Great idea Opera - I wonder if other companies would consider
doing this - i.e. get free Windows Vista registration on Bill Gates
50th birthday? BTW,
here's a direct link to the
Free Registration Page
and I see chat, photos, and some podcasting/MP3's are available... but no live webcam feed of
their party - I'm sure that
would be more exciting that the
concrete cam...;-)
I've had six bats show up in my house over the years (including one in the kitchen sink - good thing my wife didn't see that one)... while I like 'em for the insect/mosquito eating, I prefer them outside rather than swooping around inside my house...
BTW, that URL shows me using a pair of screen windows to "fend" one off (I was only armed with a frisbee) - I figured that would provide a pretty good radar return as "solid" surface.
I agree... Google had a PR/Marketing event, everyone had a few beers, listened to some music, talked business, and generally had a good time... like most companies do periodically... so not so big of deal... but Google is on one heck of a roll, so all the power to 'em.
I was disappointed that GoogleGirl didn't show up - maybe I'll invite her to my next
birthday party;-)
Carrying the analogy a bit further, my guess is that (currently) the
Slashdot crowd tends to be a younger generation and most
of the "old-farts" reject it - try to explain it to your
parents or grandparents. So in the next few decades,
will the younger crowd accept Slashdot... or will the
average age of/. readers just continue to increase?
Disclaimer: I'm an "old-fart" - had my
40th birthday
two years ago...;-)
Ditto parent's comments about target audiance is home automation... I've used X10 for my christmas lights (which is really just another power control application) but z-wave is one of the technologies I'm looking at migrating too - just wish they were as mature/common/cheap/etc. as X10.
From the article: Bugs can be reported to TippingPoint through the Zero Day Initiative Web site. TippingPoint investigates all reports and will deal only with reputable researchers, Endler said. "We need to know exactly who we are working with," he said. "We don't want to work with black hats or illegal groups." The term "black hat" is used to describe criminal hackers.
So I gotta wonder how they are gonna determine who is reputable and who is not...
Ironically, a few years ago, I put up some satellite photos of my house in Colorado... and the Virtual Earth has the same ones clearly showing the drought of 2002 with a bunch of brown grass - not realistic to expect real-time imagery, but I'm surprised not a more recent pass.
If you know of a large LCD-type sign board that is USB and/or IP addressable, drop me a note - I would LOVE to hang this on the outside of my house for christmas 2005 and allow Internet folks to provide text inputs... kinda along the lines of this site where you can enter text to show up on his screen saver.
While I'm a fan of model trains, the referenced site isn't mine... my latest whimsical site is watching paint dry ... but ummmm, a Google Earth hoax/prank would be pretty funny.
The locals already know this, but for those/.'ers that happen to be in the area, one easy and decent place to see the launch is from Cocoa Beach since it is just across the water from the launch pad. I saw a pre-dawn launch a while back from the Hilton that was pretty darn awesome. They have a big parking lot and you can simply walk through the lobby, grab a drink, check out the bikini's - maybe the Coppertone Girl will be there - and then watch the sky light up... although won't be quite as awesome as a night launch.
/.'ers will be checking their watches to measure the delay from seeing engine ignition to when you hear it and the dividing by 5 to get the distance in miles!;-)
I hacked up some Perl code a while back to use the built-in prtdiag command on Solaris for those machines that provide temperature data -take a look at gettemp if that is helpful to 'ya.
One nice thing about host monitoring is that if you lose a fan or have some localized cooling issue, you will know about it this way, rather than via a whole-room temperature monitor. There are certainly scalability issues with doing per-host monitoring though.
My wife was actually reading this over lunch in the print edition
and got a chuckle out of the closing paragraph:
"Soccer moms said their young children love minivans,
which they regard as 'a playhouse on wheels,' but teens
regard them as lame and want SUVs."
and her comment was "DUHHHH!!!!"
I was kinda surprised that the "blog marketing expert" didn't say what Mom's thought about minivans, since (after all) they are the ones buying it, not the kids. My wife used to own a red Mazda sports car, but after our second kid, we bought a Toyota Sienna XLE Minivan... and when the salesperson (who was actually nice) starting explaining all the "cool features" she stopped him saying "It's a minivan; there is nothing cool about it"
GIS = Geographic Information Systems... here's a decent writeup from Wikipedia... basically allows you to analyze data in terms of location and draw inferences from it. So for instance, based on rainfall patterns, you can predict where grass will grow;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Great idea Opera - I wonder if other companies would consider doing this - i.e. get free Windows Vista registration on Bill Gates 50th birthday? BTW, here's a direct link to the Free Registration Page and I see chat, photos, and some podcasting/MP3's are available ... but no live webcam feed of
their party - I'm sure that
would be more exciting that the
concrete cam ... ;-)
Concrete Cam is up and running ... ;-)
BTW, that URL shows me using a pair of screen windows to "fend" one off (I was only armed with a frisbee) - I figured that would provide a pretty good radar return as "solid" surface.
I agree ... Google had a PR/Marketing event, everyone had a few beers, listened to some music, talked business, and generally had a good time ... like most companies do periodically ... so not so big of deal ... but Google is on one heck of a roll, so all the power to 'em.
I was disappointed that GoogleGirl didn't show up - maybe I'll invite her to my next
birthday party ;-)
About as pointless as watching grass grow ...
Disclaimer: I'm an "old-fart" - had my 40th birthday two years ago ... ;-)
NASA says they will NOT do this ...
Any bets on when the Redmond gang will offer their Ad network?
Ditto parent's comments about target audiance is home automation ... I've used X10 for my christmas lights (which is really just another power control application) but z-wave is one of the technologies I'm looking at migrating too - just wish they were as mature/common/cheap/etc. as X10.
So I gotta wonder how they are gonna determine who is reputable and who is not ...
Ironically, a few years ago, I put up some satellite photos of my house in Colorado ... and the Virtual Earth has the same ones clearly showing the drought of 2002 with a bunch of brown grass - not realistic to expect real-time imagery, but I'm surprised not a more recent pass.
If you know of a large LCD-type sign board that is USB and/or IP addressable, drop me a note - I would LOVE to hang this on the outside of my house for christmas 2005 and allow Internet folks to provide text inputs ... kinda along the lines of this site where you can enter text to show up on his screen saver.
While I'm a fan of model trains, the referenced site isn't mine ... my latest whimsical site is watching paint dry ... but ummmm, a Google Earth hoax/prank would be pretty funny.
Agent Green correctly points out a few of the real world issues that make doing it for a real a bit of a challenge.
As the person who pulled off the Christmas Lights/Webcam Hoax let me just say Well Done Pablo Belmonte - the world needs more levity like this! ;-)
One nice thing about host monitoring is that if you lose a fan or have some localized cooling issue, you will know about it this way, rather than via a whole-room temperature monitor. There are certainly scalability issues with doing per-host monitoring though.
Gatersoft - eats up all the competition.
The last sentance in Dr. Feynman's Appendix F on the Challenger Shuttle Accident Report: For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
"Soccer moms said their young children love minivans, which they regard as 'a playhouse on wheels,' but teens regard them as lame and want SUVs."
and her comment was "DUHHHH!!!!"
I was kinda surprised that the "blog marketing expert" didn't say what Mom's thought about minivans, since (after all) they are the ones buying it, not the kids. My wife used to own a red Mazda sports car, but after our second kid, we bought a Toyota Sienna XLE Minivan ... and when the salesperson (who was actually nice) starting explaining all the "cool features" she stopped him saying "It's a minivan; there is nothing cool about it"
GIS = Geographic Information Systems ... here's a decent writeup from Wikipedia ... basically allows you to analyze data in terms of location and draw inferences from it. So for instance, based on rainfall patterns, you can predict where grass will grow ;-)
Watching-Grass-Grow.Com
GmailFS - The Google File System as discussed on Slashdot ...
And my guess is you won't find much "sense" on Hulk's Blog ... but then again, did you really think it was a Big Green Monster writing those things?!?
So while it's "earthlike", I guess they won't be growing grass anytime soon there ...