Another one that I like is Collusion. Still listed as experimental though:
Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers.
I got a used X31 from eBay for a motorcycle trip to northern Alaska last summer. As other posters have said, they are small and reasably durable, especially for the price I got it for on eBay. Since the X series don't have optical drives, just bring some memory cards with you instead. All of this survived rattling/vibrating around in my metal panniers with nothing more than a thin neoprene 'bag' for protection and a bit of carboard.
I ran out of space on my gmail account last week (I use it to receive several high traffic mailing lists). It was a bit of a pain to delete emails to make more space, as it puked the first few times I tried to delete several thousand at a time. Just because something is too big for you doesn't mean it's too big for others. If this was true, we should go back to using 640k, right?
1) Copyright a poem/song/home movie 2) Search through media company's catalogs for titles with matching keywords 3) DMCA takedown notice 4) No idea if there's any profit, but hey, it would appear that all it takes is an email to remove things you don't like from the Internet (temporarily). No need for zombie PCs etc. If it comes back up, send another takedown notice from a different address.
He compared the process to charging up a battery on the flash of a digital camera, then pushing the button and "dumping that charge," producing a magnetic field that drives the metal-cased ordnance instead of gun powder.
So if it were possible to track the shell at those speeds, if you had an important building to defend, could you not use a magnetic field pulse to defend against it? I understand it would be pretty much impossible to create a field with the same strength for an entire building, but you don't need to stop the shell cold, just slow it down enough so that the entire building is destroyed.
There are lots of news sites on the web now, but the one thing that is a big problem for me is how long they retain these news stories. It seems that many 'news' sites (and many bloggers) don't care about archiving their information, and after a few days the story is gone. If I want to find old news stories, I would probably have better luck going to a library and using a *gasp* microfiche.
Is it any wonder that of all the illegal products that can be shipped through the mail, the ones with the largest number of political lobbyists are getting special measures to ensure they're legitimate? This is really a case of money being used to influence politics. This is a huge invasion of privacy, and a nonsensical one at that. There's no way for these dogs to differentiate between legitimate and copied DVD's, and illegal DVD copies and legal DVD copies. Another case of the RIAA treating customers as the enemy. Makes me have no pity for them when they complain about being stolen from. Maybe if they gave their customers (you know, the people paying them) a little respect they might be able to get some sympathy and work with people to solve this problem. As it is, I think they're just contributing to it.
Another interesting point is that FedEx (and most likely other shipping companies) were only too happy to oblige the MPAA in the invasion of your privacy. If FedEx had told the MPAA to get stuffed in the first place, this story would never have happened.
Funny, having worked at several successful software companies I've heard the phrase, "he wore a suit to the interview," used in a negative way more than once. Often your appearance does matter, but you need to tailor it to your audience. In some markets bringing along a sloppily dressed geek will instill in your potential customers a belief that your product must be advanced. In others, it is seen as a sign of a small player, not worth dealing with. Most customers expect a somewhat professional looking salesman, but in many cases they are happy to see "those geeky guys" if they tour the facilities or if someone comes out to install a few million dollars of high-tech gear for them.
I completely agree. Think about this: Your company buys a lighting/plumbing/whatever system from XYZ Corp. The salesman from XYZ wore a suit and tie. Now the electricians etc come to install it. Do you feel they are less competant at what they do because they aren't wearing suits?
This has been going on for many generations before us, and will probably continue long after we are gone. When we were young, we all remember the "why I can remember back when..." stories told to us by our parents and grandparents. They got set in their ways and didn't keep up with the times. As we get older, we slowly fall off the bleeding edge, and eventually no longer care to be up on the latest and greatest. In fact, sometimes the latest tech is annoying to us (people talking on cell phones in lineups, etc). Perhaps it would be more useful to ask "What is it that causes us to not want to keep up with the latest and greatest like we did before?" When we were kids, we simply adapted to whatever came along, but as we get older, we become more resistant to change, what purpose does this serve?
From the parent post and others in this thread, we/.'ers now know the author's bias... but what about non-technical people? We need to get the word out to them, not just here. What are good places on the Internet to let non-technical people learn of the spin behind articles such as this?
As well, dozens of countries have offered help, such as Canada's offer of portable water purification plants, which were also deployed during the tsunami relief. As yet there has been no response to any country's offer of assistance. Yes, America has a lot of resources, but from what I see on TV, it would seem that they could use some help.
If you run Asterisk, you should also check out fwdOUT http://www.fwdout.com/, through which you can get FREE worldwide long distance calling. The only catch is that you have to allow others to make local calls out on your phone line through Asterisk. As the site's motto says: " The Love You Take Is Equal To The Love You Make", so the more calls you allow out, the more calls you have available to make. It's about a 5:1 ratio, so even allowing a few calls out gives you alot of free calls.
But do you want to know something important? I do not try to offer technical support to Spanish speakers, or try to teach at a Latin American university.
Is this the fault of the Indians for speaking english as best they can, or the fault of the corporation who has outsourced the job to them, for not making sure they picked a good call center?
Also (I'm assuming you are from the US), I'm sure that if you went to England, many people there would not say you speak English without an accent.
2. ubiquitous ten-megabit wireless networking coast to coast
Make that _symmetric_ ten-megabit, not the retarded symmetric crap home users are stuck with right now. With symmetric, the users can become content providers, thus creating an explosion of creativity and innovation. Yes, there would also be an increase in the number of warez ftp sites, but I think the amount of good this would create would outweigh the bad.
"But beyond our case, it raises the question of how do you look at people's productivity and the quality of their work in certain occupations where it's hard to tell, given the technology nowadays?"
Why not just sit beside them for a couple of days and see just what they do? Talk to people with whom they interact at work, get their opinions on this person.
What could prove to be fun would be to take a sniffer trace of what this application is sending out, then create a program that sends similar, but bogus information to their servers. Load it up on the machine of a someone you don't like and wait across the street with a videocam for the cops (and the ensuing hilarity) to arrive!
Employers say they want people who challenge the status quo, think outside the box, etc etc, yet when someone actually does this, they get fired. Companies only want soldiers - do as you are told, nothing more, nothing less.
I like what I'm doing, and I can do it from anywhere there is Internet access of some sort. However, the higher-ups are of the mindset that employees who do my line of work can only do it properly from a large cities where my peers are also located. While some of this is true (face to face meetings with people are much better than conference calls), most of the time I work on my own and can remotely connect to the resources that I need.
Funny how a company that makes money supplying Internet access/services would be so opposed to telecommuting. *sigh*
Otaku behavior is also being blamed, along with social disillusionment following Japan's protracted recession, for the increasing numbers of Japanese youth who have no apparent career ambitions. Instead, many are choosing to work part time -- or not at all -- so they can spend most of their time pursuing their hobbies.
Why is it bad to do the things that we like instead of working day in and day out at the factory/office/etc? I am moving towards this myself, as I plan to leave the big city life behind and move to a small town where there is more time to do the things I like. Sure I won't make as much money, but the commute to work will be a _lot_ shorter, the houses and land are cheaper, and the pace is a lot easier. I'd rather spend my time enjoying life than doing the Monday to Friday grind for someone else.
so why don't the copyright holders have to pay a tax
Simply because that would be insane. For if you ever wrote a poem you'd have to pay for it, which sounds just crap. If you go to a publisher, and sell those poems by twelve a dozen, then he's got income, you've got income, and hey, if you don't live on the moon's dark side, you have to pay taxes after all that, don't you.
So where's the problem, you have an income with which to pay these taxes, especially if you are selling poems "by twelve a dozen". If you think something isn't going to be good, why are you bothing to do it?
As luck would have it, I recently decided to try to build and interface USB devices, but have been having a hard time finding decent information online about it. The page mentions that they use Atmel controllers (which I was looking at), but that's about as technical as the page gets. Does anyone have any good URLs for interfacing USB microcontrollers?
Slashdot Mirror
Another one that I like is Collusion. Still listed as experimental though:
Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web. It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers.
Since they are shutting down the company, are they planning on releasing the code under GPL or some other license for others to make use of it?
What about open source textbooks for elementary school subjects such as math? I'm pretty sure addition and subtraction don't change much.
I got a used X31 from eBay for a motorcycle trip to northern Alaska last summer. As other posters have said, they are small and reasably durable, especially for the price I got it for on eBay. Since the X series don't have optical drives, just bring some memory cards with you instead. All of this survived rattling/vibrating around in my metal panniers with nothing more than a thin neoprene 'bag' for protection and a bit of carboard.
I ran out of space on my gmail account last week (I use it to receive several high traffic mailing lists). It was a bit of a pain to delete emails to make more space, as it puked the first few times I tried to delete several thousand at a time. Just because something is too big for you doesn't mean it's too big for others. If this was true, we should go back to using 640k, right?
NO AND THEN!
Bored? Need something to do?
1) Copyright a poem/song/home movie
2) Search through media company's catalogs for titles with matching keywords
3) DMCA takedown notice
4) No idea if there's any profit, but hey, it would appear that all it takes is an email to remove things you don't like from the Internet (temporarily). No need for zombie PCs etc. If it comes back up, send another takedown notice from a different address.
He compared the process to charging up a battery on the flash of a digital camera, then pushing the button and "dumping that charge," producing a magnetic field that drives the metal-cased ordnance instead of gun powder.
So if it were possible to track the shell at those speeds, if you had an important building to defend, could you not use a magnetic field pulse to defend against it? I understand it would be pretty much impossible to create a field with the same strength for an entire building, but you don't need to stop the shell cold, just slow it down enough so that the entire building is destroyed.
There are lots of news sites on the web now, but the one thing that is a big problem for me is how long they retain these news stories. It seems that many 'news' sites (and many bloggers) don't care about archiving their information, and after a few days the story is gone. If I want to find old news stories, I would probably have better luck going to a library and using a *gasp* microfiche.
Is it any wonder that of all the illegal products that can be shipped through the mail, the ones with the largest number of political lobbyists are getting special measures to ensure they're legitimate? This is really a case of money being used to influence politics. This is a huge invasion of privacy, and a nonsensical one at that. There's no way for these dogs to differentiate between legitimate and copied DVD's, and illegal DVD copies and legal DVD copies. Another case of the RIAA treating customers as the enemy. Makes me have no pity for them when they complain about being stolen from. Maybe if they gave their customers (you know, the people paying them) a little respect they might be able to get some sympathy and work with people to solve this problem. As it is, I think they're just contributing to it.
Another interesting point is that FedEx (and most likely other shipping companies) were only too happy to oblige the MPAA in the invasion of your privacy. If FedEx had told the MPAA to get stuffed in the first place, this story would never have happened.
Funny, having worked at several successful software companies I've heard the phrase, "he wore a suit to the interview," used in a negative way more than once. Often your appearance does matter, but you need to tailor it to your audience. In some markets bringing along a sloppily dressed geek will instill in your potential customers a belief that your product must be advanced. In others, it is seen as a sign of a small player, not worth dealing with. Most customers expect a somewhat professional looking salesman, but in many cases they are happy to see "those geeky guys" if they tour the facilities or if someone comes out to install a few million dollars of high-tech gear for them.
I completely agree. Think about this: Your company buys a lighting/plumbing/whatever system from XYZ Corp. The salesman from XYZ wore a suit and tie. Now the electricians etc come to install it. Do you feel they are less competant at what they do because they aren't wearing suits?
This has been going on for many generations before us, and will probably continue long after we are gone. When we were young, we all remember the "why I can remember back when..." stories told to us by our parents and grandparents. They got set in their ways and didn't keep up with the times. As we get older, we slowly fall off the bleeding edge, and eventually no longer care to be up on the latest and greatest. In fact, sometimes the latest tech is annoying to us (people talking on cell phones in lineups, etc). Perhaps it would be more useful to ask "What is it that causes us to not want to keep up with the latest and greatest like we did before?" When we were kids, we simply adapted to whatever came along, but as we get older, we become more resistant to change, what purpose does this serve?
From the parent post and others in this thread, we /.'ers now know the author's bias... but what about non-technical people? We need to get the word out to them, not just here. What are good places on the Internet to let non-technical people learn of the spin behind articles such as this?
As well, dozens of countries have offered help, such as Canada's offer of portable water purification plants, which were also deployed during the tsunami relief. As yet there has been no response to any country's offer of assistance. Yes, America has a lot of resources, but from what I see on TV, it would seem that they could use some help.
If you run Asterisk, you should also check out fwdOUT http://www.fwdout.com/, through which you can get FREE worldwide long distance calling. The only catch is that you have to allow others to make local calls out on your phone line through Asterisk. As the site's motto says: " The Love You Take Is Equal To The Love You Make", so the more calls you allow out, the more calls you have available to make. It's about a 5:1 ratio, so even allowing a few calls out gives you alot of free calls.
But do you want to know something important? I do not try to offer technical support to Spanish speakers, or try to teach at a Latin American university.
Is this the fault of the Indians for speaking english as best they can, or the fault of the corporation who has outsourced the job to them, for not making sure they picked a good call center?
Also (I'm assuming you are from the US), I'm sure that if you went to England, many people there would not say you speak English without an accent.
2. ubiquitous ten-megabit wireless networking coast to coast
Make that _symmetric_ ten-megabit, not the retarded symmetric crap home users are stuck with right now. With symmetric, the users can become content providers, thus creating an explosion of creativity and innovation. Yes, there would also be an increase in the number of warez ftp sites, but I think the amount of good this would create would outweigh the bad.
"But beyond our case, it raises the question of how do you look at people's productivity and the quality of their work in certain occupations where it's hard to tell, given the technology nowadays?"
Why not just sit beside them for a couple of days and see just what they do? Talk to people with whom they interact at work, get their opinions on this person.
What could prove to be fun would be to take a sniffer trace of what this application is sending out, then create a program that sends similar, but bogus information to their servers. Load it up on the machine of a someone you don't like and wait across the street with a videocam for the cops (and the ensuing hilarity) to arrive!
Let me repeat - Anything can taint your career .
Employers say they want people who challenge the status quo, think outside the box, etc etc, yet when someone actually does this, they get fired. Companies only want soldiers - do as you are told, nothing more, nothing less.
I like what I'm doing, and I can do it from anywhere there is Internet access of some sort. However, the higher-ups are of the mindset that employees who do my line of work can only do it properly from a large cities where my peers are also located. While some of this is true (face to face meetings with people are much better than conference calls), most of the time I work on my own and can remotely connect to the resources that I need.
Funny how a company that makes money supplying Internet access/services would be so opposed to telecommuting. *sigh*
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5 i8192
Otaku behavior is also being blamed, along with social disillusionment following Japan's protracted recession, for the increasing numbers of Japanese youth who have no apparent career ambitions. Instead, many are choosing to work part time -- or not at all -- so they can spend most of their time pursuing their hobbies.
Why is it bad to do the things that we like instead of working day in and day out at the factory/office/etc? I am moving towards this myself, as I plan to leave the big city life behind and move to a small town where there is more time to do the things I like. Sure I won't make as much money, but the commute to work will be a _lot_ shorter, the houses and land are cheaper, and the pace is a lot easier. I'd rather spend my time enjoying life than doing the Monday to Friday grind for someone else.
so why don't the copyright holders have to pay a tax
Simply because that would be insane. For if you ever wrote a poem you'd have to pay for it, which sounds just crap. If you go to a publisher, and sell those poems by twelve a dozen, then he's got income, you've got income, and hey, if you don't live on the moon's dark side, you have to pay taxes after all that, don't you.
So where's the problem, you have an income with which to pay these taxes, especially if you are selling poems "by twelve a dozen". If you think something isn't going to be good, why are you bothing to do it?
As luck would have it, I recently decided to try to build and interface USB devices, but have been having a hard time finding decent information online about it. The page mentions that they use Atmel controllers (which I was looking at), but that's about as technical as the page gets. Does anyone have any good URLs for interfacing USB microcontrollers?