Now they tell you it can't be replaced, because that version has been replaced by a "new" release, even with relatively-recently purchased media.
I'm a big fan of books on tape (I commute 1.5 hours per day) & recently was listening to one of my books for the third time. Well, the cassette got so FUBAR that the tape was coming out of the reels! I thought, "time to call the publisher for a replacement tape..."
Initially, they replied to my request for a replacement tape with, "We don't make that edition anymore...we only offer that title on CD or Library edition cassettes. Sorry, we can't help you."
My response to them was, "Well, I don't mind what format you send it to me on, I just want to be able to listen to my book on tape." Of course, they said, NO & that I could buy the other editions at a slight discount.
When I said, "Listen, I have a right to the intellectual property on those cassettes & I'm only asking for a replacement of the media itself.", the lady on the other end of the phone paused for a while & finally said, "Ummm...let me transfer you to my supervisor."
The supervisor talked to me for a few minutes, took my address & said she'd see what she could do. I didn't hear anything back from them for over a week. Just when I found time at work to call 'em back, I got a package delivered to me - the ENTIRE Library Edition of the cassettes!!
Bottom line: the RIAA may want to change the way way that media replacements are handled, but good old fashioned customer service often trumps what the lawyers want.
Thanks for the well thought out reply. You're right, though - these arguements are definitely valid for abortion. I'm an engineer & a part time developer, so I'm not 100% up on how they harvest stem cells. I was under the impression that stem cells were the by-product of aborted fetuses.
I guess with a little thought though, the issue I have would be with abortion. Once the deed is done, the stem cells might as well be used for something good. I could see others making the argument that you shouldn't use the product of something evil (aka abortion), but that's not a great argument. That's like not harvesting an organ from a body, just because it was the product of a murder.
A good practical example of where religion is hurting society is the whole stem cell nonsense. There you have an example of an active assault on a promising scientific field because of childish notions of what it means to be alive. Youre a bag of meat whose consciousness has been brought forth to keep your cells alive. Thats it. No grand plan, no meaning except for what YOU yourself decide to make of it.
So, you're a bag of meat? Why is it then, that almost every civilization in history makes it a crime to kill a fellow bag of meat?
For the sake of argument, let's assume that you and everyone else is a bag of meat. Well, society obviously places value on the human-looking bags of meat, therefore, they pass laws against murder. The question of Stem Cell Research is not a religious question. Instead, it is a two-part question:
1. What is Life?
2. At what point, if any, is it acceptable to take said Life?
Obviously the question of "What is Life?" can have religious implications, but the argument doesn't have to be on that level at all. It can be a question about organ development, cognition, or any number of biological factors. With this sort of argument, there are many people (myself included) who have a hard time believing that a 1 day old baby is somehow different than a 4 month old fetus. Many people keep extrapolating backwards & come to the conclusion that a 1-second old fetus is LIFE.
The 2nd question, is a ethical question that doesn't have to be shaped by religion either. Consider assisted suicide, euthanasia, death penalties, etc. It's all a question of ethics. Sure, religion has its thoughts on the matter, but it's not about religion.
So I would actually argue that the "stem cell nonsense" is not a matter of religion, it's a matter of ethics. Just because someone's ethics are shaped by religion does not make their ethical decisions to be silly.
I'm not one to be excited over being an early adopter, but I know people who are. Surely you know someone who really gets off on being the first guy on the block with a cool new toy. For people like that, it doesn't really matter that they're not getting the best deal - they're just excited to have the latest new gizmo!
Xbox 360 won't face the same spike-then-slump phenomenon that plauged Sony's PS2 launch. The idea seems to be that would-be Xbox 360 buyers will be less unhappy with a steady but limited supply of consoles than a massive sell-off followed buy a drought.
So, the slashdot summary seems to imply that this is simply an evil marketing ploy by Microsoft. Instead, I see it as a way of keeping the new Xbox in a position where consumers don't forget about it.
If the new Xbox sold out the first day (or two) & there weren't any more units for another month (like the PS2), how many consumers are going to forget about it? How much marketing momentum do you lose when everyone has to wait a month before they can hope to get the "next big thing"?
If, on the other hand, it sells out on the first day, but customers are told that there will be another shipment in 3-4 days, they'll be a lot less likely to forget about it. Not only that, but when when they do get one, they will still have the excitement of being an early adopter - and I'm sure that will translate to more accessories being sold.
If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I'd be happy with this rollout...
I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love. The scope of the project is amazing, the engineering that went into some of the pieces is incredible, and the final product (the first prototype) was gorgeous. I read everything I could about it & even had it as my wallpaper for a while. If you like mechanical devices, take some time to look at this project - it's well worth it!
The mechanical computer, the solar synchronizer, and the power mechanism are all very cool pieces of engineering. However, the most fascinating part of the entire clock is the "Equation of Time Cam". A bit more information about the cam follows.
The proposed clock not only keeps accurate solar time (it resets itself every day at noon via the solar synchronizer), it also keeps accurate "clock time". How it does this is pretty amazing:
In general, when the sun reaches its highest point ("solar noon"), you can look at your watch & find that it's not really noon. On any given day, the variation between "solar noon" & "clock noon" is +/- 15 minutes. Of course, this variation chanages through out the year, following a well defined curve known as the "equation of time" (http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm) (it looks like a 5th order polynomial equation).
So, when the mechanical clock resets itself at "solar noon", it's needs to account for this variation to determine "clock noon". One way to do this is to make a disc that is not perfectly round; it has a wider diameter at portions & a narrower diameter at other parts (something like a cross between a circle & an ameoba). This "disc" makes one revolution per year, and the variations in its diameter represent the difference between "solar noon" & "clock noon". So, at "solar noon", the clock resets itself & uses a feeler gauge on the disc to figure out how much variation to add or subtract to display "clock noon". So, assuming you have a sunny day every once & a while, you have a clock that will always have accurate clock time. Ingenious!
There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:
Me and 5-6 friends hosted a monthly LAN Party that lasted 2-3 years (1997-1999) and had a peak attendance of 70 people. Over the event's lifetime, it actually broke even! Here's how we did it:
We started very small: just 8 of us in a guy's house. If we met someone that was a gamer, we invited him to the next month's event. After a few months, the host's wife got a little annoyed at the size of the event. So, we had to move...
We rented out a local Lion's Club for a reasonable price & had an 25 people at the first event. We charged everyone $15 to get in & asked everyone to bring some sort of snack or drink. We even taped heavy black plastic trash bags over the windows so nobody suffered from glare). It was a great success.
Next, we started a small website with a FAQ (adults only, no booze, no drugs, games we play, etc...), a map to where we hosted the event, and a message board to see what games people wanted to play. We also made it clear that we were a Quake2 Lan Party so that we attracted people who were all interested in the same game.
We actually planned out 80% of the event (1PM until 2AM) so that there was usually a scheduled activity right around the corner. Events included the following:
-Started with a few deathmatch servers that people could hop in & out of while configuring their computers. We used some mod that kept things "even" - the more frags you had, the less damage your weapon did (and vice versa)...it got the point where you'd have to rail some newbie 4 times to kill him, but a few shots from him with his pistol would kill you - very fun stuff & extremely even scores)
-A silly tournament of sorts (QPong, Chase the chicken, or the like). Always good for a laugh.
-A group tournament such as CTF, Team Rocket Arena, Ball & Chain (Strongest player teamed up with the weakest player - usually decided by parsing the logs of all the previous tourneys & the warmup servers)
-30 v 30 Rocket Arena (the absolute highlight of the evening - there's nothing like running around on a HUGE map with 15 of your teammates trying to kill all who stood before you. It was always fun if you were the last man on one team...the whole place would errupt in cheers if you actually killed one of the mob hunting for you).
-A 1 v 1 tournament. We usually gave out medals or trophies to the top 3 players (very cheap, but such a nice item to have - just for pride; I think I still have one above my computer). We actually attracted the top players in the Houston area to this event & had several top 50 GPL players show up on many occasions.
Most tournaments were double elimination & there were always a few deathmatch servers to retire to after you were bumped out of the tournament.
People had fun playing, but the real fun always happened near the food table: you got to meet the guy who kept fragging your ass & B.S. with him or brag with your friends about some kick-ass kill.
As we grew, we had to install a new sub-panel at the lion's club to handle all the computers (an organizing member was an electrician & just charged us for parts), we frequently borrowed a switch (one of the guys worked for a networking company & didn't mind us borrowing a high powered switch for the weekend) & we started providing food (we raised the admission to $20/person but provided lunch AND dinner plus more snacks than you could eat - I usually shopped the local sales or Sam's Wholesale club).
Towards the end, we were an official GPL (??) qualifing event, had real sponsors (for door prizes & tourney prizes): Bawls, Logitech, & a local porn shop (one of the players managed an adult video store - his door prizes were very interesting), and had the tiny Lion's Club rocking with 70+ people. We even had to turn people away.
Here are the things that I think made us successful:
1. Start small & grow into the event. This did several things: we never lost a lot
10 years ago, I stumbled across the MIT lock-picking guide. After reading through it, I found a place in town to purchase some lock picks. "The Spy Store" was a place with all sorts of interesting items: hidden cameras (way before nanny cams became common), knife pens, offers for armoring your vehicle, brass knuckles, hidden tape recorders, parabolic microphones, bugging equipment, and of course, lock picks (interestingly enough, they were shut down a few years later for selling items that were only supposed to go to law enforcement officials).
Anyway, armed with only what I had read, I got home to my cheap little apartment, and proceeded to pick my house lock in 15 seconds - without ever picking a lock before. Needless to say, I was both amazed and scared.
Over the next few weeks I practiced my new found skill on all sorts of locks and learned a wonderful secret about corporate America: their locks aren't cheap, but are generally keyed 2-3 different ways (1 security key could open all locks in the building, each floor had a floor "warden" who possessed a key to get into any office on that floor, and of course, my own personal key) making them very easy to pick.
I had a guy in my office that loved to play pranks on people. One day, I noticed that he had left his car (Toyata Celica) in the parking garage overnight. Of course, he had it secured with one of those fancy devices known as "The Club". I eyeballed the car & thought, "what the hell...let's see what I can do." I was able to pick the outside lock after lots of effort. Once inside, I was amazed at how quickly "The Club" opened up to me...20 seconds (my first attempt on the club). The ignition lock was very tough & I was never able to pick it. After some thinking, I realized that a manual transmission car could be pushed around the parking garage, as long as I was careful not to lock the wheel. In the end (after some serious pushing back & forth) I had moved the car 20 parking spots down and on the other side of the garage. I locked the Club back into position, locked the door, & went home.
The next day, he came into the office with a really freaked out look on his face. He told people that he thought someone had the keys to his car & was using it. After letting him sweat it out for the rest of the day, I told him the truth. He was a little pissed, but was able to get a chuckle out of it.
From that day forward, anytime someone (even my boss) had lost a key, they'd just come see me.
The MIT Lockpicking guide is a nice starter on lockpicking. Give it a look if you have the chance.
A microwaved bill would obviously fail the crypto check via the RFID tag. Such a bill would probably produce an audible "chirp" from the scanner that would let the cashier know, "You might want to take a closer look at what just got handed to you...". At that point, you'd be looking at the other anti-counterfit measures on the bill.
Fled the country? Hardly - they just went to laboratories that were willing to fund them.
Unfortunately for them, their initial findings were presented so quickly & so spectacularly (yes, their own fault) that the entire US scientific community turned on them when results couldn't be confirmed quickly. This led to little funding in the US.
Back in the early 90's I was a personal assistant to Dr. John O'M. Bockris (Professor of Electro-Chemistry at Texas A&M University). His laboratory was the first in the world to "verify" the results of Pons & Fleischmann.
During my year and a half as a personal assistant (one of several), one of my main responsibilities was to help with correspondence with other scientists. I'd open their mail, scan it for importance, and act on it (usually forward it to the Dr. Bockris if it was personal correspondence or reply back to the sender with relevant publications if it was a request for information). Needless to say, I saw a lot of unpublished information about "cold fusion".
Among many, one particular hand-written note stands out in my mind: it described the palladium cathode melting during the course of the experiment, with no apparent cause, other than "cold fusion". I don't remember the researcher, but I do remember that this particular guy had tons of papers to his name & was a highly respected scientist.
Of course among the correspondence, there was also some petty squabbling. I was most disturbed by the fact that anyone that researched "cold fusion" was regarded as a wacko by the entrenched scientific community. The attitude that normal physicists seemed to have was that "cold fusion" was a hoax & that further investigation was an entire waste of time. They'd cry "But where are all the neutrons", or "You'd be dead by now if that much excess heat were actually being produced." What most of these so-called entrenched scientists failed to realize was, this was something entirely new. Maybe it doesn't follow the laws of nuclear physics as we understand them now. But the same thing can be said for almost any major change in our understanding of the universe (relativity and quantum physics certainly fit the bill). But the effect of their collective crying, bitching, and moaning was to make funding for "cold fusion" research a difficult thing to acquire. All this did was slow down progress on research on something that could radically alter our understanding
Anyway, the constant influx of reports during those years ('92-'93?) showed that there was something new going on. The problem was that nobody could reliably reproduce their results. But regardless, in the decade since I worked there, "rogue researchers" kept pounding away at the problem & the damned problem just won't go away. In fact, it seems (from this article and many other publications: http://www.defusion.com/ & http://www.infinite-energy.com/) that people are making real progress on the problem.
I still read some of the lighter publications & summaries, but to tell you the truth, I'm a programmer with a BS in engineering and that stuff is WAY over my head. But progress is being made. It's about freakin' time the main-stream science community stopped their bitching & started taking a good, long, hard look at this problem.
SBC's action is not based on fear of bad publicity.
After the Verizon decision, every other ISP in the nation has folded to the pressure of RIAA subpoenas. Nobody would have been shocked, distraught, or otherwise pissed off if SBC had done it, too. There was "obvious" legal precedent for revealing customer information to blame it on.
Yes, a few of us/.'ers would get our panties in a bunch about it. But honestly, would you have been surprised if SBC had complied with the subpeonas? No. You, along with everyone else, would have expected SBC to follow the crowd & turn over the personal information. You wouldn't have been happy, but your anger wouldn't have been focused at SBC. We would all blame it on the RIAA, DMCA, & the courts.
So, it's obvious that SBC could have complied with the subpeonas & gotten very little backlash for that action. The newspapers wouldn't blame it on SBC, since they were just following EVERY OTHER ISP's lead and legal precedent.
Now, I'm not entirely convinced that SBC is doing all of this because they're just nice guys. They could be trying to keep file-sharing (the killer-app for the internet) alive. They could be trying to avoid lawsuits from their own customers ("Your ad said to download all the music I wanted!!"). Or they may be trying to attract more business ("Look at us! We're SBC & we won't hand your personal information over to the evil RIAA.").
Whatever their real motivation is, I'm pretty sure it's not to avoid bad PR from a story that's already a month old...
While I attended Texas A&M, I spent 2 (93-94) years as a personal assistant (gofer, typist, etc) to James Bockris (Distinguished Professor of Electro-Chemestry - the first scientist to "confirm" Pons & Fleischmann). As such, I had full access to his corespondance (I had to open it all, sort it by subject, & reply to some of the simplier inquiries) & was able to learn quite a bit.
Although it's now been 10 years since I've done any serious research on the subject (every now & then I read the symposium notes), I can give you my opinions of the whole Cold Fusion uproar:
-There is something strange & new going on in these experiments
-This something strange & new has been very difficult to reproduce consistently (much of the research focuses on certain types of atomic level imperfections in the cathodes)
-Pons & Fleischmann screwed the pooch by announcing their results before they could reproduce them. This basically had the effect of turning 95% of the scientific community against them. This has led to many people assuming the entire field of study as bogus.
-Many scientist around the world have reported "good results" - ranging from melted cathodes (excess heat) to extra helium (fusion of hydrogen atoms?).
My guess is that there is some new type of reaction occuring in these experiments. It may or may not be able to produce excess heat. Regardless, I'd bet in 10-20 years, a paper will be published that will explain it all.
As a side note, Dr. Bockris was a very "interesting" fellow to work with - he was the epitomy of the absent minded professor; one day he came in to work with his button down dress shirt on INSIDE OUT (think about how much effort it would take you to button a dress shirt in such a fashion); he frequently would put a MARKER in his front pocket without the cap on - leading to a HUGE ink stain on many of his dress shirts. And yes, I know he's done some weird stuff in his life (alchemy, anyone?! - http://www.spectrometer.org/path/free.html).
The real power of TiVo can be found here:
-A list of all your recorded programs (just browse through to see what you want to watch)
-Program once, record forever (even if the show changes time slots)
-Pausing live TV (great for potty breaks & getting a snack - you don't have to wait for a commercial)
-Rewinding live TV (Whoa! Was that a boob I just saw?!)
-Beautiful & instant Pause
-Insanely speedy fast-forward & rewind (60x play speed by default - can be "hacked" to be faster)
-Recommended programs that are automatically recorded
I have a TiVo & the 30 second skip button is nice (yes it's an easter egg), but the "super-fast-forward" will generally get you through the commercials in 5 seconds (instead of the 2 seconds that it takes to hit the skip button 8 times), and it starts playing the instant you hit the play button.
People who make the decision to buy a TiVo based on the 30-second skip button probably don't understand the product. It does so much more...
Since I've had TiVo, I watch more television shows than I used to, but I spend less time doing it (i.e. watching American Idol takes 20 minutes instead of 1 hour, most shows only takes 20 minutes instead of 30, you can get right to Dave Letterman's Top Ten List, etc.)
Maybe the reason isn't obvious, but here it is:
Basically, the Russians are the only link between the space station and the world (NASA won't be flying any missions anytime soon).
Also, Russia doesn't have reusable spacecrafts (they have one time use capsules - the space shuttle's brilliance was the fact that it was reusable), and they only have a limited supply of them. With a two year build time on their spacecraft, they don't want to "waste them" on anything other than what is purely necessary.
Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko said, "Space tourism is not a priority. State interests must come first, then commercial interests."
Slashdot Mirror
Now they tell you it can't be replaced, because that version has been replaced by a "new" release, even with relatively-recently purchased media.
I'm a big fan of books on tape (I commute 1.5 hours per day) & recently was listening to one of my books for the third time. Well, the cassette got so FUBAR that the tape was coming out of the reels! I thought, "time to call the publisher for a replacement tape..."
Initially, they replied to my request for a replacement tape with, "We don't make that edition anymore...we only offer that title on CD or Library edition cassettes. Sorry, we can't help you."
My response to them was, "Well, I don't mind what format you send it to me on, I just want to be able to listen to my book on tape." Of course, they said, NO & that I could buy the other editions at a slight discount.
When I said, "Listen, I have a right to the intellectual property on those cassettes & I'm only asking for a replacement of the media itself.", the lady on the other end of the phone paused for a while & finally said, "Ummm...let me transfer you to my supervisor."
The supervisor talked to me for a few minutes, took my address & said she'd see what she could do. I didn't hear anything back from them for over a week. Just when I found time at work to call 'em back, I got a package delivered to me - the ENTIRE Library Edition of the cassettes!!
Bottom line: the RIAA may want to change the way way that media replacements are handled, but good old fashioned customer service often trumps what the lawyers want.
Thanks for the well thought out reply. You're right, though - these arguements are definitely valid for abortion. I'm an engineer & a part time developer, so I'm not 100% up on how they harvest stem cells. I was under the impression that stem cells were the by-product of aborted fetuses.
I guess with a little thought though, the issue I have would be with abortion. Once the deed is done, the stem cells might as well be used for something good. I could see others making the argument that you shouldn't use the product of something evil (aka abortion), but that's not a great argument. That's like not harvesting an organ from a body, just because it was the product of a murder.
Thanks for giving me something to think about!
For the sake of argument, let's assume that you and everyone else is a bag of meat. Well, society obviously places value on the human-looking bags of meat, therefore, they pass laws against murder. The question of Stem Cell Research is not a religious question. Instead, it is a two-part question:
1. What is Life?
2. At what point, if any, is it acceptable to take said Life?
Obviously the question of "What is Life?" can have religious implications, but the argument doesn't have to be on that level at all. It can be a question about organ development, cognition, or any number of biological factors. With this sort of argument, there are many people (myself included) who have a hard time believing that a 1 day old baby is somehow different than a 4 month old fetus. Many people keep extrapolating backwards & come to the conclusion that a 1-second old fetus is LIFE.
The 2nd question, is a ethical question that doesn't have to be shaped by religion either. Consider assisted suicide, euthanasia, death penalties, etc. It's all a question of ethics. Sure, religion has its thoughts on the matter, but it's not about religion.
So I would actually argue that the "stem cell nonsense" is not a matter of religion, it's a matter of ethics. Just because someone's ethics are shaped by religion does not make their ethical decisions to be silly.
I'm not one to be excited over being an early adopter, but I know people who are. Surely you know someone who really gets off on being the first guy on the block with a cool new toy. For people like that, it doesn't really matter that they're not getting the best deal - they're just excited to have the latest new gizmo!
So, the slashdot summary seems to imply that this is simply an evil marketing ploy by Microsoft. Instead, I see it as a way of keeping the new Xbox in a position where consumers don't forget about it.
If the new Xbox sold out the first day (or two) & there weren't any more units for another month (like the PS2), how many consumers are going to forget about it? How much marketing momentum do you lose when everyone has to wait a month before they can hope to get the "next big thing"?
If, on the other hand, it sells out on the first day, but customers are told that there will be another shipment in 3-4 days, they'll be a lot less likely to forget about it. Not only that, but when when they do get one, they will still have the excitement of being an early adopter - and I'm sure that will translate to more accessories being sold.
If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I'd be happy with this rollout...
For further reading, here are some links:
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A quick write up about it: http://www.bfi.org/Trimtab/spring00/longnow.htm
A wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_No
An interview aobut it: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand/brand_p2.ht
A Discovery Article: http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-05/cover/
A book about the clock: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/046
I stumbled across this project 5 years ago & was immediately in love. The scope of the project is amazing, the engineering that went into some of the pieces is incredible, and the final product (the first prototype) was gorgeous. I read everything I could about it & even had it as my wallpaper for a while. If you like mechanical devices, take some time to look at this project - it's well worth it!
i mages/general-EqOfTimeDtl1_00Lo.jpg
Currently, you can find the project's web page at http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/
The mechanical computer, the solar synchronizer, and the power mechanism are all very cool pieces of engineering. However, the most fascinating part of the entire clock is the "Equation of Time Cam". A bit more information about the cam follows.
The proposed clock not only keeps accurate solar time (it resets itself every day at noon via the solar synchronizer), it also keeps accurate "clock time". How it does this is pretty amazing:
In general, when the sun reaches its highest point ("solar noon"), you can look at your watch & find that it's not really noon. On any given day, the variation between "solar noon" & "clock noon" is +/- 15 minutes. Of course, this variation chanages through out the year, following a well defined curve known as the "equation of time" (http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm) (it looks like a 5th order polynomial equation).
So, when the mechanical clock resets itself at "solar noon", it's needs to account for this variation to determine "clock noon". One way to do this is to make a disc that is not perfectly round; it has a wider diameter at portions & a narrower diameter at other parts (something like a cross between a circle & an ameoba). This "disc" makes one revolution per year, and the variations in its diameter represent the difference between "solar noon" & "clock noon". So, at "solar noon", the clock resets itself & uses a feeler gauge on the disc to figure out how much variation to add or subtract to display "clock noon". So, assuming you have a sunny day every once & a while, you have a clock that will always have accurate clock time. Ingenious!
There's a problem, though: each year, the equation of time changes slightly. So, in order to keep accurate clock time for 10,000 years, you need 10,000 of these discs, each representing the distinct equation of time for each year. The Long Now foundation solves this problem by making an "Equation of Time Cam" - a continous stack of these cylinders. In my mind it is a thing of beauty - engineering at its best - well thought out and so simple. Here's a picture of the cam - it's the cylinder that looks like it melted a bit:
http://www.longnow.org/projects/clock/prototype1/
The Long Now's explanation can be found here (complete with Cad drawings!):
http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html
I hope everyone enjoys this project as much as I have - Have fun!
This happens to me all the time, too! Usually it's accompanied by a failure in my belt buckle...
Me and 5-6 friends hosted a monthly LAN Party that lasted 2-3 years (1997-1999) and had a peak attendance of 70 people. Over the event's lifetime, it actually broke even! Here's how we did it:
We started very small: just 8 of us in a guy's house. If we met someone that was a gamer, we invited him to the next month's event. After a few months, the host's wife got a little annoyed at the size of the event. So, we had to move...
We rented out a local Lion's Club for a reasonable price & had an 25 people at the first event. We charged everyone $15 to get in & asked everyone to bring some sort of snack or drink. We even taped heavy black plastic trash bags over the windows so nobody suffered from glare). It was a great success.
Next, we started a small website with a FAQ (adults only, no booze, no drugs, games we play, etc...), a map to where we hosted the event, and a message board to see what games people wanted to play. We also made it clear that we were a Quake2 Lan Party so that we attracted people who were all interested in the same game.
We actually planned out 80% of the event (1PM until 2AM) so that there was usually a scheduled activity right around the corner. Events included the following:
-Started with a few deathmatch servers that people could hop in & out of while configuring their computers. We used some mod that kept things "even" - the more frags you had, the less damage your weapon did (and vice versa)...it got the point where you'd have to rail some newbie 4 times to kill him, but a few shots from him with his pistol would kill you - very fun stuff & extremely even scores)
-A silly tournament of sorts (QPong, Chase the chicken, or the like). Always good for a laugh.
-A group tournament such as CTF, Team Rocket Arena, Ball & Chain (Strongest player teamed up with the weakest player - usually decided by parsing the logs of all the previous tourneys & the warmup servers)
-30 v 30 Rocket Arena (the absolute highlight of the evening - there's nothing like running around on a HUGE map with 15 of your teammates trying to kill all who stood before you. It was always fun if you were the last man on one team...the whole place would errupt in cheers if you actually killed one of the mob hunting for you).
-A 1 v 1 tournament. We usually gave out medals or trophies to the top 3 players (very cheap, but such a nice item to have - just for pride; I think I still have one above my computer). We actually attracted the top players in the Houston area to this event & had several top 50 GPL players show up on many occasions.
Most tournaments were double elimination & there were always a few deathmatch servers to retire to after you were bumped out of the tournament.
People had fun playing, but the real fun always happened near the food table: you got to meet the guy who kept fragging your ass & B.S. with him or brag with your friends about some kick-ass kill.
As we grew, we had to install a new sub-panel at the lion's club to handle all the computers (an organizing member was an electrician & just charged us for parts), we frequently borrowed a switch (one of the guys worked for a networking company & didn't mind us borrowing a high powered switch for the weekend) & we started providing food (we raised the admission to $20/person but provided lunch AND dinner plus more snacks than you could eat - I usually shopped the local sales or Sam's Wholesale club).
Towards the end, we were an official GPL (??) qualifing event, had real sponsors (for door prizes & tourney prizes): Bawls, Logitech, & a local porn shop (one of the players managed an adult video store - his door prizes were very interesting), and had the tiny Lion's Club rocking with 70+ people. We even had to turn people away.
Here are the things that I think made us successful:
1. Start small & grow into the event. This did several things: we never lost a lot
10 years ago, I stumbled across the MIT lock-picking guide. After reading through it, I found a place in town to purchase some lock picks. "The Spy Store" was a place with all sorts of interesting items: hidden cameras (way before nanny cams became common), knife pens, offers for armoring your vehicle, brass knuckles, hidden tape recorders, parabolic microphones, bugging equipment, and of course, lock picks (interestingly enough, they were shut down a few years later for selling items that were only supposed to go to law enforcement officials).
Anyway, armed with only what I had read, I got home to my cheap little apartment, and proceeded to pick my house lock in 15 seconds - without ever picking a lock before. Needless to say, I was both amazed and scared.
Over the next few weeks I practiced my new found skill on all sorts of locks and learned a wonderful secret about corporate America: their locks aren't cheap, but are generally keyed 2-3 different ways (1 security key could open all locks in the building, each floor had a floor "warden" who possessed a key to get into any office on that floor, and of course, my own personal key) making them very easy to pick.
I had a guy in my office that loved to play pranks on people. One day, I noticed that he had left his car (Toyata Celica) in the parking garage overnight. Of course, he had it secured with one of those fancy devices known as "The Club". I eyeballed the car & thought, "what the hell...let's see what I can do." I was able to pick the outside lock after lots of effort. Once inside, I was amazed at how quickly "The Club" opened up to me...20 seconds (my first attempt on the club). The ignition lock was very tough & I was never able to pick it. After some thinking, I realized that a manual transmission car could be pushed around the parking garage, as long as I was careful not to lock the wheel. In the end (after some serious pushing back & forth) I had moved the car 20 parking spots down and on the other side of the garage. I locked the Club back into position, locked the door, & went home.
The next day, he came into the office with a really freaked out look on his face. He told people that he thought someone had the keys to his car & was using it. After letting him sweat it out for the rest of the day, I told him the truth. He was a little pissed, but was able to get a chuckle out of it.
From that day forward, anytime someone (even my boss) had lost a key, they'd just come see me.
The MIT Lockpicking guide is a nice starter on lockpicking. Give it a look if you have the chance.
A microwaved bill would obviously fail the crypto check via the RFID tag. Such a bill would probably produce an audible "chirp" from the scanner that would let the cashier know, "You might want to take a closer look at what just got handed to you...". At that point, you'd be looking at the other anti-counterfit measures on the bill.
Fled the country? Hardly - they just went to laboratories that were willing to fund them.
Unfortunately for them, their initial findings were presented so quickly & so spectacularly (yes, their own fault) that the entire US scientific community turned on them when results couldn't be confirmed quickly. This led to little funding in the US.
Back in the early 90's I was a personal assistant to Dr. John O'M. Bockris (Professor of Electro-Chemistry at Texas A&M University). His laboratory was the first in the world to "verify" the results of Pons & Fleischmann.
During my year and a half as a personal assistant (one of several), one of my main responsibilities was to help with correspondence with other scientists. I'd open their mail, scan it for importance, and act on it (usually forward it to the Dr. Bockris if it was personal correspondence or reply back to the sender with relevant publications if it was a request for information). Needless to say, I saw a lot of unpublished information about "cold fusion".
Among many, one particular hand-written note stands out in my mind: it described the palladium cathode melting during the course of the experiment, with no apparent cause, other than "cold fusion". I don't remember the researcher, but I do remember that this particular guy had tons of papers to his name & was a highly respected scientist.
Of course among the correspondence, there was also some petty squabbling. I was most disturbed by the fact that anyone that researched "cold fusion" was regarded as a wacko by the entrenched scientific community. The attitude that normal physicists seemed to have was that "cold fusion" was a hoax & that further investigation was an entire waste of time. They'd cry "But where are all the neutrons", or "You'd be dead by now if that much excess heat were actually being produced." What most of these so-called entrenched scientists failed to realize was, this was something entirely new. Maybe it doesn't follow the laws of nuclear physics as we understand them now. But the same thing can be said for almost any major change in our understanding of the universe (relativity and quantum physics certainly fit the bill). But the effect of their collective crying, bitching, and moaning was to make funding for "cold fusion" research a difficult thing to acquire. All this did was slow down progress on research on something that could radically alter our understanding
Anyway, the constant influx of reports during those years ('92-'93?) showed that there was something new going on. The problem was that nobody could reliably reproduce their results. But regardless, in the decade since I worked there, "rogue researchers" kept pounding away at the problem & the damned problem just won't go away. In fact, it seems (from this article and many other publications: http://www.defusion.com/ & http://www.infinite-energy.com/) that people are making real progress on the problem.
I still read some of the lighter publications & summaries, but to tell you the truth, I'm a programmer with a BS in engineering and that stuff is WAY over my head. But progress is being made. It's about freakin' time the main-stream science community stopped their bitching & started taking a good, long, hard look at this problem.
As my grandma says, "Many hands make light work."
If you're gonna do it right, do it like this:
Grand Canyon
It's a single monitor...but it's 92" wide. And it can be yours for the low, low price of just $17,499.99!
SBC's action is not based on fear of bad publicity.
/.'ers would get our panties in a bunch about it. But honestly, would you have been surprised if SBC had complied with the subpeonas? No. You, along with everyone else, would have expected SBC to follow the crowd & turn over the personal information. You wouldn't have been happy, but your anger wouldn't have been focused at SBC. We would all blame it on the RIAA, DMCA, & the courts.
After the Verizon decision, every other ISP in the nation has folded to the pressure of RIAA subpoenas. Nobody would have been shocked, distraught, or otherwise pissed off if SBC had done it, too. There was "obvious" legal precedent for revealing customer information to blame it on.
Yes, a few of us
So, it's obvious that SBC could have complied with the subpeonas & gotten very little backlash for that action. The newspapers wouldn't blame it on SBC, since they were just following EVERY OTHER ISP's lead and legal precedent.
Now, I'm not entirely convinced that SBC is doing all of this because they're just nice guys. They could be trying to keep file-sharing (the killer-app for the internet) alive. They could be trying to avoid lawsuits from their own customers ("Your ad said to download all the music I wanted!!"). Or they may be trying to attract more business ("Look at us! We're SBC & we won't hand your personal information over to the evil RIAA.").
Whatever their real motivation is, I'm pretty sure it's not to avoid bad PR from a story that's already a month old...
While I attended Texas A&M, I spent 2 (93-94) years as a personal assistant (gofer, typist, etc) to James Bockris (Distinguished Professor of Electro-Chemestry - the first scientist to "confirm" Pons & Fleischmann). As such, I had full access to his corespondance (I had to open it all, sort it by subject, & reply to some of the simplier inquiries) & was able to learn quite a bit.
Although it's now been 10 years since I've done any serious research on the subject (every now & then I read the symposium notes), I can give you my opinions of the whole Cold Fusion uproar:
-There is something strange & new going on in these experiments
-This something strange & new has been very difficult to reproduce consistently (much of the research focuses on certain types of atomic level imperfections in the cathodes)
-Pons & Fleischmann screwed the pooch by announcing their results before they could reproduce them. This basically had the effect of turning 95% of the scientific community against them. This has led to many people assuming the entire field of study as bogus.
-Many scientist around the world have reported "good results" - ranging from melted cathodes (excess heat) to extra helium (fusion of hydrogen atoms?).
My guess is that there is some new type of reaction occuring in these experiments. It may or may not be able to produce excess heat. Regardless, I'd bet in 10-20 years, a paper will be published that will explain it all.
As a side note, Dr. Bockris was a very "interesting" fellow to work with - he was the epitomy of the absent minded professor; one day he came in to work with his button down dress shirt on INSIDE OUT (think about how much effort it would take you to button a dress shirt in such a fashion); he frequently would put a MARKER in his front pocket without the cap on - leading to a HUGE ink stain on many of his dress shirts. And yes, I know he's done some weird stuff in his life (alchemy, anyone?! - http://www.spectrometer.org/path/free.html).
The real power of TiVo can be found here: -A list of all your recorded programs (just browse through to see what you want to watch) -Program once, record forever (even if the show changes time slots) -Pausing live TV (great for potty breaks & getting a snack - you don't have to wait for a commercial) -Rewinding live TV (Whoa! Was that a boob I just saw?!) -Beautiful & instant Pause -Insanely speedy fast-forward & rewind (60x play speed by default - can be "hacked" to be faster) -Recommended programs that are automatically recorded I have a TiVo & the 30 second skip button is nice (yes it's an easter egg), but the "super-fast-forward" will generally get you through the commercials in 5 seconds (instead of the 2 seconds that it takes to hit the skip button 8 times), and it starts playing the instant you hit the play button. People who make the decision to buy a TiVo based on the 30-second skip button probably don't understand the product. It does so much more... Since I've had TiVo, I watch more television shows than I used to, but I spend less time doing it (i.e. watching American Idol takes 20 minutes instead of 1 hour, most shows only takes 20 minutes instead of 30, you can get right to Dave Letterman's Top Ten List, etc.)
Maybe the reason isn't obvious, but here it is: Basically, the Russians are the only link between the space station and the world (NASA won't be flying any missions anytime soon). Also, Russia doesn't have reusable spacecrafts (they have one time use capsules - the space shuttle's brilliance was the fact that it was reusable), and they only have a limited supply of them. With a two year build time on their spacecraft, they don't want to "waste them" on anything other than what is purely necessary. Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko said, "Space tourism is not a priority. State interests must come first, then commercial interests."