Good points but easily covered by having the customer acknowledge that structures may change with out notice and that you are not responsible for backward compatibility with ad hoc reports/process that they may have created.
Of course it would be good practice to notify the customer when you do plan on changing such things just to keep them happy. And after about 10 or 20 changes that require the customer to rebuild their own application they may revert to using the interface you originally provided.
Of course the real question that should be asked is what is the interface you have provided lacking that requires the customer to write ad hoc reports themselves? If you get that sorted out you can improve your interface to cover the problem the customer is trying to get around.
Seriously, get over it. What is the problem with a customer accessing customer data in a database? Provide read only access along with the table schema so they know what to query for and call it done.
The only problem you need to watch is to make sure they don't cause performance problems on your server with huge convoluted queries. If that is a problem then you limit them to certain times of the day/week when the load is lighter.
I have worked on several projects where the application we wrote utilized a database. In all cases a document describing the schema was made available so the customer could generate reports as needed.
They claim to use super unleaded gas. Was that before or after they put 10% ethanol in the gas? I suspect they won't get the performance they think out of the engine with such a mixture. This not only will impact the MPG but also the load capacity that the plane can carry in flight.
Now that a precedent has been set, I plan to examine and modify the direct deposit traffic found on the network. Just a few simple modifications, change the account number, add a few zeros to the amount, simple things like that.
Wonder when someone will figure out that their ad is being replaced by something else and sues?
This is an excellent idea! But this needs to be expanded to solve the problem of spam. Send out the typical spam messages. But when some id10t responds to the spam message they are tracked down and their Internet access is suspended.
If this is done then spam will go away. Right now there must be enough id10ts out there that actually respond and buy stuff that it makes sending out spam worth the effort. If you take away enough of the idiots out there that spend money based on spam then the monetary reason for sending spam will go away and the problem will finally be solved.
Just implement gray listing. This will eliminate most spam. Then setup spamassassin to catch the few that do get through.
I set this combination up several years ago for a small company. The owner was about to abandon email entirely because of the amount of spam that was coming through. Once this combination had been implemented he has had no real problems with spam since.
When I first looked at the problem he was getting thousands of spam messages a day. Now there is just a handful that get through the gray listing and spamassassin does a great job of dealing with those.
Check out the gas pumps at the gas station the next time you fill up the car. Almost all pumps in the U.S. now have fuel that has 10% ethanol in it.
Major stories about it in the papers. Apparently the ethanol content ruins fiberglass fuel tanks found in some boats. Ethanol also apparently is less efficient than straight gasoline. This is causing lower miles per gallon in cars than if they were using non-ethanol gasoline. That being the case I have to assume it would affect aircraft engines in a similar fashion. In this case reducing the performance of the engine means less thrust than expected. Not a good thing.
This won't get very far. First obvious issue, the visibility available while in drive mode will make this thing a bitch to change lanes safely. Especially with people riding close up to gawk at it.
And I wonder how it will work with ethanol gas? That apparently is all you can get now for cars. The specs don't specify aircraft fuel.
And the useful load numbers are not that great. 550 lbs and 120 lbs of that is fuel. Today people are hitting the 200lbs mark very easily. I'll bet this beast is sluggish with two adults and full fuel load. And you would have to carefully calculate the CG on such a small plane. Moving 10lbs around in the cabin would most likely through the CG off. (Have seen that in other light airplanes.)
This will be a novelty if it ever actually flies. I doubt they will actually sell these as production aircraft.
Good try. I think I liked the other one from the 50's where the wings came off and were put on a trailer better.
Just imagine, you spend $20.00 on a DVD. Then you have to go on the Internet to register the DVD and provide a credit card that can be billed when you watch the DVD. Then every time you pop the DVD in the player it runs a check to verify that you have registered the DVD and have a valid credit card that is charged $5.00 every time you play it. That is brilliant! The companies selling these won't go out of business, they will have a guaranteed revenue stream from all those DVDs out there.
I wonder if they have patented this idea yet? Need to check and file one right away if they haven't.
This is not the first town to be completely powered by wind. Washington D.C. is the first town to be completely powered by wind. Mind you it is the hot air of all those lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists but it is all wind power.
Watch the up coming election process to see just how much over capacity can be generated by the wind bags in D.C.
They have been using a specially modified version of Eliza to generate the motions. They had a team of lawyers file the first couple then simply started up the simulation and it is not filing all the paperwork. This is eventually going to cause a problem when they are asked where the programs law degree is from.
(e) The lawyer gets to bill an excessive amount for generating some paper work and having lunch with the judge. He then goes to his $2.4 million dollar home in his brand new BMW and sleep with his trophy wife and later on in the week sleep with his mistress.
Lawyer's don't care if their motions are granted or not, they only care if they can bill for the time.
You are correct. Innocence is no defense. While you may be presumed innocent until proven guilty the simple fact that you have been pulled into court before a judge and charged with a crime leaves a an indelible stench of guilt on you.
I recently listened to a defense attorney spend considerable time schooling potential members of a jury in the difference between innocence and not guilt. He apparently was going for the not guilty verdict even though his client participated in the car jacking willingly. Most amazing speech I had heard in a long time. I think he was actually going to argue that his client just went along due to peer pressure and wanted to fit in.
I learned a long time ago that in the court room the judge and attorneys involved are not interested in the truth, the facts, or with dispensing justice. They are there to tell a story and put on an act to convince the jury that their side is telling a better story than the other side.
It reminds me a lot of survivor at the end where the remaining contestants tell a story to convince everyone in the jury to vote them the money.
Amazed that ANYONE actually signed up for this thing before anyone credible had reported that it was real and worked as expected. This is one of those cases where the early sucker...I mean adopter leads the way with their pocket book and loses everything.
The real interesting question here is how much did they get away with before they were busted?
How many times in the past have people reported that the imminent failure of the Internet (or USENET) would occur? Get it straight folks, the Internet as we know it may change but it will not collapse or crash or fail. It will adapt as it always has and continue on.
This is another non-story that should not have been posted.
New mirror surface tank deployed to defeat anti-tank laser system. One surprise found with the highly polished mirror surfaced tanks is that from a distance they looked like the surrounding surfaces. One unexpected side effect however is when a laser was fired at such a tank the beam was reflected hitting infantry in the area causing severe burns.
Next story: kinetic energy weapon developed to take out mirrored surface tanks. They are like little anvils placed in low orbit. When called on they drop from orbit onto the tanks at terminal velocity. A swarm of these weapons can take out a battalion of vehicles in just a few seconds.
It almost is that simple. I thought most 10th graders had the requisite knowledge to know how the atom bomb worked and could put one together assuming they could get enough quality nuclear material to build the core. At least back in my time most 10th graders had the basics on how such a bomb was built. Now a days they probably don't get exposed to such know how. Most of the info for the design can come from several movies that have been made over the years or from a few library searches.
I was disappointed a little in that my copies of "The Way Things Work" did not include a bomb design. Volume 2 does include a lot of info on the nuclear cycle and several reactor designs, but no bomb design.
I think part of the problem with kids today is that they are given almost everything and sit in front of computers playing games most of the time instead of reading and thinking about how things work.
I thought this was a different day...
on
Happy Pi Day
·
· Score: 1
I thought pie day was the day when Bill Gates was hit in the face by a pie.
February 4th, 1998 is when it happened. See the action here:
Why all this fascination with music? All this effort put into creating it and stealing it and breaking DRM and trying to protect it? I finally figured it out. It is to allow a very large number of people to make money by doing something that adds absolutely nothing to this world. It is all fluff and does not make anything better. It simply wastes a lot of time and effort and money that could be put to better use.
Read an article once in Reader's Digest called the Radioactive Boy Scout. At least I think that was the title. Talked about a kid that used some radium paint like that to build a device that concentrated and aimed the particles like a beam. He then used it to create more radioactive material by bombarding things with. If the story was true he caused a minor situation in the neighborhood with hazmat or whatever they were called back then having to move in and collect all the stuff and remove it.
But as in most things this won't end well. Given enough time and resources anything can be cracked. Even these batteries. The fuel will be removed and used in ways that no one wants except for mad men.
As you point out they are talking about box office receipts only. But lets see in the last year they upped the price of tickets at those box offices by more than the 5% they are claiming it increased. So with fewer people going to the movies they still recorded an increase at the box office due to the increased prices placed on those that are still going to the movies.
Seems like a 5% increase is at about the same rate or lower than inflation.
Wake me up again when they report NUMBERS OF TICKETS SOLD as the metric vs. the amount of money collected. That would be a better measure showing if they actually increased viewership or not.
This is just another example of bad science. Someone either wanted these results and found them by either manufacturing them or ignoring data that did not correlate with the "expected" findings. At best they jumped to a conclusion while ignoring the actual cause of the effect, if there was one. Most likely they had a statistical blip due to the small group they sampled. Repeated studies with larger sample groups with control groups looking at non-cat owners and dog owners would probably show this is nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
Good points but easily covered by having the customer acknowledge that structures may change with out notice and that you are not responsible for backward compatibility with ad hoc reports/process that they may have created.
Of course it would be good practice to notify the customer when you do plan on changing such things just to keep them happy. And after about 10 or 20 changes that require the customer to rebuild their own application they may revert to using the interface you originally provided.
Of course the real question that should be asked is what is the interface you have provided lacking that requires the customer to write ad hoc reports themselves? If you get that sorted out you can improve your interface to cover the problem the customer is trying to get around.
Seriously, get over it. What is the problem with a customer accessing customer data in a database? Provide read only access along with the table schema so they know what to query for and call it done.
The only problem you need to watch is to make sure they don't cause performance problems on your server with huge convoluted queries. If that is a problem then you limit them to certain times of the day/week when the load is lighter.
I have worked on several projects where the application we wrote utilized a database. In all cases a document describing the schema was made available so the customer could generate reports as needed.
They claim to use super unleaded gas. Was that before or after they put 10% ethanol in the gas? I suspect they won't get the performance they think out of the engine with such a mixture. This not only will impact the MPG but also the load capacity that the plane can carry in flight.
I don't want all the worlds wealth. Just a very small percentage will do. There is plenty to go around for everyone on /.
Now that a precedent has been set, I plan to examine and modify the direct deposit traffic found on the network. Just a few simple modifications, change the account number, add a few zeros to the amount, simple things like that.
Wonder when someone will figure out that their ad is being replaced by something else and sues?
Yes. That would be appropriate and would fit the crime.
This is an excellent idea! But this needs to be expanded to solve the problem of spam. Send out the typical spam messages. But when some id10t responds to the spam message they are tracked down and their Internet access is suspended.
If this is done then spam will go away. Right now there must be enough id10ts out there that actually respond and buy stuff that it makes sending out spam worth the effort. If you take away enough of the idiots out there that spend money based on spam then the monetary reason for sending spam will go away and the problem will finally be solved.
Just implement gray listing. This will eliminate most spam. Then setup spamassassin to catch the few that do get through.
I set this combination up several years ago for a small company. The owner was about to abandon email entirely because of the amount of spam that was coming through. Once this combination had been implemented he has had no real problems with spam since.
When I first looked at the problem he was getting thousands of spam messages a day. Now there is just a handful that get through the gray listing and spamassassin does a great job of dealing with those.
Check out the gas pumps at the gas station the next time you fill up the car. Almost all pumps in the U.S. now have fuel that has 10% ethanol in it.
Major stories about it in the papers. Apparently the ethanol content ruins fiberglass fuel tanks found in some boats. Ethanol also apparently is less efficient than straight gasoline. This is causing lower miles per gallon in cars than if they were using non-ethanol gasoline. That being the case I have to assume it would affect aircraft engines in a similar fashion. In this case reducing the performance of the engine means less thrust than expected. Not a good thing.
This won't get very far. First obvious issue, the visibility available while in drive mode will make this thing a bitch to change lanes safely. Especially with people riding close up to gawk at it.
And I wonder how it will work with ethanol gas? That apparently is all you can get now for cars. The specs don't specify aircraft fuel.
And the useful load numbers are not that great. 550 lbs and 120 lbs of that is fuel. Today people are hitting the 200lbs mark very easily. I'll bet this beast is sluggish with two adults and full fuel load. And you would have to carefully calculate the CG on such a small plane. Moving 10lbs around in the cabin would most likely through the CG off. (Have seen that in other light airplanes.)
This will be a novelty if it ever actually flies. I doubt they will actually sell these as production aircraft.
Good try. I think I liked the other one from the 50's where the wings came off and were put on a trailer better.
Hence the reason for introducing this "service".
Just imagine, you spend $20.00 on a DVD. Then you have to go on the Internet to register the DVD and provide a credit card that can be billed when you watch the DVD. Then every time you pop the DVD in the player it runs a check to verify that you have registered the DVD and have a valid credit card that is charged $5.00 every time you play it. That is brilliant! The companies selling these won't go out of business, they will have a guaranteed revenue stream from all those DVDs out there.
I wonder if they have patented this idea yet? Need to check and file one right away if they haven't.
This is not the first town to be completely powered by wind. Washington D.C. is the first town to be completely powered by wind. Mind you it is the hot air of all those lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists but it is all wind power.
Watch the up coming election process to see just how much over capacity can be generated by the wind bags in D.C.
They have been using a specially modified version of Eliza to generate the motions. They had a team of lawyers file the first couple then simply started up the simulation and it is not filing all the paperwork. This is eventually going to cause a problem when they are asked where the programs law degree is from.
It's a trick question!
The actual answer in all cases is (e).
(e) The lawyer gets to bill an excessive amount for generating some paper work and having lunch with the judge. He then goes to his $2.4 million dollar home in his brand new BMW and sleep with his trophy wife and later on in the week sleep with his mistress.
Lawyer's don't care if their motions are granted or not, they only care if they can bill for the time.
You are correct. Innocence is no defense. While you may be presumed innocent until proven guilty the simple fact that you have been pulled into court before a judge and charged with a crime leaves a an indelible stench of guilt on you.
I recently listened to a defense attorney spend considerable time schooling potential members of a jury in the difference between innocence and not guilt. He apparently was going for the not guilty verdict even though his client participated in the car jacking willingly. Most amazing speech I had heard in a long time. I think he was actually going to argue that his client just went along due to peer pressure and wanted to fit in.
I learned a long time ago that in the court room the judge and attorneys involved are not interested in the truth, the facts, or with dispensing justice. They are there to tell a story and put on an act to convince the jury that their side is telling a better story than the other side.
It reminds me a lot of survivor at the end where the remaining contestants tell a story to convince everyone in the jury to vote them the money.
If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
Amazed that ANYONE actually signed up for this thing before anyone credible had reported that it was real and worked as expected. This is one of those cases where the early sucker...I mean adopter leads the way with their pocket book and loses everything.
The real interesting question here is how much did they get away with before they were busted?
How many times in the past have people reported that the imminent failure of the Internet (or USENET) would occur? Get it straight folks, the Internet as we know it may change but it will not collapse or crash or fail. It will adapt as it always has and continue on.
This is another non-story that should not have been posted.
Like they said, "Can not tell you what is obscene, but we know it when we see it."
I think that was just a ploy to get a log or p0rn delivered to them at no cost.
New mirror surface tank deployed to defeat anti-tank laser system. One surprise found with the highly polished mirror surfaced tanks is that from a distance they looked like the surrounding surfaces. One unexpected side effect however is when a laser was fired at such a tank the beam was reflected hitting infantry in the area causing severe burns.
Next story: kinetic energy weapon developed to take out mirrored surface tanks. They are like little anvils placed in low orbit. When called on they drop from orbit onto the tanks at terminal velocity. A swarm of these weapons can take out a battalion of vehicles in just a few seconds.
It almost is that simple. I thought most 10th graders had the requisite knowledge to know how the atom bomb worked and could put one together assuming they could get enough quality nuclear material to build the core. At least back in my time most 10th graders had the basics on how such a bomb was built. Now a days they probably don't get exposed to such know how. Most of the info for the design can come from several movies that have been made over the years or from a few library searches.
I was disappointed a little in that my copies of "The Way Things Work" did not include a bomb design. Volume 2 does include a lot of info on the nuclear cycle and several reactor designs, but no bomb design.
I think part of the problem with kids today is that they are given almost everything and sit in front of computers playing games most of the time instead of reading and thinking about how things work.
I thought pie day was the day when Bill Gates was hit in the face by a pie.
February 4th, 1998 is when it happened. See the action here:
http://www.bitstorm.org/gates/
For a few years I took pies into work on that day. Everyone really liked them.
Why all this fascination with music? All this effort put into creating it and stealing it and breaking DRM and trying to protect it? I finally figured it out. It is to allow a very large number of people to make money by doing something that adds absolutely nothing to this world. It is all fluff and does not make anything better. It simply wastes a lot of time and effort and money that could be put to better use.
People need to realize this and just give it up.
Read an article once in Reader's Digest called the Radioactive Boy Scout. At least I think that was the title. Talked about a kid that used some radium paint like that to build a device that concentrated and aimed the particles like a beam. He then used it to create more radioactive material by bombarding things with. If the story was true he caused a minor situation in the neighborhood with hazmat or whatever they were called back then having to move in and collect all the stuff and remove it.
But as in most things this won't end well. Given enough time and resources anything can be cracked. Even these batteries. The fuel will be removed and used in ways that no one wants except for mad men.
As you point out they are talking about box office receipts only. But lets see in the last year they upped the price of tickets at those box offices by more than the 5% they are claiming it increased. So with fewer people going to the movies they still recorded an increase at the box office due to the increased prices placed on those that are still going to the movies.
Seems like a 5% increase is at about the same rate or lower than inflation.
Wake me up again when they report NUMBERS OF TICKETS SOLD as the metric vs. the amount of money collected. That would be a better measure showing if they actually increased viewership or not.
This is just another example of bad science. Someone either wanted these results and found them by either manufacturing them or ignoring data that did not correlate with the "expected" findings. At best they jumped to a conclusion while ignoring the actual cause of the effect, if there was one. Most likely they had a statistical blip due to the small group they sampled. Repeated studies with larger sample groups with control groups looking at non-cat owners and dog owners would probably show this is nonsense.
Sounds like bad science to me.