We were just commenting today on how there should be a standing class action law suit against Microsoft. We could not think of a real reason, be you seem to have one here. The loss of business and revenue, whether from your pocket or your ISP's pocket, mulitplied acorss many ISPs seems like a case to me
My ISP is having almost continual problems being flooded with random worm noise.
Having a fairly common name has been a hassle. First the credit reporting agencies put someone else's bad credit under my wife's account. It took 6 months of writing letters to all the companies that had submitted credit info to the evil 3 before it was all straightend out. Somehow it was my wife's fault that the creidit reporting agencies messed up.
I named my son after myself with a different middle name. A couple of months after he was born I got a call asking to talk to him. I told the caller no. When he asked why, I said beacuse he was too young to talk. This guy was with collection agency trying to recover on a bad school loan.
Recently, I got notified by the Division of Child Welfare that they were going to start garnishing wages for back child support. I don't owe any child support, having just had the one wife. I called and got an answering machine that said they would try and get bck to me in 2 days. I then called the newspaper. 15 minutes later the DCW called very apologetic about the mix up.
Moral: Identity is very important yet is not treated as such by either the government or private companies. This needs to be made a bigger issue. If you have problems, be sure the media knows. Write letters to the editor and to your elected officials. There is a lot of money being made by selling your personal information. Its going to take a lot of people making noise before it changes.
Want to see who is selling your personal info? Here's how: When you sign up for anything, instead of just putting your name, put the name of the place your are registering with. For example: if your name is John Doe and you are registering with SlashDot, instead of entering your name as John Doe, you wouold enter J SlashDot Doe. That way when you get any mail, email, phone calls etc, you will know exactly where they came from.
I have been re-reading the comic books I bought back in the day. Many of the Bloom Counties could easily run today and be just as timely as when they were first written. It especially helps that there is a George Bush in the White House.
There is one where Oliver creates a transporter devices and show his dad who asks "Can you put George Bush in the White House?" and Oliver responds he can't perform miralces.
My co-hort in cubieville sloth has mentioned that the Breathed-one has been doing kids books and highly recommends them. My daughter has an Opus family: three sizes of stuffed Opuses (Opi?); the daddy, the mommy and the baby Opus.
You need to consider your development process like a chess game. You cannot go back and change the moves that don't make sense anymore. Instead, consider where you are now and move forward.
Instead of trying to go back and write test cases for everything, do as pong suggested and move forward from where you are today. Since the code is already working there is no real need to write test cases for it. Doing so would be contrary to the philosphy of XP that you only do what is necessary to complete the project.
As you go on writing test cases for bugs and new features, you will naturally start writing test cases to cover already working code. Sometimes these will be indirect tests as you write tests for new code that depends on old code. Othertimes, new test cases will be needed for old code when a change to one piece breaks another piece. Again, don't worry about "what might be", only worry about what is. What might be often becomes what never was.
90% of success is just getting started. Start simple and move on. I am sure someone famous said something like that.
There can't be a Do Not Spam list as the spammers are not so well behaved as the telemarketers. Believe it or not, the telemarketers consider themselves good citizens and are really providing the world a wonderful service. There is an organization and they can be regulated through phone line access.
The spammers cannot be regulated in the same way because there is no way to regulate internet access in the same way. So a Do Not Spam list would really be a Spam Me Lots list.
See SpamGourmet to help reduce the spamming
There is more info on Exendin at http://www.glucagon.com/exendin.htm.
It seems to effect GLP-1. Unfortunately, I do not know much about diabetes yet, having been recently diagnosed.
I have been taking the diabetic education classes and learing all about the carbs and glucose and how evil chocolate is. I was a chocohalic myself. I wonder how much that contributed to my current condition.
As an at least average chess player, I feel that the better the computer, the better for me. BTW, by average I mean I win as often as I lose. I usually lose when I play the computer. Yet that is not the only reason, or even the best reason to teach a computer to play chess.
Even better than playing a computer, is using the computer to analyze the game afterwards. The best way to get better is to learn from your own mistakes and those of your opponents. By having a stong, even grand master level, computer program look over the game you can learn a lot about why you lost or won. Imagine someone who can beat the world champion willing to go over your game with you.
Humans will always have an advantage over computers until chess becomes "solvable". Until then, there will always be people who can keep the machines on their toes. Also, by giving the rest of us opponents of great skill to play, who are also patient enought to teach, we can all improve our game and improve the general playing level of chess
When you get right down to it, a worm or a virus is just a bit of code that updates your computer in some fashion. It allows your computer to perform some function it did not previously perform. In essence, it is no different than hitting windows update and hoping for the best.
Well, of course there is a slight difference. With windows update, you ask for the update to happen. That is not the same as knowing what is really being changed. For example, the most recent windows update broke EI when it tries to talk to Squid. Also, I do not really know what is being updated by windows update, I just have to hope for the best.
So, is leaving a port open any more of a security risk than pressing the "Windows Update" button? Either way I am giving people who I do not know and probably don't trust access to my computer.
On the flip side, does a worm that improves my computer in some way any better than one that degrades my computer? Would it be ok for MicroSoft to release a worm that automatically upgrades EI? I think more right thinking people would agree that it is wrong, even if its for the right reasons. The end does not justify the means.
Somewhere there is a line between right and wrong here. The problem of course is that there are so many people who do not understand what a worm or an update are, how can they possible do the right thing? Does a fix it worm make sysadmins lazy? Maybe. Does it help the little old lady who just wants to find out about her genealogy and does not know or care how her computer work? Absolutely. It also help those of us who have to help this little old lady out because she is out mother.
Someday, the computer will be as easy to use as a microwave. Until then, I will take all the help I can get.
He is actually more worried about the company being sued by the RIAA for pirating MP3s. We have already been given notice a couple of time, but that is for a later rant.
2 days after they are released in the wild we'll be bidding for them on eBay.
I think you have hit upon the solution for several of the world problems, create a market for them on eBay. In India, there is a group of people who eat rats. Whenever there is a rot problem, they call these people who are good at catching and getting rid of rats.
So we could create a war souvenir craze. Get your land mine here, only 10,000,000,000 of them left to go. Get your before they are all gone.
Here at work we were just warned of the horror that is P2P. My boss' boss' boss was telling us that he would never allow a P2P program on his computer and that running one here at work was grounds for termination. Of course, he was only referring to music swapping. But in his mind, the two are inseparately connected. This is common in the "real" world ( and I don't mean the "reality?" series ).
P2P is set to be to the internet what the internet was to whatever was before it:). Imagine devices like cell phones which we carry with us at all times running P2P with all other portable devices. Add to that GPS technology and now you have an internet, or more precisely, the next generation internet that can interact more closely with reality. No longer do the cyber world and the real world need to be different places.
How will this be used? Using the cell phones and GPS, the P2P network can compute real-time traffic contiditions based on the speed of the cell phone and route the driver in route. No expensie infrastructure is needed.
How about having your cell phone interact with people in close proximity to you. Maybe at a sporting event or some other. What would it do? Only time will tell.
By having the network not only to other computers but also to the person via the phone and physical location via GPS, the network will become much more useful and timely than anything we have ever seen before. Maybe it could be used for defence even.
With the continual barrage of national news from CNN, CNBS, MSNBC, USA Today and the like, what is news has changed. The power outage in the north east US is an example.
Living in the West, how does this effect me? Well, not at all, almost. One of my web sites is down because it is hosted in Michigan. Other than that, it does not change my day to day living at all. Yet, when I turn on the TV or the radio, all I hear about is the Great Power Outage. The more local power outage of about 10,000 people that also occured overnight was only mentioned on the radio and not by any of the local TV stations at all.
Not too many years ago we would have heard about something as distint as this Great Power Outage after the fact. It used to take time for "news" to travel, yet now we hear about it as it happens. Given the media's perchant for the sensational, we are continually shown images of horrorific, lurid, terrible, and bizarre things taking place all over the world.
This creates two problems. First, we become convinced that the world is a more awful place than it really is or needs to be. The continual onslot of bad news we get makes us feel threatened, even when the bad news originates thousands of miles away. Even though we understand that these things happen far away, emotionally its the same as if it happened in our home town.
The second problem is the lack of local news we receive. Do we know more about what is happening in Iraq than we do in our own towns or neighborhoods? Do we and our kids know who the former President of Iraq is but can't say who are city, county, state, and national representatives are? Who can effect our lives more, our local leaders or the former leaders of far off places?
Of course national and internation news is important. However, it should play second fiddle to the more important local issues that truly can effect our everyday lives.
Re:The power cell itself just cured diabetes and m
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I can just see the next generation of GameBoy...
Introducing the Nintendo "GlucoseBoy". Never worry about changing batteries again. There is a "leech" attachment included in the controls that painlessly extracts the needed glucose from the person playing the game. There is even an indicator showing if you have enough glucose or if you need to eat some more.
Of course, it could be the beginnings of the Matrix: automated machines living off the heat/energy produced by there human power sources.
Slashdot Mirror
THANKS!!!!
My ISP is having almost continual problems being flooded with random worm noise.
I named my son after myself with a different middle name. A couple of months after he was born I got a call asking to talk to him. I told the caller no. When he asked why, I said beacuse he was too young to talk. This guy was with collection agency trying to recover on a bad school loan.
Recently, I got notified by the Division of Child Welfare that they were going to start garnishing wages for back child support. I don't owe any child support, having just had the one wife. I called and got an answering machine that said they would try and get bck to me in 2 days. I then called the newspaper. 15 minutes later the DCW called very apologetic about the mix up.
Moral: Identity is very important yet is not treated as such by either the government or private companies. This needs to be made a bigger issue. If you have problems, be sure the media knows. Write letters to the editor and to your elected officials. There is a lot of money being made by selling your personal information. Its going to take a lot of people making noise before it changes.
Want to see who is selling your personal info? Here's how: When you sign up for anything, instead of just putting your name, put the name of the place your are registering with. For example: if your name is John Doe and you are registering with SlashDot, instead of entering your name as John Doe, you wouold enter J SlashDot Doe. That way when you get any mail, email, phone calls etc, you will know exactly where they came from.
There is one where Oliver creates a transporter devices and show his dad who asks "Can you put George Bush in the White House?" and Oliver responds he can't perform miralces.
My co-hort in cubieville sloth has mentioned that the Breathed-one has been doing kids books and highly recommends them. My daughter has an Opus family: three sizes of stuffed Opuses (Opi?); the daddy, the mommy and the baby Opus.
Welcome back Opus.
Instead of trying to go back and write test cases for everything, do as pong suggested and move forward from where you are today. Since the code is already working there is no real need to write test cases for it. Doing so would be contrary to the philosphy of XP that you only do what is necessary to complete the project.
As you go on writing test cases for bugs and new features, you will naturally start writing test cases to cover already working code. Sometimes these will be indirect tests as you write tests for new code that depends on old code. Othertimes, new test cases will be needed for old code when a change to one piece breaks another piece. Again, don't worry about "what might be", only worry about what is. What might be often becomes what never was.
90% of success is just getting started. Start simple and move on. I am sure someone famous said something like that.
The spammers cannot be regulated in the same way because there is no way to regulate internet access in the same way. So a Do Not Spam list would really be a Spam Me Lots list. See SpamGourmet to help reduce the spamming
There is more info on Exendin at http://www.glucagon.com/exendin.htm. It seems to effect GLP-1. Unfortunately, I do not know much about diabetes yet, having been recently diagnosed. I have been taking the diabetic education classes and learing all about the carbs and glucose and how evil chocolate is. I was a chocohalic myself. I wonder how much that contributed to my current condition.
As an at least average chess player, I feel that the better the computer, the better for me. BTW, by average I mean I win as often as I lose. I usually lose when I play the computer. Yet that is not the only reason, or even the best reason to teach a computer to play chess.
Even better than playing a computer, is using the computer to analyze the game afterwards. The best way to get better is to learn from your own mistakes and those of your opponents. By having a stong, even grand master level, computer program look over the game you can learn a lot about why you lost or won. Imagine someone who can beat the world champion willing to go over your game with you.
Humans will always have an advantage over computers until chess becomes "solvable". Until then, there will always be people who can keep the machines on their toes. Also, by giving the rest of us opponents of great skill to play, who are also patient enought to teach, we can all improve our game and improve the general playing level of chess
When you get right down to it, a worm or a virus is just a bit of code that updates your computer in some fashion. It allows your computer to perform some function it did not previously perform. In essence, it is no different than hitting windows update and hoping for the best.
Well, of course there is a slight difference. With windows update, you ask for the update to happen. That is not the same as knowing what is really being changed. For example, the most recent windows update broke EI when it tries to talk to Squid. Also, I do not really know what is being updated by windows update, I just have to hope for the best.
So, is leaving a port open any more of a security risk than pressing the "Windows Update" button? Either way I am giving people who I do not know and probably don't trust access to my computer.
On the flip side, does a worm that improves my computer in some way any better than one that degrades my computer? Would it be ok for MicroSoft to release a worm that automatically upgrades EI? I think more right thinking people would agree that it is wrong, even if its for the right reasons. The end does not justify the means.
Somewhere there is a line between right and wrong here. The problem of course is that there are so many people who do not understand what a worm or an update are, how can they possible do the right thing? Does a fix it worm make sysadmins lazy?
Maybe. Does it help the little old lady who just wants to find out about her genealogy and does not know or care how her computer work? Absolutely. It also help those of us who have to help this little old lady out because she is out mother.
Someday, the computer will be as easy to use as a microwave. Until then, I will take all the help I can get.
He is actually more worried about the company being sued by the RIAA for pirating MP3s. We have already been given notice a couple of time, but that is for a later rant.
I think you have hit upon the solution for several of the world problems, create a market for them on eBay. In India, there is a group of people who eat rats. Whenever there is a rot problem, they call these people who are good at catching and getting rid of rats.
So we could create a war souvenir craze. Get your land mine here, only 10,000,000,000 of them left to go. Get your before they are all gone.
Here at work we were just warned of the horror that is P2P. My boss' boss' boss was telling us that he would never allow a P2P program on his computer and that running one here at work was grounds for termination. Of course, he was only referring to music swapping. But in his mind, the two are inseparately connected. This is common in the "real" world ( and I don't mean the "reality?" series ).
:). Imagine devices like cell phones which we carry with us at all times running P2P with all other portable devices. Add to that GPS technology and now you have an internet, or more precisely, the next generation internet that can interact more closely with reality. No longer do the cyber world and the real world need to be different places.
P2P is set to be to the internet what the internet was to whatever was before it
How will this be used? Using the cell phones and GPS, the P2P network can compute real-time traffic contiditions based on the speed of the cell phone and route the driver in route. No expensie infrastructure is needed.
How about having your cell phone interact with people in close proximity to you. Maybe at a sporting event or some other. What would it do? Only time will tell.
By having the network not only to other computers but also to the person via the phone and physical location via GPS, the network will become much more useful and timely than anything we have ever seen before. Maybe it could be used for defence even.
With the continual barrage of national news from CNN, CNBS, MSNBC, USA Today and the like, what is news has changed. The power outage in the north east US is an example.
Living in the West, how does this effect me? Well, not at all, almost. One of my web sites is down because it is hosted in Michigan. Other than that, it does not change my day to day living at all. Yet, when I turn on the TV or the radio, all I hear about is the Great Power Outage. The more local power outage of about 10,000 people that also occured overnight was only mentioned on the radio and not by any of the local TV stations at all.
Not too many years ago we would have heard about something as distint as this Great Power Outage after the fact. It used to take time for "news" to travel, yet now we hear about it as it happens. Given the media's perchant for the sensational, we are continually shown images of horrorific, lurid, terrible, and bizarre things taking place all over the world.
This creates two problems. First, we become convinced that the world is a more awful place than it really is or needs to be. The continual onslot of bad news we get makes us feel threatened, even when the bad news originates thousands of miles away. Even though we understand that these things happen far away, emotionally its the same as if it happened in our home town.
The second problem is the lack of local news we receive. Do we know more about what is happening in Iraq than we do in our own towns or neighborhoods? Do we and our kids know who the former President of Iraq is but can't say who are city, county, state, and national representatives are? Who can effect our lives more, our local leaders or the former leaders of far off places?
Of course national and internation news is important. However, it should play second fiddle to the more important local issues that truly can effect our everyday lives.
I can just see the next generation of GameBoy ...
Introducing the Nintendo "GlucoseBoy". Never worry about changing batteries again. There is a "leech" attachment included in the controls that painlessly extracts the needed glucose from the person playing the game. There is even an indicator showing if you have enough glucose or if you need to eat some more.
Of course, it could be the beginnings of the Matrix: automated machines living off the heat/energy produced by there human power sources.