Patriot Act + Zero Tolerance = Be VERY Careful
on
Steel Bolt Hacking
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Hey novice lockpickers, be VERY careful! Although the U.S. Patriot Act and Zero Tolerance are not directly connected, the type of thinking is...
In New Jersey, four children received school suspensions for "shooting" at each other (bang! bang!) with extended index fingers. The kids had violated their school's zero-tolerance policy against "weapons".
Commonwealth v. Milo A 12-year-old student drew pictures that depicted his teacher being shot.
In Irvington, N.J., two eight-year-olds have been charged with "making terrorist threats." The boys were "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun,"
...because reputation counts for a lot in the gaming industry.
I respectfully disagree. Xbox seems to be doing fine. Of all the companies who face a reputation problem among gamer-techno-types, M$ has to be one of the worst. M$ gets openly slammed by/. on an almost daily basis, yet the Xbox is still going strong.
I doubt the few niche articles on/. and hardocp are any part of the average mom-dad purchaser. If Infinum Labs can hit the market with a large enough mainstream advetising campaign, they could actually make some money.
I guess there are at least 70,000 suckers in the world...
Absolutely! AOL alone has over 30 MILLION subscribers!!! That means that all Infinum Labs needs to do is convince 0.003% of AOL subscribers to buy. (30M based on recent msnbc article.)
Ha ha haa! Now K's of/.ers have had their sub-concious/.ed by those damn singing kids! Now, if Disney could figure a way to get $ each time THAT song goes around in someone's head...
Oooops! You're right. Jumpman on the C64 rocked (along with M.U.L.E. already mentioned in an earlier post). Of my favorite Jumpman levels was when clones of your guy would start appearing at ~10 sec. intervals and trace your path. You'd have to jump,jump,jump to introduce pauses in your clones' path so you could navigate the level.
Well Zork of course, do we even need to mention it? And while I wouldn't argue it was a classic, Zork Nemesis on the PC had great atmosphere and some pretty original puzzles.
BTW: Most previous posts are NOT classic games! Quake 3, Chrono Trigger, anything-64!?!? COME ON PEOPLE! Sure, "classic" is a subjective term, but can't we at least agree that classic games refer to pre-90's games!?!
Some good examples would be Megaman, Tetris, or Metroid (not Super-Metroid). If these other titles start showing up as so-called "classics" then that means I'm getting old and that just can't be! Who cares about fancy-schmancy 64-bit graphics and sound!? My 8-bit NES still kicks ass with all the latest titles. That 3-D crap is a fad and it will never look smooth!
Remember that one? When everyone would use e-mail exclusively (since it was FREE!) and the post office, fedex, and ups would be out of business in 5 years. I don't have stats to back it up, but I suspect the Internet has actually helped the postal industry a ton. Okay, maybe people write and send fewer snail letters, but mail-order shopping and e-bay resulting shipments (more shipping $$$) have gone through the roof!
I can't predict how the gadget consolidation will play out, but I suspect there will be wonderful surprises in store down the road. Shouldn't all of these portable technical gadgets glob into one utility-pod anyways? Why should I be forced to fumble with seperate gadgets? What if they could get to a point where they build stackable phones with interchangeable camera modules, MP3 modules, holo-projection modules, etc... You could click 3-6 of these lego-like bricks togeather and have your own custom utility-pod that best suits YOUR needs.
Besides, once they get all the gadgets figured out and have nothing left to worry about, maybe they can finally provide unbroken signal coverage between my house and my office: A 15 mile commute in a frickin Atlanta suburb with a county population of 2.4 MILLION people. Incompetant bastards.
If you're seeing I, Robot this weekend, we ask that you consider printing and handing out the "3 Laws Unsafe" Flyer. With hundreds handing it out, the awareness of AI ethics should increase significantly.
Yea, cause that's the way a/.er will get all the [chicks|dudes].
"Hey there... so... ya wanna get a cup of coffee after the movie and chat about artificial intelligence ethics? I uhhhh, got my Dad's car too ya know..."
Other posters recognized the robot is basically a framework of servos that can execute a pre-programmed set of movements. In the case of the video, impressive combos, but pre-prog'd nonetheless.
What if you could hot-wire a wireless connection? (Okay, hot-wire was a bad choice of words, let's use "hack" instead...) Instead of a pre-programmed sequence of movements, you could write intellegent modules to handle things like balance, position, etc... The heavy thinking would occur on your PC while the movements were executed by the unit. Communication between the brain and the muscles would occur over 802.11xyz, Danish kings, or whatever.
You may need to add a few sensors or a gyroscope from an R/C helicopter, but it would be like the ultimate MindStorms kit!
Or perhaps the cheap-geeks version of Robot Battles! All teams would have identical hardware packages and it would be up to their programming skills to beat the other teams. [Echoed race announcer voice:]Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! The first annual Cheap-Geeks distributed component processing competition! Watch live as recursive algorithms battle for supremecy with servo-actuated motor systems! [systems... systems..] You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use the edge!
Yea sure, FOX would pick that up over reality shows about blonde, teen, lesbians in bikinis any day.
You don't work from home, you don't carry a pager, and you don't give them your cell phone number.
Instead, your replacement will take care of all those pesky "issues" like decorating your cube and picking up your paycheck. If you really are an integral part of keeping a company running 24x7, then your salary probably already reflects it. Let's be honest: most folks have 1+Mb Internet connections and cell phones anyways. It's not like the co. is asking you to maintain a DS3 into your basement.
It's easy to sound-off on/. posts, but you're facing a reality of today's business world. Try negotiating an in-between solution. Discuss with management that you recognize most folks have Internet connections and cell phones anyways. (Now, they'll recognize you live in the real world with them.) Then explain you are committed to the company, cite examples, etc... (Yea, basically kiss-up a little). Then explain that you'd like to expense a portion of your business-related expenses. If 50% of your cell calls are work related and a fourth of your Internet time is resolving work issues, then you'd like to expense those percentages of those bills. Explain how this arrangement would help you adjust your budget during this transition period that the co. is going through.
After a while, you can push those numbers up a little since no-one will actually look at every in/out-bound number on your cell phone bill.;-) And as for the so-called transition period, how many "temporary fixes" are still in place years later?;-) Don't take any big stands on this issue. Don't bring it up in the weekly staff meeting. Let this negotiation occur quietly between you and whoever approves your expenses. It's the real world, population: us.
I remember the first time I read an article about Hyper Text Markup Language back in the late '80s. It described a form of computer-browseable books and newspapaers where you could click on any word for more details. It was like having the ultimate cross reference-ability.
Too bad HTML is so widely mis-used. Just link-enabling menus or following ideas with "CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE" is so lame. Some would argue, "Well, you have to develop for the least common backwoods redneck with a tin-can connection..." Or, "When companies spend big bucks, they have to ensure...blah blah blah"
I think the original intent of HTML *WAS* intuitive. It's all the common mis-uses of HTML that have muddied the waters.
What little I've visited of the Wikipedia site is a GREAT experience. I can click on words to find out more and I LOVE IT!
I have an HP Laserjet II (IIp me thinks) that I bought from a bust co. 8 years ago for $10. It's worked great for the last 8 years and was probably in heavy business-use service for its first 5+ years. At $10 bucks, it was a fantastic investment.
Of course, the neighborhood lights dim when it fires up so any "savings" are probably being killed by my electric bill.
PLEASE don't give them any more ideas. And for goodness sakes moderators, don't mod posts like this up as insightful where more people are likely to see it.
While this certainly isn't a very original idea, I'm still amazed at what I can get on ebay. Yes, it's cliche, but I often forget about it when I start soliving problems similar to these. I get all engineerie and over analyze the challenge.
Large chunks of disk-based storage can be found on the cheap. With the advancements in software (read OS with Linux) based RAID, even JBOD's would work well.
I had a client who experienced a major power failure every weekend for 3 weeks in a row. This equaled MAJOR problems for their business. As it turned out, a newly hired janitor was using an un-marked plug outside the DC to vacuum cube-ville.
It was simply chance that the previous cleaning crews never used that particular plug for vacuums. It was simply negligent electrical work that resulted in a data center circuit being available in relatively non-secured areas. It was complete stupidity that allowed the failure of such a circuit to bring down multiple, major, systems.
Reminds me of clients who spend $100K on firewalls, $400K in security consulting and pen-tests, $120K digital camera systems, etc... THEN prop the DC door open since they can't activate the newly hired sys-admin's swipe badge for 4 weeks! (Not that I'm bitter...)
In a brand new data center, I was performing a regular bypass test on a somewhat large ($75K) APC UPS system. As I recall, I was switching the unit into bypass mode to prepare for a normal maintenance task. (Bypass mode is basically removing the unit from inline service. Instead of street->UPS->racks, you change it to street->racks.)
I followed the APC directions EXACTLY. Problem was, they left out one step. There was a large cradle switch that you pulled down to disengage the fuses before certain steps. Well, the documentation did NOT refer to a small metal plate that had apparently been added to later versions of this unit. I *think* the metal plate was suppossed to prevent an accidental disengagement of the fuses. In practice however, it did allow for a partial disengagement.
So, I pull the rocker switch down to what I think is disengaged, when in fact, it was only barely disengaged. I proceeded to the next steps...
BANG! POW! BANG! Followed by that charred electric smoke smell well known to most/.ers -though very strong in this case.
No fires, no blown batteries, but definately a charred distribution board and intelligence board(s). Fortunately, the entire unit was covered by APC support.
Two lessons learned: One, no matter how good the documentation is or isn't, experience with a specific device goes a long way. Two, always, always maintain support on expensive equipment.
In-game ads are commonplace nowadays, but does anyone know what game featured the FIRST in-game ad?
The earliest I can think of is ET featuring Reeses. Well, I *think* the game had Reeses, I can't remember for sure. Although that was more product-placement than a true ad. A lot of games feature in-game billboards, but for a long time I think it was only the publisher's name and logos.
the last thing I want to be doing on a sunny day is mow the lawn
But I'd LOVE to spend 3-5 months building an over-engineered gadget that, if it ever works, will probably require 10-30 hours of repair and maintenance per 1 hour of lawn mowing.
In the US, we find some kid, pay him $20, and be done with it.
(Hmmmm... Now if I could have a robotic weed-wacker... "Hey honey, I'll be in the garage!")
From page 24: Hidalgo suggests the use of ROC curves, originally from signal detection theory and used extensively in medical testing, as better capturing the important aspects
of spam filter performance.
Perhaps a distributed analysis system (similar to SETI@home) could be used to combat spam. Not only could the idle time of bazillions of CPUs be levereaged to improve "signal" analysis, but perhaps the clients could analyize local incoming mail to corelate new trends in spam originators and then share that information with all of the other clients. Then you could combine that with the genetic evolution improvements of the F1 sim-cars recently mentioned on/.
So there's the high-level idea, now you smart people go make it work.:-)
...I can attest to the fact that some clients DO place too much weight on certs. I'll be the first to tell you that some of my certs are valuable and backed by years of experience (VCP - Veritas Certified Pro) while some are the result of cram/pass (CCNA 2.0) or somewhere in between (RHCE).
I've found that being up-front and honest about which of your certs fall into which catagories lends a high level of credability to yourself in the eyes of a potential client/employer. When asked about a specific cert that falls in the cram/pass catagory, I'm brutally honest: "Well, I am certified and I have worked on the equipment in a lab environment; however, the certification was required by my employer so we could resell a particular product line. I can get it up and running solidly, but not off the top of my head..." This was especially true when I used to work in the "channel" (ISVs, resellers, SIs).
I would not fall into the poor attitude of "all certs suck and are worthless"! Proper certs AND documented real-world experience can be a powerful weapon as you try to sell yourself. They can also be a way to get around the gatekeepers to access the real decision makers.
BellSouth (and others I'm sure) flat out LIE about how DSL works. They maintain that it is simply impossible to have DSL without a phone line. "Without a phone number to map to, how would we know where the DSL circuit goes?" The public mis-information campaign is stunning.
I have started asking The Georgia Public Service Commission to promote a similar mandate in my area. My problem was that not only did I have to use BellSouth for Local and DSL, but they were my only choice for cable TV as well! Of course, they didn't offer high-speed-cable-Internet so I was stuck. Thanks to their monopoly, they have been incrementally turning up the price -especially over the last 12 months- on ALL three services. Sure, sat-TV providers seemed to be offering "high-speed-Internet" but at the end of the day it appeared they were just bundling/reselling traditional services like Earthlink which still req'd a local phone line.
FINALLY, another cable co. moved into my area and they started offering high-speed-cable. Now I've fired BellSouth as my cable TV provider, and fired BellSouth as my high-speed-Internet provider. And thanks to cable-Internet, I don't need a local line at all thanks to cell phones! Thanks Adelphia!
oO(Who would've thought I'd be singing the praises of any cable co?)
...before any of the initial screenshots were released. I may buy another PS2, insert GTA:SA and weld the tray shut.
TakeTwo Interactive: Your team at R* deserves even more cash bonuses. Keep up the great work.
Yea, I sound like a fan-boy, but there's just something about the recent GTA games (>=GTA3) that I can't let go of. They've become theraputic after a long day at work.
A future PHB? All the ingrediants are there: arrogance, cockiness, self-delusion... Kid, you're headed for middle-management!
These are the types of unrealistic self-loving kids you get when all you do is shower little Johnny with positive reinforcement no matter how much he sucks at [fill in sport, hobby, or interest here]. Chances are, this kid attended government schools. And now he's comparing himself to those teenagers? Maybe you really are special, though statistically speaking, I doubt it.
You think you're bright, sharp, and multi-talented? Anyone can have that impression when they compare themselves to their coincidental surroundings (family, local friends, etc.) Think you're good at computers? Go to Berkeley or someplace where you will really be challenged. Like rockets? Get a PhD and join NASA. Great swimmer? Then get on the Olympic team. Otherwise, you're just another schmuck.
Don't get sucked into comparing yourself against easy targets like teenage pals. Until you work with the best in a given field (or even the pretty good) you have NO idea how much you suck.
And if you're good at cooking, go win an Iron Chef tournament. Until then, reel in the ego before you get pounded.
I'd like to see a series of simple, clean art based on the early sprites of video games. Something that captures the essence of the pixel layout in a high quality glossy print suitable for framing. Most sprites would probably look nice on a solid black background. Something in a vein similar to the Absolut Vodka ads. Not funny, but a series of pieces that could be framed and hung as a grouping.
Now that I think about it, I guess I could do this on my own. I wonder if such imagery is considered public domain yet?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey novice lockpickers, be VERY careful! Although the U.S. Patriot Act and Zero Tolerance are not directly connected, the type of thinking is...
In New Jersey, four children received school suspensions for "shooting" at each other (bang! bang!) with extended index fingers. The kids had violated their school's zero-tolerance policy against "weapons".
Commonwealth v. Milo A 12-year-old student drew pictures that depicted his teacher being shot.
In Irvington, N.J., two eight-year-olds have been charged with "making terrorist threats." The boys were "playing cops and robbers with a paper gun,"
I respectfully disagree. Xbox seems to be doing fine. Of all the companies who face a reputation problem among gamer-techno-types, M$ has to be one of the worst. M$ gets openly slammed by /. on an almost daily basis, yet the Xbox is still going strong.
I doubt the few niche articles on /. and hardocp are any part of the average mom-dad purchaser. If Infinum Labs can hit the market with a large enough mainstream advetising campaign, they could actually make some money.
I guess there are at least 70,000 suckers in the world...
Absolutely! AOL alone has over 30 MILLION subscribers!!! That means that all Infinum Labs needs to do is convince 0.003% of AOL subscribers to buy. (30M based on recent msnbc article.)
Ha ha haa! Now K's of /.ers have had their sub-concious /.ed by those damn singing kids! Now, if Disney could figure a way to get $ each time THAT song goes around in someone's head...
Oooops! You're right. Jumpman on the C64 rocked (along with M.U.L.E. already mentioned in an earlier post). Of my favorite Jumpman levels was when clones of your guy would start appearing at ~10 sec. intervals and trace your path. You'd have to jump,jump,jump to introduce pauses in your clones' path so you could navigate the level.
Well Zork of course, do we even need to mention it? And while I wouldn't argue it was a classic, Zork Nemesis on the PC had great atmosphere and some pretty original puzzles.
Asteroids in the original arcade table-top version with pizza greased glass and Big-Gulp rings.
BTW: Most previous posts are NOT classic games! Quake 3, Chrono Trigger, anything-64!?!? COME ON PEOPLE! Sure, "classic" is a subjective term, but can't we at least agree that classic games refer to pre-90's games!?!
Some good examples would be Megaman, Tetris, or Metroid (not Super-Metroid). If these other titles start showing up as so-called "classics" then that means I'm getting old and that just can't be! Who cares about fancy-schmancy 64-bit graphics and sound!? My 8-bit NES still kicks ass with all the latest titles. That 3-D crap is a fad and it will never look smooth!
Remember that one? When everyone would use e-mail exclusively (since it was FREE!) and the post office, fedex, and ups would be out of business in 5 years. I don't have stats to back it up, but I suspect the Internet has actually helped the postal industry a ton. Okay, maybe people write and send fewer snail letters, but mail-order shopping and e-bay resulting shipments (more shipping $$$) have gone through the roof!
I can't predict how the gadget consolidation will play out, but I suspect there will be wonderful surprises in store down the road. Shouldn't all of these portable technical gadgets glob into one utility-pod anyways? Why should I be forced to fumble with seperate gadgets? What if they could get to a point where they build stackable phones with interchangeable camera modules, MP3 modules, holo-projection modules, etc... You could click 3-6 of these lego-like bricks togeather and have your own custom utility-pod that best suits YOUR needs.
Besides, once they get all the gadgets figured out and have nothing left to worry about, maybe they can finally provide unbroken signal coverage between my house and my office: A 15 mile commute in a frickin Atlanta suburb with a county population of 2.4 MILLION people. Incompetant bastards.
If you're seeing I, Robot this weekend, we ask that you consider printing and handing out the "3 Laws Unsafe" Flyer. With hundreds handing it out, the awareness of AI ethics should increase significantly.
Yea, cause that's the way a /.er will get all the [chicks|dudes].
"Hey there... so... ya wanna get a cup of coffee after the movie and chat about artificial intelligence ethics? I uhhhh, got my Dad's car too ya know..."
Other posters recognized the robot is basically a framework of servos that can execute a pre-programmed set of movements. In the case of the video, impressive combos, but pre-prog'd nonetheless.
What if you could hot-wire a wireless connection? (Okay, hot-wire was a bad choice of words, let's use "hack" instead...) Instead of a pre-programmed sequence of movements, you could write intellegent modules to handle things like balance, position, etc... The heavy thinking would occur on your PC while the movements were executed by the unit. Communication between the brain and the muscles would occur over 802.11xyz, Danish kings, or whatever.
You may need to add a few sensors or a gyroscope from an R/C helicopter, but it would be like the ultimate MindStorms kit!
Or perhaps the cheap-geeks version of Robot Battles! All teams would have identical hardware packages and it would be up to their programming skills to beat the other teams. [Echoed race announcer voice:]Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! The first annual Cheap-Geeks distributed component processing competition! Watch live as recursive algorithms battle for supremecy with servo-actuated motor systems! [systems... systems..] You'll pay for the whole seat, but you'll only use the edge!
Yea sure, FOX would pick that up over reality shows about blonde, teen, lesbians in bikinis any day.
You don't work from home, you don't carry a pager, and you don't give them your cell phone number.
Instead, your replacement will take care of all those pesky "issues" like decorating your cube and picking up your paycheck. If you really are an integral part of keeping a company running 24x7, then your salary probably already reflects it. Let's be honest: most folks have 1+Mb Internet connections and cell phones anyways. It's not like the co. is asking you to maintain a DS3 into your basement.
It's easy to sound-off on /. posts, but you're facing a reality of today's business world. Try negotiating an in-between solution. Discuss with management that you recognize most folks have Internet connections and cell phones anyways. (Now, they'll recognize you live in the real world with them.) Then explain you are committed to the company, cite examples, etc... (Yea, basically kiss-up a little). Then explain that you'd like to expense a portion of your business-related expenses. If 50% of your cell calls are work related and a fourth of your Internet time is resolving work issues, then you'd like to expense those percentages of those bills. Explain how this arrangement would help you adjust your budget during this transition period that the co. is going through.
After a while, you can push those numbers up a little since no-one will actually look at every in/out-bound number on your cell phone bill. ;-) And as for the so-called transition period, how many "temporary fixes" are still in place years later? ;-) Don't take any big stands on this issue. Don't bring it up in the weekly staff meeting. Let this negotiation occur quietly between you and whoever approves your expenses. It's the real world, population: us.
I remember the first time I read an article about Hyper Text Markup Language back in the late '80s. It described a form of computer-browseable books and newspapaers where you could click on any word for more details. It was like having the ultimate cross reference-ability.
Too bad HTML is so widely mis-used. Just link-enabling menus or following ideas with "CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE" is so lame. Some would argue, "Well, you have to develop for the least common backwoods redneck with a tin-can connection..." Or, "When companies spend big bucks, they have to ensure...blah blah blah"
I think the original intent of HTML *WAS* intuitive. It's all the common mis-uses of HTML that have muddied the waters.
What little I've visited of the Wikipedia site is a GREAT experience. I can click on words to find out more and I LOVE IT!
THANKS WIKIPEDIA!
I have an HP Laserjet II (IIp me thinks) that I bought from a bust co. 8 years ago for $10. It's worked great for the last 8 years and was probably in heavy business-use service for its first 5+ years. At $10 bucks, it was a fantastic investment.
Of course, the neighborhood lights dim when it fires up so any "savings" are probably being killed by my electric bill.
PLEASE don't give them any more ideas. And for goodness sakes moderators, don't mod posts like this up as insightful where more people are likely to see it.
While this certainly isn't a very original idea, I'm still amazed at what I can get on ebay. Yes, it's cliche, but I often forget about it when I start soliving problems similar to these. I get all engineerie and over analyze the challenge.
Large chunks of disk-based storage can be found on the cheap. With the advancements in software (read OS with Linux) based RAID, even JBOD's would work well.
1-2 TB ain't what it used to be!
I had a client who experienced a major power failure every weekend for 3 weeks in a row. This equaled MAJOR problems for their business. As it turned out, a newly hired janitor was using an un-marked plug outside the DC to vacuum cube-ville.
It was simply chance that the previous cleaning crews never used that particular plug for vacuums. It was simply negligent electrical work that resulted in a data center circuit being available in relatively non-secured areas. It was complete stupidity that allowed the failure of such a circuit to bring down multiple, major, systems.
Reminds me of clients who spend $100K on firewalls, $400K in security consulting and pen-tests, $120K digital camera systems, etc... THEN prop the DC door open since they can't activate the newly hired sys-admin's swipe badge for 4 weeks! (Not that I'm bitter...)
In a brand new data center, I was performing a regular bypass test on a somewhat large ($75K) APC UPS system. As I recall, I was switching the unit into bypass mode to prepare for a normal maintenance task. (Bypass mode is basically removing the unit from inline service. Instead of street->UPS->racks, you change it to street->racks.)
I followed the APC directions EXACTLY. Problem was, they left out one step. There was a large cradle switch that you pulled down to disengage the fuses before certain steps. Well, the documentation did NOT refer to a small metal plate that had apparently been added to later versions of this unit. I *think* the metal plate was suppossed to prevent an accidental disengagement of the fuses. In practice however, it did allow for a partial disengagement.
So, I pull the rocker switch down to what I think is disengaged, when in fact, it was only barely disengaged. I proceeded to the next steps...
BANG! POW! BANG! Followed by that charred electric smoke smell well known to most /.ers -though very strong in this case.
No fires, no blown batteries, but definately a charred distribution board and intelligence board(s). Fortunately, the entire unit was covered by APC support.
Two lessons learned: One, no matter how good the documentation is or isn't, experience with a specific device goes a long way. Two, always, always maintain support on expensive equipment.
Check out this high-speed parking manuever!
[obligatory /. MS bash complete]
Just because the PC (or employee) is healthy, does NOT imply it's being productive. I mean jeez, look at the slackdotters around here.
In-game ads are commonplace nowadays, but does anyone know what game featured the FIRST in-game ad?
The earliest I can think of is ET featuring Reeses. Well, I *think* the game had Reeses, I can't remember for sure. Although that was more product-placement than a true ad. A lot of games feature in-game billboards, but for a long time I think it was only the publisher's name and logos.
What about other early examples?
the last thing I want to be doing on a sunny day is mow the lawn
But I'd LOVE to spend 3-5 months building an over-engineered gadget that, if it ever works, will probably require 10-30 hours of repair and maintenance per 1 hour of lawn mowing.
In the US, we find some kid, pay him $20, and be done with it.
(Hmmmm... Now if I could have a robotic weed-wacker... "Hey honey, I'll be in the garage!")
From page 24: Hidalgo suggests the use of ROC curves, originally from signal detection theory and used extensively in medical testing, as better capturing the important aspects of spam filter performance.
Perhaps a distributed analysis system (similar to SETI@home) could be used to combat spam. Not only could the idle time of bazillions of CPUs be levereaged to improve "signal" analysis, but perhaps the clients could analyize local incoming mail to corelate new trends in spam originators and then share that information with all of the other clients. Then you could combine that with the genetic evolution improvements of the F1 sim-cars recently mentioned on /.
So there's the high-level idea, now you smart people go make it work. :-)
...I can attest to the fact that some clients DO place too much weight on certs. I'll be the first to tell you that some of my certs are valuable and backed by years of experience (VCP - Veritas Certified Pro) while some are the result of cram/pass (CCNA 2.0) or somewhere in between (RHCE).
I've found that being up-front and honest about which of your certs fall into which catagories lends a high level of credability to yourself in the eyes of a potential client/employer. When asked about a specific cert that falls in the cram/pass catagory, I'm brutally honest: "Well, I am certified and I have worked on the equipment in a lab environment; however, the certification was required by my employer so we could resell a particular product line. I can get it up and running solidly, but not off the top of my head..." This was especially true when I used to work in the "channel" (ISVs, resellers, SIs).
I would not fall into the poor attitude of "all certs suck and are worthless"! Proper certs AND documented real-world experience can be a powerful weapon as you try to sell yourself. They can also be a way to get around the gatekeepers to access the real decision makers.
BellSouth (and others I'm sure) flat out LIE about how DSL works. They maintain that it is simply impossible to have DSL without a phone line. "Without a phone number to map to, how would we know where the DSL circuit goes?" The public mis-information campaign is stunning.
I have started asking The Georgia Public Service Commission to promote a similar mandate in my area. My problem was that not only did I have to use BellSouth for Local and DSL, but they were my only choice for cable TV as well! Of course, they didn't offer high-speed-cable-Internet so I was stuck. Thanks to their monopoly, they have been incrementally turning up the price -especially over the last 12 months- on ALL three services. Sure, sat-TV providers seemed to be offering "high-speed-Internet" but at the end of the day it appeared they were just bundling/reselling traditional services like Earthlink which still req'd a local phone line.
FINALLY, another cable co. moved into my area and they started offering high-speed-cable. Now I've fired BellSouth as my cable TV provider, and fired BellSouth as my high-speed-Internet provider. And thanks to cable-Internet, I don't need a local line at all thanks to cell phones! Thanks Adelphia!
oO(Who would've thought I'd be singing the praises of any cable co?)
...before any of the initial screenshots were released. I may buy another PS2, insert GTA:SA and weld the tray shut.
TakeTwo Interactive: Your team at R* deserves even more cash bonuses. Keep up the great work.
Yea, I sound like a fan-boy, but there's just something about the recent GTA games (>=GTA3) that I can't let go of. They've become theraputic after a long day at work.
A future PHB? All the ingrediants are there: arrogance, cockiness, self-delusion... Kid, you're headed for middle-management!
These are the types of unrealistic self-loving kids you get when all you do is shower little Johnny with positive reinforcement no matter how much he sucks at [fill in sport, hobby, or interest here]. Chances are, this kid attended government schools. And now he's comparing himself to those teenagers? Maybe you really are special, though statistically speaking, I doubt it.
You think you're bright, sharp, and multi-talented? Anyone can have that impression when they compare themselves to their coincidental surroundings (family, local friends, etc.) Think you're good at computers? Go to Berkeley or someplace where you will really be challenged. Like rockets? Get a PhD and join NASA. Great swimmer? Then get on the Olympic team. Otherwise, you're just another schmuck.
Don't get sucked into comparing yourself against easy targets like teenage pals. Until you work with the best in a given field (or even the pretty good) you have NO idea how much you suck.
And if you're good at cooking, go win an Iron Chef tournament. Until then, reel in the ego before you get pounded.
I'd like to see a series of simple, clean art based on the early sprites of video games. Something that captures the essence of the pixel layout in a high quality glossy print suitable for framing. Most sprites would probably look nice on a solid black background. Something in a vein similar to the Absolut Vodka ads. Not funny, but a series of pieces that could be framed and hung as a grouping.
Now that I think about it, I guess I could do this on my own. I wonder if such imagery is considered public domain yet?