Plastikman is great (Although I don't own any albums yet).
My current favorites: Boards of Canada, Solvent, Lowfish, Plaid, & Autchre. Two really good labels for this stuff is Warp Records and Suction Records. I find more great stuff everywhere I look.
I got so bored with electronica that I almost gave up. And then I found this stuff, and it just keeps getting better. It's like electronica, but it's way more complex and creative.
One thing I'm really curious about: Plastikman, Lowfish, Solvent, and Boards of Canada are all from Canada. There's some undergound cultural revolution happening up there. What's going on?
If you have access to Internet Radio, I highly reccommend these these two stations.
There's one strange phenomenon I experience after a lot of coding: it feels like my hands are connected directly to my shoulders, and my eyes seem to zoom in so the screen fills my vision. I code faster and better, but it's really weird. Does anyone else get this?
I can't program without that phenomenon:) I found a couple brands of music that (ambient psychadellic electronic music) that allow me to really concentrate on the project. Hours will go by and I won't notice...
Of course, my jobs are typically 30% programming, 70% administration/human-interaction...
However the U.S. would be better advised to let the market evolve in the most efficient manner.
But if you tax one group but don't tax the other group, it's not a balanced market. You're protecting the Etailers in an unfair manner.
E-Tailers are not comparable to retail shops, as many in this discussion have already pointed out.
But they are comparable. Retailers and Etailers have products/services, staff and customers, and their goal is to profit, and they need a location from which to maximize profit. The only real difference is that etailers do their business online, and don't pay sales tax.
I still haven't seen a good reason why we should favor etailers vs retailers, other then many Slashdot earn their salary from the some sort of ebusiness.
To give you some perspective: I worked for an Etailer from 2000-This Year.
What politicians fail to understand is that the major draw to e-tailing is the lack of taxes. Sure, shopping online a huge convenience, but people today would still choose to drive to their local retailer and actually touch and try out a product before making a purchase, and forcing taxes on e-tailing would take away any incentive for consumers to use the services of the fledging new industry.
So you're arguing that e-tailing should be tax-free (read: Subsidized) because it's a new industry? I've got news for you: There are dozens of 'new industries' out there today, and almost all of them pay State taxes.
I'm not saying that there should be new taxes, and I understand that a large part of the anti-tax argument has to do with "taxation over state lines", but let me ask you this: Why should we give tax breaks to a 'fledgling new industry' and but not 'fledgling new retail store' on Main street?
I don't care if it's a fledgling new industry. I don't care if a retail store has the "I can touch the merchandise" advantage over an internet store. The internet store doesn't have to pay the high rent on Main street, they can pay the cheaper rent of a warehouse on the edge of town, or in a poorer state. There are dozens of similar advantages and disadvantages in any industry.
If the state taxes a retail business, but does not tax the similar internet business, then it means they are subsidizing one industry over another, which is unfair.
The government should not favor one industry over the other by giving tax cuts to either industry.
Personally, I think it's a response to the general anti-Indian bashing that Indians apparently face on most international newsgroups. Add the fact that India is only now coming out of its socialist hibernation and you have a perfect situation for some oh-I'm-so-Indian chest beating.
True, but this article only gives more ammunition to the anti-Indian bashers. I wouldn't want to be associated with this guy:
a) He's not the first person to make this claim about extraterrestrial microbes.
b) This isn't good science. What, he sticks a balloon above some theoretical "barrier" in the atmosphere, finds some microbes, and then claims they MUST be extraterrestrial? That's a silly claim.
Which is more likely: That bacteria from Earth managed to travel 41km into the sky sometime in the last 4.5 billion years, and then survived in that environment; or that bacteria travelled millions-trillions of miles through space from some other system and just happened to find Earths atmosphere?
Hey, I like the "intergalactic spores" theory as much as anybody, but I think this scientist is ignoring the obvious.
Duh! Saddam doesn't read his email, one of the "Saddam Lookalikes" reads the email, and occasionally responds... so I guess you could call them "Saddam Typealikes".
I don't really care about people's costumes. I want to know more about your Halloween _projects_. What cheap, creative ways are you using to decorate your house?
Here's an easy way to haunt up your front porch for less then $25. The neighborhood kids love it.
Last halloween I bought 10 pounds of dry ice from a local industrial chemical supply store for about $10. I placed the dry ice in a cheap black 5 gallon "witches cauldron", which I got from the local Haloween store.
To create the fog, I simply placed the ice in the cauldron, and periodically added warm water when I saw trick-or-treaters. The warm water melts the ice, and you get fog.
The dry-ice provided enough fog rolling down my front steps to freak out the neighborhood kids. This fog lasted approximately 4 hours.
For added effect, I placed a couple of those green and red glow sticks inside the cauldron (Since glow sticks glow less when cold, I placed the sticks on a pedestal above the cold ice and water), and added some reflective alluminum foil to enhance the glow.
As an added effect, I replaced my porch light with a black light, and added a bunch of those green-spiderwebs from the halloween store.
This gave the whole porch a nice eerie glow, especially with the green-glow eminating from the cauldron. The fog trickling down the stairs is a great and cheap effect, especially with flickering candle light from the jack-o-lanterns.
Whole cost of this operation, including dry ice $1 a pound), cauldron ($5 at the drug store), black light ($2 at hardware store), glow sticks ($2 each), spiderwebs ($3 a pack), pumpkins ($3 each) was probably $25. I'm going to do the same thing this year.
No, I've noticed the opposite in my Yahoo account. I use their spamguard feature, but still, I've noticed an increase by a factor of 10x. I get ALOT of spam now.
Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet
Hold on to those conclusions cowboy, just because they are the only entry does NOT mean that they are the only technology contributor.
Opensecrets is a GREAT site, and I really appreciate their efforts[1], but their database is far from complete. I've been browsing the site over the last few days, and I notice that Opensecrets has information for many of the Democratic congressional candidates, but not for many Republican candidates.
Check out the race in my District. We have information for Barbara Lee, for the other two candidates, it says "No reports on record for this candidate. ". Not a good measure, yet.
Does this mean that Democrat$ receive more money then Republican$? NO!
It simply means that, for whatever reason, Opensecrets has the data for the Democrats, but has less information for the Republicans.
[1]: So valuable that I donated money to them, even through I just got laid off. YOU SHOULD DONATE TOO).
Notice how the site posts the following disclosure at the bottom of many of the Congressional query pages:
Quality of Disclosure:
Quality of disclosure data has been removed from the site because of errors in the Federal Election Commission's database. The FEC has informed us that it will not supply updated disclosure data until mid-October. We will post new figures on disclosure quality as soon as possible.
Convenient timing, eh? Elections are November 5th, and the FEC won't supply the updated information until "mid-October". That's probably not enough time for opensecrets to input the data before the elctions.
If the FEC supplied that information on a timely basis, I might be able to make a more educated decision on November 5th.
Or Daylight Savings time, as observed by most operating systems:... 1:00 = 1 hour till you switch your clock.... 1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock. 1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock. 1:00 = 1 hour till you switch your clock.... 1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock. 1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock.... 1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock. 1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock.
I've never understood the need for super-cold machine rooms. 70F is well within the healthy operating parameters of most computers.
Let's also not forget that air conditioners aren't always good for the mechine: They increase the level of static electricity in the area, and can blows dust around if don't have an airfilter in that room. Dust and static buildup can harm the machines more then at 70F temperature.
As another poster pointed out, the only good reason to keep an AC at a really low temperature is to deal with the hotspots. It may be 60F at your desk, but the big server is sitting in a corner far from the AC, and it's case is 80F. But that's just a result of poor air flow, and can probably be resolved with a few fans and a few air ducts.
A friend in Sacramento had his AT&T cable modem service shut off repeatedly. He was at home all day, and listening to internet talk radio (most commonly his own show, just to see what was on). Apparantly a 24k stream from Live365 was enough to enforce a AUP shutdown... of course, he wasn't doing anything that was against the AUP, and he go them to turn it back on every time, but they would turn around and shut his account down again a week later.
And yet I know a dozen attbi.com users in the SF Bay Area who listen to Live365 up to 8+ hours a day, 5+ days a week (myself included), and none of them have ever had their service shut off.
Are you sure that your friend isn't just getting poor service from ATT ? They are known for their outages, and their supplied cable modems have trouble dealing with network hiccups. Did the support folks actuall say the problem was with the AUP?
During the rainy season earlier this year, I had a period where my ATT connection died every several days. When it happened, I called tech support, they asked me to do the 'unplug the cable modem. Wait 5 minutes, plug it back in' trick. It worked, but my connection would die just a few days later. After a few rounds of this, and alot of complaining on my part, ATT finally sent a technician to check on the problem.
Lo-and-behold, the problem was actually a corroded connector on one of the telephone poles. Apparently my connection would die, and the cable modem couldn't cope with the degraded network connection. It's been 8 months and several hundred hours of streaming audio later, and I've only had 2-3 more outages, and of which were all resolved within 10 minutes.
"I see you're trying to email a program to every member of your Outlook Address book. DON'T DO THAT YOU FUCKING MORON!"
Creative 'modifications'/'defacement' of the ads?
on
Microsoft Vandalizes NYC
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The sidewalk decals were a heavier plastic, with a roughly textured surface. Though they were stuck to the pavement, they too could be lifted off fairly easily.
I'm curious how people will 'creative modify' the Microsoft ads. Any pictures?
We get these annoying sidewalk decals in San Francisco all the time. Usually they're on private property, but too often they're on the public sidewalk in hard-to-ignore locations.
The most annoying ads are in the public train stations. The ads are usually placed at the top or bottom of the staircases (and in some cases, ON the staircases), or in some other location that is hard to ignore. For example, imagine a group of people travelling down in an escalator. Where are people looking? 95% of the people will looking at the base of the escalator at some point. So, the clever ad companies place these annoying ads at the base of the escalator, where it's almost impossible to ignore them.
This is why that whenever I pass one of these sidewalk stickers on public areas, I always make sure to take an extra few seconds to discretely lift up one of the corners of the sticker-ad with the sole of my shoe. The stickers are usually made of a heavy plastic, and it's difficult to tear them up without a sharp object.
As large groups of people pass through the train station and walk over the sticker, some individuals will eventually step on the torn up corner, and the advertisement will become even more torn up over time. Many people hate the ads as much as I do, and will also make an effort to kick up the sticker a little bit more. As the advertisement comes off the sidewalk, it becomes uglier and dirtier, wish tarnishes the image that the advertiser is trying to promote.
I've been in two datacenters where there were regularly spaced 'emergency air supply' masks, right next to the regularly spaced fire extinguishers.
Not sure how well they would work in a room full of smoke and halon, but I suppose you could run from station to station, and then somehow pry open the massive firedoor...
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Once your done driving, hop into a plane and fly over Nevada. Those same regions of "empty space" will be completely peppered with dirt roads, which I would qualify as "human influence".
And the roads are just something we can see. What about the pollution from the upwind chemical plant, the oil dripping out of one of those offroad trucks, residue from the meth lab that exploded 3 years ago.
You can't necessarily see those human influences from a car or a plane, but they're still there.
Slashdot Mirror
Plastikman is great (Although I don't own any albums yet).
My current favorites: Boards of Canada, Solvent, Lowfish, Plaid, & Autchre. Two really good labels for this stuff is Warp Records and Suction Records. I find more great stuff everywhere I look.
I got so bored with electronica that I almost gave up. And then I found this stuff, and it just keeps getting better. It's like electronica, but it's way more complex and creative.
One thing I'm really curious about: Plastikman, Lowfish, Solvent, and Boards of Canada are all from Canada. There's some undergound cultural revolution happening up there. What's going on?
If you have access to Internet Radio, I highly reccommend these these two stations.
There's one strange phenomenon I experience after a lot of coding: it feels like my hands are connected directly to my shoulders, and my eyes seem to zoom in so the screen fills my vision. I code faster and better, but it's really weird. Does anyone else get this?
:) I found a couple brands of music that (ambient psychadellic electronic music) that allow me to really concentrate on the project. Hours will go by and I won't notice...
I can't program without that phenomenon
Of course, my jobs are typically 30% programming, 70% administration/human-interaction...
do you have any tips on getting through ultra-long coding sessions?
... ponders ... ponders ...
Yeah, remember the pain and agony of those 27 hours, realize that it's impossible to write quality programs with that strategy, and never do it again!
It's even more fun when clueless mangement tries to get you to do that in the Real World. Feh...
Oh well, Back to my job search!
No, maybe to the average slashdot.org/~joe the advantages are obvious
... And userid 369. All that time and no comments... :)
Hmmm... if Joe knows that FOSS exists, he sure ain't admitting to it!
http://slashdot.org/~joe
joe has posted 0 comments.
However the U.S. would be better advised to let the market evolve in the most efficient manner.
But if you tax one group but don't tax the other group, it's not a balanced market. You're protecting the Etailers in an unfair manner.
E-Tailers are not comparable to retail shops, as many in this discussion have already pointed out.
But they are comparable. Retailers and Etailers have products/services, staff and customers, and their goal is to profit, and they need a location from which to maximize profit. The only real difference is that etailers do their business online, and don't pay sales tax.
I still haven't seen a good reason why we should favor etailers vs retailers, other then many Slashdot earn their salary from the some sort of ebusiness.
To give you some perspective: I worked for an Etailer from 2000-This Year.
What politicians fail to understand is that the major draw to e-tailing is the lack of taxes. Sure, shopping online a huge convenience, but people today would still choose to drive to their local retailer and actually touch and try out a product before making a purchase, and forcing taxes on e-tailing would take away any incentive for consumers to use the services of the fledging new industry.
So you're arguing that e-tailing should be tax-free (read: Subsidized) because it's a new industry? I've got news for you: There are dozens of 'new industries' out there today, and almost all of them pay State taxes.
I'm not saying that there should be new taxes, and I understand that a large part of the anti-tax argument has to do with "taxation over state lines", but let me ask you this: Why should we give tax breaks to a 'fledgling new industry' and but not 'fledgling new retail store' on Main street?
I don't care if it's a fledgling new industry. I don't care if a retail store has the "I can touch the merchandise" advantage over an internet store. The internet store doesn't have to pay the high rent on Main street, they can pay the cheaper rent of a warehouse on the edge of town, or in a poorer state. There are dozens of similar advantages and disadvantages in any industry.
If the state taxes a retail business, but does not tax the similar internet business, then it means they are subsidizing one industry over another, which is unfair.
The government should not favor one industry over the other by giving tax cuts to either industry.
Personally, I think it's a response to the general anti-Indian bashing that Indians apparently face on most international newsgroups. Add the fact that India is only now coming out of its socialist hibernation and you have a perfect situation for some oh-I'm-so-Indian chest beating.
True, but this article only gives more ammunition to the anti-Indian bashers. I wouldn't want to be associated with this guy:
a) He's not the first person to make this claim about extraterrestrial microbes.
b) This isn't good science. What, he sticks a balloon above some theoretical "barrier" in the atmosphere, finds some microbes, and then claims they MUST be extraterrestrial? That's a silly claim.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Which is more likely: That bacteria from Earth managed to travel 41km into the sky sometime in the last 4.5 billion years, and then survived in that environment; or that bacteria travelled millions-trillions of miles through space from some other system and just happened to find Earths atmosphere?
Hey, I like the "intergalactic spores" theory as much as anybody, but I think this scientist is ignoring the obvious.
Duh! Saddam doesn't read his email, one of the "Saddam Lookalikes" reads the email, and occasionally responds... so I guess you could call them "Saddam Typealikes".
There's a whole homebrew Halloween subculture out there.
Here's a great Halloween Project List with diagrams and everything.
Some of the projects cheap, easy and can be done in an hour (and you still have a few days left).
Other projects are more involved, like building a IR motion detector to detect trick-or-treaters and set off some effect (like a fog machine) further up the path, the famous flying crank ghost projects, glowing ghosts, you name it. I mean, come on, haven't you always wanted to build your own electric arc (jacobs ladder)" that you see in Frankenstein's Labratory???
I don't really care about people's costumes. I want to know more about your Halloween _projects_. What cheap, creative ways are you using to decorate your house?
Here's an easy way to haunt up your front porch for less then $25. The neighborhood kids love it.
Last halloween I bought 10 pounds of dry ice from a local industrial chemical supply store for about $10. I placed the dry ice in a cheap black 5 gallon "witches cauldron", which I got from the local Haloween store.
To create the fog, I simply placed the ice in the cauldron, and periodically added warm water when I saw trick-or-treaters. The warm water melts the ice, and you get fog.
The dry-ice provided enough fog rolling down my front steps to freak out the neighborhood kids. This fog lasted approximately 4 hours.
For added effect, I placed a couple of those green and red glow sticks inside the cauldron (Since glow sticks glow less when cold, I placed the sticks on a pedestal above the cold ice and water), and added some reflective alluminum foil to enhance the glow.
As an added effect, I replaced my porch light with a black light, and added a bunch of those green-spiderwebs from the halloween store.
This gave the whole porch a nice eerie glow, especially with the green-glow eminating from the cauldron. The fog trickling down the stairs is a great and cheap effect, especially with flickering candle light from the jack-o-lanterns.
Whole cost of this operation, including dry ice $1 a pound), cauldron ($5 at the drug store), black light ($2 at hardware store), glow sticks ($2 each), spiderwebs ($3 a pack), pumpkins ($3 each) was probably $25. I'm going to do the same thing this year.
How does mentioning "going to the bathroom" make the show PC?
No, I've noticed the opposite in my Yahoo account. I use their spamguard feature, but still, I've noticed an increase by a factor of 10x. I get ALOT of spam now.
:)
Perhaps hotmail is redirecting spam to Yahoo???
It's a small portion of your life savings when compared to the percentage of taxes given out as political favors.
Yes, but Big Labor has magnitudes more people then Big Oil.
For example, AFCME has
1.3 million members, and contributed $30,671,426 between 1990 - 2002. That's a whole stinking $5 per year per member. Mostly to Democrats. Big wow.
The oil industry, on the otherhand, gave $147,101,710 between 1990 - 2002, $108,198,576 of which went to Republicans.
Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet
Hold on to those conclusions cowboy, just because they are the only entry does NOT mean that they are the only technology contributor.
Opensecrets is a GREAT site, and I really appreciate their efforts[1], but their database is far from complete. I've been browsing the site over the last few days, and I notice that Opensecrets has information for many of the Democratic congressional candidates, but not for many Republican candidates.
Check out the race in my District. We have information for Barbara Lee, for the other two candidates, it says "No reports on record for this candidate. ". Not a good measure, yet.
Does this mean that Democrat$ receive more money then Republican$? NO!
It simply means that, for whatever reason, Opensecrets has the data for the Democrats, but has less information for the Republicans.
[1]: So valuable that I donated money to them, even through I just got laid off. YOU SHOULD DONATE TOO).
Notice how the site posts the following disclosure at the bottom of many of the Congressional query pages:
Quality of Disclosure:
Quality of disclosure data has been removed from the site because of errors in the Federal Election Commission's database. The FEC has informed us that it will not supply updated disclosure data until mid-October. We will post new figures on disclosure quality as soon as possible.
Convenient timing, eh? Elections are November 5th, and the FEC won't supply the updated information until "mid-October". That's probably not enough time for opensecrets to input the data before the elctions.
If the FEC supplied that information on a timely basis, I might be able to make a more educated decision on November 5th.
Suspicious timing, if you ask me.
Or Daylight Savings time, as observed by most operating systems: ... ... ... ...
1:00 = 1 hour till you switch your clock.
1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock.
1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock.
1:00 = 1 hour till you switch your clock.
1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock.
1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock.
1:50 = 10 minutes till you switch the clock.
1:55 = 5 minutes till you switch your clock.
I've never understood the need for super-cold machine rooms. 70F is well within the healthy operating parameters of most computers.
Let's also not forget that air conditioners aren't always good for the mechine: They increase the level of static electricity in the area, and can blows dust around if don't have an airfilter in that room. Dust and static buildup can harm the machines more then at 70F temperature.
As another poster pointed out, the only good reason to keep an AC at a really low temperature is to deal with the hotspots. It may be 60F at your desk, but the big server is sitting in a corner far from the AC, and it's case is 80F. But that's just a result of poor air flow, and can probably be resolved with a few fans and a few air ducts.
A friend in Sacramento had his AT&T cable modem service shut off repeatedly. He was at home all day, and listening to internet talk radio (most commonly his own show, just to see what was on). Apparantly a 24k stream from Live365 was enough to enforce a AUP shutdown... of course, he wasn't doing anything that was against the AUP, and he go them to turn it back on every time, but they would turn around and shut his account down again a week later.
And yet I know a dozen attbi.com users in the SF Bay Area who listen to Live365 up to 8+ hours a day, 5+ days a week (myself included), and none of them have ever had their service shut off.
Are you sure that your friend isn't just getting poor service from ATT ? They are known for their outages, and their supplied cable modems have trouble dealing with network hiccups. Did the support folks actuall say the problem was with the AUP?
During the rainy season earlier this year, I had a period where my ATT connection died every several days. When it happened, I called tech support, they asked me to do the 'unplug the cable modem. Wait 5 minutes, plug it back in' trick. It worked, but my connection would die just a few days later. After a few rounds of this, and alot of complaining on my part, ATT finally sent a technician to check on the problem.
Lo-and-behold, the problem was actually a corroded connector on one of the telephone poles. Apparently my connection would die, and the cable modem couldn't cope with the degraded network connection. It's been 8 months and several hundred hours of streaming audio later, and I've only had 2-3 more outages, and of which were all resolved within 10 minutes.
Finally, a good use for Clippy!
"I see you're trying to email a program to every member of your Outlook Address book. DON'T DO THAT YOU FUCKING MORON!"
The sidewalk decals were a heavier plastic, with a roughly textured surface. Though they were stuck to the pavement, they too could be lifted off fairly easily.
I'm curious how people will 'creative modify' the Microsoft ads. Any pictures?
We get these annoying sidewalk decals in San Francisco all the time. Usually they're on private property, but too often they're on the public sidewalk in hard-to-ignore locations.
The most annoying ads are in the public train stations. The ads are usually placed at the top or bottom of the staircases (and in some cases, ON the staircases), or in some other location that is hard to ignore. For example, imagine a group of people travelling down in an escalator. Where are people looking? 95% of the people will looking at the base of the escalator at some point. So, the clever ad companies place these annoying ads at the base of the escalator, where it's almost impossible to ignore them.
This is why that whenever I pass one of these sidewalk stickers on public areas, I always make sure to take an extra few seconds to discretely lift up one of the corners of the sticker-ad with the sole of my shoe. The stickers are usually made of a heavy plastic, and it's difficult to tear them up without a sharp object.
As large groups of people pass through the train station and walk over the sticker, some individuals will eventually step on the torn up corner, and the advertisement will become even more torn up over time. Many people hate the ads as much as I do, and will also make an effort to kick up the sticker a little bit more. As the advertisement comes off the sidewalk, it becomes uglier and dirtier, wish tarnishes the image that the advertiser is trying to promote.
Sweat-soaked, skintight, velvet jumpsuit with cute little butterfly wings.
Hey now, whatever Steve does in his personal life is his own business, as long as all activities involve consensual adults.
I've been in two datacenters where there were regularly spaced 'emergency air supply' masks, right next to the regularly spaced fire extinguishers.
Not sure how well they would work in a room full of smoke and halon, but I suppose you could run from station to station, and then somehow pry open the massive firedoor...
First of all, drive through Nevada some time. Mile after mile of empty space, but according to this report, humans have "appropriated" it. Technically, I'm sure they're right in the sense that someone owns it, but it's not as if the land is being used for anything.
Once your done driving, hop into a plane and fly over Nevada. Those same regions of "empty space" will be completely peppered with dirt roads, which I would qualify as "human influence".
And the roads are just something we can see. What about the pollution from the upwind chemical plant, the oil dripping out of one of those offroad trucks, residue from the meth lab that exploded 3 years ago.
You can't necessarily see those human influences from a car or a plane, but they're still there.
Where has the wilderness gone?