When I was in high school a friend and I used to mix our own black power and explode pipe bombs in his father's field (it was a farming area) during the winter when there were no crops to damage. Can you imagine what would happen if any children tried that today?
Even stranger to today's society, our parents knew and approved of our activities. FWIW, we both had First Class Radio Amateur Licenses and were in all the math/science/electronics classes together, so we weren't totally clueless about what we were doing. This was back in a time (~1955) when a group of us kids would think nothing of grabbing our.22 rifles, 12 gauge shotguns, pistols, or whatever we owned and favored (my cousin had a lever action 30-30 rifle just like "The "Rifleman" did on the television program of that name), and head out in the farming fields hunting Jack Rabbits - which were pests to the farmers.
"...when your capitalist economy begins devouring itself,... to sustain the gluttonous beast you've created."
Don't knock it unless you've tried it. The "gluttonous beast" of capitalism you refer to is responsible for earning me most of my retirement savings. Anyone, even you or me, can invest in these money hungry "gluttonous beast" corporations who try to make us (the shareholders) richer. If I had received just one-forth of the return on the Social Security money the government has extorted from me and my employers over the years as I've received from investments in private corporations, I'd be a rich man now.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 1
And that is exactly why I had my telephone land lines disconnected - so that the phone company can never, ever, make the police think such a thing has happened in my home. As far as I know, I now have a "black mark" on my record for the bogus call that was probably the result of a buggy telephone switching program.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 1
That is in fact exactly what they accused me of: murdering my wife and stashing her body under the bed after she had managed to dial 911 with her last dying breath or some sort of bullshit.
Do you have any concept of how demoralizing and insulting it is to be accused by the police of murdering my own wife? I was being treated as guilty until proven innocent instead of the way it's supposed to be. In fact, I invited the police to call my wife and talk with her at her job. They declined.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 0
I don't give a good god damn WHAT their reasons were or that it was an accident. I do NOT want the police entering my home without my permission.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 2, Informative
No apologies were proffered by the police. The exact same thing happened to me back in January with the local fire department incidentally.
No, our cellular telephone plan is NOT with Cingular!;-)
"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instead.
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called. Our telephones were completely out of order (no dial tone) at the time the police say the call came in, and I was sitting peacefully having my second cup of coffee for the morning. After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms, I had my telephone service discontinued and the wires physically removed from my home.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected. My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
The closest I've found to what you describe is the PalmOne Treo 650 (See: http://snipurl.com/j3cu ). I pick it up on Friday so I haven't had a chance to use it personally yet, but it's supposed to have unlimited Internet access, email, etc.
I'm waiting for fast Flash RAM to get cheap enough that I can easily afford at least 2GB of it on a PCMCIA card so that I can boot from that instead of the laptop's sluggish 5K RPM hard drive. Oddly enough the BIOS boot menu already has a provision for this.
"Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition."
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, Article. II., Section. 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
"It would not be uncommon for a project to end, and for someone to not have a project in which to go."
I once quite literally came within TWO HOURS of being laid off from JPL because neither I nor my supervisor could find a project for me. Turns out my supervisor came through at the last minute (Thanks Barry), and the project turned out to be one of the most fun ones of my career. I don't want to get into specifics, but some of my firmware is orbiting Saturn.:-)
Bullshit. I worked for JPL for 25 years and retired about two years ago. During my 25 years there I saw JPL go from a relatively lean and mean organization that was actually fun to work at, to a top heavy morass of bureaucracy so burdensome with so many damn rules and regulations that it's a miracle anything at all ever gets done there anymore. Most of the people who knew what they were doing have either retired, died, or otherwise left JPL. Many of the people remaining have no idea how to design a simple closed-loop control system for example - and the worst part is they don't know it. In fact, I once tried to explain to one of the technical program managers for a cancelled Europa project why a closed loop control system cannot simply zero out accumulated error and pretend it doesn't exist because the physical error doesn't simply go away by magic. He had no idea what I was talking about. Because of this so called "technical manager"'s ignorance, JPL paid Lockheed-Martin Aerospace (LMA) for the design of a spacecraft power control system that was so flawed I refused to use their design at all and designed my own, even though the contract had already been paid.
Engineers are outnumbered about 10 to 1 (I kid you not) at most JPL project meetings by managers. I once had a friend of mine (who was the only person doing any actual design work on the project) get so pissed off because he was the only engineer (and the only one doing any real work on that part of the project) in a meeting full of managers complaining about him not working fast enough, that he told them to get off their lazy asses and do some of the work themselves. He wasn't fired because not one of the managers could do anything useful. JPL used to be a great place to work twenty or thirty years ago, but now all the bullshit bureaucracy just causes frustration and ulcers. Personally, I think the place would be a lot more fun to work at if it were smaller like it used to be, because projects were truly team efforts that people cared about before the place was inundated with blundering ignorant managers that don't do a damn thing except get in the way and complain. A few years ago, top level management spend thousands of dollars on a report that was no more than a pretty picture of the visible light spectrum. Their "report" was so ludicrous it even made it into one of the Dilbert cartoons - and believe me, a lot of JPLers were submitting a lot of material to Scott Adams because there was so much inane BS going on at JPL at that time ("Faster, Better, Cheaper" was one classic example which led to three failed spacecraft missions to Mars). JPL always seems to have some damn new management fad they try to force on the engineers and scientists, and the management fads are constantly changing.
There are still a few good people there, and one of them was in charge of MER. I think that's primarily why it was a success, but don't look for many more successful projects out of JPL until they dump a few hundred bureaucrats.
You can't be serious!? I thought the Slashdot management was turning this into a Microsoft forum, but now I'm not so sure. Can anyone explain what the connection is between the "Princess Bride," and something a typical Slashdot reader would be interested in?
"It seems to me that Slashdot turned into some kind of investiment newsletter..."
Since you mention it, not long after a story about Pursuit Dynamics (it's traded on one of the UK exchanges) was published here on SlashDot a couple of years ago, I did some research about the company on my own and purchased 5,000 shares for $3,308. Those 5,000 shares are now worth about $22,750.:-) Who says reading SlashDot is a waste of time?
"We trained hard, but it seemed that everytime we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
"While there have been shorter spikes that have been steeper, nothing in history even approaches what we're experiencing right now."
Actually, it sounds like it might be fun.:-) I only have another 15-25 years left to live anyhow, so I wouldn't mind spending it watching the world end, or to at least see some interesting weather for a change. Here in Southern California it's always hot and dry.
The squirrels in the foothills above my community have been known to carry bubonic plague for many years, but there's nothing anyone can do about it. I don't recall any cases of it having been passed to humans (campers, etc) as yet however.
I also have three monitors, but mine are positioned differently.
The one on my far left is a laptop that I use mainly as a music box (one of its USB ports is connected via an external converter to a Hi-Fi preamp and thus to my main stereo system so I don't have to listen to the crappy audio from the laptop's builtin audio system, and the laptop is also connected to an external USB 250GB hard drive containing about 50GB of MP3 recordings of my favorite music.), and to run background computing tasks on - factoring algorithms mostly).
The middle monitor sits on my adjustable computer monitor table next to my desk and an $700 all leather and wood very comfortable office chair..., which I never use anymore now that I've installed a third "monitor."
My third "monitor" is a 4x5 feet front projection screen mounted on the far wall about 8 feet in front of my all leather Barkolounger recliner (Note: Here's something only Slashdotters could appreciate: When I went to purchase my recliner, I told the sales clerk that I wanted a color of leather that would match the color of my computer case! She said that was a first for her, but managed to match it perfectly:-).
Anyhow, a high resolution (1280x1024) video projector is securely mounted near the ceiling above and to the right of my easy chair so that with my wireless keyboard and mouse, I can do my programming and web-surfing from the comfort of my Barcolounger! I don't even need to wear my computer glasses anymore. I'm sure everyone on Slashdot who wears reading glasses knows what I mean by "computer glasses" but for the rest of you, they are glasses with a prescription such that they focus at about arms length (which is how far away my regular computer monitor normally is from my eyes) instead of up closer like normal reading glasses do. I don't need any glasses at all to use my four by five foot computer "monitor" however, and movies look great on it!:-)
As for software development tools, I highly recommend either the free Actel Libero® Integrated Design Environment (IDE) development tools, or one of the Lattice ispLEVER packages. Seriously folks, Verilog HDL or SystemC are just as much programming languages as C/C++ or Java, etc. As FPGA's get larger and cheaper, I expect to see more and more functions that are traditionally performed on old-fashioned sequential computers like your desktop computer, and will be embedded into special purposes devices rather than general purpose computers. As a bona-fide retired 35+ years of experience computer programmer, I think I am qualified to discourage anyone from entering the field of traditional computer programming. I would instead encourage young people these days to study VLSI design and learn at least one VLSI design language if you want to be a programmer, or preferably to instead study something like biological (ie genetic) engineering which is the "next big thing."
The CNET quote was taken totally out of context, but was funny as Hell anyway!;-)
...
they [Google] have this slogan that they are going to organize the world's information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world's information. It's a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer.
Question: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point?
Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in high school a friend and I used to mix our own black power and explode pipe bombs in his father's field (it was a farming area) during the winter when there were no crops to damage. Can you imagine what would happen if any children tried that today?
.22 rifles, 12 gauge shotguns, pistols, or whatever we owned and favored (my cousin had a lever action 30-30 rifle just like "The "Rifleman" did on the television program of that name), and head out in the farming fields hunting Jack Rabbits - which were pests to the farmers.
Even stranger to today's society, our parents knew and approved of our activities. FWIW, we both had First Class Radio Amateur Licenses and were in all the math/science/electronics classes together, so we weren't totally clueless about what we were doing. This was back in a time (~1955) when a group of us kids would think nothing of grabbing our
Too bad the USPTO doesn't require a working prototype.
The Writers Edge article is the most convincing explanation I've heard yet. Thank you for posting a link to it.
Don't knock it unless you've tried it. The "gluttonous beast" of capitalism you refer to is responsible for earning me most of my retirement savings. Anyone, even you or me, can invest in these money hungry "gluttonous beast" corporations who try to make us (the shareholders) richer. If I had received just one-forth of the return on the Social Security money the government has extorted from me and my employers over the years as I've received from investments in private corporations, I'd be a rich man now.
And that is exactly why I had my telephone land lines disconnected - so that the phone company can never, ever, make the police think such a thing has happened in my home. As far as I know, I now have a "black mark" on my record for the bogus call that was probably the result of a buggy telephone switching program.
That is in fact exactly what they accused me of: murdering my wife and stashing her body under the bed after she had managed to dial 911 with her last dying breath or some sort of bullshit.
Do you have any concept of how demoralizing and insulting it is to be accused by the police of murdering my own wife? I was being treated as guilty until proven innocent instead of the way it's supposed to be. In fact, I invited the police to call my wife and talk with her at her job. They declined.
I don't give a good god damn WHAT their reasons were or that it was an accident. I do NOT want the police entering my home without my permission.
No apologies were proffered by the police. The exact same thing happened to me back in January with the local fire department incidentally.
No, our cellular telephone plan is NOT with Cingular! ;-)
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called. Our telephones were completely out of order (no dial tone) at the time the police say the call came in, and I was sitting peacefully having my second cup of coffee for the morning. After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms, I had my telephone service discontinued and the wires physically removed from my home.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected. My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
Ron Dotson
Glendale, CA, USA
The closest I've found to what you describe is the PalmOne Treo 650 (See: http://snipurl.com/j3cu ). I pick it up on Friday so I haven't had a chance to use it personally yet, but it's supposed to have unlimited Internet access, email, etc.
I'm waiting for fast Flash RAM to get cheap enough that I can easily afford at least 2GB of it on a PCMCIA card so that I can boot from that instead of the laptop's sluggish 5K RPM hard drive. Oddly enough the BIOS boot menu already has a provision for this.
Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?
I once quite literally came within TWO HOURS of being laid off from JPL because neither I nor my supervisor could find a project for me. Turns out my supervisor came through at the last minute (Thanks Barry), and the project turned out to be one of the most fun ones of my career. I don't want to get into specifics, but some of my firmware is orbiting Saturn. :-)
Engineers are outnumbered about 10 to 1 (I kid you not) at most JPL project meetings by managers. I once had a friend of mine (who was the only person doing any actual design work on the project) get so pissed off because he was the only engineer (and the only one doing any real work on that part of the project) in a meeting full of managers complaining about him not working fast enough, that he told them to get off their lazy asses and do some of the work themselves. He wasn't fired because not one of the managers could do anything useful. JPL used to be a great place to work twenty or thirty years ago, but now all the bullshit bureaucracy just causes frustration and ulcers. Personally, I think the place would be a lot more fun to work at if it were smaller like it used to be, because projects were truly team efforts that people cared about before the place was inundated with blundering ignorant managers that don't do a damn thing except get in the way and complain. A few years ago, top level management spend thousands of dollars on a report that was no more than a pretty picture of the visible light spectrum. Their "report" was so ludicrous it even made it into one of the Dilbert cartoons - and believe me, a lot of JPLers were submitting a lot of material to Scott Adams because there was so much inane BS going on at JPL at that time ("Faster, Better, Cheaper" was one classic example which led to three failed spacecraft missions to Mars). JPL always seems to have some damn new management fad they try to force on the engineers and scientists, and the management fads are constantly changing.
There are still a few good people there, and one of them was in charge of MER. I think that's primarily why it was a success, but don't look for many more successful projects out of JPL until they dump a few hundred bureaucrats.
You can't be serious!? I thought the Slashdot management was turning this into a Microsoft forum, but now I'm not so sure. Can anyone explain what the connection is between the "Princess Bride," and something a typical Slashdot reader would be interested in?
What a coincidence - I'm celebrating my 60th birthday TODAY! :-)
Since you mention it, not long after a story about Pursuit Dynamics (it's traded on one of the UK exchanges) was published here on SlashDot a couple of years ago, I did some research about the company on my own and purchased 5,000 shares for $3,308. Those 5,000 shares are now worth about $22,750. :-) Who says reading SlashDot is a waste of time?
"We trained hard, but it seemed that everytime we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
Petronius Arbiter (210 B.C.)
Actually, it sounds like it might be fun. :-) I only have another 15-25 years left to live anyhow, so I wouldn't mind spending it watching the world end, or to at least see some interesting weather for a change. Here in Southern California it's always hot and dry.
The squirrels in the foothills above my community have been known to carry bubonic plague for many years, but there's nothing anyone can do about it. I don't recall any cases of it having been passed to humans (campers, etc) as yet however.
The one on my far left is a laptop that I use mainly as a music box (one of its USB ports is connected via an external converter to a Hi-Fi preamp and thus to my main stereo system so I don't have to listen to the crappy audio from the laptop's builtin audio system, and the laptop is also connected to an external USB 250GB hard drive containing about 50GB of MP3 recordings of my favorite music.), and to run background computing tasks on - factoring algorithms mostly).
The middle monitor sits on my adjustable computer monitor table next to my desk and an $700 all leather and wood very comfortable office chair..., which I never use anymore now that I've installed a third "monitor."
My third "monitor" is a 4x5 feet front projection screen mounted on the far wall about 8 feet in front of my all leather Barkolounger recliner (Note: Here's something only Slashdotters could appreciate: When I went to purchase my recliner, I told the sales clerk that I wanted a color of leather that would match the color of my computer case! She said that was a first for her, but managed to match it perfectly :-).
Anyhow, a high resolution (1280x1024) video projector is securely mounted near the ceiling above and to the right of my easy chair so that with my wireless keyboard and mouse, I can do my programming and web-surfing from the comfort of my Barcolounger! I don't even need to wear my computer glasses anymore. I'm sure everyone on Slashdot who wears reading glasses knows what I mean by "computer glasses" but for the rest of you, they are glasses with a prescription such that they focus at about arms length (which is how far away my regular computer monitor normally is from my eyes) instead of up closer like normal reading glasses do. I don't need any glasses at all to use my four by five foot computer "monitor" however, and movies look great on it! :-)
As for software development tools, I highly recommend either the free Actel Libero® Integrated Design Environment (IDE) development tools, or one of the Lattice ispLEVER packages. Seriously folks, Verilog HDL or SystemC are just as much programming languages as C/C++ or Java, etc. As FPGA's get larger and cheaper, I expect to see more and more functions that are traditionally performed on old-fashioned sequential computers like your desktop computer, and will be embedded into special purposes devices rather than general purpose computers. As a bona-fide retired 35+ years of experience computer programmer, I think I am qualified to discourage anyone from entering the field of traditional computer programming. I would instead encourage young people these days to study VLSI design and learn at least one VLSI design language if you want to be a programmer, or preferably to instead study something like biological (ie genetic) engineering which is the "next big thing."
Where are my mod points when I need them? Great post.
Get yourself some Valtrex .