One of my coworkers at a previous job, grabbed a screen capture, of our Network Monitioring Machine. It was running What's Up Gold in full screen mode. Anyway this joker got the image into adobe or paint shop pro, or some image manipulator and changed all the green icons on the image red. The way we'd have WuG set up was Green was all clear, red was all services down on that device.
Then he set it up with ACDSEE I believe with another image that just stated: April Fools! and set the images to repeat every 30 seconds or so. WuG was still monitoring in the background so he didn't jepordize any services or anything. If an Alarm went off it would have been taken care of.
Anyway the CEO was walking one of his suit friends around the office around 8:30 that morning, giving his usual drawl, "And around this corner we have our Network Monitoring Machine. As you will see if everything is red we have a major issue...." At that point he walked around the corner and nearly died, until the screen changed to April Fools. Someone still had to explain to him that at no time was the network actually fully down. That the person who set up the prank didn't down the whole network just to get the image etc..
My Inspirational teacher, was my Sixth Grade teacher. In my town elementary was K-6, so we were not jaded middle schoolers then. His name was Mr. Vanderels. One of the coolest men I've ever known, he taught outside the box in so many ways.
He inspired his class to think outside of the text books, in ways that many teachers will never phathom. From his zany capitals quizes, with questions like This place is Satan's dishwasher.. Helsinki(no offense ment to our friends in Finland, its one of the ones I remember to this day..) To his Hang-man challenges. Where he'd run the hangman on the board and we'd dig out our atlas' and try and find the city he was looking for. A correct answer would erase a demerit or give a bonus to the next test.
One day in May, school was almost over and he turned the tables, a bit, he told the whole class, find one city in hangman. If you can stump me, everyone will get 100 bonus points on their final. We were up for the challenge! Digging out the atlas we poured over the globe trying to find the hardest most complicated word without any foriegn language markings on it. We came apon Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky(Excuse my spelling here its been a long time...) Wouldn't you know it, he got it after the second letter in hangman! We lost! defeated we asked how he knew, he picked up a pulp fiction novel of the time. You know one of those spy dramas, and said "It's all in the books." He started me right then in there on my love of reading.
Mr. Vanderels, I credit with my analytical quick thinking mind. Elementary school is so important to a person in their formative years, to have someone as cool as him is a bonus in my books. I might not have a PHD, or Masters, or even a bachellors, but because of him, I know what I can and can't do, and I am damn good at what I do. A little of everything, somethings better than others.
They are all still around. Sure they don't have the giga followings of the big graphical games. But for the most part I find the players to be a little more intelligent. I started my mudding career back in College, on Dragon Realms, then I migrated to the first World Of Darkness MUSH called The Masquerade. I still have an account on FurryMuck telnet://furry.org 8888, I think... Yep just logged on there.
Now I'm mostly into the Role Playing style of MUSHing. I play on a super hero based mush called Marvel X-treme: telnet://minerva.erisian.net 2008. I'm also the caretaker of another fantasy based game called Star Wars a New Threat: telnet://starwas.pennmush.org 9999. Both of these games are great for the serious minded Roleplayer, not people who are drawn to hack and slashing. There's a new site out there dedicated to all things text based mu* ing. It can be found at Electric Soup this is the site of a friend of mine and a great place to talk about MU*ing.
Some may say that its a dead art, but as long as people can read and people can type, I think these games will go on strong. No matter how customizable you can make your Avatar on the graphical games, they can never come as close to the power of the written word. Mushes and MUDs are not dead, not by a long shot. Drop by sometime.
Regards,
Frank/Runestar/Zeus@Starwars A New Threat/Pluto@Marvel Xtreme.
This is the sorta thing me and a buddy were talking about last night.
We determined that there are two types of conspiracy theorists. Those who like reading about them, and believing only bits and pieces as being the truth, and those who go around wearing tinfoil lined clothing.
Those who believe this is an evil plot by TiVo to take over the world are completely in the second category.
All data collected by the Tivo is encrypted at the source and then sent to Tivo's servers. They do not know what channels a particular person is watching. Only that a person is watching a particular channel.
The very fact that TiVo has a Privacy Officer is a boon for me. How many other PVRs have one? They are committed to keeping individual information private. Before the change in the policy they couldn't even share subscription numbers information to the producers of the equipment.
What happened to being able to size buttons? I like my desktop... not huge buttons. Even at 1024 x 768(hey its my work machine tiny 17") they are huge I'd hate to see them at 800 600...
Could they find any more places to add buttons and gizmos too? It reminds me of a very bad imitation swiss army knife, where all the gadgets can't come out at once because they overlap.
No offense to mozilla, but this is bloatware added ontop of it. Please tell me, that the release version will allow you to have small buttons and no aol crap... The sidebar is nasty IMO it takes up even more screen width. Thankfully it can be shrunk down. This is Netscape for the mass market? I'll go back to IE 5.0 even if it is not GNU.. who knows maybe the Judge will order it to be...
I was looking for a service a while ago, local service area was fine with me. So I picked Omnipoint. They had what I wanted, which was a good prepay plan.
Anyway before I get too far ahead of myself, when I was looking for a cellphone I did find it hard to find one. Then I reliezed why when I went to Nokia's website: www.nokia.com They have virtually the same phone listed as 4-5 different model numbers. This is so the're resellers can sell them and claim they are the only ones to have XXXX phone. Besides companies like Sprint PCS, I believe all cellphone manufacturers do this. I could be wrong but thats how it looked to me. A friend of mine got a Nokia 51XX? and it was virtually the same as my Nokia 5190. Except I think his had 50 less places in his address book. But he got his at Cellular one and mine was purchased at Omnipoint. Mine was actually cheaper than his go figure..
Runestar
If I was a purchasing agent for a school
on
Lego CAD
·
· Score: 1
If I was a school's purchasing agent. Why would I buy this software from Lego directly when I can just go to http://www.lugnet.com/cad/ to find a freeware lego cad program that works very well and has been tested for years? I would not be suprized if this is just another company trying who is now going to try and say well we have a program. Now you can't distro your own code because it infringes on our rights.
I suggest those who are insterested in LegoCAD look at some of the other fine cad programs for free before paying for three diskettes. I bet the DOS Based BlockCAD would even run under dosemu.
After having worked in retail for 7 years, and then for one of the first Internet Content Providers (Delphi if you must know), I can tell you you are one of the few that checks their statements. I've seen people call up to my pervious employer, and want to cancel their service that they signed up for 2 years prior, and forgot about. Oh and please refund everything you charged to the card. Legally we were only required to give back 3 months and, then only if the account was not logged into at all.
Most people don't check their statements. Its true. If something is being billed regularly and is not more than 30 dollars a month they will never notice it. It is sad but true. I watch my accounts like a hawk personally. I still dish out my CC to most secure servers, when I want to buy something online. My browser is as secure as the mainstream browsers come. I try and protect myself but I know the only real way to be protective is to be vigilant, like yourself.
I actually posted a story on this on the 23rd. I was extremely fustrated with Toys at the time. They were in the process of screwing me over hugely. I guess the story's content was a little too much flaimbait. The stroy goes I got the letter. Check the website, it said at 5pm that the order was in the warehouse. 4 hours later at 9pm on the 23rd it said on the website that it was delayed. I called Toys' 1-888 number that was a travesty. I waited 40mins on hold, then got dropped as soon as the rep answered. Dialed back in same thing after 40 mins. Third try after 40 mins gout a rep. The rep told me that my order was delayed and would not make it before Christmas. I was pissed so I did what any red blooded american would do. I asked to speak to a supervisor. Waited on hold for another 40 mins before someone picked up and dropped the call. I was turning purple at this time so I wrote a nice long letter to the CEO.. Not that he reads his email or cares but it felt good. I gave up and played some UT for a few hours then went to sleep. I called up at 9am 12/23 and the operator I got on the line told me it was being shipped that day for overnight delivery. Plus I was getting 100 Geofrey bucks. Around noon time the buzzer rings and its Fedex Overnight Express. They had shipped it the night before... They were totally screwed up at Toys this year. I will think twice about shopping Toys R Us online next year. Anyway here's the letter I recieved from the CEO:
From: johnb@Toysrus.com Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 15:33:36 +0400 Subject: Important Update Regarding Your Toys R Us Order Number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Dear Valued Customer,
As we approach our holiday deadline, it becomes apparent to us that even with our fulfillment center working around the clock, WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DELIVER YOUR ORDER BEFORE DECEMBER 25TH.
Even though the vast majority of the orders we have in our system will be delivered on or before Christmas day, we believe that it is imperative that you be informed in time to react for the holidays.
Satisfied customers are our lifeblood and I would hope you could forgive us for this very frustrating experience. IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS, WE WILL SEND TO YOU BY OVERNIGHT EXPRESS, $100 WORTH OF FREE GEOFFREY DOLLARS that can be used to purchase additional gifts at any Toys'R'Us, Kids 'R' Us or Babies 'R' Us stores - as a thank you for your patience and understanding.
If you want to cancel your order please email us at cancelmyorder@toysrus.com, please include the above referenced order number in the subject line.
We are rushing to get every order shipped as quickly as possible, so if your order is delivered and you do not wish to accept the shipment, please refuse delivery and we will make sure your credit card is credited for the full amount of your order.
Over the last few weeks, Toysrus.com has become one of the most popular e-commerce sites on the Internet. Unfortunately, because Internet sales have been far greater than anyone expected, our whole infrastructure - from customer service through fulfillment - has been overloaded by the hundreds of thousands of orders placed on our site.
As a father of two little boys, I can fully appreciate the annoyance and frustration that this email will cause. On behalf of everyone at Toysrus.com, we sincerely apologize for being unable to meet your expectations and promise you that we will be dramatically more prepared to deal with this level of growth in 2000.
Sincere apologies,
John Barbour CEO Toysrus.com
Email address: johnb@Toysrus.com
Runestar - Happy to have gotten the gifts. POed for the Angst this email caused me...
I'm going to be spreading this story around to all my Oz friends, and suggest every/. does the same. First its Austrailia then its the world. Microsoft has a big investment down under. Lets not forget where one of their launch parties for Winblows 95 was. Sydney. This really doesn't suprize me.. scare me yes.. Suprize no. I mean look how much information the average person is willing to give out without knowing about it as it is. IDsoft is gathering who knows what from your computer if you play their quake game. RealMedia is gathering your musical tastes. We will soon be living in a world tailor made for us by those wishing to sell us more and more stuff. *Sigh* Stop the bus I want to get off.
The panama canal was built by the Americans using some of the equipment left abanadoned by the French. Yes the Americans basically went in and hacked a country out of Columbia. Only 1 person and one donkey was killed in the Panamanian Revolution... Yes the Americans then did commence building a canal. But unlike the french who wanted to dig the entire canal down to sea level. The Americans used a system of locks and a man made lake to make the canal.
French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps envisioned La Grande Tranchee ("the great trench") as a sea-level canal without locks, akin to the one built by the French at Suez. Lesseps built the Seuz. I believe he never had a day of engineering schooling. He failed building the panama canal and nearly bankrupted France in the process. He went from hero to failure in the eyes of the french.
The reason the Americans suceeded, where the french failed, were many. One they wanted it more. They needed a quicker route to get their warships between oceans. 67 days around the cape was not good enough for them. Secondly they fought the mosquitto problem. Thus ending epedemic deseases in the area. Lastly the Americans were using a lock system that used the power of water itself to open and close.
Before I bore everyone to death.. Probably already happened. During WWII there was even a plan in place that if the canal was taken by the Axis powers or about to be taken, it would be drained and damaged beyond repair by the weight of the water itself.. basically they would open all the locks and let the water drain out in one massave flood. Runestar
And the on door Ice Dispenser? I mean seriously any fridge needs to have these two items to be the fridge of the future in my books. Cold filterd water whenever you want it and icecubes too. Damn thats what I look for when buying a fridge. Although the split door look would probably make the veiwing screen a little too small. Why not make it detachable so you can set it next to the stove so you can display your recipe right there while your cooking. Put it in a industrial safe washable container and your all set.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my coworkers at a previous job, grabbed a screen capture, of our Network Monitioring Machine. It was running What's Up Gold in full screen mode. Anyway this joker got the image into adobe or paint shop pro, or some image manipulator and changed all the green icons on the image red. The way we'd have WuG set up was Green was all clear, red was all services down on that device.
Then he set it up with ACDSEE I believe with another image that just stated: April Fools! and set the images to repeat every 30 seconds or so. WuG was still monitoring in the background so he didn't jepordize any services or anything. If an Alarm went off it would have been taken care of.
Anyway the CEO was walking one of his suit friends around the office around 8:30 that morning, giving his usual drawl, "And around this corner we have our Network Monitoring Machine. As you will see if everything is red we have a major issue...." At that point he walked around the corner and nearly died, until the screen changed to April Fools. Someone still had to explain to him that at no time was the network actually fully down. That the person who set up the prank didn't down the whole network just to get the image etc..
Runestar
Damn that didn't take long. I really think as a service Slashdot should mirror webpages of the most recent articles.
Anyway does this thing look anygood? or is it still Vaporware?
Runestar
My Inspirational teacher, was my Sixth Grade teacher. In my town elementary was K-6, so we were not jaded middle schoolers then. His name was Mr. Vanderels. One of the coolest men I've ever known, he taught outside the box in so many ways.
He inspired his class to think outside of the text books, in ways that many teachers will never phathom. From his zany capitals quizes, with questions like This place is Satan's dishwasher.. Helsinki(no offense ment to our friends in Finland, its one of the ones I remember to this day..) To his Hang-man challenges. Where he'd run the hangman on the board and we'd dig out our atlas' and try and find the city he was looking for. A correct answer would erase a demerit or give a bonus to the next test.
One day in May, school was almost over and he turned the tables, a bit, he told the whole class, find one city in hangman. If you can stump me, everyone will get 100 bonus points on their final. We were up for the challenge! Digging out the atlas we poured over the globe trying to find the hardest most complicated word without any foriegn language markings on it. We came apon Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky(Excuse my spelling here its been a long time...) Wouldn't you know it, he got it after the second letter in hangman! We lost! defeated we asked how he knew, he picked up a pulp fiction novel of the time. You know one of those spy dramas, and said "It's all in the books." He started me right then in there on my love of reading.
Mr. Vanderels, I credit with my analytical quick thinking mind. Elementary school is so important to a person in their formative years, to have someone as cool as him is a bonus in my books. I might not have a PHD, or Masters, or even a bachellors, but because of him, I know what I can and can't do, and I am damn good at what I do. A little of everything, somethings better than others.
Oooh Thanks for the vote of confidence AC...
:)
Glad to see someone doesn't like me.
Doh...
Call it a hangover...
Starwars A New Threat can be found at starwars.pennmush.org 9999 not starwas...
Runestar
They are all still around. Sure they don't have the giga followings of the big graphical games. But for the most part I find the players to be a little more intelligent. I started my mudding career back in College, on Dragon Realms, then I migrated to the first World Of Darkness MUSH called The Masquerade. I still have an account on FurryMuck telnet://furry.org 8888, I think... Yep just logged on there.
Now I'm mostly into the Role Playing style of MUSHing. I play on a super hero based mush called Marvel X-treme: telnet://minerva.erisian.net 2008. I'm also the caretaker of another fantasy based game called Star Wars a New Threat: telnet://starwas.pennmush.org 9999. Both of these games are great for the serious minded Roleplayer, not people who are drawn to hack and slashing. There's a new site out there dedicated to all things text based mu* ing. It can be found at Electric Soup this is the site of a friend of mine and a great place to talk about MU*ing. Some may say that its a dead art, but as long as people can read and people can type, I think these games will go on strong. No matter how customizable you can make your Avatar on the graphical games, they can never come as close to the power of the written word. Mushes and MUDs are not dead, not by a long shot. Drop by sometime.
Regards,
Frank/Runestar/Zeus@Starwars A New Threat/Pluto@Marvel Xtreme.
This is the sorta thing me and a buddy were talking about last night.
We determined that there are two types of conspiracy theorists. Those who like reading about them, and believing only bits and pieces as being the truth, and those who go around wearing tinfoil lined clothing.
Those who believe this is an evil plot by TiVo to take over the world are completely in the second category.
All data collected by the Tivo is encrypted at the source and then sent to Tivo's servers. They do not know what channels a particular person is watching. Only that a person is watching a particular channel.
The very fact that TiVo has a Privacy Officer is a boon for me. How many other PVRs have one? They are committed to keeping individual information private. Before the change in the policy they couldn't even share subscription numbers information to the producers of the equipment.
Runestar
My ownly comments on NS6 is oh my god!
What happened to being able to size buttons? I like my desktop... not huge buttons. Even at 1024 x 768(hey its my work machine tiny 17") they are huge I'd hate to see them at 800 600...
Could they find any more places to add buttons and gizmos too? It reminds me of a very bad imitation swiss army knife, where all the gadgets can't come out at once because they overlap.
No offense to mozilla, but this is bloatware added ontop of it. Please tell me, that the release version will allow you to have small buttons and no aol crap... The sidebar is nasty IMO it takes up even more screen width. Thankfully it can be shrunk down. This is Netscape for the mass market? I'll go back to IE 5.0 even if it is not GNU.. who knows maybe the Judge will order it to be...
I was looking for a service a while ago, local service area was fine with me. So I picked Omnipoint. They had what I wanted, which was a good prepay plan.
Anyway before I get too far ahead of myself, when I was looking for a cellphone I did find it hard to find one. Then I reliezed why when I went to Nokia's website: www.nokia.com They have virtually the same phone listed as 4-5 different model numbers. This is so the're resellers can sell them and claim they are the only ones to have XXXX phone. Besides companies like Sprint PCS, I believe all cellphone manufacturers do this. I could be wrong but thats how it looked to me. A friend of mine got a Nokia 51XX? and it was virtually the same as my Nokia 5190. Except I think his had 50 less places in his address book. But he got his at Cellular one and mine was purchased at Omnipoint. Mine was actually cheaper than his go figure..
Runestar
If I was a school's purchasing agent. Why would I buy this software from Lego directly when I can just go to http://www.lugnet.com/cad/ to find a freeware lego cad program that works very well and has been tested for years? I would not be suprized if this is just another company trying who is now going to try and say well we have a program. Now you can't distro your own code because it infringes on our rights.
I suggest those who are insterested in LegoCAD look at some of the other fine cad programs for free before paying for three diskettes. I bet the DOS Based BlockCAD would even run under dosemu.
Runestar
After having worked in retail for 7 years, and then for one of the first Internet Content Providers (Delphi if you must know), I can tell you you are one of the few that checks their statements. I've seen people call up to my pervious employer, and want to cancel their service that they signed up for 2 years prior, and forgot about. Oh and please refund everything you charged to the card. Legally we were only required to give back 3 months and, then only if the account was not logged into at all.
Most people don't check their statements. Its true. If something is being billed regularly and is not more than 30 dollars a month they will never notice it. It is sad but true. I watch my accounts like a hawk personally. I still dish out my CC to most secure servers, when I want to buy something online. My browser is as secure as the mainstream browsers come. I try and protect myself but I know the only real way to be protective is to be vigilant, like yourself.
Frank
I actually posted a story on this on the 23rd. I was extremely fustrated with Toys at the time. They were in the process of screwing me over hugely. I guess the story's content was a little too much flaimbait. The stroy goes I got the letter. Check the website, it said at 5pm that the order was in the warehouse. 4 hours later at 9pm on the 23rd it said on the website that it was delayed. I called Toys' 1-888 number that was a travesty. I waited 40mins on hold, then got dropped as soon as the rep answered. Dialed back in same thing after 40 mins. Third try after 40 mins gout a rep. The rep told me that my order was delayed and would not make it before Christmas. I was pissed so I did what any red blooded american would do. I asked to speak to a supervisor. Waited on hold for another 40 mins before someone picked up and dropped the call. I was turning purple at this time so I wrote a nice long letter to the CEO.. Not that he reads his email or cares but it felt good. I gave up and played some UT for a few hours then went to sleep. I called up at 9am 12/23 and the operator I got on the line told me it was being shipped that day for overnight delivery. Plus I was getting 100 Geofrey bucks. Around noon time the buzzer rings and its Fedex Overnight Express. They had shipped it the night before... They were totally screwed up at Toys this year. I will think twice about shopping Toys R Us online next year. Anyway here's the letter I recieved from the CEO:
From: johnb@Toysrus.com
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 15:33:36 +0400
Subject: Important Update Regarding Your Toys R Us Order Number XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Dear Valued Customer,
As we approach our holiday deadline, it becomes apparent to us that even with
our fulfillment center working around the clock, WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DELIVER
YOUR ORDER BEFORE DECEMBER 25TH.
Even though the vast majority of the orders we have in our system will be
delivered on or before Christmas day, we believe that it is imperative that
you be informed in time to react for the holidays.
Satisfied customers are our lifeblood and I would hope you could forgive us
for this very frustrating experience. IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS, WE WILL SEND TO
YOU BY OVERNIGHT EXPRESS, $100 WORTH OF FREE GEOFFREY DOLLARS that can be
used to purchase additional gifts at any Toys'R'Us, Kids 'R' Us or Babies 'R' Us
stores - as a thank you for your patience and understanding.
If you want to cancel your order please email us at cancelmyorder@toysrus.com,
please include the above referenced order number in the subject line.
We are rushing to get every order shipped as quickly as possible, so if your order is
delivered and you do not wish to accept the shipment, please refuse delivery and we will
make sure your credit card is credited for the full amount of your order.
Over the last few weeks, Toysrus.com has become one of the most popular
e-commerce sites on the Internet. Unfortunately, because Internet sales have
been far greater than anyone expected, our whole infrastructure - from
customer service through fulfillment - has been overloaded by the hundreds of
thousands of orders placed on our site.
As a father of two little boys, I can fully appreciate the annoyance and
frustration that this email will cause. On behalf of everyone at
Toysrus.com, we sincerely apologize for being unable to meet your
expectations and promise you that we will be dramatically more prepared
to deal with this level of growth in 2000.
Sincere apologies,
John Barbour
CEO
Toysrus.com
Email address: johnb@Toysrus.com
Runestar - Happy to have gotten the gifts. POed for the Angst this email caused me...
I'm going to be spreading this story around to all my Oz friends, and suggest every /. does the same. First its Austrailia then its the world. Microsoft has a big investment down under. Lets not forget where one of their launch parties for Winblows 95 was. Sydney. This really doesn't suprize me.. scare me yes.. Suprize no. I mean look how much information the average person is willing to give out without knowing about it as it is. IDsoft is gathering who knows what from your computer if you play their quake game. RealMedia is gathering your musical tastes. We will soon be living in a world tailor made for us by those wishing to sell us more and more stuff. *Sigh* Stop the bus I want to get off.
Runestar
The panama canal was built by the Americans using some of the equipment left abanadoned by the French. Yes the Americans basically went in and hacked a country out of Columbia. Only 1 person and one donkey was killed in the Panamanian Revolution... Yes the Americans then did commence building a canal. But unlike the french who wanted to dig the entire canal down to sea level. The Americans used a system of locks and a man made lake to make the canal.
French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps envisioned La Grande Tranchee ("the great trench") as a sea-level canal without locks, akin to the one built by the French at Suez. Lesseps built the Seuz. I believe he never had a day of engineering schooling. He failed building the panama canal and nearly bankrupted France in the process. He went from hero to failure in the eyes of the french.
The reason the Americans suceeded, where the french failed, were many. One they wanted it more. They needed a quicker route to get their warships between oceans. 67 days around the cape was not good enough for them. Secondly they fought the mosquitto problem. Thus ending epedemic deseases in the area. Lastly the Americans were using a lock system that used the power of water itself to open and close.
Before I bore everyone to death.. Probably already happened. During WWII there was even a plan in place that if the canal was taken by the Axis powers or about to be taken, it would be drained and damaged beyond repair by the weight of the water itself.. basically they would open all the locks and let the water drain out in one massave flood.
Runestar
And the on door Ice Dispenser? I mean seriously any fridge needs to have these two items to be the fridge of the future in my books. Cold filterd water whenever you want it and icecubes too. Damn thats what I look for when buying a fridge. Although the split door look would probably make the veiwing screen a little too small. Why not make it detachable so you can set it next to the stove so you can display your recipe right there while your cooking. Put it in a industrial safe washable container and your all set.