right now I have to rely on the honesty of my guests in disclosing if their camera has imaging capabilities or not... (hint: I work with secured technologies).
hint: it's not that secure if you're relying on the honesty of your guests.:-)
"...I took a photo of a stranger's car because I believed she was abusing the disabled placard system..."
OT: I'm curious, had you been tailing this person and become familiar with their physical abilities? Or, did you witness someone park in a blue space, get out of their car, and appear to walk into the mall with no obvious problems?
I ask because a member of my family has a neurological disease that makes it difficult to walk due to poor balance and/or difficult to walk a long distance. Their doctor ordered them to use the blue spaces and not over-excert themselves as this can further aggravate the condition. It's a completely legitimate and doctor prescribed use of the blue space.
Because this person is very self-conscious of the condition, they have learned to mask its effects -most of the time. This results in the situation where they park in the blue space and *appear* to be walking into the mall just fine. They have ever received the "what are doing parking in that space asshole?" looks in the past. If that stranger were to start photographing *me* I sure would be pissed to.
This is not a hyper-sensitive insesitive clod post, I'm just honestly curious about differnet forms of parking space vigilantism. Do you often photograph people you don't believe should be using the blue spaces?
This is not a flame! I'm curious because I also perform a little parking space vigilantism. When someone parks in a space so crooked they make the space next to them virtually unusable, I'll squeeze my car in so they have to climb into their car from the other side. I drive an old beater, what are they gonna do? Key my hood? So what. Besides, they know they suck.
Sounds really neat, but how about a FAQ at their website? And what's with the site's layout!?!? As an engineering type I kind-of like it, but as Joe Average (the mode my brain is usually in) I can't find crap.
It's also funny that after viewing the demo and browsing some of their site, I reviewed the section on downloading and giving "Archy" (formerly "THE") a test drive. There's, like, 140 steps just to download and install this thing on Windows. The entire MS-Office suite of 10+ bloat-ware tools only takes 5 clicks of "Next."
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea and I'm going to look for a cheap copy of Raskin's book right now.
If you're not familiar with the history of the open-source 3D modelling tool known as "Blender," I highly recommend taking 5 minutes to read about it here: http://http//www.blender3d.org/cms/History.53.0.ht ml It's a great story of how this particular set of proprietary code escaped to the freedom of open-source under the GNU Public License. (With a little help from an incredible fan-user base.)
"...how about working on the content instead of the wrapper?"
Hmmm. I can see you've never been involved with sales.... ever.:-)
Did you know there are still people buying the Matrix video game. It sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. Magazine reviewers (who were't bought-off) warned of its suckiness. But people still buy it.
Isn't it wierd how bad an event is can depend so heavily on how it happened? I mean, I'd be pissed if this happened to me but I think I would be less pissed if it was due to component failure rather than human error (actually, sounds more like process or Q/A error, but I digress). And even if it was component failure, couldn't that (often) be ultimately traced back to human failure somewhere further up the line.
Oooooh ooooh! I hope the figure out a way to use easy-to-break and impossible-to-find vendor-proprietary dongles for all my connections! That would be awesome!
I agree that it's pretty lame to use a company's resources to steal their business, but I've never understood the notion of deep company loyalty. True, a company may "write me a check" but the company does NOT "put bread on my table", I do. The check was in exchange for the services I provided -nothing more, nothing less. Don't get all sentimental about company loyalty. It's a business. When times get tough, you might get a pink slip just as fast as the next guy.
Loyalty does mean something nowadays, it's just that it's often grossly mis-placed. People apply loyalty to their employer, but not to their family. They apply loyalty to a brand of drink or jeans, but not to their community. Loyalty abounds, it's just used in silly ways.
My logic in 1999 was this: Everything is always breaking anyways and we still seem to get by, why should 1/1/01 be any different? Servers die, applications crash, battery backups fail, power outages happen, cars crash, trains derail, planes wreck, secretaries with "temporary" admin permissions delete entire file servers. From my point of view, I'm amazed that we even make it from one day to the next!
"Yea, but on 1/1/01, it's ALL gonna break at the same time!!!!" Dude, it's already all breaking at the same time. We'll be fine.
High School spring break in Panama City, FL. (Where else right?). Getting the obligatory air brushed T-shirt when I notice the artist finishes by spraying some kind of clear coat over the shirt's art. "What's that for?" I ask. "Keeps the paint from washing off." He replies
"Have you done cars?"
"Yea, lots. But that uses a special paint... blah blah..."
"Hmmmm... Well, what if you used T-shirt paint on the car instead and didn't put the finish coat on it?"
"Hmmmm... I dunno. It should wash off but I don't know for sure."
"Hmmmm... Let's find out."
"Are you sure dude?"
"Yea, let's give it a shot."
Five hours later, my car was covered bumper-to-bumper with beautiful air brushed beach scenes. Yes, I was sober before, during, and after my decision to do this. Man, you thought the "Tony & Julie forever" license plates were tacky, this was incredible! After baking in the Sun for 5 days, it didn't exactly wash off too easy, but it did come off with a lot of elbow grease.
Spring break hotel: $200
Beer for week: $250
Completely air brushed car: $80 cash
Look on parents' face when I pulled in the driveway...:-)
My experience with 3 different Internet connection providers has been that NONE of them had stated support for Linux. Linux as an unsupported platform for [fill in ISP here] is usually not a technology issue; rather, it's a tech support issue. Their techsupport staff needs to be able to walk Joe Average through 10 easy steps of "click this, click that, etc..." Troubleshooting via Linux would require one of two things: A) Far more complex read-response scripts. Or B) Far more educated techsupport staff. Neither seems likely to happen.
My latest foray into high(ish) speed access at home resulted in yet another frustrating conversation: (I suspect the situation is similar for cell-based access.)
What's my PPoE connection information?
Huh? I need to login to your PC to complete the setup.
No you don't, I just need the connection information to put in my firewall.
The firewall is on your PC. It doesn't matter.
No, the firewall is a dedicated piece of hardware.
Sir, if you'll just let me use your computer...
[I log him into a linux shell...]
Uhhhh, we only support Windows. I don't think this computer can connect to the Internet. Has it logged into the Internet before?
[rant]Why does everyone think you log-on, log-into, or log-onto the friggin Internet?!?[/rant]
The un-supporting meat bags answering the phones have NO idea what a default gateway is (nevermind the knuckle-draggers they send to connect it), yet they are responsible for troubleshooting network connectivity! That is why so few service providers "support" Linux. The sad thing is, they could really save themselves a lot of grief if they would just put the 4 or 5 nuggets of useful information we need in the initial welcome e-mail. Instead, they bury the meaningful info in 40 pages of screen-by-screen click fests. Finally, on page 34 I find what I'm looking for: The IP of their DNS server! Yipee! Now it's back to my welcome e-mail to search for my login ID amongst 6 pages of marketing bullshit.
Sun specifically will not under any circumstance include GPL'd code in the Solaris kernel. Sun was recently somewhat screwed by Intel. Sun had been waiting for Intel to release wireless drivers (mainly for Solaris x86 laptop/wireless users). When Intel finally did release the code, they did it under GPL. Thus, completely screwing Sun's ability to include the drivers in their distribution. Technically, they could add the drivers, but they strictly adhere to the idea that NO GPL code will become part of the Solaris kernel.
I'm not suggesting Sun hasn't contributed anything to the tech-community, but to say they were "founded on open source" reminds me of Animal Farm.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Sun kernel guru, but I know some. Some of the "facts" above may be a little munged in translation.
Lego Wars: Evenly divide pieces and plates between 2 players. You had 30 minutes to build a fortress, then arrange Lego people on/around/in your fortress. Lego people had to be at least 50% visable and only standing on one leg. Alternate turns throwing pennies at the opposing fortress to knock down Lego people. There was no limit to force of throw so the strategy was part aim, part obliterate the other fortress. Boy did we get popped in the hand sometimes! My favorite strategy: devise walls and shields that would drop into place after the game started. The shields would be held up by a very fragile support. When the pennies started flying, my walls would drop down and provide 100% coverage of the Lego person!
Lego car race down our steep driveway. Rules basically consisted of evenly dividing all legos amongst competitors. The really good wheels were distributed based on coin flips. Idea was to get all the way to the bottom of the hill ahead of everyone else (much like an actual race!) Main problem was vearing off into yard.
Loved it! I could link the rings in 7 seconds. I haven't touched one in almost 20 years (gasp!) but I can still solve it in my mind. I should get one off ebay and see if I really can still solve it.
Hey Google, please don't make us read those wacky JPG/GIF letter scrambles with criss-cross lines and input the random characters into a field before submitting a search.
"Hold on a sec while I Goog- Huh? Grrrr.... H... P... 7... O... wait no, 7... zero... ummm...
...what happened next illustrates one reason journalists have such a hard time calling it like they see it on science issues.
That's the problem, the journalists usually don't see it at all. Most science reporting I hear through the news is horrible. I'm not just talking about the kind of horribleness that results when Joe Reporter tries to distill quantum entanglement into a one sentance explanation that Joe Sixpack can nod along with and "understand". Rather, there seems to be a flawed notion amongst journalists (IMO) that all sides of an issue have equally valid arguments.
If you want to demonstrate journalistic depth by presenting the numerous and complex issues around a subject, great! But please provide the proper context for Joe Average that captures the fact that positions A and B are from the leaders of the field for the last 30 years and positions C, D, and E are from the minority lunatic fringe that jumped into the game last summer.
ST:TNG Episode 106. When Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) and Ensign Robin (Ashley Judd -yummy) develop a strobe-light sequence to counteract the effects of a mind-controlling VR game.
Thanks for posting a memory. That game was awesome. It came to the local arcade when I was 14. It's how I learned to drive a manual transmission. No kidding. Sure, a real car felt different, but I had already internalized the motions of hand/feet coordination.
The sequal had a course that finished with a tunnel followed by a high-bank right turn to the finish line. I was able to shave 4-ish seconds off my champion challenge lap time with the following stunt: When entering the tunnel, drive up the left side a little, come back down and drive up the right side. You should have enough momentum loop the circular tunnel like a roller coaster. (No big deal so far -this trick was shown in one of the demo laps I think.) Instead of exiting the tunnel on the road headed for the final hard right bank, I would extend my ceiling run, come swooping down the left side of the tunnel and launch off the last right edge of the tunnel's bank. Done properly, I would fly out of the tunnel directly towards the finish line and barrel roll through the air. It was spectacular! Usually I would crash through the finish line, but it didn't matter -the race was over. about 33% of the time, it would be a perfect 360 degree barrell roll and I would land on my wheels blasting through the finish line.
From an earlier post: "I think this is just a case of government seeing another opportunity to use people."
Correction: You should think this is just a case of your neighbor seeing another opportunity to take away your money. Assuming we're talking about the US, "we the people" empower the government to use guns to take away resources from other people. NEVER lose site of this. It's the same notion as guns don't kill people, people kill people. Governments don't, on their own, take money from people. People USE the government to take money from people.
From another earlier post: "voip tax on businesses can be a way to focus taxation on companies that won't go broke even if taxed"
A similar notion applies here. COMPANIES DON'T PAY TAXES! Companies merely collect taxes from people and forward the money to the government. NEVER lose site of this either.
Argue these points as much as you like. Left-wing spin or right-wing spin doesn't matter. The basic fact is that people create and empower government to use the threat of deadly force to take away your property and give it to someone else. To some extent, this is usually considered okay. The other basic fact is for EVERY tax that a company pays, somewhere, somehow, their customer (which is eventually a person) pays for the tax. It may be a long path in some instances, but in the end, a PERSON pays for every tax levied on any corporation.
Slashdot Mirror
right now I have to rely on the honesty of my guests in disclosing if their camera has imaging capabilities or not... (hint: I work with secured technologies).
hint: it's not that secure if you're relying on the honesty of your guests. :-)
"...I took a photo of a stranger's car because I believed she was abusing the disabled placard system..."
OT: I'm curious, had you been tailing this person and become familiar with their physical abilities? Or, did you witness someone park in a blue space, get out of their car, and appear to walk into the mall with no obvious problems?
I ask because a member of my family has a neurological disease that makes it difficult to walk due to poor balance and/or difficult to walk a long distance. Their doctor ordered them to use the blue spaces and not over-excert themselves as this can further aggravate the condition. It's a completely legitimate and doctor prescribed use of the blue space.
Because this person is very self-conscious of the condition, they have learned to mask its effects -most of the time. This results in the situation where they park in the blue space and *appear* to be walking into the mall just fine. They have ever received the "what are doing parking in that space asshole?" looks in the past. If that stranger were to start photographing *me* I sure would be pissed to.
This is not a hyper-sensitive insesitive clod post, I'm just honestly curious about differnet forms of parking space vigilantism. Do you often photograph people you don't believe should be using the blue spaces?
This is not a flame! I'm curious because I also perform a little parking space vigilantism. When someone parks in a space so crooked they make the space next to them virtually unusable, I'll squeeze my car in so they have to climb into their car from the other side. I drive an old beater, what are they gonna do? Key my hood? So what. Besides, they know they suck.
Sounds really neat, but how about a FAQ at their website? And what's with the site's layout!?!? As an engineering type I kind-of like it, but as Joe Average (the mode my brain is usually in) I can't find crap.
It's also funny that after viewing the demo and browsing some of their site, I reviewed the section on downloading and giving "Archy" (formerly "THE") a test drive. There's, like, 140 steps just to download and install this thing on Windows. The entire MS-Office suite of 10+ bloat-ware tools only takes 5 clicks of "Next."
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea and I'm going to look for a cheap copy of Raskin's book right now.
Oops, double htttp's in link. Try this: http://www.blender3d.org/cms/History.53.0.html
If you're not familiar with the history of the open-source 3D modelling tool known as "Blender," I highly recommend taking 5 minutes to read about it here: http://http//www.blender3d.org/cms/History.53.0.ht ml It's a great story of how this particular set of proprietary code escaped to the freedom of open-source under the GNU Public License. (With a little help from an incredible fan-user base.)
"...how about working on the content instead of the wrapper?"
Hmmm. I can see you've never been involved with sales.... ever. :-)
Did you know there are still people buying the Matrix video game. It sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. Magazine reviewers (who were't bought-off) warned of its suckiness. But people still buy it.
Isn't it wierd how bad an event is can depend so heavily on how it happened? I mean, I'd be pissed if this happened to me but I think I would be less pissed if it was due to component failure rather than human error (actually, sounds more like process or Q/A error, but I digress). And even if it was component failure, couldn't that (often) be ultimately traced back to human failure somewhere further up the line.
I dunno, we humans are strange.
You know what'd be crazy ? A new movie. Like with new ideas. That'd be crazy.
Well sure, but Disney's not talking to Pixar anymore... :-(
Oooooh ooooh! I hope the figure out a way to use easy-to-break and impossible-to-find vendor-proprietary dongles for all my connections! That would be awesome!
I agree that it's pretty lame to use a company's resources to steal their business, but I've never understood the notion of deep company loyalty. True, a company may "write me a check" but the company does NOT "put bread on my table", I do. The check was in exchange for the services I provided -nothing more, nothing less. Don't get all sentimental about company loyalty. It's a business. When times get tough, you might get a pink slip just as fast as the next guy.
Loyalty does mean something nowadays, it's just that it's often grossly mis-placed. People apply loyalty to their employer, but not to their family. They apply loyalty to a brand of drink or jeans, but not to their community. Loyalty abounds, it's just used in silly ways.
My logic in 1999 was this: Everything is always breaking anyways and we still seem to get by, why should 1/1/01 be any different? Servers die, applications crash, battery backups fail, power outages happen, cars crash, trains derail, planes wreck, secretaries with "temporary" admin permissions delete entire file servers. From my point of view, I'm amazed that we even make it from one day to the next!
"Yea, but on 1/1/01, it's ALL gonna break at the same time!!!!" Dude, it's already all breaking at the same time. We'll be fine.
And now I get to say: "See, I told you so."
High School spring break in Panama City, FL. (Where else right?). Getting the obligatory air brushed T-shirt when I notice the artist finishes by spraying some kind of clear coat over the shirt's art. "What's that for?" I ask. "Keeps the paint from washing off." He replies
"Have you done cars?"
"Yea, lots. But that uses a special paint... blah blah..."
"Hmmmm... Well, what if you used T-shirt paint on the car instead and didn't put the finish coat on it?"
"Hmmmm... I dunno. It should wash off but I don't know for sure."
"Hmmmm... Let's find out."
"Are you sure dude?"
"Yea, let's give it a shot."
Five hours later, my car was covered bumper-to-bumper with beautiful air brushed beach scenes. Yes, I was sober before, during, and after my decision to do this. Man, you thought the "Tony & Julie forever" license plates were tacky, this was incredible! After baking in the Sun for 5 days, it didn't exactly wash off too easy, but it did come off with a lot of elbow grease.
Spring break hotel: $200 :-)
Beer for week: $250
Completely air brushed car: $80 cash
Look on parents' face when I pulled in the driveway...
My experience with 3 different Internet connection providers has been that NONE of them had stated support for Linux. Linux as an unsupported platform for [fill in ISP here] is usually not a technology issue; rather, it's a tech support issue. Their techsupport staff needs to be able to walk Joe Average through 10 easy steps of "click this, click that, etc..." Troubleshooting via Linux would require one of two things: A) Far more complex read-response scripts. Or B) Far more educated techsupport staff. Neither seems likely to happen.
My latest foray into high(ish) speed access at home resulted in yet another frustrating conversation: (I suspect the situation is similar for cell-based access.)
What's my PPoE connection information?
Huh? I need to login to your PC to complete the setup.
No you don't, I just need the connection information to put in my firewall.
The firewall is on your PC. It doesn't matter.
No, the firewall is a dedicated piece of hardware.
Sir, if you'll just let me use your computer...
[I log him into a linux shell...]
Uhhhh, we only support Windows. I don't think this computer can connect to the Internet. Has it logged into the Internet before?
[rant]Why does everyone think you log-on, log-into, or log-onto the friggin Internet?!?[/rant]
The un-supporting meat bags answering the phones have NO idea what a default gateway is (nevermind the knuckle-draggers they send to connect it), yet they are responsible for troubleshooting network connectivity! That is why so few service providers "support" Linux. The sad thing is, they could really save themselves a lot of grief if they would just put the 4 or 5 nuggets of useful information we need in the initial welcome e-mail. Instead, they bury the meaningful info in 40 pages of screen-by-screen click fests. Finally, on page 34 I find what I'm looking for: The IP of their DNS server! Yipee! Now it's back to my welcome e-mail to search for my login ID amongst 6 pages of marketing bullshit.
Hey, it's not some unfiltered random post. This story submission went through stringent /. editorial filtering and -Oh wait a minute...
Sun specifically will not under any circumstance include GPL'd code in the Solaris kernel. Sun was recently somewhat screwed by Intel. Sun had been waiting for Intel to release wireless drivers (mainly for Solaris x86 laptop/wireless users). When Intel finally did release the code, they did it under GPL. Thus, completely screwing Sun's ability to include the drivers in their distribution. Technically, they could add the drivers, but they strictly adhere to the idea that NO GPL code will become part of the Solaris kernel.
I'm not suggesting Sun hasn't contributed anything to the tech-community, but to say they were "founded on open source" reminds me of Animal Farm.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Sun kernel guru, but I know some. Some of the "facts" above may be a little munged in translation.
Two lego games we devised were...
Lego Wars: Evenly divide pieces and plates between 2 players. You had 30 minutes to build a fortress, then arrange Lego people on/around/in your fortress. Lego people had to be at least 50% visable and only standing on one leg. Alternate turns throwing pennies at the opposing fortress to knock down Lego people. There was no limit to force of throw so the strategy was part aim, part obliterate the other fortress. Boy did we get popped in the hand sometimes! My favorite strategy: devise walls and shields that would drop into place after the game started. The shields would be held up by a very fragile support. When the pennies started flying, my walls would drop down and provide 100% coverage of the Lego person!
Lego car race down our steep driveway. Rules basically consisted of evenly dividing all legos amongst competitors. The really good wheels were distributed based on coin flips. Idea was to get all the way to the bottom of the hill ahead of everyone else (much like an actual race!) Main problem was vearing off into yard.
Jeeez, I was kinda dorky way back then too?
Loved it! I could link the rings in 7 seconds. I haven't touched one in almost 20 years (gasp!) but I can still solve it in my mind. I should get one off ebay and see if I really can still solve it.
heh heh heh, my buddy got screwed with the Twin Pod Cloud Car that Christmas. I got the X-Wing. His parents sucked, mine ruled!
up for 30 sec. w/ no FP???
Hey Google, please don't make us read those wacky JPG/GIF letter scrambles with criss-cross lines and input the random characters into a field before submitting a search.
"Hold on a sec while I Goog- Huh? Grrrr.... H... P... 7... O... wait no, 7... zero... ummm...
That's the problem, the journalists usually don't see it at all. Most science reporting I hear through the news is horrible. I'm not just talking about the kind of horribleness that results when Joe Reporter tries to distill quantum entanglement into a one sentance explanation that Joe Sixpack can nod along with and "understand". Rather, there seems to be a flawed notion amongst journalists (IMO) that all sides of an issue have equally valid arguments.
If you want to demonstrate journalistic depth by presenting the numerous and complex issues around a subject, great! But please provide the proper context for Joe Average that captures the fact that positions A and B are from the leaders of the field for the last 30 years and positions C, D, and E are from the minority lunatic fringe that jumped into the game last summer.
ST:TNG Episode 106. When Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) and Ensign Robin (Ashley Judd -yummy) develop a strobe-light sequence to counteract the effects of a mind-controlling VR game.
Thanks for posting a memory. That game was awesome. It came to the local arcade when I was 14. It's how I learned to drive a manual transmission. No kidding. Sure, a real car felt different, but I had already internalized the motions of hand/feet coordination.
The sequal had a course that finished with a tunnel followed by a high-bank right turn to the finish line. I was able to shave 4-ish seconds off my champion challenge lap time with the following stunt: When entering the tunnel, drive up the left side a little, come back down and drive up the right side. You should have enough momentum loop the circular tunnel like a roller coaster. (No big deal so far -this trick was shown in one of the demo laps I think.) Instead of exiting the tunnel on the road headed for the final hard right bank, I would extend my ceiling run, come swooping down the left side of the tunnel and launch off the last right edge of the tunnel's bank. Done properly, I would fly out of the tunnel directly towards the finish line and barrel roll through the air. It was spectacular! Usually I would crash through the finish line, but it didn't matter -the race was over. about 33% of the time, it would be a perfect 360 degree barrell roll and I would land on my wheels blasting through the finish line.
From an earlier post: "I think this is just a case of government seeing another opportunity to use people."
Correction: You should think this is just a case of your neighbor seeing another opportunity to take away your money. Assuming we're talking about the US, "we the people" empower the government to use guns to take away resources from other people. NEVER lose site of this. It's the same notion as guns don't kill people, people kill people. Governments don't, on their own, take money from people. People USE the government to take money from people.
From another earlier post: "voip tax on businesses can be a way to focus taxation on companies that won't go broke even if taxed"
A similar notion applies here. COMPANIES DON'T PAY TAXES! Companies merely collect taxes from people and forward the money to the government. NEVER lose site of this either.
Argue these points as much as you like. Left-wing spin or right-wing spin doesn't matter. The basic fact is that people create and empower government to use the threat of deadly force to take away your property and give it to someone else. To some extent, this is usually considered okay. The other basic fact is for EVERY tax that a company pays, somewhere, somehow, their customer (which is eventually a person) pays for the tax. It may be a long path in some instances, but in the end, a PERSON pays for every tax levied on any corporation.
Hey, it's better than /. being Dremelled. (dremilled? dremeled? dremmeled?)