except that SBC would have spent all that money to lay them
I call bullshit. They charge infrastructure fees, taxes, and get tax breaks from local, state and federal agencies based on their maintenence and rollout of infrastructure. A lot of the early infrastructure was paid for lock stock and barrel by DoD, who wanted hardline going everywhere.
SBC didn't spend dime one. They spent less than they made with all the fees and tax breaks. Joe Taxpayer paid for all of it.
I vote we stop giving them breaks because they maintain it until they stop charging others more than cost on it.
to something similar. (ftp, gopher, home, mosaic, www, etc, should all be changed to http://www.server.com/webapp/)
So now when a user punches "www.ebay.com" into IE, it will send them instead to the URL
"http://www.server.com/webapp/www.ebay.com"
instead, which your webserver will log as an invalid page request along with the requestor, so you can walk to their desk and tell them that IE is only to be used for the web application and nothing else.
Firefox doesn't depend on that registry entry, and will gleefully ignore it.
Some spyware vendors use these keys and then do server side redirection. Your browser loads "http://scumwareinc.com/redirect.cgi?www.ebay.com" in a blink, logs it, and you're loading eBay before you realize it even happened.
Re:Cockroach bomb shelters and buttered kitten pow
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Eh.. If PETA has a complaint about cat-butter reactors, we just need to remind them that the cat not need be living to have the desired effect as far as I know. Kill a couple dozen cats, they'll beg the scientists to return to the humane live cat reactors.
Sadly, the Texas DOT doesn't say much of anything on the subject of insurance requirements for undriven cars. Requiring insurance on every vehicle in the state, regardless of whether it is driven (or even capable of being driven) is not something sane people would tolerate.
As it happens, I ended up asking around on IM. One of my college friends lives in Texas, and he says that insurance is not per-se required. He does this with his daughters car, something she drives mabye once a year when she's home from college. You are required to keep vehicles driven on the road registered, and as such are required to keep insurance on it. Vehicles not driven on the public roads are not required to be registered or insured, although the DOT will charge you a renewal penalty if you allow it to lapse. The car can be stored, or in a non-running state, or operated on private land without insurance.
However, and here's the good bit he found out because it wasn't driven for nine months; If you allow your registration to lapse, you can go into the DOT with an affidavit that says "I haven't been driving this car" and you can re-register the vehicle with no penalty so long as you do it less than 12 months after it lapses. So if your registration and insurance lapses on January 1, you can walk in on Dec 30th and retitle.
Also, in this case you would not be letting the policy lapse. You add the compact to the policy, remove the SUV. The policy has not lapsed. When you need to drive the SUV, you readd it to the policy. If you were letting *all* your insurance lapse, that would be a situation where they can raise your rate, but not if you have another vehicle insured.
Trip licenses! Here in WA state, and in a lot of other places, you can get insurance (attached to an existing policy) and tags/registration keyed to a trip. My in-laws used to do this with the truck they use to pull their trailer to the beach in the summer.
So retire the SUV. Buy a compact. Next time you need to drive up to Oregon to go rafting you need to do some planning a week out, but you're not driving the SUV year round.
Please note: They probably will not do this for you in BC. But for those of us here in the 'states, look at it as a way to up your mileage without the insurance/title expense of two vehicles except for that tiny period you need the second.
Lots of older cars do this too. I had a '84 Ford with pressure sensors in the seats that would cause the seatbelt warning buzzer to complain incessantly.
After the fifth or sixth time I drove home with something heavy on my passenger seat and listened to the permascream, I jumpered the sensor to off permanently with a U of baling wire.
One of the first things I do in any new car is check out how it accelerates, how it handles me throwing it around a turn too fast, and how controllable it is in a skid. It's a "save my ass" thing. I want to know that I can make the short ramps to I-5 safely when the slow lane is doing 75MPH and packed. I want to know if the rear end throws out easily when all four are locked. I want to know if I'm going to have to surf the broken glass on the shoulder at full speed or if I can brake and change lanes when I come up on the dark, dead car three lengths from me in the middle of night. I want to know if I'm going to get it up to the top of some of the places I work. I'm going to take it on rutted fire roads to see if I clear or if I'm going to need to rut jockey.
All of which will trip the box in an Onstar vehicle.
Re:Top Five reasons why the space program should b
on
Apollo 12 at 35
·
· Score: 1
Part of the reason they're so profitable is that technology produced for NASA is done on their dime. So companies save nearly all their R&D budget.
Also, NASA, and people working for NASA, don't have to pay for the license to use chemical process X, or spend millions on patent research to make sure their product doesn't infringe, or pay hordes of lawyers to stave off competitors who hold patents on something similar. So say you're doing research into growing modified plants for a Mars mission. Instead of paying Monsanto money for the right to play with a gene sequence, then paying a biotech firm money for the right to use a particular manipulation technique, then paying another company for the right to use a chemical test, and paying lawyers on top of it all to make sure what you're twiddling with isn't patented by anyone and that you don't infringe any licenses, you just do it. So of every dollar NASA spends, more of it is spent on, you know, actual research.
Soup?! Cripes, folks. You don't need a microwave to eat condensed soup.. A pocket knife. If the blade is big enough and the soup is thick enough, you don't even need a spoon..
Campbell's Bean with Bacon and a Gerber Gatorback. Dinner is done.
There's lots of stuff you can eat cold wou wouldn't think. Look through the fridge and pantry sometime. Lots of stuff is basically ready to eat, although it might not be tasty that way.
One of my faves to eat when the power is out is hot dogs. Most brands are pre-cooked and will go bad if left unrefridgerated. So eat em first!
Now, you will agree with me that even a small air conditioner will cool a room with your PC in it as cold as you would like it, no?
Now consider a mid-size refridgerator. 1. Rated for similar BTU to your average entry level AC unit. 2. Cools a smaller space than a room. 3. Cools a better insulated space than a room.
Now why would the refridgerator have any trouble at all with a PC? Perhaps the fact that the refridgerator typically runs 5%-10% of the time, tops, and a single hot plate of food is not enough to inspire fear in the grand scheme of the refridgerators temperature dial has confused you a little?
Are you aware how bad the Beastie Boys got burned over sampling?
Every time a new Beasties album comes out, there's another lawsuit and they refine what's cutting edge for legal sampling. They've had their chops busted over what you or I would think is sane use soooo many times. Flute players who had three notes of audio sampled *after* it had been licensed. AC/DC suing over a riff used in "Rock Hard". License to Ill and Paul's Boutique were an endless headache for them..
So why the hell would you share your stuff with the world when all the world does to you is sue your ass off? Do unto others...
Funny, proprietary formats haven't hurt *any* of the other game companies. In case you haven't noticed, the Gamecube, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, and Gameboy DS all use proprietary storage. As did Sega's offerings, SNK's, Phillips, etc.
As for the "capacious" argument; How the heck else are you going to put a gigabyte of storage in a portable cheaper than optical media? ROM cartridges? Don't make me laugh.
No.. But someone could call the someone on the Homeland Security committee, spoof the ID of another member, and proceed to have a conversation with the Senator's staff sbout what direction he wants to push a particular bill in response to a security lapse.
There ya go, you know 4-6 months ahead of time what the weak points will be.
I bought a copy of a Kid Rock album a few years ago, and after opening it and playing through it once I thought it was about the worst thing I had heard since.. Well, probably since Sammy Hagar decided he needed a solo album.
So I walk back into the Sam Goody and stood around with the case in my hand, flipping it open and closed till I got a sales drone to see me.
me: Hi, I need to return this. drone: I'm sorry, but we don't take returns on opened merchandise. Store policy. me: I know what your store policy is. The disc is defective. drone: Oh, is it scratched? Sometimes that happens in the packaging process. me: Naw, the disc looks fine. But whenever I put it in my player, all I get out of the speakers is noise. drone: Wow, I've never heard of that happening. me: Only happens with this one disc. The copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours I bought here at the same time sounds great. drone: Hmm. I think we've still got a couple copies on the shelf, we can exchange it for another. me: I'd rather like to return it versus exchange it, because it was supposed to be a gift and I already had to buy an alternate gift in a hurry thanks to it throwing up through my speakers.
After discussing the model of my player, the fact it also produced garbage when played in my car stereo, the clerk gets his manager to sign off on a refund.
So I'm up at the register with the salesdrone and the cashier to get my money back.
clerk: Wow, I don't think I've heard of any problems with that album. me: Don't ask me. clerk: I ought to go stick it in one of the demo players and see how bad it sounds. [clerk hands me my money and a new reciept] me: Go for it. Don't put the volume up too loud though, I'll warn you. [clerk pops it in a player stuck under the counter, player spins up and starts playing "Cowboy"] clerk: Seems to work just fine, that's weird. me: Funny, I paid $26 for a CD full of music, I expected music. That sounds like overmodulated static with some profanity thrown in. Not music. It's gotta be defective.
Wanna bet? Call up any of the baby bells. I bet they could scrounge you any of their "approved" phones all the way back to the late 60's if you offer the right warehouse lackey the right amount of money. They're assets, and as they're returned they're catalogued and stored. But as they're not a phone in the current issue list, they sit in a warehouse corner.
Want farther back? 50's? 40's? Call one of the major motion picture studios. With the way those guys pack-rat crap, I bet you could have a phone June Cleaver or Lucille Ball used on the air.
Not old enough? Call AT&T. I heard tell of a couple of company museums in Jersey while I worked there. Lots of prototype kind of stuff. Or try the Smithsonian. They probably have a very wide selection of telephones.
What about the White House Public Relations people? They'll be able to tell you which museum got phone number 1. If they're not too productive, mabye you can ring the Hayes' Presidential Center. They may have it.
These were mass produced items, and all in the last 130 years. To think that even one significant model is unlocatable with Google and a phone is ridiculous.
They're pretty common in industry and business. Things like insurance. Say you're going out to check on a water damage claim. Snap a Polaroid of the stained walls, you have something to stuff in the file when you arrive back at the office.
I once saw a glass manufacturer that equipped all their drivers with them, to document cases of glass damage. A couple Polaroids of a half-usable case of glass often dissuaded the customer from claiming all the glass was damaged on delivery and that he should get his new half-order for free.
Course, a lot of the applications that Polaroids are perfect for are also perfect for digital cameras. Digital cameras are cheaper to use, but more difficult to use correctly. But if you're taking 40+ a day, the odd screwed photo from the digital still gets you out cheaper than 40 mostly-perfect Polaroids.
All those ANC folks are still on the CIA/FBI "We don't want you in our country" list.
If Nelson Mandela made the mistake of wandering into the US without a State Department bouncer at his side, they'd prolly give the poor old man a body cavity search.
Myself, I install EverCrack first, so I can start up the patcher and install items 2-10 while it does its thing pulling down three expansions and five years of bugfixes.
Figure it cuts a few hours off the time I'm not feeding my addiction.
Slashdot Mirror
except that SBC would have spent all that money to lay them
I call bullshit. They charge infrastructure fees, taxes, and get tax breaks from local, state and federal agencies based on their maintenence and rollout of infrastructure. A lot of the early infrastructure was paid for lock stock and barrel by DoD, who wanted hardline going everywhere.
SBC didn't spend dime one. They spent less than they made with all the fees and tax breaks. Joe Taxpayer paid for all of it.
I vote we stop giving them breaks because they maintain it until they stop charging others more than cost on it.
IBM does too!
It was pretty nice for running PCI development boards on the road.
What the gentleman meant is they need to be jacketed.
For in wall applications, you can't use plain old insulated copper anymore, you require something with a fire-resistant outer jacket.
Most companies accomplish it with PVC or PVC and foil.
That isn't really too hard.
u rr entVersion\URL\DefaultPrefix
u rr entVersion\URL\Prefixes
" in a blink, logs it, and you're loading eBay before you realize it even happened.
Just add an entry to the registry declaring that any address http and ftp is now prefixed.
Here's a cheap and easy way to do this on 2K/XP (Mabye other Win32 OS, dunno about those)
Say you want your users only accessing the company web application hosted at www.server.com/webapp/ with IE.
Change the default in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
from "http://" to "http://www.server.com/webapp/"
and then change all the sub entries in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
to something similar. (ftp, gopher, home, mosaic, www, etc, should all be changed to http://www.server.com/webapp/)
So now when a user punches "www.ebay.com" into IE, it will send them instead to the URL
"http://www.server.com/webapp/www.ebay.com"
instead, which your webserver will log as an invalid page request along with the requestor, so you can walk to their desk and tell them that IE is only to be used for the web application and nothing else.
Firefox doesn't depend on that registry entry, and will gleefully ignore it.
Some spyware vendors use these keys and then do server side redirection. Your browser loads "http://scumwareinc.com/redirect.cgi?www.ebay.com
Eh.. If PETA has a complaint about cat-butter reactors, we just need to remind them that the cat not need be living to have the desired effect as far as I know. Kill a couple dozen cats, they'll beg the scientists to return to the humane live cat reactors.
Now, were those simulated Slashdot headlines?
If so, the typos, spelling errors and grammar malfunctions add immensely to them.
The only thing missing would have been a dupe of Christmas 2007 entered as Christmas, 2008.
Sadly, the Texas DOT doesn't say much of anything on the subject of insurance requirements for undriven cars. Requiring insurance on every vehicle in the state, regardless of whether it is driven (or even capable of being driven) is not something sane people would tolerate.
.
As it happens, I ended up asking around on IM. One of my college friends lives in Texas, and he says that insurance is not per-se required. He does this with his daughters car, something she drives mabye once a year when she's home from college. You are required to keep vehicles driven on the road registered, and as such are required to keep insurance on it. Vehicles not driven on the public roads are not required to be registered or insured, although the DOT will charge you a renewal penalty if you allow it to lapse. The car can be stored, or in a non-running state, or operated on private land without insurance.
However, and here's the good bit he found out because it wasn't driven for nine months; If you allow your registration to lapse, you can go into the DOT with an affidavit that says "I haven't been driving this car" and you can re-register the vehicle with no penalty so long as you do it less than 12 months after it lapses. So if your registration and insurance lapses on January 1, you can walk in on Dec 30th and retitle
Also, in this case you would not be letting the policy lapse. You add the compact to the policy, remove the SUV. The policy has not lapsed. When you need to drive the SUV, you readd it to the policy. If you were letting *all* your insurance lapse, that would be a situation where they can raise your rate, but not if you have another vehicle insured.
Trip licenses! Here in WA state, and in a lot of other places, you can get insurance (attached to an existing policy) and tags/registration keyed to a trip. My in-laws used to do this with the truck they use to pull their trailer to the beach in the summer.
So retire the SUV. Buy a compact. Next time you need to drive up to Oregon to go rafting you need to do some planning a week out, but you're not driving the SUV year round.
Please note: They probably will not do this for you in BC. But for those of us here in the 'states, look at it as a way to up your mileage without the insurance/title expense of two vehicles except for that tiny period you need the second.
Lots of older cars do this too. I had a '84 Ford with pressure sensors in the seats that would cause the seatbelt warning buzzer to complain incessantly.
After the fifth or sixth time I drove home with something heavy on my passenger seat and listened to the permascream, I jumpered the sensor to off permanently with a U of baling wire.
One of the first things I do in any new car is check out how it accelerates, how it handles me throwing it around a turn too fast, and how controllable it is in a skid. It's a "save my ass" thing. I want to know that I can make the short ramps to I-5 safely when the slow lane is doing 75MPH and packed. I want to know if the rear end throws out easily when all four are locked. I want to know if I'm going to have to surf the broken glass on the shoulder at full speed or if I can brake and change lanes when I come up on the dark, dead car three lengths from me in the middle of night. I want to know if I'm going to get it up to the top of some of the places I work. I'm going to take it on rutted fire roads to see if I clear or if I'm going to need to rut jockey.
All of which will trip the box in an Onstar vehicle.
Part of the reason they're so profitable is that technology produced for NASA is done on their dime. So companies save nearly all their R&D budget.
Also, NASA, and people working for NASA, don't have to pay for the license to use chemical process X, or spend millions on patent research to make sure their product doesn't infringe, or pay hordes of lawyers to stave off competitors who hold patents on something similar. So say you're doing research into growing modified plants for a Mars mission. Instead of paying Monsanto money for the right to play with a gene sequence, then paying a biotech firm money for the right to use a particular manipulation technique, then paying another company for the right to use a chemical test, and paying lawyers on top of it all to make sure what you're twiddling with isn't patented by anyone and that you don't infringe any licenses, you just do it. So of every dollar NASA spends, more of it is spent on, you know, actual research.
Soup?! Cripes, folks. You don't need a microwave to eat condensed soup.. A pocket knife. If the blade is big enough and the soup is thick enough, you don't even need a spoon..
Campbell's Bean with Bacon and a Gerber Gatorback. Dinner is done.
There's lots of stuff you can eat cold wou wouldn't think. Look through the fridge and pantry sometime. Lots of stuff is basically ready to eat, although it might not be tasty that way.
One of my faves to eat when the power is out is hot dogs. Most brands are pre-cooked and will go bad if left unrefridgerated. So eat em first!
You just invernted the oven.
Now, you will agree with me that even a small air conditioner will cool a room with your PC in it as cold as you would like it, no?
Now consider a mid-size refridgerator.
1. Rated for similar BTU to your average entry level AC unit.
2. Cools a smaller space than a room.
3. Cools a better insulated space than a room.
Now why would the refridgerator have any trouble at all with a PC? Perhaps the fact that the refridgerator typically runs 5%-10% of the time, tops, and a single hot plate of food is not enough to inspire fear in the grand scheme of the refridgerators temperature dial has confused you a little?
Are you aware how bad the Beastie Boys got burned over sampling?
Every time a new Beasties album comes out, there's another lawsuit and they refine what's cutting edge for legal sampling. They've had their chops busted over what you or I would think is sane use soooo many times. Flute players who had three notes of audio sampled *after* it had been licensed. AC/DC suing over a riff used in "Rock Hard". License to Ill and Paul's Boutique were an endless headache for them..
So why the hell would you share your stuff with the world when all the world does to you is sue your ass off? Do unto others...
Really? The Gameboy Advance and Gameboy DS *are*. Or haven't you noticed the Pokemon episodes on ROM at Bestbuy?
Funny, proprietary formats haven't hurt *any* of the other game companies. In case you haven't noticed, the Gamecube, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, and Gameboy DS all use proprietary storage. As did Sega's offerings, SNK's, Phillips, etc.
As for the "capacious" argument; How the heck else are you going to put a gigabyte of storage in a portable cheaper than optical media? ROM cartridges? Don't make me laugh.
Seen any ways to copy, download and play GameCube games lately? :)
Yup. Not too hard. It's just a DVD drive under the hood, after all.
But you don't even have to go that far.
This
plus
This
And some freeware software on your PC that I'm not going to even link, because then people will put two and two together and try it.
No.. But someone could call the someone on the Homeland Security committee, spoof the ID of another member, and proceed to have a conversation with the Senator's staff sbout what direction he wants to push a particular bill in response to a security lapse.
There ya go, you know 4-6 months ahead of time what the weak points will be.
I bought a copy of a Kid Rock album a few years ago, and after opening it and playing through it once I thought it was about the worst thing I had heard since.. Well, probably since Sammy Hagar decided he needed a solo album.
So I walk back into the Sam Goody and stood around with the case in my hand, flipping it open and closed till I got a sales drone to see me.
me: Hi, I need to return this.
drone: I'm sorry, but we don't take returns on opened merchandise. Store policy.
me: I know what your store policy is. The disc is defective.
drone: Oh, is it scratched? Sometimes that happens in the packaging process.
me: Naw, the disc looks fine. But whenever I put it in my player, all I get out of the speakers is noise.
drone: Wow, I've never heard of that happening.
me: Only happens with this one disc. The copy of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours I bought here at the same time sounds great.
drone: Hmm. I think we've still got a couple copies on the shelf, we can exchange it for another.
me: I'd rather like to return it versus exchange it, because it was supposed to be a gift and I already had to buy an alternate gift in a hurry thanks to it throwing up through my speakers.
After discussing the model of my player, the fact it also produced garbage when played in my car stereo, the clerk gets his manager to sign off on a refund.
So I'm up at the register with the salesdrone and the cashier to get my money back.
clerk: Wow, I don't think I've heard of any problems with that album.
me: Don't ask me.
clerk: I ought to go stick it in one of the demo players and see how bad it sounds.
[clerk hands me my money and a new reciept]
me: Go for it. Don't put the volume up too loud though, I'll warn you.
[clerk pops it in a player stuck under the counter, player spins up and starts playing "Cowboy"]
clerk: Seems to work just fine, that's weird.
me: Funny, I paid $26 for a CD full of music, I expected music. That sounds like overmodulated static with some profanity thrown in. Not music. It's gotta be defective.
The physical phones aren't around anymore.
Wanna bet? Call up any of the baby bells. I bet they could scrounge you any of their "approved" phones all the way back to the late 60's if you offer the right warehouse lackey the right amount of money. They're assets, and as they're returned they're catalogued and stored. But as they're not a phone in the current issue list, they sit in a warehouse corner.
Want farther back? 50's? 40's? Call one of the major motion picture studios. With the way those guys pack-rat crap, I bet you could have a phone June Cleaver or Lucille Ball used on the air.
Not old enough? Call AT&T. I heard tell of a couple of company museums in Jersey while I worked there. Lots of prototype kind of stuff. Or try the Smithsonian. They probably have a very wide selection of telephones.
What about the White House Public Relations people? They'll be able to tell you which museum got phone number 1. If they're not too productive, mabye you can ring the Hayes' Presidential Center. They may have it.
These were mass produced items, and all in the last 130 years. To think that even one significant model is unlocatable with Google and a phone is ridiculous.
They're pretty common in industry and business. Things like insurance. Say you're going out to check on a water damage claim. Snap a Polaroid of the stained walls, you have something to stuff in the file when you arrive back at the office.
I once saw a glass manufacturer that equipped all their drivers with them, to document cases of glass damage. A couple Polaroids of a half-usable case of glass often dissuaded the customer from claiming all the glass was damaged on delivery and that he should get his new half-order for free.
Course, a lot of the applications that Polaroids are perfect for are also perfect for digital cameras. Digital cameras are cheaper to use, but more difficult to use correctly. But if you're taking 40+ a day, the odd screwed photo from the digital still gets you out cheaper than 40 mostly-perfect Polaroids.
All those ANC folks are still on the CIA/FBI "We don't want you in our country" list.
If Nelson Mandela made the mistake of wandering into the US without a State Department bouncer at his side, they'd prolly give the poor old man a body cavity search.
Personally, I'm suprised babelfish.altavista.digital.com still works.
Might want to rework that..
Myself, I install EverCrack first, so I can start up the patcher and install items 2-10 while it does its thing pulling down three expansions and five years of bugfixes.
Figure it cuts a few hours off the time I'm not feeding my addiction.
He's also the only one that is dead. :/