Extasy GeForce 3: after 8 months the fan fails and it burns out the network card two slots over. Geforce survives. Fan replacement arrives and its still running to this day.
Chaintech Geforce 4: after 3 months the fan fails and burns out the video card itself. Still waiting to hear back from chaintech for warranty service.
Why do they put the world's cheapest fans on these things? Saving 10 cents can't be worth the warranty replacements when these things burn themselves out.
What really gets me, and others, is that all the concrete rules and exposition in 1 and 2 simply are tossed out the window. Revolutions seems to be a sequel of a movie never made. Reloaded did setup a lot of questions regarding determinism and how real Zion was. All this was brushed aside on what was a good action movie with some very hack work connecting action scenes.
I believe we will sooner or later find out this was a big editing disaster. First off, Persephone was already described as being a 'big character' in the Revolutions, yet had two lines. The architect describes her as the 'emotional' mother of the Matrix and Revolutions is full of people expressing their love to one another. I think it becomes obvious that a significant part of this movie was supposed to be an exploration into the emotional lives of programs and people, but was cut or never produced.
The stuff they kept was the bare minimum to end this trilogy. Big robot fight in Zion. Big Neo vs Smith fight. Some kind of peace/stalement and a hint that this is just another iteration of the Matrix with the 'I think we'll see him again' line from the Oracle.
The great setup about determinism/causality was dropped. The great potential of Persephone was dropped. Some kind of solution to the main man vs. machine problem never took place (this may be intentional - the humans were played for chumps to release programs or the matrix will reboot again so it doesnt matter). etc.
Expect the rumor mill to be full of stories regarding control and creative differences in the making of this movie because it doesn't quite fit the mold and really looks hacked together to make the release date.
I also don't block text ads because they aren't annoying and if ad-blocking catches on it will simply mean that websites will have to move to a better advertising model. One that respects the privacy of the visitor, one that isn't all flash, one that isn't a giant waste of bandwidth, one that provides information not just CLICK HERE gimmicks, etc.
Its gotten out of hand lately. I visit friends an d their computers are covered in spyware and other junk they didn't install because someone made a convincing misleading ad. Or they have a hundred tracking cookies violating their privacy so doubleclick can data mine the world. No thanks.
Its very darwinian in a sense as ads people will tolerate will probably not be blocked in the end. Personally, I think google is doing it right with ads based on the context of the site and by going all text. Others should follow and may the days of the giant flash ads and blinking banners be behind us. It can join the Divx DVD format, the BLINK tag, and the CueCat in bin of bad ideas.
> It would be like blowing up the Senate building with all the people in it.
Huh? Our Senators are cowards who stay at home and have 'voice votes' when its time to pay their owners. See DMCA vote or yesterday's 87 billion Iraq vote. Almost 90 senators stayed home for the Iraq vote.
Sorry to get OT, but voice votes are as close to a bomb as far as democracy is concerned.
They do. McDonalds has a little advisory regarding MSG on their own site, sugar their buns to cause cravings (do a google search), and use recipes/flavors designed to return the best return on the investment possible at the expense of their customer's health (read fast food nation).
This is an herbal supplement, the results vary greatly from individual to individual, and none of these applications have been proven or approved by the FDA.
>I only wish that I could keep my WiFi up without WEP for my neihgbors or anyone walking by without exposing myself to risk of internet connection termination.
Print up some business cards with the WEP key. Hand them out to people you trust.
Control outbound port 25 connections via your firewall. Allow only port 80 from untrusted clients. etc. Its not *that* hard. There are linux distros set to do this using an old 286 if need be. If you want to give it away you will need a robust firewall. Think of it as a digital condom.
Can we end the mindless ACLU bashing? Symatec's firewall is a private product made by a private company, if you know anything about the ACLU it deals with government and usually in the sphere of legislation being challenge because its unconstitutional.
Yes, they also protect speech, many times speech you may not like.
Want to make the ACLU a better organization? Join your local state-level chapter, get your friends involved, and voice your opinion.
About as unconvcing as it for altavista, eh? Search engine tech isn't that complex and right now alltheweb.com is google's #1 competitor. Google is a powerful brand, but as we've seen with Netscape that doesn't mean much in the changing IT landscape.
There are lots of google specific complaints. Like ranking blogs too high, ignoring words like 'who' and 'what' by default, pagerank isn't as hot as it used to be, etc.
There's plenty of room for competition and google's seat as search engine leader is not guaranteed the same way Microsoft may not be the desktop OS leader in the next 5-10 years. Plausible but not guaranteed.
> (Probably one that most of us habent heard of yet.)
Its called alltheweb.com. It does video and audio searches too. On top of that it rates blogs very, very low so the #1 google complaint "Its all blogs, all the time!" has been taken care of.
Oh please, lets see: the average american diet consists of fried foods and red meat. Traffic is a symptom of a lack of a decent light rail system. I live in the middle of Chicago, take the train everyday to work and school and avoid the crap everyone else eats.
I used to eat like everyone else and realized I didn't want to carry a gut around and knew if I didn't change my diet soon I was going to be stuck with this gut the rest of my days. Working in technology usually means sitting in front of a computer all day.
Obviously, there's a lot of money to be made in selling greasy, unhealthy foods. Sugarwater is the prefered drink for most Americans and schools sign exclusive deals to provide high-calorie high-sugar/corn syrup drinks directly to children.
If America wanted to, it could change overnight. If people wanted health they could have it, but the current assumptions that 'fast food everyday isnt that bad' and a recent report that toddlers were being fed fries and cola didn't even shock the public. Sometimes people get the bodies they deserve. Its a shame that the media has no problem airing ads from McDonalds that make fast food look like a healthy and practically religious event while books on fast food, like fast food nation are largely ignored by the very same media.
Also, I think he's streching by calling spam abundance. If SMTP didn't become the standard but something else with built in authentication was then spam would be a non-issue yet the same mechanisms of "abundance" would be in place.
In the end, its how something is used not how much of something there is. Futurists need to realize that a simple hypothesis, or a simply answer that ties everything together is probably wrong. What's that famous HL Mencken quote, google?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong"
Anyone know of an IP blacklist so that admins can block these sites/installers at the firewall? No luck finding anything that's targeted at only spyware host IPs.
So I shut off the PC that runs 24/7. Immediately the noise from the Tivo blows me away. Its not the drive its the fan (upped to 12 volts). I swear its louder than the computer. At 3am I'm contemplating cracking open the Tivo box and lowering the fan down to that standard 9v. Then I realize I'm an idiot, turn the computer back on, and enjoy its new role as "white noise generator" and quickly fall asleep.
>Go to the library, borrow the book and read it...
Your analogy would only make sense if I could demand the librarian make me a digital DRM-free copy of the book.
The problem here is fairly obvious, Amazon is expecting thousands of authors to "trust us with security," and these authors politely say no and you fall back on a non-sequitar library argument?
Sorry, but bought dead-tree books on rental is not the same thing as a digital copy I can mass-send/share globally.
Frankly, considering what passes off as "computer security" nowadays I would be a bit nervous too.
Also, I think its something of an insult to just tell authors "Oh, btw, you can opt-out." They or their publishers should be OPTING-IN after being informed of Amazon's plans. This attitude of "We're going to drop your book in our OCR machine because we're Amazon" should be treated with contempt.
I'm not pissing on the concept but on the implementation. This could have been done in a much more civil manner, but Amazon chose the "big-corporate do-as-we-please" way out.
I know this much: this will be disabled to send or recieve at every lawfirm in the world. You are simply not going to read something that you can't print out, copy, etc and will expire in four hours.
What really bothers me is that this is truly "lazy man's crypto." MS could have made a nice GUI for gpg and better PGP support in its XP products, but they deliver this instead? MS is in a position where it can bring crypto to the masses and other goodies. Its a shame really.
Not to mention they can't plug the "analog hole" namely the fact that your monitor is a passive listening device and as such screenshots cannot be blocked. Even if they block it on the OS level a cheap digital camera will do in a pinch.
These on-line maps lack basic features before I can even consider taking them seriously.
1. Weighted streets. If one street is somewhat nearby, is 4 lanes with a 45 mph limit compared to a 2 lane, but nearer busy urban street, guess which one gets picked. Its amusing using these map services when near Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. They will recommend any route except the quickest and most direct.
A selection of AI aided paths would help tremendously.
2. Language: you don't turn onto ramps, etc. Many of these print outs look like you're going to be making a thousand turns because of ambigious language.
3. User feedback: Its understandable that the maps will have all sorts of problems with non-existant streets, construction, etc so why not let users comment on generated paths? "10 people reported this street in this area to be problematic." etc.
4. Last but not least, I need a girlfriend version of mapquest. Just a page with stuff like "Okay turn right at that creepy gas station and keep an eye out for the Burger King. You'll make a left there, no I mean the other Burger King."
>With some services disabled, Windows XP will run fine on 96 MB of memory
Umm, that must include the boot service.
Let's face facts here, if you're reading slashdot you probably use a lot of free software.
Mozilla tabs eat RAM like you wouldn't believe, and I for one am not going back to the old ways of only keeping a few windows/tabs open at a time. Sorry, but this feature changes the entire web experience for me and it uses RAM.
You probably have cygwin doing something crazy in the background.
You might have 2 or 3 email clients (think work vs play vs school, etc).
Ever use a java app? Or have to use a big ass java app for work/school?
You might have some unusual services running.
Laptops are the PC away from home. So sometimes you have do some pretty foolish things with them. Usually that equals a performance hit.
>The default 256MB should be plenty.
I barely get away with 256mb on my old dell, and 512 would be a welcome relief, but the computer world isn't static. In a couple years you'll still own that same laptop and the new WindowsBlahBlah or the new RedHat will probably demand more resources and you'll wish you didn't shoot yourself in the foot by buying into this limitation.
Can saving on those extra slots be so important in the long run? If I wanted a lightweight machine (not in lbs but in power) I would spend a lot less than what this thing costs.
Its very informative, but lacks the flash and buzzwords that makes television successful. In other words its fairly boring. Digging up McLuhan's corpse here but the medium is very much the message. Selling science on TV is a *tough* sell and you need various gimmicks to get a critical mass of people watching.
Carl Sagan was a cult of personality of his own.
Connections was amusing, smart, well narrated, and had lots of on-locale stuff.
Right now the Science Channel comes off exactly like what they made us watch in high school when teachers didnt feel like teaching, only not as dumbed down.
Television really isn't a good medium for science. Then again its not good for a lot of things, yet there are ways around this problem. Look at all the sexy women reading the telepromter on cable news. Or shows with "extreme" type advetising gimmicks. Hiring people with real charisma and giving them some creative control. etc.
An issue that does bother me is that SCI-FI, PAX, PBS, etc have no problem playing these "Unexplained" shows, all of which give a lot of credit to creationism (right-wing bias in the media is quite real) and other credulous nonsense without a counterpart on some other channel attacking these shows. An offensive, in your face, science show consisting of people with some backbone could make for some excellent ratings. Divide that up with traditional science shows and it might work. Find the luminaries out there, let them speak in a format that's entertaining. I've read that Bucky Fuller was just a great speaker. Where are the Bucky Fullers of our age? There are a lot of "Carl Sagans" and "Bucky Fullers" out there. Find them and give them a job and watch the money roll in.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets see:
Extasy GeForce 3: after 8 months the fan fails and it burns out the network card two slots over. Geforce survives. Fan replacement arrives and its still running to this day.
Chaintech Geforce 4: after 3 months the fan fails and burns out the video card itself. Still waiting to hear back from chaintech for warranty service.
Why do they put the world's cheapest fans on these things? Saving 10 cents can't be worth the warranty replacements when these things burn themselves out.
>PC Speakers that say "Shop at Belkin!" every couple of minutes.
Yes, but only when you're asleep.
Err, thanks. That's a halloween costume I made 3 years ago using elwire. Its nice that I have an official detrator that follows me around the web.
>When will we lose our connection (if we haven't already)?
Its good until 2005 when the FCC Broadcast Flag rule makes recieving the signal illegal without a DRM upgrade.
Excellent post. I just saw this a few hours ago.
What really gets me, and others, is that all the concrete rules and exposition in 1 and 2 simply are tossed out the window. Revolutions seems to be a sequel of a movie never made. Reloaded did setup a lot of questions regarding determinism and how real Zion was. All this was brushed aside on what was a good action movie with some very hack work connecting action scenes.
I believe we will sooner or later find out this was a big editing disaster. First off, Persephone was already described as being a 'big character' in the Revolutions, yet had two lines. The architect describes her as the 'emotional' mother of the Matrix and Revolutions is full of people expressing their love to one another. I think it becomes obvious that a significant part of this movie was supposed to be an exploration into the emotional lives of programs and people, but was cut or never produced.
The stuff they kept was the bare minimum to end this trilogy. Big robot fight in Zion. Big Neo vs Smith fight. Some kind of peace/stalement and a hint that this is just another iteration of the Matrix with the 'I think we'll see him again' line from the Oracle.
The great setup about determinism/causality was dropped. The great potential of Persephone was dropped. Some kind of solution to the main man vs. machine problem never took place (this may be intentional - the humans were played for chumps to release programs or the matrix will reboot again so it doesnt matter). etc.
Expect the rumor mill to be full of stories regarding control and creative differences in the making of this movie because it doesn't quite fit the mold and really looks hacked together to make the release date.
Exactly. I've been running this ad blocking project for a couple years now and have no qualms about any BS moral issue. Its my PC and I can render the web as I like.
I also don't block text ads because they aren't annoying and if ad-blocking catches on it will simply mean that websites will have to move to a better advertising model. One that respects the privacy of the visitor, one that isn't all flash, one that isn't a giant waste of bandwidth, one that provides information not just CLICK HERE gimmicks, etc.
Its gotten out of hand lately. I visit friends an d their computers are covered in spyware and other junk they didn't install because someone made a convincing misleading ad. Or they have a hundred tracking cookies violating their privacy so doubleclick can data mine the world. No thanks.
Its very darwinian in a sense as ads people will tolerate will probably not be blocked in the end. Personally, I think google is doing it right with ads based on the context of the site and by going all text. Others should follow and may the days of the giant flash ads and blinking banners be behind us. It can join the Divx DVD format, the BLINK tag, and the CueCat in bin of bad ideas.
> It would be like blowing up the Senate building with all the people in it.
Huh? Our Senators are cowards who stay at home and have 'voice votes' when its time to pay their owners. See DMCA vote or yesterday's 87 billion Iraq vote. Almost 90 senators stayed home for the Iraq vote.
Sorry to get OT, but voice votes are as close to a bomb as far as democracy is concerned.
They do. McDonalds has a little advisory regarding MSG on their own site, sugar their buns to cause cravings (do a google search), and use recipes/flavors designed to return the best return on the investment possible at the expense of their customer's health (read fast food nation).
Fraud is in the eye of the beholder.
This is an herbal supplement, the results vary greatly from individual to individual, and none of these applications have been proven or approved by the FDA.
Ta da.
Disclaimers go a long way.
>Anyone who wanted to use that node would have to send you an e-mail to get the WEP key.
Or maybe SSID: knockonmywindow. Considering he's right there.
>I only wish that I could keep my WiFi up without WEP for my neihgbors or anyone walking by without exposing myself to risk of internet connection termination.
Print up some business cards with the WEP key. Hand them out to people you trust.
Control outbound port 25 connections via your firewall. Allow only port 80 from untrusted clients. etc. Its not *that* hard. There are linux distros set to do this using an old 286 if need be. If you want to give it away you will need a robust firewall. Think of it as a digital condom.
First get a corporate shield, an S-corp can be had for as little as $100 in most states. This will protect your personal assets from a lawsuit.
.40 bottle of vitamin C with a little sticker that says "Placebo you bought from a spammer, dumbass. Cure wait ails ya."
Get a bulk mailer and email harvester and sell "Placebon the Herbal Viagra." Get a credit card processing account (or maybe just paypal) from a bank.
Email a million people.
Get ~5,000 orders.
Charge $19.99
Send them a
You profit. They get burned. Everyone wins. For the moral people, think of it as your personal war against scurvy.
Can we end the mindless ACLU bashing? Symatec's firewall is a private product made by a private company, if you know anything about the ACLU it deals with government and usually in the sphere of legislation being challenge because its unconstitutional.
Yes, they also protect speech, many times speech you may not like.
Want to make the ACLU a better organization? Join your local state-level chapter, get your friends involved, and voice your opinion.
>Unconvincing.
About as unconvcing as it for altavista, eh? Search engine tech isn't that complex and right now alltheweb.com is google's #1 competitor. Google is a powerful brand, but as we've seen with Netscape that doesn't mean much in the changing IT landscape.
There are lots of google specific complaints. Like ranking blogs too high, ignoring words like 'who' and 'what' by default, pagerank isn't as hot as it used to be, etc.
There's plenty of room for competition and google's seat as search engine leader is not guaranteed the same way Microsoft may not be the desktop OS leader in the next 5-10 years. Plausible but not guaranteed.
> (Probably one that most of us habent heard of yet.)
Its called alltheweb.com. It does video and audio searches too. On top of that it rates blogs very, very low so the #1 google complaint "Its all blogs, all the time!" has been taken care of.
Oh, the parent isnt just funny but accurate. Check out how life at Fox News channel is really like.
Salon interview here too.
Oh please, lets see: the average american diet consists of fried foods and red meat. Traffic is a symptom of a lack of a decent light rail system. I live in the middle of Chicago, take the train everyday to work and school and avoid the crap everyone else eats.
I used to eat like everyone else and realized I didn't want to carry a gut around and knew if I didn't change my diet soon I was going to be stuck with this gut the rest of my days. Working in technology usually means sitting in front of a computer all day.
Obviously, there's a lot of money to be made in selling greasy, unhealthy foods. Sugarwater is the prefered drink for most Americans and schools sign exclusive deals to provide high-calorie high-sugar/corn syrup drinks directly to children.
If America wanted to, it could change overnight. If people wanted health they could have it, but the current assumptions that 'fast food everyday isnt that bad' and a recent report that toddlers were being fed fries and cola didn't even shock the public. Sometimes people get the bodies they deserve. Its a shame that the media has no problem airing ads from McDonalds that make fast food look like a healthy and practically religious event while books on fast food, like fast food nation are largely ignored by the very same media.
Also, I think he's streching by calling spam abundance. If SMTP didn't become the standard but something else with built in authentication was then spam would be a non-issue yet the same mechanisms of "abundance" would be in place.
In the end, its how something is used not how much of something there is. Futurists need to realize that a simple hypothesis, or a simply answer that ties everything together is probably wrong. What's that famous HL Mencken quote, google?
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong"
Anyone know of an IP blacklist so that admins can block these sites/installers at the firewall? No luck finding anything that's targeted at only spyware host IPs.
Psychological you say?
Its 3am and I can't sleep.
So I shut off the PC that runs 24/7. Immediately the noise from the Tivo blows me away. Its not the drive its the fan (upped to 12 volts). I swear its louder than the computer. At 3am I'm contemplating cracking open the Tivo box and lowering the fan down to that standard 9v. Then I realize I'm an idiot, turn the computer back on, and enjoy its new role as "white noise generator" and quickly fall asleep.
>Go to the library, borrow the book and read it...
Your analogy would only make sense if I could demand the librarian make me a digital DRM-free copy of the book.
The problem here is fairly obvious, Amazon is expecting thousands of authors to "trust us with security," and these authors politely say no and you fall back on a non-sequitar library argument?
Sorry, but bought dead-tree books on rental is not the same thing as a digital copy I can mass-send/share globally.
Frankly, considering what passes off as "computer security" nowadays I would be a bit nervous too.
Also, I think its something of an insult to just tell authors "Oh, btw, you can opt-out." They or their publishers should be OPTING-IN after being informed of Amazon's plans. This attitude of "We're going to drop your book in our OCR machine because we're Amazon" should be treated with contempt.
I'm not pissing on the concept but on the implementation. This could have been done in a much more civil manner, but Amazon chose the "big-corporate do-as-we-please" way out.
I know this much: this will be disabled to send or recieve at every lawfirm in the world. You are simply not going to read something that you can't print out, copy, etc and will expire in four hours.
What really bothers me is that this is truly "lazy man's crypto." MS could have made a nice GUI for gpg and better PGP support in its XP products, but they deliver this instead? MS is in a position where it can bring crypto to the masses and other goodies. Its a shame really.
Not to mention they can't plug the "analog hole" namely the fact that your monitor is a passive listening device and as such screenshots cannot be blocked. Even if they block it on the OS level a cheap digital camera will do in a pinch.
> I think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down to the Gym and exercise on my behalf.
Just hit the "Kill owner" button and the fight for your life will be the best workout you've ever had.
These on-line maps lack basic features before I can even consider taking them seriously.
1. Weighted streets. If one street is somewhat nearby, is 4 lanes with a 45 mph limit compared to a 2 lane, but nearer busy urban street, guess which one gets picked. Its amusing using these map services when near Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. They will recommend any route except the quickest and most direct.
A selection of AI aided paths would help tremendously.
2. Language: you don't turn onto ramps, etc. Many of these print outs look like you're going to be making a thousand turns because of ambigious language.
3. User feedback: Its understandable that the maps will have all sorts of problems with non-existant streets, construction, etc so why not let users comment on generated paths? "10 people reported this street in this area to be problematic." etc.
4. Last but not least, I need a girlfriend version of mapquest. Just a page with stuff like "Okay turn right at that creepy gas station and keep an eye out for the Burger King. You'll make a left there, no I mean the other Burger King."
>With some services disabled, Windows XP will run fine on 96 MB of memory
Umm, that must include the boot service.
Let's face facts here, if you're reading slashdot you probably use a lot of free software.
Mozilla tabs eat RAM like you wouldn't believe, and I for one am not going back to the old ways of only keeping a few windows/tabs open at a time. Sorry, but this feature changes the entire web experience for me and it uses RAM.
You probably have cygwin doing something crazy in the background.
You might have 2 or 3 email clients (think work vs play vs school, etc).
Ever use a java app? Or have to use a big ass java app for work/school?
You might have some unusual services running.
Laptops are the PC away from home. So sometimes you have do some pretty foolish things with them. Usually that equals a performance hit.
>The default 256MB should be plenty.
I barely get away with 256mb on my old dell, and 512 would be a welcome relief, but the computer world isn't static. In a couple years you'll still own that same laptop and the new WindowsBlahBlah or the new RedHat will probably demand more resources and you'll wish you didn't shoot yourself in the foot by buying into this limitation.
Can saving on those extra slots be so important in the long run? If I wanted a lightweight machine (not in lbs but in power) I would spend a lot less than what this thing costs.
Its very informative, but lacks the flash and buzzwords that makes television successful. In other words its fairly boring. Digging up McLuhan's corpse here but the medium is very much the message. Selling science on TV is a *tough* sell and you need various gimmicks to get a critical mass of people watching.
Carl Sagan was a cult of personality of his own.
Connections was amusing, smart, well narrated, and had lots of on-locale stuff.
Right now the Science Channel comes off exactly like what they made us watch in high school when teachers didnt feel like teaching, only not as dumbed down.
Television really isn't a good medium for science. Then again its not good for a lot of things, yet there are ways around this problem. Look at all the sexy women reading the telepromter on cable news. Or shows with "extreme" type advetising gimmicks. Hiring people with real charisma and giving them some creative control. etc.
An issue that does bother me is that SCI-FI, PAX, PBS, etc have no problem playing these "Unexplained" shows, all of which give a lot of credit to creationism (right-wing bias in the media is quite real) and other credulous nonsense without a counterpart on some other channel attacking these shows. An offensive, in your face, science show consisting of people with some backbone could make for some excellent ratings. Divide that up with traditional science shows and it might work. Find the luminaries out there, let them speak in a format that's entertaining. I've read that Bucky Fuller was just a great speaker. Where are the Bucky Fullers of our age? There are a lot of "Carl Sagans" and "Bucky Fullers" out there. Find them and give them a job and watch the money roll in.