Re:Great... just what space entrepreneurs need...
on
Golf in Space
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· Score: 1
Well, lets setup a scenario I don't like, and which invites all the rocket scientists among us to get out their calculators for exersize.
Assume he hits it in the same direction as the station is traveling, thereby giving it an orbital boost. A good hit (but probably not while in a space suit) might give it an extra 200 mph. So its orbit will expand, and will be higher than the station for a while. But that higher orbit also takes more time, so the station will overtake it and pass it eventually, probably within a week or so. From then on, the ball falls farther and farther behind, gradually getting a whole orbit out of synch.
Now, a year passes while both orbits are decaying, and eventually the supply ship will need to burn a few thousand pounds of fuel to give the station a boost.
At some point in the future would it not be possible that the ball is headed south at its 57 degrees inclination while the now boosted station is headed north at its 57 degree inclination, and that the paths could intersect? Given the orbital velocity of both is in the vicinity of 17,500 mph, what would be the approach velocities in that case?
Food for thought.
I don't think I'd want to stick up a gloved hand and try to catch that puppy to keep it from hitting the station. Even a bullet from a 220 Swift would be moving a heck of a lot slower in relative terms. The golf ball I expect weighs 200x the 220's 45 gr slug. I think I'd rather be Javelin catching at the olympics, its safer.:)
Why am I reminded, by reading this post, of the Bush admin response to Katrina?
An amazing similarity. In either scenario, the bodies on the ground weren't consulted as to whether or not the problem was serious.
As for recovery in New Orleans and that general area, it will be a very long time if ever coming. Why? Even to me, sitting in front of a monitor a thousand miles away, its extremely obvious that the only recovery the feds are interested in is just enough to the port itself to get the oil flowing again, or move that traffic to some other port. I expect the current facts are about 75% has moved, 15% is still to be repaired out in the gulf, and maybe 10% is now moving through the port of New Orleans.
Away from New Orleans, we have gas for our cars, and enough natural to keep our feet warm most of the time. And until somebodies feet are cold, in an office with the clout to do something about it, and his local gas pumper demands cash before turning on the pump to fill up his 3 bedroom suv, the situation is not going to markedly improve.
And the saddest part is the displaced blacks, many of which have a 2nd rate education because they had 2nd rate schools in their neighborhood because we've had a 2nd rate government for the last 90 years, maybe more, are going to get a hell of a lot colder and hungrier before its all said and done.
If we, the voting public, do not reclaim the theory that the government is OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people, then I fear this 230 year old experiment in Democracy will have come to naught.
These next elections folks, take a good look at ALL the candidates, not just the big two cats currently engaged in a sometimes entertaining, always maddening spitting match, and vote for the bext man/woman for the job, regardless of the job, and regardless of the party. I know full well there are wannabe candidates out there that could do a far better job than what we've had for at least the last 50 years. But when they can't afford to get a word in sideways between the republicrats and their pissing matches, its not a fair fight.
So pay attention folks, if you want to save the democratic form of government. It takes YOUR participation to make it work, so learn about ALL the candidates, and then VOTE. (And I don't think it needs to be said, but I will anyway, BUT NOT on Diebold machine)
Like Ben Franklin said, Democracy is a very bad form of government, but all the others are so much worse.
No slap on the wrist, no deuce in a "country club." Hard time, every time, no exceptions.
Maybe, but then they'd just have a designated, probably gay fall guy & pay his family if he has one, $60k a year while he sits in the slammer getting pounded (or doing the pounding, probably both). While they continue business as usual.
I very much prefer to hit them in the language that an MBA can understand because it takes ALL the profit out of it and then some. A minimum of 3x what they may have made, with a $10 million minimum. Note the 'may', cause if they didn't make as much doing it as we estimate, then thats their problem. Our official attitude should be Tough shit, you did the crime and its pay up time or sit in the slammer at say $30k a year credit against the fine for the CEO of record while the fine is drawing the current interest rate the credit cards charge their never paid up deadbeats.
Now that I'd say would make honest garbage truck driving folks out of Al Capone even.
OTOH, a public stoning would probably be far more effective. Until then, can we have a punitve fine law that makes it a whole lot less appealing to do these underhanded, often illegal tricks just because the legendary Joe SixPack doesn't know how to protect his machine?
I'd suggest $10 million per instance, such as per each single title cd release because anything less will be be treated as a cost of doing business to these low life jerks. Maybe thats not enough, but done often enough it will send a message around thats at least as effective as sending Luigi and Anthony around with a violin case thats strangely heavy and has the potential to make a lot of noise in stacato bursts. I'll posit that the violin case solution would be more permanent though.:)
If any of these low lifes are reading this, can you figure out that we're pi$$ed? And that your sales are down because we're pi$$ed? No? Then I submit you can't read either... I don't buy ANYTHING that doesn't have the Phillips owned trademark Compact Disk Logo on it. End of discussion AFAIC.
No, the real solution is to outlaw all DRM and allow all copying that does not result in material gain or profit. Coupled with that, lock up anyone who profits with real income, for the duration left yet on the copyrights violated, running consecutively if there are several such copyrights involved. After the culprit(s) has sat in the slammer for a minimum of time, he/she may appeal to the rights holder for mercy and be let out early.
The only thing wrong with that is that it would also need to contain some wording re the lost profits to the copyright holders that was a direct result of someone giveing other person(s) copy(s) of a cd. Say a fiver for each cd burnt & passed along. And make it clear that that is the total extent of the damages they can claim. This bs of charging everyone 3500-20k dollars for one provable cd is pure stuff, fresh and still steaming.
Likewise, if the defendant is adjudged not guilty, the plaintiff then gets to do the same time for sueing under false pretenses and pay his own costs for keep to boot so society doesn't have to support the scum. That would certainly level the playing field after a bit due to a shortage of lawyers not in jail. And I expect it would improve jail conditions as a side effect too, for at least as long as the crooked lawyer still had an account to support him(her)self in the manner to which they've become accustomed. After that, or if the partner sues for divorce and cleans out the joint account, well things are tough all over...:)
This is otherwise the best proposal to come down the pike in quite a while. But because it would be the ultimate in fairness to all concerned, with no great profit to be made by the legal beagles, you can bet you whatever it will never reach a reading in any government house on the planet.
And thats too bad. But its a hell of an idea whose time has come nonetheless.
I'd really like to see some more resources dedicated in the initial granting process rather than simply cheer the decisions to review. Allowing someone to patent an unoriginal idea contradicts the notion of promoting the useful arts which the Constitution provides for.
Well, that was the idea when the USTPO was re-organized quite a few years ago, to make it self-supporting. But somehow, the fees charged never seem to wind up buying more reviewers with technical knowledge suitable for the job, or computers enough to facilitate a speedy search for prior art in their own database.
However, I'm certainly not privy to their budget details, and it may be that the fees charged are what they perceive the traffic will bear, but which are still insufficient to realize the grand dream of both an efficient opertion, and smart enough people on staff to see through all the bullshit in the average patent application, which as we all know has been reduced to boilerplate language over the last 150 years, the soul purpose of which is to confuse and confound the examiner into thinking this particular kitchen match is a brand new invention just because this one has a blue head where the normal ones have a red head.
Folks who can chew through that stuff in a timely manner and make the right decision, doing the prior art searches et all, should, in order to protect the innocent, be first at least 3 star genius's, tested as such before they are even offered the position AND be paid enough to keep them for long enough to actually get some usefull work from them. I'd estimate that as being at least $250k/annum minimum in todays market for such people.
Yeah, I'm a dreamer who thinks it might actually work.
I think thats a hell of a good question. There could be the argument that the original claim was fraudulent, so therefore any and all contracts are null and void, and Oh, By the Way, We would like our money back with interest at the prevailing fed rate at least, plus triple damages for the fraud, plus all attorney's fees. That would bring this whole mess to such a screeching halt it would take 20 years to get the burnt rubber and asbestos dust out of the environment.
Nice concept, but like the Blackberry case (I think the NTP patents were in fact issued, and purchased in good faith, and that the disruption that would be caused by a Blackberry shutdown is the overriding consideration here, no surprise, so just move along now folks) I don't imagine there will be any compensatory remedies available for anyone unless the entire SC goes out on a 20 foot persimmon limb hanging over quicksand and saws it off behind them. To do so would deal a blow to commerce in general that it would be a long time recovering, and the legal profession that pursued all this will never stand for being made responsible for their own averice. So naahh, right may be right, but tain't gonna happen till the revolution, whenever that is.
Whats a Democracy? Anybody got a good definition that actually makes sense in view of todays real world, existing facts? This sure as hell isn't it.
And nobody is going to seriously suggest that a gas ball 100s of times the size of Jupiter is an asteroid or a comet.
I suggest you analyze that statement better, a lot better. Jupiter is now large enough that one could say it missed being a star in its own right by only 3 or 4 of its masses. 100 times more massive and this system would have been a binary system visible from 5% of the way across the visible universe by the likes of Hubble. In fact I would expect, since that would still make it smaller than our own star, the sun, it would be a quite long lived binary and be lighting up our night sky after 5 billion years a heck of a lot brighter than its current albedo does...
I think the question then would have to be, would life have developed on this planet if it had a second, albeit dimmer, sun to impart energy to it in the varying amounts resulting from the interplay of orbits, or would that increased Jovian mass have perturbed the orbits of the rest of the planets such that most of them were eventually ejected long before a stable environment that lead to life had been achieved?
It would be an interesting whatif to work out by someone with experience in orbital mechanics, to simulate both the environment and the orbital effects of a 100 times more massive Jupiter that just happened to fire up its internal fusion fires on the rest of this system over the last 5 billion years.
Well, not ALL of us are die-hard geeks about sitting in front of a computer in the weak light of man-made lights ALL the time.
I've had to have 3 spots removed from my face by freezing, and one on my back by a little deeper cutting, it came back negative though.
In addition to the computer work over the last 25+ years, I've also logged a few hundred thousand on a motorcycle, made the form and poured the blocks and laid up a retaining wall about 44" high & 100 feet long over the last 3 summers, in addition to the usual yard work & an occasional fishing trip. By the end of summer this 71 year old white boy looks pretty dark allthough its not as even as it was 60 years ago, darnit...
So yes, you could generally say that I don't need a vitamin D suplement in the summertime.:-)
I find this to be an interesting story in view of the fact that I'm now at that age where prostate problems can be worrysome but aren't just yet.
I get the feeling that with all the medical things we've discovered, and the rate of discovery, will if intelligently applied, are such that the first person to outlive Methusaleh has already been born. He will of course be independently wealthy because it will be charged for by the sharks^H^H^H^H^Hmedical profession who see such as a way to collect even more money. It won't be me by any means since I've developed insulin resistance and have to watch my sugar intake pretty closely, and failure to do that will eventually lead to all sorts of circulation problems that lead to a fatal heart attack. But, at 71, despite the aches and pains, I still feel pretty good most of the time, so I have hope for a few more years yet. I need to lose another 30 lbs to match the 30 I've taken off since being told to read my sugar a year ago, but that seems to have hit a cold weather standstill & will wait till I get back out and work it off come warm weather again.
OTOH TPTB who control this, would look at my passing as a plus for SS's financial future, hence I don't expect to see real efforts made to implement much of this on the population as a whole due to the price to be charged for these "unusual" services. It is not in societies best interest that I draw SS based on the 55 years I worked and contributed to SS, for another 40 years. With the effects of inflation, my withdrawal rate (ignoreing the interest income I could have made had that money been invested in a compound bearing account all these years, but thats another beef entirely) I will have used up my contributions in another year or so.
The key phrase is TANSTAAFL, whether TPTB spell it out in understandable terms or not, which generally speaking, will not be done in words that Joe Sixpack will grok. That could^H^H^H^H^Hwould lead to serious social problems for TPTB at the end of the day.
American SS would be in seriously deep excrement if everyone lived for 5 years past their retirement party, and I haven't quite done that yet myself as I worked till I was 67. Many don't even make it to the party and thats all part of the equation that makes it almost work as the best ponzi scheme ever perpetrated on the american public, by the government no less.:-)
Extending the lifespan, without also extending the productive working years in roughly the same proportion, as was done by the last modifications to the SS act, simply is not good fiscal responsibility. Either that, or a much larger fraction of the working income is paid in taxes to support the benefits paid out for the longer lifespan. I believe some of that effect is seen in tax rates paid by the working class in the more socialist Scandinavian countries.
And thats my $0.02, adjust for inflation since 1934, then discount as required.
The std form letter that says we're too gawddamned busy to worry about your little squeek is all I've ever gotten from them when fwding such crap to abuse@. As for useing a new 'spoof' address for this when IIRC the RFC says it should be abuse@ is just ducking the issue and hoping it will go away.
Personally, I sort ALL that crap to the JunqueMail folder and make it all go away about daily.
Personally also, I've always looked at my fellow man as a like minded person, but the last 65+ years has taught me there are lots of them, who like bad puppies, should have been drowned at birth. But I still let each one prove him(or her)self before I pass judgement.
As for it being our problem, and not ebay/paypal's, somebody in a position of power at these don't give a damn companies needs to get bit & have his life ruined. Then maybe they'll hire a lobbyist firm who will see to it that crimes of this nature are both harder to pull off, and a damned sight more costly, effectively ruining the perps life for even trying it, let alone doing it successfully a few times. Then and only then, when the chances of pulling it off vanish, will we get rid of such slime.
Their warped mind needs to be removed from the gene pool by whatever means is both effective, and permanent until such time as they've proved themselves worthy of the name 'human'. Society and its goody two shoes people are not doing humanity a favor when they want to let them breed more of them just to keep the welfare agents busy.
Sorry, in a bad mood tonight. These phishers are not the kind of "fishers of men" Jesus had in mind.
Well, I had a round with the state of California many years ago, where they had gotten off on the wrong foot with me, and an attorney listened, took it pro bono if he lost, and made the states people look downright evil before it was adjudicated in our favor, with damages, which basicly meant we got our gas money back, and he actually got paid. The gentlemans name was Gunn, and when he was introduced to the court, several eyebrows went up, and stayed up noticeably long. They knew they were going to be toast from the git-go I think. I talked to some other folks about him later, and he did have a reputation for gitten-r-dun.
I also used another attorney when I'd put some stuff in storage, paid up for 90 days, and the storage folks cleaned it out & took it to the dump the next day. As I had a nearly 30 year collection of negatives bound in 3 big notebooks in there, some of which had commercial art possibilties, and all my family history in it, we had no trouble tapping that jerks wallet for 10 grand and costs. But Gunn didn't do that one and I forget who did at this late date since that was 30 years back up the log now.
A member of our church passed the bar exam about 10 years ago, and I told her at the time that she had finally gotten her name on the list. She innocently asked which list, and I replied "the list of lawyers we're gonna do a Bill Shakespear on someday". She didn't think it was funny for some reason or other.:) OTOH, they had sold us a Shelty pup that turned out to be a good companion for about 11 years, so we remained friends and members of the same church.
I think the whole point of this is that the MPAA didn't have to make any copies. They could have just called everybody to the screening room, one at a time if need be, and shown them the only copy they had.
So there was a way around his do not copy commandment and still be able to rate the movie. That pretty well moots their defense IMO.
Frankly I feel there may be more than just a $50,000(?) fine involved for the copyright violation, if only because there are enough attorneys around that some of them might even do the prosecution of this case pro bono just to see the shoe on the other foot for a change.
For all our more or less good natured attorney bashing that goes on here, believe it or not I have met a few honest human beings with a sense of whats right and wrong. Sometimes tainted by their legal schooling admittedly, but it can be detected from time to time.
Thats only as good as the operators on duty when looked at on a shorter term than a daily basis. So I have to tell a story here that illustrates the problem, in this case one that having an NTP setup (which didn't exist except in older protocols in 1978) wouldn't have fixed unless it was applied directly to the generator controls on the power grid.
Anyway, about 2pm my board operator at the tv station I was the CE at came running into my office and said the tape machine was going crazy, he though it was running fast and the on air picture wasn't viewable even after being time base corrected. He'd put that tape in 3 of them without making it work.
As I walked through the control room I was just barely aware that the air conditioning and all the fans in the transmitter seemed to be working real well. I looked at the tape machine, whose main drive motor was a synchronous type whose speed is locked to the powerline frequency, and it did indeed appear to be running fast by a rather large margin. Looking at a motorized wall clock, I noted it was about 18 minutes faster than my trusty timex. So I timed the wall clock second hand against the timex and came up with a powerline frequency of around 71 hz. Voltage was also up a bit, to about 130 at the wall socket, so my transmitter was running very well indeed.
Calling the local electrickery people, I got a number for the WAPA control center up in Utah someplace and called them up. Argueing with the sexytary for a couple of minutes I finally got through to an operator on duty, introduced myself as the CE at a tv station down in New Mexico and then asked him if his clocks were fast. He first didn't get it, then checked his watch against the wall clock and muttered OMG. He said I'll get that fixed asap and I hung up since there wasn't a watts line account there & Ma Bell was very proud of her daytime business rates...
About 2 minutes later you could hear the fans and stuff gradually slowing down, and it finally settled at about 59hz until time had caught up with the wall clocks again.
I think some folks either got some overtime or got to go home a few minutes early that day, so there were what one could have called collateral damages, if even only to the economy west of the mississippi. The whole west side of the country is all synched up, presumably so is whats east of the river. Anyway, it was such an odd occurance that I still have to grin when I recall it nearly 30 years later. One of those things that couldn't ever happen, but did.:-)
Well now, if you stop and think of it, that would be the worst case scenario one could imagine, cause some dip would leave his web browser sitting on the page watching the clock update itself every second. Do that 10 times and you've used a quite measurable portion of the servers bandwidth.
You would be amazed at the number of folks who figure its allright to do that, I mean its there, why not use it attitude? So no, no admin in his right mind would set that up. Or if he did, he should be dismissed as not being worthy of the job title of a sysadmin.
I swear, the average intelligence of a slashdot post is dropping below the average intelligence at large these days.
So prove me wrong and lets see if there is such a thing in this thread.
However, I'd like to see the instructions for making a server out of one box and keeping the rest of the local system synched to it made more widely available. You have to dig to find them, and I think they are a bit dated but I could reduce the 'client' count by 2 here at home by doing it.
Having met Mr. Schmidt some 28 or so years back up the log, I came away with the impression then that he was so full of himself that there wasn't any room left for common sense. I certainly saw no evidence in the fleeting glimpses I got of him that day that could be used as evidence of The Right Stuff.
This was after Apollo 17, and he was on the campaign trail, paired up for his visit to the tv station where I was the CE with Sen. Pete Dominici. Pete had time to talk to all of us, Harrison popped in and out, only condescending to speak to Pete to ask what time the party was tonight. He wasn't the least bit interested in listening to his potential constituents, while Pete was personally taking notes & even came into my office and sat down long enough to smoke a cigarette with me while he took the time to explain the status of a pending bill I was very concerned about.
You can guess which box on the ballot had my checkmarks in it when it went in the box 7 weeks later. And I still think Pete's a better man than W ever will be. Sadly, an honest man doesn't seem to gather enough political clout to muster up a run for the white house.
Anyway, thats my take on Harrison Schmidt. Anything he is promoting should be looked at very very carefully, and then I'm sure that thinking people will give it the thumbs down sign.
Its been my experience that either the judge is the type who applies the law very accurately, or, and this is more often the case, has a builtin bias toward the consumer/little guy.
I don't think this is a good idea, justice really does need the element of compassion that I doubt a robotic piece of code will ever be able to emulate well enough to keep things out of higher courts just to get the final answer as society deems it should be. Sure, the higher court may well find the same thing, but at least a human said it.
Frankly, this sounds like yet another idea for the lawyers to milk for all its worth, enhancing their income far more than the perceived economy of letting a few lines of code render the decision. It will wind up being just another billing hour for them.
The fact that they are looking for VC money to commercialize it says volumes about their business model vs any interest in real justice.
This one deserves a thumbs down from the box seats.
That was, in all probability, McClosky's. It has rather extreme levels of uv protection built in, so that wood retains its fresh color for quite a while before it starts to fade to gray. Beats CWF all to hell, but then its as much for a quart as CWF is a gallon. I put a deck on the front of the house about 5 years ago, and have already cleaned it off with a pressure washer & recoated it with CWF, but next summer it gets cleaned off again and I spend $200 giving it about 4 or 5 coats of McClosky's. I'll bet a 12 pack of your fav suds it will look better in 5 years than it does right now, 2 years after 2 coats of CWF.
such skills are now seldom taught and even less often of interest to the younger generation. Then they wonder why everything is made so chintzy:(
Yup, they see Daddy making all sorts of money, often on the backs of those less well endowed with common sense and figure that must be how its done. Then when they get caught up by the law (Ken Lay anybody?), its all societies fault, "why, we weren't doing anything wrong." Bull shit. Enough of that, and lets say 35 inches of rain will grow 180 bushels to the acre too. It all depends on what you use the bull shit for, or said another way, when life deals you lemons, open up a street stand and make lemonaid. But, if when said life evens the books, but you still own the title to half the town and lemonaid business is poor to non-existant because the potential customer is more worried about how he's going to make this months payment on the mortgage, just remember that time wounds all heels.
Yeah, I'm a JOAT of sorts, inherited from my mother, who was the only girl in the Des Moines Tech High Schools 1929 class in aviation technology. I've managed to be at the right place to leave my fingerprints in some strange places, like on the parts of the two tv cameras that were on the Trieste when it went down into the mohole, 37,000+ feet down in the pacific in the early 60's. I was the bench tech that helped build them at Oceanographic Engineering in San Diego, then about a 7 man company. No vcr's in those days, so the pix you saw were shot with a rangefinder leica, off the 8" monitors in it. Poor pix, really, but it had never been done before, nor since.
My formal education is 8th grade, but I am a C.E.T (since 72) and I have what used to be a first phone ticket since '62, and a degree from the University of Hard Knocks about 15 years ago, and took the GED thingy about 12 years ago. When the pass-fail notice on that was a bit slow coming, I looked up the teacher who gave the test and asked him about it and his reply was "why do you really care, you were just doing it for the exersize weren't you?" I guess I was when I thought about it...:-)
Its been a great ride so far for 71 years other than losing my first wife to a stroke at age 34 back in 68. Got lots of grandkids, some of whom have been busy making me a great grandfather several times now. I'm now having to watch my sugar, and thats melted 30 of the 200 lbs I weighted a year ago off, 20 to go I think, but its getting harder to stay under the 170 mark over the holidays. We all dig our graves with our mouths I think... I'll attach my sig to this, from that you can decode my email address if you'd like to continue this off/.
-- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me, gene.heskett, should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too.:-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Youth: Why the hell should I pay someone else to do that when I can do it myself?
Old age: Why the hell should I do that myself when I can pay someone else to do it?
Waving AARP trash mail, I haven't joined yet. We don't always see the same side politically. I can safely say that while I voted, my wife and I didn't vote for the republicrats in the last 2 general elections.
Or the other side of 70 age: Why the hell can't I afford to pay somebody else to do it?
As for the shop, I do both metal and wood, lately been messing around with a Harbor Freight Micromill I've equipt with stepper motors, and a computer running the cvs of emc2 as of new years eve. I was bored, and needed to make a switchplate decorator frame for a 4 gang box located at my nephews dairy farm in NY where the &^%$##@ electrickery installers left it 7/16" of an inch proud of the drywall. Handy piece of white pine, fairly clear, but had to make 2 passes at the cutout, the micromill doesn't have enough table motion in the y direction (in and out) to cut the hole in one mounting on the table. Cut out the hole, make the edges square with the hole on the table saw, run it thru my 13" planer till its the right thickness, hit the edges with a 1/4" round bit in my router table, sand to suit, and its now got the first coat of McClosky's Marine Spar Varnish on it, the only varnish worth wasting a 25 cent foam brush on. It'll have 6 or so by the time I'm done, all polished up with 0000 steel wool. Then I need to make about 6 regular sized ones for the duplexes in that same room, and take them and a cleaning rod I bought for the grand nephew (48" long, carbon fibre shaft, ball bearing handle) who just turned 15 last fall and is getting to be a pretty good shot with his 22 (got a marauding fox with it this fall), but was using one of those 3 piece alu rods, better known as a barrel wrecker. Alu cleaning rods have worn out more rifle barrels than bullets ever did.
Yeah, I'm an amature gunsmith too, carving most of my own stocks and such for the last 40 years, I've worn/burned out 3 30 caliber barrels & 1 22-250. I've bought 2 boxes of 30-06 ammo, and 1 box of 22-250 stuff in my life, reloading the rest of the several thousand rounds it takes to burn out that many barrels. I had one of my guns stolen about 30 years ago, but returned when the guy was stupid enough to bring it into the hardware store where the deputy was buying paint at the time and ask why the shells were splitting. Silly guy couldn't see, or didn't know, what the stamping on the barrel that said "30-06 Ackley Improved" meant. I own the reamer that cut that chamber. I let him off, he was just dumb enough to buy it, but the one that stole it got 6 months in the local county hotel.
Yeah, I'm an old fart...:-)
Have a happy new year. And go find yourself a good woman, you'll live longer according to the stats.
Well, in my defense although I don't know how long it will last, I bought a standalone 3 years ago and the first thing I did was flash it with a regioncode and macrovision free image. You see, my setup precludes useing its channel 3 output, and the a/v outputs were macrovisioned so they were useless by the time I'd looped them through my S-VHS deck to get to a ch 3 output. Now the S-VHS deck has died, and its all a/v cables now, but switched through a new 200 watts of audio receiver. I have NDI if they think its legal, and frankly, I don't have $0.50 to call somebody that might give a shit. Someday, if and when these crappy lcd monitors get some real contrast, and the Sharp Aquos, at 4000/1 is getting there, I'll bring one of them home and be able to watch the hidef channels I'm already paying for in my dish install. But, that also means I've got to get off my duff & finish an entertainment center I started about 2 years ago since the one we're usijng now is only 30" wide. I've been picking up the cherry and ash for it as I go, from a little specialty wood shop out in the toulies NE of Ithaca NY when I've been in the neighborhood at my nephews dairy farm, about 430 miles NE of me in WV.
But my shop is both too small and isn't heated, so thats a warmer weather project. And slightly warmer weather may find me up in upstate MI working on a dark tv station. I'm a semi-retired tv engineer. I tried to retire as the CE at WDTV in 2001 at 67, but they won't let me, and the money is too good to turn down out of hand. But I'll be damned if I go up there and spend the next 2-3 months shoveling snow like I did in Feb last year. At my age, thats something you hire done...
I would, but since I've never bought anything that didn't have the CD logo owned by Phillips on it, I figure that would disqualify me right quick. Recent purchases include Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose", (she is at 70, as good as ever!) the plastic case has the CD logo on it, but the cd doesn't, published by Universal, then 2 Johnny Cash CD's, American III & VI that don't have the logo but don't appear to have anything extra on them, and a 3 cd collection of Johnny's that all have the CD logo on them.
So I'd have a hard time proving I've been damaged.
But if you have a taste for country, American VI has some other stuff on it thats better IMO than "hurt" was. "The Man Comes Around" was Johnny's way of saying he knew his time was short.
I've got to start a collection of Toby Keith stuff too, he's doing what I'd call classics, and I will if when I pick up the cd and read the labels, they give me a reasonable assurance that they are clean. If they're copy protected, sorry Toby, but no sale if I can't grip them and put the cd on the shelf to prove I won the music. I can't put it any plainer than that.
The last thing they need is for Vista to be even less appealing.
Shh, don't make so darned much noise about it please. Then, when the poor schmuck who buys a machine with vista on it, and finds he can't watch his aussie sourced movie dvd's unless he blows vista away and installs linux, just watch how long it takes him to install and learn linux. That'll make the legendary Speedy Gonzalas look like a marble statue.
Am I smarter than the average Joe? Not a hell of a lot, but when my full blown big box amiga died in 98 and I had to build a new x86 box, I never gave it more than 30 seconds thought before installing linux, and I've never regretted it.
M$ and the music/movie people are so busy shooting at each other, aiming for much higher locations than the foot with actions such as this, all the while shouting out whole cloth chorus's of 'sales are down, it must be the pirates' bull shit. Sickening is what it is...
All this of course while not one single cd with the rootkit on it has been pulled from the racks at my local WallyWorld.
Actions speak far louder than words, and the (in)action on this subject alone is absolutely deafening. I fervently hope the proposed class action settlement we all read about right here a day or so ago is tossed out, rejected, whatever, by a large enough plurality that a genuine message will be sent.
Realisticly, I also know it won't happen until criminal charges are brought against the CEO's who signed off on the ideas, tried, and convicted. This should have been the preferred course of action as some time in the federal pound 'em the ass always makes a far more lasting impression than a few million worth of the companies money spent on PR after one of these ill conceived ideas is commited to product on the sales floor.
Whats worse, the average schmuck standing at the music/dvd rack not only doesn't know about it, when told, he/she doesn't believe it could be that bad.
The dumbing down of Joe SixPack over the last 70 years is nothing short of amazing. But then look at who bought the last election. Harry Truman is doing about 270,000 rpms in his grave. The supposedly only thing we can do is clean house, senate too, the next time we get a chance to vote. Vote the jerks who voted this stuff in, out.
In 1995, The Dems, against the feedback they got from their constituents, passed the so-called Assault weapons act that just expired, which made half the deer rifles used by the Joe SixPacks illegal in one swell foop. Guess what, the Dems lost 39 seats in the house in the next election and have not recovered yet. Now we need a similar epiphany for TPTB in both the political and commerce fields.
I don't think the Dems have the smarts for the job either when you take a long look at what they've offered for the top job recently. Clinton is the only one with an IQ you can brag about. I'm on the moveon mailing list, but only 1 in 20 of their rants contains truely sane writing. But I read them to see what (they, possibly my enemy) has planned next so I can be prepared to shoot back accurately when the time comes...
If you think a 3rd party guy/gal has a better idea, dammit, vote for her/him.
I rest my case, and wish you all a happier and better 2006.
unfortunately the pdf link is broken or has been slashdoted
I even changed the prefs in ff1.5 to use acroread, version 7 on this linux box as opposed to the default of ggv. Acroread was a bit more imformative in that it said the file was not a supported filetype, or that it had been sent as an email attachment and not properly decoded, meaning the mimetype received wasn't matching.
In any event, I've sent the site managers a request that it be fixed.
The real problem is yet another American president thinks he's above the law, as if the entire point of the revolution and the constitution and the millenia of history before that went over his head.
Yup, and we thought we had it bad when we ran Nixon out of town. Nixon was an amature, and at the time he scared me excrementless.
No people should invest so much of their self worth in their elected officials as Americans do in their president. It shouldn't be as hard as it is to say "Bush, you fucked up. You're out. We're going to give some other horses ass a shot.".
The wheels do at times turn exceedingly slow. But I think I can detect motion over this 'situation'. My problem is that the vp is also a problem, believeing even more than the weed^H^H^H^HBush that what they are doing is right and proper.
It isn't, not by a hell of a long row of apple trees friends. To quote Bush himself "A dictatorship wouldn't be so bad, if I was the dictator". He has, by presidential decree, assumed powers that are only known in a dictatorship. Its time the people spoke again, loud and clear, that this WILL NOT be tolerated. This constitution is not, as Bush has also said, "Just a piece of (expletive) paper".
Too bad we can't just call another general election, with someone like Feingold running. But I don't think the Constitution, as amended, has a mechanism for that.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, lets setup a scenario I don't like, and which invites all the rocket scientists among us to get out their calculators for exersize.
:)
Assume he hits it in the same direction as the station is traveling, thereby giving it an orbital boost. A good hit (but probably not while in a space suit) might give it an extra 200 mph. So its orbit will expand, and will be higher than the station for a while. But that higher orbit also takes more time, so the station will overtake it and pass it eventually, probably within a week or so. From then on, the ball falls farther and farther behind, gradually getting a whole orbit out of synch.
Now, a year passes while both orbits are decaying, and eventually the supply ship will need to burn a few thousand pounds of fuel to give the station a boost.
At some point in the future would it not be possible that the ball is headed south at its 57 degrees inclination while the now boosted station is headed north at its 57 degree inclination, and that the paths could intersect? Given the orbital velocity of both is in the vicinity of 17,500 mph, what would be the approach velocities in that case?
Food for thought.
I don't think I'd want to stick up a gloved hand and try to catch that puppy to keep it from hitting the station. Even a bullet from a 220 Swift would be moving a heck of a lot slower in relative terms. The golf ball I expect weighs 200x the 220's 45 gr slug. I think I'd rather be Javelin catching at the olympics, its safer.
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Cheers, Gene
Why am I reminded, by reading this post, of the Bush admin response to Katrina?
An amazing similarity. In either scenario, the bodies on the ground weren't consulted as to whether or not the problem was serious.
As for recovery in New Orleans and that general area, it will be a very long time if ever coming. Why? Even to me, sitting in front of a monitor a thousand miles away, its extremely obvious that the only recovery the feds are interested in is just enough to the port itself to get the oil flowing again, or move that traffic to some other port. I expect the current facts are about 75% has moved, 15% is still to be repaired out in the gulf, and maybe 10% is now moving through the port of New Orleans.
Away from New Orleans, we have gas for our cars, and enough natural to keep our feet warm most of the time. And until somebodies feet are cold, in an office with the clout to do something about it, and his local gas pumper demands cash before turning on the pump to fill up his 3 bedroom suv, the situation is not going to markedly improve.
And the saddest part is the displaced blacks, many of which have a 2nd rate education because they had 2nd rate schools in their neighborhood because we've had a 2nd rate government for the last 90 years, maybe more, are going to get a hell of a lot colder and hungrier before its all said and done.
If we, the voting public, do not reclaim the theory that the government is OF the people, BY the people, FOR the people, then I fear this 230 year old experiment in Democracy will have come to naught.
These next elections folks, take a good look at ALL the candidates, not just the big two cats currently engaged in a sometimes entertaining, always maddening spitting match, and vote for the bext man/woman for the job, regardless of the job, and regardless of the party. I know full well there are wannabe candidates out there that could do a far better job than what we've had for at least the last 50 years. But when they can't afford to get a word in sideways between the republicrats and their pissing matches, its not a fair fight.
So pay attention folks, if you want to save the democratic form of government. It takes YOUR participation to make it work, so learn about ALL the candidates, and then VOTE. (And I don't think it needs to be said, but I will anyway, BUT NOT on Diebold machine)
Like Ben Franklin said, Democracy is a very bad form of government, but all the others are so much worse.
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Cheers, Gene
No slap on the wrist, no deuce in a "country club." Hard time, every time, no exceptions.
Maybe, but then they'd just have a designated, probably gay fall guy & pay his family if he has one, $60k a year while he sits in the slammer getting pounded (or doing the pounding, probably both). While they continue business as usual.
I very much prefer to hit them in the language that an MBA can understand because it takes ALL the profit out of it and then some. A minimum of 3x what they may have made, with a $10 million minimum. Note the 'may', cause if they didn't make as much doing it as we estimate, then thats their problem. Our official attitude should be Tough shit, you did the crime and its pay up time or sit in the slammer at say $30k a year credit against the fine for the CEO of record while the fine is drawing the current interest rate the credit cards charge their never paid up deadbeats.
Now that I'd say would make honest garbage truck driving folks out of Al Capone even.
My $0.02, adjust for inflation since 1934.
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Cheers, Gene
OTOH, a public stoning would probably be far more effective. Until then, can we have a punitve fine law that makes it a whole lot less appealing to do these underhanded, often illegal tricks just because the legendary Joe SixPack doesn't know how to protect his machine?
:)
I'd suggest $10 million per instance, such as per each single title cd release because anything less will be be treated as a cost of doing business to these low life jerks. Maybe thats not enough, but done often enough it will send a message around thats at least as effective as sending Luigi and Anthony around with a violin case thats strangely heavy and has the potential to make a lot of noise in stacato bursts. I'll posit that the violin case solution would be more permanent though.
If any of these low lifes are reading this, can you figure out that we're pi$$ed? And that your sales are down because we're pi$$ed? No? Then I submit you can't read either... I don't buy ANYTHING that doesn't have the Phillips owned trademark Compact Disk Logo on it. End of discussion AFAIC.
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Cheers, Gene
No, the real solution is to outlaw all DRM and allow all copying that does not result in material gain or profit. Coupled with that, lock up anyone who profits with real income, for the duration left yet on the copyrights violated, running consecutively if there are several such copyrights involved. After the culprit(s) has sat in the slammer for a minimum of time, he/she may appeal to the rights holder for mercy and be let out early.
:)
The only thing wrong with that is that it would also need to contain some wording re the lost profits to the copyright holders that was a direct result of someone giveing other person(s) copy(s) of a cd. Say a fiver for each cd burnt & passed along. And make it clear that that is the total extent of the damages they can claim. This bs of charging everyone 3500-20k dollars for one provable cd is pure stuff, fresh and still steaming.
Likewise, if the defendant is adjudged not guilty, the plaintiff then gets to do the same time for sueing under false pretenses and pay his own costs for keep to boot so society doesn't have to support the scum. That would certainly level the playing field after a bit due to a shortage of lawyers not in jail. And I expect it would improve jail conditions as a side effect too, for at least as long as the crooked lawyer still had an account to support him(her)self in the manner to which they've become accustomed. After that, or if the partner sues for divorce and cleans out the joint account, well things are tough all over...
This is otherwise the best proposal to come down the pike in quite a while. But because it would be the ultimate in fairness to all concerned, with no great profit to be made by the legal beagles, you can bet you whatever it will never reach a reading in any government house on the planet.
And thats too bad. But its a hell of an idea whose time has come nonetheless.
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Cheers, Gene
ahhhh... the bliss would almost be too much.
:-)
Yes, but as you said almost but not quite too much. I think I could stand it anyway.
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Cheers, Gene
I'd really like to see some more resources dedicated in the initial granting process rather than simply cheer the decisions to review. Allowing someone to patent an unoriginal idea contradicts the notion of promoting the useful arts which the Constitution provides for.
Well, that was the idea when the USTPO was re-organized quite a few years ago, to make it self-supporting. But somehow, the fees charged never seem to wind up buying more reviewers with technical knowledge suitable for the job, or computers enough to facilitate a speedy search for prior art in their own database.
However, I'm certainly not privy to their budget details, and it may be that the fees charged are what they perceive the traffic will bear, but which are still insufficient to realize the grand dream of both an efficient opertion, and smart enough people on staff to see through all the bullshit in the average patent application, which as we all know has been reduced to boilerplate language over the last 150 years, the soul purpose of which is to confuse and confound the examiner into thinking this particular kitchen match is a brand new invention just because this one has a blue head where the normal ones have a red head.
Folks who can chew through that stuff in a timely manner and make the right decision, doing the prior art searches et all, should, in order to protect the innocent, be first at least 3 star genius's, tested as such before they are even offered the position AND be paid enough to keep them for long enough to actually get some usefull work from them. I'd estimate that as being at least $250k/annum minimum in todays market for such people.
Yeah, I'm a dreamer who thinks it might actually work.
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Cheers, Gene
I think thats a hell of a good question. There could be the argument that the original claim was fraudulent, so therefore any and all contracts are null and void, and Oh, By the Way, We would like our money back with interest at the prevailing fed rate at least, plus triple damages for the fraud, plus all attorney's fees. That would bring this whole mess to such a screeching halt it would take 20 years to get the burnt rubber and asbestos dust out of the environment.
Nice concept, but like the Blackberry case (I think the NTP patents were in fact issued, and purchased in good faith, and that the disruption that would be caused by a Blackberry shutdown is the overriding consideration here, no surprise, so just move along now folks) I don't imagine there will be any compensatory remedies available for anyone unless the entire SC goes out on a 20 foot persimmon limb hanging over quicksand and saws it off behind them. To do so would deal a blow to commerce in general that it would be a long time recovering, and the legal profession that pursued all this will never stand for being made responsible for their own averice. So naahh, right may be right, but tain't gonna happen till the revolution, whenever that is.
Whats a Democracy? Anybody got a good definition that actually makes sense in view of todays real world, existing facts? This sure as hell isn't it.
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Cheers, Gene
And nobody is going to seriously suggest that a gas ball 100s of times the size of Jupiter is an asteroid or a comet.
I suggest you analyze that statement better, a lot better. Jupiter is now large enough that one could say it missed being a star in its own right by only 3 or 4 of its masses. 100 times more massive and this system would have been a binary system visible from 5% of the way across the visible universe by the likes of Hubble. In fact I would expect, since that would still make it smaller than our own star, the sun, it would be a quite long lived binary and be lighting up our night sky after 5 billion years a heck of a lot brighter than its current albedo does...
I think the question then would have to be, would life have developed on this planet if it had a second, albeit dimmer, sun to impart energy to it in the varying amounts resulting from the interplay of orbits, or would that increased Jovian mass have perturbed the orbits of the rest of the planets such that most of them were eventually ejected long before a stable environment that lead to life had been achieved?
It would be an interesting whatif to work out by someone with experience in orbital mechanics, to simulate both the environment and the orbital effects of a 100 times more massive Jupiter that just happened to fire up its internal fusion fires on the rest of this system over the last 5 billion years.
Interesting indeed.
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Cheers, Gene
Well, not ALL of us are die-hard geeks about sitting in front of a computer in the weak light of man-made lights ALL the time.
:-)
:-)
I've had to have 3 spots removed from my face by freezing, and one on my back by a little deeper cutting, it came back negative though.
In addition to the computer work over the last 25+ years, I've also logged a few hundred thousand on a motorcycle, made the form and poured the blocks and laid up a retaining wall about 44" high & 100 feet long over the last 3 summers, in addition to the usual yard work & an occasional fishing trip. By the end of summer this 71 year old white boy looks pretty dark allthough its not as even as it was 60 years ago, darnit...
So yes, you could generally say that I don't need a vitamin D suplement in the summertime.
I find this to be an interesting story in view of the fact that I'm now at that age where prostate problems can be worrysome but aren't just yet.
I get the feeling that with all the medical things we've discovered, and the rate of discovery, will if intelligently applied, are such that the first person to outlive Methusaleh has already been born. He will of course be independently wealthy because it will be charged for by the sharks^H^H^H^H^Hmedical profession who see such as a way to collect even more money. It won't be me by any means since I've developed insulin resistance and have to watch my sugar intake pretty closely, and failure to do that will eventually lead to all sorts of circulation problems that lead to a fatal heart attack. But, at 71, despite the aches and pains, I still feel pretty good most of the time, so I have hope for a few more years yet. I need to lose another 30 lbs to match the 30 I've taken off since being told to read my sugar a year ago, but that seems to have hit a cold weather standstill & will wait till I get back out and work it off come warm weather again.
OTOH TPTB who control this, would look at my passing as a plus for SS's financial future, hence I don't expect to see real efforts made to implement much of this on the population as a whole due to the price to be charged for these "unusual" services. It is not in societies best interest that I draw SS based on the 55 years I worked and contributed to SS, for another 40 years. With the effects of inflation, my withdrawal rate (ignoreing the interest income I could have made had that money been invested in a compound bearing account all these years, but thats another beef entirely) I will have used up my contributions in another year or so.
The key phrase is TANSTAAFL, whether TPTB spell it out in understandable terms or not, which generally speaking, will not be done in words that Joe Sixpack will grok. That could^H^H^H^H^Hwould lead to serious social problems for TPTB at the end of the day.
American SS would be in seriously deep excrement if everyone lived for 5 years past their retirement party, and I haven't quite done that yet myself as I worked till I was 67. Many don't even make it to the party and thats all part of the equation that makes it almost work as the best ponzi scheme ever perpetrated on the american public, by the government no less.
Extending the lifespan, without also extending the productive working years in roughly the same proportion, as was done by the last modifications to the SS act, simply is not good fiscal responsibility. Either that, or a much larger fraction of the working income is paid in taxes to support the benefits paid out for the longer lifespan. I believe some of that effect is seen in tax rates paid by the working class in the more socialist Scandinavian countries.
And thats my $0.02, adjust for inflation since 1934, then discount as required.
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Cheers, Gene
The std form letter that says we're too gawddamned busy to worry about your little squeek is all I've ever gotten from them when fwding such crap to abuse@. As for useing a new 'spoof' address for this when IIRC the RFC says it should be abuse@ is just ducking the issue and hoping it will go away.
Personally, I sort ALL that crap to the JunqueMail folder and make it all go away about daily.
Personally also, I've always looked at my fellow man as a like minded person, but the last 65+ years has taught me there are lots of them, who like bad puppies, should have been drowned at birth. But I still let each one prove him(or her)self before I pass judgement.
As for it being our problem, and not ebay/paypal's, somebody in a position of power at these don't give a damn companies needs to get bit & have his life ruined. Then maybe they'll hire a lobbyist firm who will see to it that crimes of this nature are both harder to pull off, and a damned sight more costly, effectively ruining the perps life for even trying it, let alone doing it successfully a few times. Then and only then, when the chances of pulling it off vanish, will we get rid of such slime.
Their warped mind needs to be removed from the gene pool by whatever means is both effective, and permanent until such time as they've proved themselves worthy of the name 'human'. Society and its goody two shoes people are not doing humanity a favor when they want to let them breed more of them just to keep the welfare agents busy.
Sorry, in a bad mood tonight. These phishers are not the kind of "fishers of men" Jesus had in mind.
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Cheers, gene
Well, I had a round with the state of California many years ago, where they had gotten off on the wrong foot with me, and an attorney listened, took it pro bono if he lost, and made the states people look downright evil before it was adjudicated in our favor, with damages, which basicly meant we got our gas money back, and he actually got paid. The gentlemans name was Gunn, and when he was introduced to the court, several eyebrows went up, and stayed up noticeably long. They knew they were going to be toast from the git-go I think. I talked to some other folks about him later, and he did have a reputation for gitten-r-dun.
:) OTOH, they had sold us a Shelty pup that turned out to be a good companion for about 11 years, so we remained friends and members of the same church.
I also used another attorney when I'd put some stuff in storage, paid up for 90 days, and the storage folks cleaned it out & took it to the dump the next day. As I had a nearly 30 year collection of negatives bound in 3 big notebooks in there, some of which had commercial art possibilties, and all my family history in it, we had no trouble tapping that jerks wallet for 10 grand and costs. But Gunn didn't do that one and I forget who did at this late date since that was 30 years back up the log now.
A member of our church passed the bar exam about 10 years ago, and I told her at the time that she had finally gotten her name on the list. She innocently asked which list, and I replied "the list of lawyers we're gonna do a Bill Shakespear on someday". She didn't think it was funny for some reason or other.
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Cheers, Gene
I think the whole point of this is that the MPAA didn't have to make any copies. They could have just called everybody to the screening room, one at a time if need be, and shown them the only copy they had.
So there was a way around his do not copy commandment and still be able to rate the movie. That pretty well moots their defense IMO.
Frankly I feel there may be more than just a $50,000(?) fine involved for the copyright violation, if only because there are enough attorneys around that some of them might even do the prosecution of this case pro bono just to see the shoe on the other foot for a change.
For all our more or less good natured attorney bashing that goes on here, believe it or not I have met a few honest human beings with a sense of whats right and wrong. Sometimes tainted by their legal schooling admittedly, but it can be detected from time to time.
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Cheers, Gene
Thats only as good as the operators on duty when looked at on a shorter term than a daily basis. So I have to tell a story here that illustrates the problem, in this case one that having an NTP setup (which didn't exist except in older protocols in 1978) wouldn't have fixed unless it was applied directly to the generator controls on the power grid.
:-)
Anyway, about 2pm my board operator at the tv station I was the CE at came running into my office and said the tape machine was going crazy, he though it was running fast and the on air picture wasn't viewable even after being time base corrected.
He'd put that tape in 3 of them without making it work.
As I walked through the control room I was just barely aware that the air conditioning and all the fans in the transmitter seemed to be working real well. I looked at the tape machine, whose main drive motor was a synchronous type whose speed is locked to the powerline frequency, and it did indeed appear to be running fast by a rather large margin. Looking at a motorized wall clock, I noted it was about 18 minutes faster than my trusty timex. So I timed the wall clock second hand against the timex and came up with a powerline frequency of around 71 hz. Voltage was also up a bit, to about 130 at the wall socket, so my transmitter was running very well indeed.
Calling the local electrickery people, I got a number for the WAPA control center up in Utah someplace and called them up. Argueing with the sexytary for a couple of minutes I finally got through to an operator on duty, introduced myself as the CE at a tv station down in New Mexico and then asked him if his clocks were fast. He first didn't get it, then checked his watch against the wall clock and muttered OMG. He said I'll get that fixed asap and I hung up since there wasn't a watts line account there & Ma Bell was very proud of her daytime business rates...
About 2 minutes later you could hear the fans and stuff gradually slowing down, and it finally settled at about 59hz until time had caught up with the wall clocks again.
I think some folks either got some overtime or got to go home a few minutes early that day, so there were what one could have called collateral damages, if even only to the economy west of the mississippi. The whole west side of the country is all synched up, presumably so is whats east of the river. Anyway, it was such an odd occurance that I still have to grin when I recall it nearly 30 years later. One of those things that couldn't ever happen, but did.
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Cheers, gene
Well now, if you stop and think of it, that would be the worst case scenario one could imagine, cause some dip would leave his web browser sitting on the page watching the clock update itself every second. Do that 10 times and you've used a quite measurable portion of the servers bandwidth.
You would be amazed at the number of folks who figure its allright to do that, I mean its there, why not use it attitude? So no, no admin in his right mind would set that up. Or if he did, he should be dismissed as not being worthy of the job title of a sysadmin.
I swear, the average intelligence of a slashdot post is dropping below the average intelligence at large these days.
So prove me wrong and lets see if there is such a thing in this thread.
However, I'd like to see the instructions for making a server out of one box and keeping the rest of the local system synched to it made more widely available. You have to dig to find them, and I think they are a bit dated but I could reduce the 'client' count by 2 here at home by doing it.
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Cheers, Gene
Having met Mr. Schmidt some 28 or so years back up the log, I came away with the impression then that he was so full of himself that there wasn't any room left for common sense. I certainly saw no evidence in the fleeting glimpses I got of him that day that could be used as evidence of The Right Stuff.
This was after Apollo 17, and he was on the campaign trail, paired up for his visit to the tv station where I was the CE with Sen. Pete Dominici. Pete had time to talk to all of us, Harrison popped in and out, only condescending to speak to Pete to ask what time the party was tonight. He wasn't the least bit interested in listening to his potential constituents, while Pete was personally taking notes & even came into my office and sat down long enough to smoke a cigarette with me while he took the time to explain the status of a pending bill I was very concerned about.
You can guess which box on the ballot had my checkmarks in it when it went in the box 7 weeks later. And I still think Pete's a better man than W ever will be. Sadly, an honest man doesn't seem to gather enough political clout to muster up a run for the white house.
Anyway, thats my take on Harrison Schmidt. Anything he is promoting should be looked at very very carefully, and then I'm sure that thinking people will give it the thumbs down sign.
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Cheers, Gene
Its been my experience that either the judge is the type who applies the law very accurately, or, and this is more often the case, has a builtin bias toward the consumer/little guy.
I don't think this is a good idea, justice really does need the element of compassion that I doubt a robotic piece of code will ever be able to emulate well enough to keep things out of higher courts just to get the final answer as society deems it should be. Sure, the higher court may well find the same thing, but at least a human said it.
Frankly, this sounds like yet another idea for the lawyers to milk for all its worth, enhancing their income far more than the perceived economy of letting a few lines of code render the decision. It will wind up being just another billing hour for them.
The fact that they are looking for VC money to commercialize it says volumes about their business model vs any interest in real justice.
This one deserves a thumbs down from the box seats.
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Cheers, Gene
I went to the site, where it says a video of the device in action can be seen at the link on the bottom of the page.
But guess what friends, when you click on the link, you are rejected because you are not a friggin member.
It might for all I know, be a great idea, but screw em and the camel that rode in on them.
Whyinhell does Taco post these stories without checking them out for veracity?
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No Cheers, Gene
That was, in all probability, McClosky's. It has rather extreme levels of uv protection built in, so that wood retains its fresh color for quite a while before it starts to fade to gray. Beats CWF all to hell, but then its as much for a quart as CWF is a gallon. I put a deck on the front of the house about 5 years ago, and have already cleaned it off with a pressure washer & recoated it with CWF, but next summer it gets cleaned off again and I spend $200 giving it about 4 or 5 coats of McClosky's. I'll bet a 12 pack of your fav suds it will look better in 5 years than it does right now, 2 years after 2 coats of CWF.
:(
:-)
/.
:-)
such skills are now seldom taught and even less often of interest to the younger generation. Then they wonder why everything is made so chintzy
Yup, they see Daddy making all sorts of money, often on the backs of those less well endowed with common sense and figure that must be how its done. Then when they get caught up by the law (Ken Lay anybody?), its all societies fault, "why, we weren't doing anything wrong." Bull shit. Enough of that, and lets say 35 inches of rain will grow 180 bushels to the acre too. It all depends on what you use the bull shit for, or said another way, when life deals you lemons, open up a street stand and make lemonaid. But, if when said life evens the books, but you still own the title to half the town and lemonaid business is poor to non-existant because the potential customer is more worried about how he's going to make this months payment on the mortgage, just remember that time wounds all heels.
Yeah, I'm a JOAT of sorts, inherited from my mother, who was the only girl in the Des Moines Tech High Schools 1929 class in aviation technology. I've managed to be at the right place to leave my fingerprints in some strange places, like on the parts of the two tv cameras that were on the Trieste when it went down into the mohole, 37,000+ feet down in the pacific in the early 60's. I was the bench tech that helped build them at Oceanographic Engineering in San Diego, then about a 7 man company. No vcr's in those days, so the pix you saw were shot with a rangefinder leica, off the 8" monitors in it. Poor pix, really, but it had never been done before, nor since.
My formal education is 8th grade, but I am a C.E.T (since 72) and I have what used to be a first phone ticket since '62, and a degree from the University of Hard Knocks about 15 years ago, and took the GED thingy about 12 years ago. When the pass-fail notice on that was a bit slow coming, I looked up the teacher who gave the test and asked him about it and his reply was "why do you really care, you were just doing it for the exersize weren't you?" I guess I was when I thought about it...
Its been a great ride so far for 71 years other than losing my first wife to a stroke at age 34 back in 68. Got lots of grandkids, some of whom have been busy making me a great grandfather several times now. I'm now having to watch my sugar, and thats melted 30 of the 200 lbs I weighted a year ago off, 20 to go I think, but its getting harder to stay under the 170 mark over the holidays. We all dig our graves with our mouths I think... I'll attach my sig to this, from that you can decode my email address if you'd like to continue this off
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Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me, gene.heskett, should add
the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too.
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Youth: Why the hell should I pay someone else to do that when I can do it myself?
:-)
Old age: Why the hell should I do that myself when I can pay someone else to do it?
Waving AARP trash mail, I haven't joined yet. We don't always see the same side politically. I can safely say that while I voted, my wife and I didn't vote for the republicrats in the last 2 general elections.
Or the other side of 70 age: Why the hell can't I afford to pay somebody else to do it?
As for the shop, I do both metal and wood, lately been messing around with a Harbor Freight Micromill I've equipt with stepper motors, and a computer running the cvs of emc2 as of new years eve. I was bored, and needed to make a switchplate decorator frame for a 4 gang box located at my nephews dairy farm in NY where the &^%$##@ electrickery installers left it 7/16" of an inch proud of the drywall. Handy piece of white pine, fairly clear, but had to make 2 passes at the cutout, the micromill doesn't have enough table motion in the y direction (in and out) to cut the hole in one mounting on the table. Cut out the hole, make the edges square with the hole on the table saw, run it thru my 13" planer till its the right thickness, hit the edges with a 1/4" round bit in my router table, sand to suit, and its now got the first coat of McClosky's Marine Spar Varnish on it, the only varnish worth wasting a 25 cent foam brush on. It'll have 6 or so by the time I'm done, all polished up with 0000 steel wool. Then I need to make about 6 regular sized ones for the duplexes in that same room, and take them and a cleaning rod I bought for the grand nephew (48" long, carbon fibre shaft, ball bearing handle) who just turned 15 last fall and is getting to be a pretty good shot with his 22 (got a marauding fox with it this fall), but was using one of those 3 piece alu rods, better known as a barrel wrecker. Alu cleaning rods have worn out more rifle barrels than bullets ever did.
Yeah, I'm an amature gunsmith too, carving most of my own stocks and such for the last 40 years, I've worn/burned out 3 30 caliber barrels & 1 22-250. I've bought 2 boxes of 30-06 ammo, and 1 box of 22-250 stuff in my life, reloading the rest of the several thousand rounds it takes to burn out that many barrels. I had one of my guns stolen about 30 years ago, but returned when the guy was stupid enough to bring it into the hardware store where the deputy was buying paint at the time and ask why the shells were splitting. Silly guy couldn't see, or didn't know, what the stamping on the barrel that said "30-06 Ackley Improved" meant. I own the reamer that cut that chamber. I let him off, he was just dumb enough to buy it, but the one that stole it got 6 months in the local county hotel.
Yeah, I'm an old fart...
Have a happy new year. And go find yourself a good woman, you'll live longer according to the stats.
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Cheers, Gene
Well, in my defense although I don't know how long it will last, I bought a standalone 3 years ago and the first thing I did was flash it with a regioncode and macrovision free image. You see, my setup precludes useing its channel 3 output, and the a/v outputs were macrovisioned so they were useless by the time I'd looped them through my S-VHS deck to get to a ch 3 output. Now the S-VHS deck has died, and its all a/v cables now, but switched through a new 200 watts of audio receiver. I have NDI if they think its legal, and frankly, I don't have $0.50 to call somebody that might give a shit. Someday, if and when these crappy lcd monitors get some real contrast, and the Sharp Aquos, at 4000/1 is getting there, I'll bring one of them home and be able to watch the hidef channels I'm already paying for in my dish install. But, that also means I've got to get off my duff & finish an entertainment center I started about 2 years ago since the one we're usijng now is only 30" wide. I've been picking up the cherry and ash for it as I go, from a little specialty wood shop out in the toulies NE of Ithaca NY when I've been in the neighborhood at my nephews dairy farm, about 430 miles NE of me in WV.
But my shop is both too small and isn't heated, so thats a warmer weather project. And slightly warmer weather may find me up in upstate MI working on a dark tv station. I'm a semi-retired tv engineer. I tried to retire as the CE at WDTV in 2001 at 67, but they won't let me, and the money is too good to turn down out of hand. But I'll be damned if I go up there and spend the next 2-3 months shoveling snow like I did in Feb last year. At my age, thats something you hire done...
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Cheers, Gene
I would, but since I've never bought anything that didn't have the CD logo owned by Phillips on it, I figure that would disqualify me right quick. Recent purchases include Loretta Lynn's "Van Lear Rose", (she is at 70, as good as ever!) the plastic case has the CD logo on it, but the cd doesn't, published by Universal, then 2 Johnny Cash CD's, American III & VI that don't have the logo but don't appear to have anything extra on them, and a 3 cd collection of Johnny's that all have the CD logo on them.
So I'd have a hard time proving I've been damaged.
But if you have a taste for country, American VI has some other stuff on it thats better IMO than "hurt" was. "The Man Comes Around" was Johnny's way of saying he knew his time was short.
I've got to start a collection of Toby Keith stuff too, he's doing what I'd call classics, and I will if when I pick up the cd and read the labels, they give me a reasonable assurance that they are clean. If they're copy protected, sorry Toby, but no sale if I can't grip them and put the cd on the shelf to prove I won the music. I can't put it any plainer than that.
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Cheers, gene
The last thing they need is for Vista to be even less appealing.
Shh, don't make so darned much noise about it please. Then, when the poor schmuck who buys a machine with vista on it, and finds he can't watch his aussie sourced movie dvd's unless he blows vista away and installs linux, just watch how long it takes him to install and learn linux. That'll make the legendary Speedy Gonzalas look like a marble statue.
Am I smarter than the average Joe? Not a hell of a lot, but when my full blown big box amiga died in 98 and I had to build a new x86 box, I never gave it more than 30 seconds thought before installing linux, and I've never regretted it.
M$ and the music/movie people are so busy shooting at each other, aiming for much higher locations than the foot with actions such as this, all the while shouting out whole cloth chorus's of 'sales are down, it must be the pirates' bull shit. Sickening is what it is...
All this of course while not one single cd with the rootkit on it has been pulled from the racks at my local WallyWorld.
Actions speak far louder than words, and the (in)action on this subject alone is absolutely deafening. I fervently hope the proposed class action settlement we all read about right here a day or so ago is tossed out, rejected, whatever, by a large enough plurality that a genuine message will be sent.
Realisticly, I also know it won't happen until criminal charges are brought against the CEO's who signed off on the ideas, tried, and convicted. This should have been the preferred course of action as some time in the federal pound 'em the ass always makes a far more lasting impression than a few million worth of the companies money spent on PR after one of these ill conceived ideas is commited to product on the sales floor.
Whats worse, the average schmuck standing at the music/dvd rack not only doesn't know about it, when told, he/she doesn't believe it could be that bad.
The dumbing down of Joe SixPack over the last 70 years is nothing short of amazing. But then look at who bought the last election. Harry Truman is doing about 270,000 rpms in his grave. The supposedly only thing we can do is clean house, senate too, the next time we get a chance to vote. Vote the jerks who voted this stuff in, out.
In 1995, The Dems, against the feedback they got from their constituents, passed the so-called Assault weapons act that just expired, which made half the deer rifles used by the Joe SixPacks illegal in one swell foop. Guess what, the Dems lost 39 seats in the house in the next election and have not recovered yet. Now we need a similar epiphany for TPTB in both the political and commerce fields.
I don't think the Dems have the smarts for the job either when you take a long look at what they've offered for the top job recently. Clinton is the only one with an IQ you can brag about. I'm on the moveon mailing list, but only 1 in 20 of their rants contains truely sane writing. But I read them to see what (they, possibly my enemy) has planned next so I can be prepared to shoot back accurately when the time comes...
If you think a 3rd party guy/gal has a better idea, dammit, vote for her/him.
I rest my case, and wish you all a happier and better 2006.
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Cheers, Gene
unfortunately the pdf link is broken or has been slashdoted
I even changed the prefs in ff1.5 to use acroread, version 7 on this linux box as opposed to the default of ggv. Acroread was a bit more imformative in that it said the file was not a supported filetype, or that it had been sent as an email attachment and not properly decoded, meaning the mimetype received wasn't matching.
In any event, I've sent the site managers a request that it be fixed.
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Cheers, Gene.
The real problem is yet another American president thinks he's above the law, as if the entire point of the revolution and the constitution and the millenia of history before that went over his head.
Yup, and we thought we had it bad when we ran Nixon out of town. Nixon was an amature, and at the time he scared me excrementless.
No people should invest so much of their self worth in their elected officials as Americans do in their president. It shouldn't be as hard as it is to say "Bush, you fucked up. You're out. We're going to give some other horses ass a shot.".
The wheels do at times turn exceedingly slow. But I think I can detect motion over this 'situation'. My problem is that the vp is also a problem, believeing even more than the weed^H^H^H^HBush that what they are doing is right and proper.
It isn't, not by a hell of a long row of apple trees friends.
To quote Bush himself "A dictatorship wouldn't be so bad, if I was the dictator". He has, by presidential decree, assumed powers that are only known in a dictatorship. Its time the people spoke again, loud and clear, that this WILL NOT be tolerated. This constitution is not, as Bush has also said, "Just a piece of (expletive) paper".
Too bad we can't just call another general election, with someone like Feingold running. But I don't think the Constitution, as amended, has a mechanism for that.
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Cheers, Gene