90% of EVERYTHING is crap. It just happens that weblogs trend toward a specific TYPE of crap -- SPAM. I mean you may think JeffK is crap, but some of us find him funny, so anything with actual content has to be not crap to somebody (if only the creator). That means all the crap must be content-free.
Plus, it keeps the little "bumps" on the "f" and "j" keys in the right place.
After moving the keys around (and I specifically shop for keyboards that allow this), I shaved off the bumps on the F and J keys. Then I used a slot cover heated up with a lighter, pressed against the front of the U and H keys, to create new home key bumps. Problem solved.
One problem I haven't seen mentioned is that when you make typos (and we all do), they will no longer make sense to the QWERTY world. I seem prone to swapping M and W, or R and L (or L and/), or dipthongs TH and NT. This gets interesting "WTF" reactions from people in IRC channels, except for a few who have also made the switch. It's one of those little things we can use to identify each other.
Another note is that many games don't use the keyboard driver and read directly from the hardware, which means you're typing QWERTY in console mode no matter what you actually want. I guess the only solution to this is a hard-wired keyboard.
It's an owed favor. This was the best thing they could think of to say about West Virginia, after one engineer got high on bug juice (lab ethanol and Dr Pepper) and insulted another engineer's family tree "that doesn't fork". Even this engineer couldn't bring himself to describe West Virginians as "bright", so he applied the term to its equivalent on Titan.
Step 1: pick a catch PHRASE, not word, with some meaning to it. "Worst. American Idol. Ever." for example (with a meaning of "She Bangs").
Step 2: Convert the meaning to symbols in some cutesy way, such as "She!sShe!s". You can work l33t-5p34k into it somehow (just be consistent so you can remember it). This is your password, but you only write down the catch phrase.
This is what I was told by an executive from Levi-Strauss, Inc who explained why "affirmative action" was worthwhile: because people take chances on people who remind them of themselves. The logic of cronyism becomes de facto discrimination in hiring practice.
So all that happens instead is that people take chances on people who remind them of themselves in every way but appearance. Granted, this is still an improvement in terms of evening the playing field, but it's debatable whether it brings a different mental attitude to the position. Fundamentally, how is a nerdy black engineer with duct taped glasses any different from a nerdy white engineer with duct taped glasses? Having known enough of both, I can say -- there's not much difference. In a lot of fields of work, the environment that created the person matters far more than their genetics. That, and the people who flock to the field tend to have inherent similarities to start with. Basing an opinion of someone's value on his/her genetic make-up is just silly, as silly as basing that opinion on their last name or where they were born.
So don't mount the fan to the hard drive, mount it to the drive cage using the same 1/2 inch L-brackets. If you get noise and/or vibration, add rubber grommets.
This has the following significant advantages:
1. The fan vibration is only minimally transmitted to the drive, if at all (aside from the air stream).
2. You don't have to worry about plugging and unplugging a second device every time you pull a drive. This also means that once you install the fan, you can neatly tuck away its wiring since it's not going anywhere.
3. You can easily put a fan above AND below a particularly hot or worrisome drive.
4. Most drive cages don't have enough extra clearance to account for the thickness of the L brackets if they're attached to the drive. This neatly sidesteps the issue.
Sure this would then just become another ghetto-rigged case fan, but do you care THAT much? If you do, then you're the type who probably wants a full enclosure for each drive anyhow (so buy one).
Well as you noticed, it does make you cramp up. If you were standing, it was probably difficult to stay that way. Had you been walking or running, the sudden jolt would almost certainly make you lose your balance, which makes it quite difficult to attack someone. That is the point -- not to stun someone, but to forcibly remove their conscious control over major skeletal muscles. This only needs to take place for a few seconds in most circumstances, allowing time to surround the tas-ee and (once the juice is off) pin him down. This isn't to say that the pain doesn't play a role in it, it's quite useful as an intimidation tactic. But the real point is to stop what someone is doing without the high risk of fatal injury that comes from firearms (even with beanbags and the like).
Another aspect is that there is no scatter, there is no projectile penetration, and there is no risk of shooting the neighbor or wife through the wall accidentally. If firing into a crowded space, or even into a fistfight, you wanna make sure you hit just your target (but if you miss and hit someone else, you don't have to zap them).
It would seem the easiest way to overcome the gyro problem with flywheels would be to have two of them, rotating in opposite directions around a common axis (shaft within a shaft perhaps). This still wouldn't solve the weight issue though.
about:config works fine, IF you already have lines for the options in question... or so it seems. It doesn't always save the changes. However, if you need to add a line from scratch, or add whole blocks of lines, you're best off hand-editing. There are plenty of options that don't appear there, such as these two entries from my own user.js// Instead of annoying error dialog messages, display pages: user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enabled ", true);// Force frames to be resizable user_pref("layout.frames.force_resizabi lity", true);
As for profile manager icons... nope, there aren't any except for the one I made myself. That's why I had to look it up and create one. Would I complain that one is needed if it had been provided? Perhaps one is provided IF you set up multiple profiles at installation, but I didn't -- I just had my main profile locked open, created a new one to go online and see how to fix it, and couldn't find the option to change it back. So I had to go hunt THAT down as well.
So this is no troll -- this is how Firefox behaves on my system. If it works otherwise on yours, bully for you.
Having to do a "Run..." and type in a command line to launch Firefox's profile manager is completely unintuitive, and also completely unnecessary. If the profile manager can't be made accessible from within FF, then at the very least the installer should create a shortcut that will launch the profile manager. That would be good enough for me, it's not something I need very much. (I've made my own shortcut, but I really shouldn't have to.)
Another nuisance is having to create and edit user.js by hand. Once again, if it is not desireable to have this functionality within FF itself, there should be a stand-alone utility to do this for you.
I think the problem with the Focus is that it's not focused enough -- it has a bit of an identity crisis. It's supposed to be a cheap car, but in many ways it isn't. It's heavier than a Chevy Cavalier, it rides smoother, it has better sound dampening, and it feels much less "cheap" overall. The plastic surfaces have a little bit of "give" to them, making them more pleasing to the touch (but also hard to clean). It also has a somewhat slushy torque converter that hurts performance from a dead stop, but it has plenty of passing power. Driving one daily (mostly city) I get between 23.5 and 24 mpg. (It also has a nice sound system and power everything, though those don't have to add weight.)
The Cavalier, on the other hand, just exudes cheapness. Every plastic surface still has the sharp edges where the halves of the injection mold met, the texturing is uncomfortable, things you expect to be padded aren't, the front seats are thin shells, no power windows or door locks, and sound and shock dampening are rather poor. But as a consequence, it weighs a bit less than the Focus. The torque converter is much tighter, so it darts off the line quite nicely, but revs the engine much higher in doing so. Engine noise at these higher RPM rates is much more noticeable not only due to volume, but the raised pitch. That said, it's ALSO not lacking for passing power, though it gets a little squirrely on the north side of 85 mph. On the other hand, I've never obtained a speed in the Focus that I felt was beyond the car's capabilities, and that includes 90+ mph straight drives from L.A. to Las Vegas.
But all this stripping down does have some tangible benefits -- driving the Cavalier under the exact same circumstances, I get between 26.5 and 27 mpg. I know gasoline is a finite resource, but I don't feel the trade is worth it. There has to be a way to squeeze more efficiency out of the Focus without turning it into the Cavalier. Maybe the newer ones have tightened up that torque converter so it's not necessary to mash the pedal at every light (try that in the Cav and you'll smoke the tires), that has to help.
In any case, I'll be quite glad to go back to driving the Focus. Being able to lock/unlock the doors by remote is very useful since I park the car and walk away about a dozen times a day, I was leaving the Cav unlocked a good portion of the time since there's nothing worth stealing in a rental car. Not having to pay the rental fee will also make me feel better of course.:)
The whole point of this long-winded diatribe is that 2001 Focus > 2005 Cavalier in everything except gas mileage and full-stop takeoffs, and the gas mileage difference isn't all that much. But it's enough to be noticeable in a so-called "economy car".
The Domtec construction isn't all that bad, but it can't be done with just a fire hose. If you're hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest contractor, you need something that will do that work for you.
Because on a rifle stock it LOOKS LIKE A WEAPON. A camera on a rifle stock looks like... a camera on a rifle stock. A long lens is pretty obvious, and there's not much point to putting a camera on a rifle stock with a short lens -- in fact most stocks would end up getting in the picture, as they're intended to provide left hand support for a long lens. Anything over 300 mm (or a zoom) is going to have a lot of glass, unless it's a mirror lens. And if it's a mirror lens, it's FAT and probably won't work with that rifle stock.
Tripods are much steadier than anyone's hands, and I can't imagine the acceptable drift is going to be very large from a km away. Leave the pan portion of the tripod head unlocked and you should be able to track a signal without hand shake getting into it.
If they wanna be really ghetto about it, a tv tray and a bunch of beanbags will do, and something that looks like a telescope would end up just looking like a tube on a bunch of beanbags.
You can pay a quarter to use public telescopes in many parks and public attractions, and have been able to for many years, so I don't think anyone is all that concerned about telescopes pointed at downtown buildings, even if it's from the roof of another building. Besides, if there's a significant altitude difference, it's going to be craptacular seeing anyhow, as ceilings and floors are going to limit the view into any single window tremendously.
The whole point of this was that they are far enough away that you WON'T see them staring back at you if you look out the window. If they were that close, they wouldn't need equipment this elaborate in the first place.
If they had made this look like a telescope rather than a weapon, and mounted it on a tripod, they could have pointed it just about anywhere they wanted and nobody would have paid a whole lot of attention to them. The rifle-like appearance only served to make the device look much more dangerous than it was.
There are times when the form factor of a rifle makes perfect sense (rifle stocks for cameras, for example), but many others where it just DOESN'T. This is one of the latter group.
Would that be the normal 1-to-10 method, or the much more efficient finger counting in binary? I can't easily carry this onto both hands, but I quite regularly do this with one hand or maybe one hand and the other thumb.
(It doesn't hurt that I'm counting bars of rest, and those are quite frequently in multiples of 4.)
Anyhow, there's a significant difference between "one to five" and "one to thirty-one", when you speak of "counting on one hand". The difference is much more substantial when you're talking about both hands.
And if you think I'm talking out of my ass, I come from Canada, a more socialist country and even our text books are "old and in disrepair". Like my shakespear texts had my cousins signatures in them... They're also about 15 years older than I am...
Why is this a problem, as long as the books aren't falling apart or otherwise illegible? I mean it's not like old Bill is still editing his manuscripts or putting out Version 2.0. I can certainly see this being a problem for a science text, or a modern history text, or a dictionary, but centuries-old literature has pretty much stopped mutating at this point (except for new versions of the Bible that seem to come out regularly). This goes for any literary work actually -- interpretations of literature may change, and biographical information on authors may change, but the text shouldn't. That's why many schools pay to have such books bound in durable hardcover, incurring a significant expense up front in order to avoid replacing books (repeatedly) further down the line.
I know I was reading decades-old books in high school, and nobody seemed to mind. The only inconvenience was the fact that we had to sign for them so we could be billed if they didn't come back, because the replacement cost was so high.
How do you propose the IT administrator prevent hardware devices from being attached to a machine once it leaves his hands? Locking the box in a cabinet is not a bad idea, but do you really want it to burn up in there? Other than putting every machine on lockdown, how is this going to be stopped? It's not like he needed passwords or admin rights, or even a live boot CD. The only risks of detection are:
1. The machine hangs when you unplug, then replug, the keyboard. Doesn't usually happen, but it's certainly not unheard of. This is easily avoided by waiting until the machine is off.
2. Somebody sees him do it.
3. Someone traces the keylogger purchase to his shopper card and... oh wait, wrong story.
In my experience, most blazars are really toasted and just THINK they're going at some large fraction of c, when in fact they are going 12 miles an hour in the fast lane.
Slashdot Mirror
90% of EVERYTHING is crap. It just happens that weblogs trend toward a specific TYPE of crap -- SPAM. I mean you may think JeffK is crap, but some of us find him funny, so anything with actual content has to be not crap to somebody (if only the creator). That means all the crap must be content-free.
Mal-2
are belong to me!
It's you!
Plus, it keeps the little "bumps" on the "f" and "j" keys in the right place.
/), or dipthongs TH and NT. This gets interesting "WTF" reactions from people in IRC channels, except for a few who have also made the switch. It's one of those little things we can use to identify each other.
After moving the keys around (and I specifically shop for keyboards that allow this), I shaved off the bumps on the F and J keys. Then I used a slot cover heated up with a lighter, pressed against the front of the U and H keys, to create new home key bumps. Problem solved.
One problem I haven't seen mentioned is that when you make typos (and we all do), they will no longer make sense to the QWERTY world. I seem prone to swapping M and W, or R and L (or L and
Another note is that many games don't use the keyboard driver and read directly from the hardware, which means you're typing QWERTY in console mode no matter what you actually want. I guess the only solution to this is a hard-wired keyboard.
Mal-2
It's an owed favor. This was the best thing they could think of to say about West Virginia, after one engineer got high on bug juice (lab ethanol and Dr Pepper) and insulted another engineer's family tree "that doesn't fork". Even this engineer couldn't bring himself to describe West Virginians as "bright", so he applied the term to its equivalent on Titan.
Duh.
Mal-2
Step 1: pick a catch PHRASE, not word, with some meaning to it.
"Worst. American Idol. Ever." for example (with a meaning of "She Bangs").
Step 2: Convert the meaning to symbols in some cutesy way, such as "She!sShe!s". You can work l33t-5p34k into it somehow (just be consistent so you can remember it). This is your password, but you only write down the catch phrase.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat as necessary.
Mal-2
This is what I was told by an executive from Levi-Strauss, Inc who explained why "affirmative action" was worthwhile: because people take chances on people who remind them of themselves. The logic of cronyism becomes de facto discrimination in hiring practice.
So all that happens instead is that people take chances on people who remind them of themselves in every way but appearance. Granted, this is still an improvement in terms of evening the playing field, but it's debatable whether it brings a different mental attitude to the position. Fundamentally, how is a nerdy black engineer with duct taped glasses any different from a nerdy white engineer with duct taped glasses? Having known enough of both, I can say -- there's not much difference. In a lot of fields of work, the environment that created the person matters far more than their genetics. That, and the people who flock to the field tend to have inherent similarities to start with. Basing an opinion of someone's value on his/her genetic make-up is just silly, as silly as basing that opinion on their last name or where they were born.
Mal-2
So don't mount the fan to the hard drive, mount it to the drive cage using the same 1/2 inch L-brackets. If you get noise and/or vibration, add rubber grommets.
This has the following significant advantages:
1. The fan vibration is only minimally transmitted to the drive, if at all (aside from the air stream).
2. You don't have to worry about plugging and unplugging a second device every time you pull a drive. This also means that once you install the fan, you can neatly tuck away its wiring since it's not going anywhere.
3. You can easily put a fan above AND below a particularly hot or worrisome drive.
4. Most drive cages don't have enough extra clearance to account for the thickness of the L brackets if they're attached to the drive. This neatly sidesteps the issue.
Sure this would then just become another ghetto-rigged case fan, but do you care THAT much? If you do, then you're the type who probably wants a full enclosure for each drive anyhow (so buy one).
Mal-2
In post-9/11 Soviet Russia, the world blames its stupidity on YOU.
Not that this is new.
Mal-2
Well as you noticed, it does make you cramp up. If you were standing, it was probably difficult to stay that way. Had you been walking or running, the sudden jolt would almost certainly make you lose your balance, which makes it quite difficult to attack someone. That is the point -- not to stun someone, but to forcibly remove their conscious control over major skeletal muscles. This only needs to take place for a few seconds in most circumstances, allowing time to surround the tas-ee and (once the juice is off) pin him down. This isn't to say that the pain doesn't play a role in it, it's quite useful as an intimidation tactic. But the real point is to stop what someone is doing without the high risk of fatal injury that comes from firearms (even with beanbags and the like).
Another aspect is that there is no scatter, there is no projectile penetration, and there is no risk of shooting the neighbor or wife through the wall accidentally. If firing into a crowded space, or even into a fistfight, you wanna make sure you hit just your target (but if you miss and hit someone else, you don't have to zap them).
Mal-2
It would seem the easiest way to overcome the gyro problem with flywheels would be to have two of them, rotating in opposite directions around a common axis (shaft within a shaft perhaps). This still wouldn't solve the weight issue though.
Mal-2
about:config works fine, IF you already have lines for the options in question... or so it seems. It doesn't always save the changes. However, if you need to add a line from scratch, or add whole blocks of lines, you're best off hand-editing. There are plenty of options that don't appear there, such as these two entries from my own user.js // Instead of annoying error dialog messages, display pages:d ", true); // Force frames to be resizablei lity", true);
user_pref("browser.xul.error_pages.enable
user_pref("layout.frames.force_resizab
As for profile manager icons... nope, there aren't any except for the one I made myself. That's why I had to look it up and create one. Would I complain that one is needed if it had been provided? Perhaps one is provided IF you set up multiple profiles at installation, but I didn't -- I just had my main profile locked open, created a new one to go online and see how to fix it, and couldn't find the option to change it back. So I had to go hunt THAT down as well.
So this is no troll -- this is how Firefox behaves on my system. If it works otherwise on yours, bully for you.
Mal-2
Having to do a "Run..." and type in a command line to launch Firefox's profile manager is completely unintuitive, and also completely unnecessary. If the profile manager can't be made accessible from within FF, then at the very least the installer should create a shortcut that will launch the profile manager. That would be good enough for me, it's not something I need very much. (I've made my own shortcut, but I really shouldn't have to.)
Another nuisance is having to create and edit user.js by hand. Once again, if it is not desireable to have this functionality within FF itself, there should be a stand-alone utility to do this for you.
Mal-2
I think the problem with the Focus is that it's not focused enough -- it has a bit of an identity crisis. It's supposed to be a cheap car, but in many ways it isn't. It's heavier than a Chevy Cavalier, it rides smoother, it has better sound dampening, and it feels much less "cheap" overall. The plastic surfaces have a little bit of "give" to them, making them more pleasing to the touch (but also hard to clean). It also has a somewhat slushy torque converter that hurts performance from a dead stop, but it has plenty of passing power. Driving one daily (mostly city) I get between 23.5 and 24 mpg. (It also has a nice sound system and power everything, though those don't have to add weight.)
:)
The Cavalier, on the other hand, just exudes cheapness. Every plastic surface still has the sharp edges where the halves of the injection mold met, the texturing is uncomfortable, things you expect to be padded aren't, the front seats are thin shells, no power windows or door locks, and sound and shock dampening are rather poor. But as a consequence, it weighs a bit less than the Focus. The torque converter is much tighter, so it darts off the line quite nicely, but revs the engine much higher in doing so. Engine noise at these higher RPM rates is much more noticeable not only due to volume, but the raised pitch. That said, it's ALSO not lacking for passing power, though it gets a little squirrely on the north side of 85 mph. On the other hand, I've never obtained a speed in the Focus that I felt was beyond the car's capabilities, and that includes 90+ mph straight drives from L.A. to Las Vegas.
But all this stripping down does have some tangible benefits -- driving the Cavalier under the exact same circumstances, I get between 26.5 and 27 mpg. I know gasoline is a finite resource, but I don't feel the trade is worth it. There has to be a way to squeeze more efficiency out of the Focus without turning it into the Cavalier. Maybe the newer ones have tightened up that torque converter so it's not necessary to mash the pedal at every light (try that in the Cav and you'll smoke the tires), that has to help.
In any case, I'll be quite glad to go back to driving the Focus. Being able to lock/unlock the doors by remote is very useful since I park the car and walk away about a dozen times a day, I was leaving the Cav unlocked a good portion of the time since there's nothing worth stealing in a rental car. Not having to pay the rental fee will also make me feel better of course.
The whole point of this long-winded diatribe is that 2001 Focus > 2005 Cavalier in everything except gas mileage and full-stop takeoffs, and the gas mileage difference isn't all that much. But it's enough to be noticeable in a so-called "economy car".
Mal-2
Problem with the Binishell is that it looks like a half-buried helmet. I can imagine a brigade of stormtroopers standing around it, singing "Share and Enjoy".
The Domtec construction isn't all that bad, but it can't be done with just a fire hose. If you're hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest contractor, you need something that will do that work for you.
Mal-2
This ithing is in the shape of half a cylinder. What else can you do with a half cylinder -- if you flip it over? Skateboard halfpipe maybe?
Mal-2
Because on a rifle stock it LOOKS LIKE A WEAPON. A camera on a rifle stock looks like... a camera on a rifle stock. A long lens is pretty obvious, and there's not much point to putting a camera on a rifle stock with a short lens -- in fact most stocks would end up getting in the picture, as they're intended to provide left hand support for a long lens. Anything over 300 mm (or a zoom) is going to have a lot of glass, unless it's a mirror lens. And if it's a mirror lens, it's FAT and probably won't work with that rifle stock.
Tripods are much steadier than anyone's hands, and I can't imagine the acceptable drift is going to be very large from a km away. Leave the pan portion of the tripod head unlocked and you should be able to track a signal without hand shake getting into it.
If they wanna be really ghetto about it, a tv tray and a bunch of beanbags will do, and something that looks like a telescope would end up just looking like a tube on a bunch of beanbags.
Mal-2
You can pay a quarter to use public telescopes in many parks and public attractions, and have been able to for many years, so I don't think anyone is all that concerned about telescopes pointed at downtown buildings, even if it's from the roof of another building. Besides, if there's a significant altitude difference, it's going to be craptacular seeing anyhow, as ceilings and floors are going to limit the view into any single window tremendously.
The whole point of this was that they are far enough away that you WON'T see them staring back at you if you look out the window. If they were that close, they wouldn't need equipment this elaborate in the first place.
Mal-2
If they had made this look like a telescope rather than a weapon, and mounted it on a tripod, they could have pointed it just about anywhere they wanted and nobody would have paid a whole lot of attention to them. The rifle-like appearance only served to make the device look much more dangerous than it was.
There are times when the form factor of a rifle makes perfect sense (rifle stocks for cameras, for example), but many others where it just DOESN'T. This is one of the latter group.
Mal-2
Would that be the normal 1-to-10 method, or the much more efficient finger counting in binary? I can't easily carry this onto both hands, but I quite regularly do this with one hand or maybe one hand and the other thumb.
(It doesn't hurt that I'm counting bars of rest, and those are quite frequently in multiples of 4.)
Anyhow, there's a significant difference between "one to five" and "one to thirty-one", when you speak of "counting on one hand". The difference is much more substantial when you're talking about both hands.
Mal-2
Heaven knows no self-respecting slashdotter would ever want to get WET! :)
Mal-2
And if you think I'm talking out of my ass, I come from Canada, a more socialist country and even our text books are "old and in disrepair". Like my shakespear texts had my cousins signatures in them... They're also about 15 years older than I am...
Why is this a problem, as long as the books aren't falling apart or otherwise illegible? I mean it's not like old Bill is still editing his manuscripts or putting out Version 2.0. I can certainly see this being a problem for a science text, or a modern history text, or a dictionary, but centuries-old literature has pretty much stopped mutating at this point (except for new versions of the Bible that seem to come out regularly). This goes for any literary work actually -- interpretations of literature may change, and biographical information on authors may change, but the text shouldn't. That's why many schools pay to have such books bound in durable hardcover, incurring a significant expense up front in order to avoid replacing books (repeatedly) further down the line.
I know I was reading decades-old books in high school, and nobody seemed to mind. The only inconvenience was the fact that we had to sign for them so we could be billed if they didn't come back, because the replacement cost was so high.
Mal-2
I knew you could.
(Warning: here there be goatses!)
Mal-2
How do you propose the IT administrator prevent hardware devices from being attached to a machine once it leaves his hands? Locking the box in a cabinet is not a bad idea, but do you really want it to burn up in there? Other than putting every machine on lockdown, how is this going to be stopped? It's not like he needed passwords or admin rights, or even a live boot CD. The only risks of detection are:
1. The machine hangs when you unplug, then replug, the keyboard. Doesn't usually happen, but it's certainly not unheard of. This is easily avoided by waiting until the machine is off.
2. Somebody sees him do it.
3. Someone traces the keylogger purchase to his shopper card and... oh wait, wrong story.
Mal-2
I live in Los Angeles. I own a .38 revolver and can shoot fist-size clusters at 25 feet with it. I fail to follow your logic.
Mal-2
In my experience, most blazars are really toasted and just THINK they're going at some large fraction of c, when in fact they are going 12 miles an hour in the fast lane.
Mal-2