My favorite chair of all time is a mesh-backed model I got at Office Depot a few years ago, for about $250. I don't remember the model number, but here's a good description.
It has a padded seat and shock-absorbing seatpost, with a height adjustment. The armrests adjust vertically with a simple grip adjuster. The headrest adjusts manually.
The same lever that adjusts the height (in the canonical way) also allows reclining by sliding it out when not under pressure. Reverse the motion to disable reclining.
The spring which resists reclining is adjustable by a knob below the seat.
This chair helped solve my neck problems, and worked a lot better than some out there for 10 times the price.
I think that we would indeed be better off without such ads. One of my favorite authors has said that the creation of "silly luxuries and sillier advertisements to sell them" are useless work, not productive, and I think he was right. And he died back in 1963!
We don't need someone shouting at us in our homes to buy this product, and infecting our kids' minds with materialist greed. I've lived without a TV for two years. Occasionally I'll watch TV at my mom's house, but I don't miss it at all. I get my news online, and I don't rot my brain on sitcoms. My radio (commercial free station) gives me all the live content I need.
I hope our society moves away from TV, perhaps toward streaming content. I'd love the State of the Union speech (sorry, but I'm an American) to be available online.
That's a very powerful image. That is especially so when you remember that in America, a girl isn't even safe in her own bedroom with her best friend, and her parents in the next room. (For those unfamiliar, a girl named Polly Klaas was kidnapped under those conditions in California, sexually molested, and murdered. Her body was found about a month after the crime. This happened over 10 years ago. The man who did this was a convicted pedophile.)
When I have kids, I won't even let them walk to school alone unless we live right across the street, and even then I'll probably watch them all way from my front door. Kids in America have been kidnapped just walking home from school, with horrible results. To think that an 8-year-old girl was safe alone in a public subway station there, and over here we can't even pass a law to monitor known sexual offenders!
I wonder if there's a middle ground possible. Is it possible, through suitable laws and enforcement thereof, to have a safe, orderly society that is still free? Is it possible to effectively deter crimes without unjustly harsh punishments? Will an American girl ever be truly safe in a public place?
Parent is extremely OFFTOPIC, and is verging on FLAMEBAIT.
Re:The deployment pipe often gets neglected in OSS
on
The CVS Cop-Out
·
· Score: 1
Just a little correction to help you with English grammar/spelling. (I assume German is your native language. Mine is English, and I'm better than most native speakers/writers.)
In English, when changing an adjective ending in 'y' like 'lucky' to an adverb, change the 'y' to an 'i' and add 'ly' so that 'lucky' becomes 'luckily'. Of course, in English there are exceptions to almost every rule.
And yes, your English is better than my German (none), or my French (some).
This seems like a very interesting idea. It raises several questions, though:
What is the definition of "core OS portions"? How can you define such a term to cover all possible OS's (present and future) and their various design philosophies? Or, would the OS installer define these by placing them in the protected memory?
How large would such memory be? It would seem to place a hard limit on the size of the OS.
How often would this be done? Windows seems to need updating every week, more often when it first comes out.
Would the update boot mode be a BIOS program that runs in ROM?
Speaking of which, how different is this in procedure from a BIOS update?
In principle, however, this seems pretty good. Maybe it is a good architecture for systems which absolutely, positively, have to be A1 secure.
That seems like a really good idea. It will work really well, if you remember what you're doing. There's only one problem that I can forsee, and that has to do with the keyboard layout.
What do you do if you have to type in the same password (say, for a Webmail system) on both Dvorak and Qwerty systems, depending on where you happen to be at the moment? I use Dvorak at home, and change the keyboard to same when I'm away (if I can), but sometimes I have to deal with a Qwerty system.
I don't know about you, but I infrequently want to remember what the keycodes are in Dvorak when I'm away from my system (i.e., what would a given phrase look like typed by a Qwerty typist on a Dvorak keyboard?) I find that task rather hard. I can type in Dvorak if I don't think aboout what I'm doing. If I try to think about it, I mess up. Don't even ask me where "H" is on a dvorak keyboard. I have to try to type "H", and then look at a Qwerty keyboard to see where the letter is. You get the picture.
The point is, say I set up a pwd by your method using the Dvorak layout, because I'm signing in/changing pwd from home. Then I get to a computer whose layout I can't change, and I need to login. Okay, so I remember what letter I started from, and what letter-shapes my password was. Problem is, those letter-shapes don't correspond to the correct password on the keboard layout I'm forced to use! What would you recommend for that situation?
I may indeed start doing this, if I can figure out how to overcome the above problem. Incidentally, what do you do if the idiot code monkeys put a MAXIMUM password length that is too short for what you want to do?
This has become an excuse to not think things through at all.
That is regrettable. I, however, do not advocate the use of such an excuse. I fully support, and would require, a complete and impartial examination of any possible consequences to the use of a new technology. However, you can't list "the butterfly effect" as a possible consequence, since that is completely inscrutable. Any disastrous effects that occurred as a result of such chaotic interaction could be as easily triggered by inaction as by action.
In short, do examine all the options. Just don't get paranoid about "what if" scenarios. If you're not blinded by greed, you'll know where to draw the line.
By your reasoning, we shouldn't do anything, ever, because changing anything might cause a chain reaction that eventually destroys the universe.
Take the classic butterfly example. According to chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings can eventually cause a change of weather on a global scale, and "eventually" is much sooner than we would think. Now, say I'm hiking down the trail, and I see a spider web. It's in my way, so I knock it down. (Let the spider build somewhere else.) However, five minutes after I pass, a butterfly flies through the space that was once occupied by the web. That butterfly continues to fly, and as a result (according to chaos theory), there is an additional hurricane in the Carribean that kills several people and destroys hundreds of homes, with property damage, etc.
Or, say, that the butterfly continues to fly, and intstead of causing an additional hurricane, the flapping of its wings prevents a hurricane from reaching land! No homes, lives, or ships are destroyed.
Demonstrably, we cannot predict all of the eventual consequences of our actions. This should give us pause for thought when we begin to exercise new powers whose consequences are insufficiently understood. But that should not keep us from doing something just because it might have disastrous consequences! Walking across the street, in that case, could have disastrous consequences!
In any case, most of the folks here have watched/read too much SF. We all know an action has unpredictable consequences, but those that cannot possibly be evaluated should be ignored, lest the possibility destroy any chance of action at all. Sure, it might be possible to build mass drivers and alter the asteroid's orbit. But those things don't get designed and built overnight, especially not the first time. (SF books don't count.) Also, one has to imagine the massive amount of hardware that would have to be brought up. At this point, despite what Kim Stanley Robinson might have written, we do not have the ability to send robots to an asteroid and have them build everything they need from the raw materials they find. Building such things down here, and then sending them into space to be assembled is probably more than NASA can handle right now, given the current state of budget affairs, orbital shuttle repair research, Mars trips, etc. Nice thought, but we'll need at least 20 years of research before we're really ready for that sort of thing.
A motion has been made and seconded. Request the chair to call for a vote?
As for contact info, the young lady does include a postal address on the last page of her photojournal.
Moreover, with a little sleuthing, I uncovered an e-mail address! You'll notice that some of the pictures bear the legend "kidofspeed.com"? Well, the URL has a "coming soon" page, which I found only mildly surprising. However a Whois lookup revealed that it was just registered on March 11th, so that explains a lack of content. Moreover, the lookup gave contact information that is very similar to Elena's postal address. It also gave an e-mail address, which I post here for the benefit of the Slashdot editors:
<crocodile@bk.ru>
I only gave this info up because I'm too shy to use it myself, but I really want to see a Slashdot interview! Honestly, I don't have anything to offer her but US citizenship, but I still wish I had the guts to write to her!
Seriously, if she gets a thousand e-mails from horny Slashotters, how do you think she would respond? My guess is that after reading the first few with growing disgust, she would delete the rest without opening them (like Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle), unless for some reason one of them manages to forcefully hijack her attention. (Actually, it would be more likely that her e-mail server would be slashdotted, and she couldn't read any.)
So, a word from the wise to any would-be Romeos: Unless you honestly think you can impress this woman, don't bother her. Let Cowboy Neal, or one of the other editors, represent Slashdot in the interview. I'm sure then we'd find out if she's at all interested in meeting American men....
One last thought: OTOH, if she is so interested, her chances of success are much better than those girls you see on the "Russian Mail-Order Brides" websites. Even if that is her eventual object, (which I highly doubt), she still deserves kudos for her intelligence in concocting such a scheme. I, for one, would still want to see if I could make an American lady out of her!
Second the motion. Furthermore, a motion to submit the abovementioned phrase to jargon-friends (with credit to zeruch for coinage) as a prime example of hackerly linguistic ingenuity is hereby proposed. May I have a second?
What would be really interesting is an aptitude test built in to the software. If users want to enable "power user" features, they would first have to pass the computerized aptitude test. Users who fail would have to wait a set period (like a month, a year, a century:-> ) before trying again.
Hey, how about this? The "enable advanced features" button pretends to enable power user features, but only fabricates different scenarios to test the user's response to them? For example, for a month after clicking this button, a luser would see e-mails in his inbox which are manufactured by the software to see whether he's dumb^H^H^H^Htrusting enough to click on an e-mail like "I need you help to access my money" or "Incease your {p*n*s|br**st|p*cs} size now!!!" Satisfactory performance over a sufficient period of time would enable actual use of advanced features.
If that idea is too impractical, what about just linking advanced features to the presence of quality AntiVirus software? Whenever I'm called in to work on a clien't computer, I check their antivirus protection and strongly recommend Norton if it isn't already installed. (I am multiOStral, consulting for Macs and PCs, and learning Linux.) You could have the button saying "Enable Power Features" check for the presence of updated AV software. If same is not present, the box would say:
You have requested a feature which requires the presence of anti-virus software. Please install such software before attempting to use this feature. Consult your local X vendor for appropriate titles.
Does anyone know how much damage a naive luser could actually do with AV software installed?
Slashdot Mirror
My favorite chair of all time is a mesh-backed model I got at Office Depot a few years ago, for about $250. I don't remember the model number, but here's a good description.
It has a padded seat and shock-absorbing seatpost, with a height adjustment. The armrests adjust vertically with a simple grip adjuster. The headrest adjusts manually.
The same lever that adjusts the height (in the canonical way) also allows reclining by sliding it out when not under pressure. Reverse the motion to disable reclining.
The spring which resists reclining is adjustable by a knob below the seat.
This chair helped solve my neck problems, and worked a lot better than some out there for 10 times the price.
FWIW, my $0.02
I think that we would indeed be better off without such ads. One of my favorite authors has said that the creation of "silly luxuries and sillier advertisements to sell them" are useless work, not productive, and I think he was right. And he died back in 1963!
We don't need someone shouting at us in our homes to buy this product, and infecting our kids' minds with materialist greed. I've lived without a TV for two years. Occasionally I'll watch TV at my mom's house, but I don't miss it at all. I get my news online, and I don't rot my brain on sitcoms. My radio (commercial free station) gives me all the live content I need.
I hope our society moves away from TV, perhaps toward streaming content. I'd love the State of the Union speech (sorry, but I'm an American) to be available online.
That's a very powerful image. That is especially so when you remember that in America, a girl isn't even safe in her own bedroom with her best friend, and her parents in the next room. (For those unfamiliar, a girl named Polly Klaas was kidnapped under those conditions in California, sexually molested, and murdered. Her body was found about a month after the crime. This happened over 10 years ago. The man who did this was a convicted pedophile.)
When I have kids, I won't even let them walk to school alone unless we live right across the street, and even then I'll probably watch them all way from my front door. Kids in America have been kidnapped just walking home from school, with horrible results. To think that an 8-year-old girl was safe alone in a public subway station there, and over here we can't even pass a law to monitor known sexual offenders!
I wonder if there's a middle ground possible. Is it possible, through suitable laws and enforcement thereof, to have a safe, orderly society that is still free? Is it possible to effectively deter crimes without unjustly harsh punishments? Will an American girl ever be truly safe in a public place?
Parent is extremely OFFTOPIC, and is verging on FLAMEBAIT.
Just a little correction to help you with English grammar/spelling. (I assume German is your native language. Mine is English, and I'm better than most native speakers/writers.)
In English, when changing an adjective ending in 'y' like 'lucky' to an adverb, change the 'y' to an 'i' and add 'ly' so that 'lucky' becomes 'luckily'. Of course, in English there are exceptions to almost every rule.
And yes, your English is better than my German (none), or my French (some).
In principle, however, this seems pretty good. Maybe it is a good architecture for systems which absolutely, positively, have to be A1 secure.
Objection! Assumes organs not in evidence!
That seems like a really good idea. It will work really well, if you remember what you're doing. There's only one problem that I can forsee, and that has to do with the keyboard layout.
What do you do if you have to type in the same password (say, for a Webmail system) on both Dvorak and Qwerty systems, depending on where you happen to be at the moment? I use Dvorak at home, and change the keyboard to same when I'm away (if I can), but sometimes I have to deal with a Qwerty system.
I don't know about you, but I infrequently want to remember what the keycodes are in Dvorak when I'm away from my system (i.e., what would a given phrase look like typed by a Qwerty typist on a Dvorak keyboard?) I find that task rather hard. I can type in Dvorak if I don't think aboout what I'm doing. If I try to think about it, I mess up. Don't even ask me where "H" is on a dvorak keyboard. I have to try to type "H", and then look at a Qwerty keyboard to see where the letter is. You get the picture.
The point is, say I set up a pwd by your method using the Dvorak layout, because I'm signing in/changing pwd from home. Then I get to a computer whose layout I can't change, and I need to login. Okay, so I remember what letter I started from, and what letter-shapes my password was. Problem is, those letter-shapes don't correspond to the correct password on the keboard layout I'm forced to use! What would you recommend for that situation?
I may indeed start doing this, if I can figure out how to overcome the above problem. Incidentally, what do you do if the idiot code monkeys put a MAXIMUM password length that is too short for what you want to do?
Sounds like poetic justice to me.
</chortling>
This has become an excuse to not think things through at all.
That is regrettable. I, however, do not advocate the use of such an excuse. I fully support, and would require, a complete and impartial examination of any possible consequences to the use of a new technology. However, you can't list "the butterfly effect" as a possible consequence, since that is completely inscrutable. Any disastrous effects that occurred as a result of such chaotic interaction could be as easily triggered by inaction as by action.
In short, do examine all the options. Just don't get paranoid about "what if" scenarios. If you're not blinded by greed, you'll know where to draw the line.
By your reasoning, we shouldn't do anything, ever, because changing anything might cause a chain reaction that eventually destroys the universe.
Take the classic butterfly example. According to chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings can eventually cause a change of weather on a global scale, and "eventually" is much sooner than we would think. Now, say I'm hiking down the trail, and I see a spider web. It's in my way, so I knock it down. (Let the spider build somewhere else.) However, five minutes after I pass, a butterfly flies through the space that was once occupied by the web. That butterfly continues to fly, and as a result (according to chaos theory), there is an additional hurricane in the Carribean that kills several people and destroys hundreds of homes, with property damage, etc.
Or, say, that the butterfly continues to fly, and intstead of causing an additional hurricane, the flapping of its wings prevents a hurricane from reaching land! No homes, lives, or ships are destroyed.
Demonstrably, we cannot predict all of the eventual consequences of our actions. This should give us pause for thought when we begin to exercise new powers whose consequences are insufficiently understood. But that should not keep us from doing something just because it might have disastrous consequences! Walking across the street, in that case, could have disastrous consequences!
In any case, most of the folks here have watched/read too much SF. We all know an action has unpredictable consequences, but those that cannot possibly be evaluated should be ignored, lest the possibility destroy any chance of action at all. Sure, it might be possible to build mass drivers and alter the asteroid's orbit. But those things don't get designed and built overnight, especially not the first time. (SF books don't count.) Also, one has to imagine the massive amount of hardware that would have to be brought up. At this point, despite what Kim Stanley Robinson might have written, we do not have the ability to send robots to an asteroid and have them build everything they need from the raw materials they find. Building such things down here, and then sending them into space to be assembled is probably more than NASA can handle right now, given the current state of budget affairs, orbital shuttle repair research, Mars trips, etc. Nice thought, but we'll need at least 20 years of research before we're really ready for that sort of thing.
Just my 00000010 cents.
A motion has been made and seconded. Request the chair to call for a vote?
As for contact info, the young lady does include a postal address on the last page of her photojournal.
Moreover, with a little sleuthing, I uncovered an e-mail address! You'll notice that some of the pictures bear the legend "kidofspeed.com"? Well, the URL has a "coming soon" page, which I found only mildly surprising. However a Whois lookup revealed that it was just registered on March 11th, so that explains a lack of content. Moreover, the lookup gave contact information that is very similar to Elena's postal address. It also gave an e-mail address, which I post here for the benefit of the Slashdot editors:
<crocodile@bk.ru>
I only gave this info up because I'm too shy to use it myself, but I really want to see a Slashdot interview! Honestly, I don't have anything to offer her but US citizenship, but I still wish I had the guts to write to her!
Seriously, if she gets a thousand e-mails from horny Slashotters, how do you think she would respond? My guess is that after reading the first few with growing disgust, she would delete the rest without opening them (like Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle), unless for some reason one of them manages to forcefully hijack her attention. (Actually, it would be more likely that her e-mail server would be slashdotted, and she couldn't read any.)
So, a word from the wise to any would-be Romeos: Unless you honestly think you can impress this woman, don't bother her. Let Cowboy Neal, or one of the other editors, represent Slashdot in the interview. I'm sure then we'd find out if she's at all interested in meeting American men....
One last thought: OTOH, if she is so interested, her chances of success are much better than those girls you see on the "Russian Mail-Order Brides" websites. Even if that is her eventual object, (which I highly doubt), she still deserves kudos for her intelligence in concocting such a scheme. I, for one, would still want to see if I could make an American lady out of her!
Second the motion. Furthermore, a motion to submit the abovementioned phrase to jargon-friends (with credit to zeruch for coinage) as a prime example of hackerly linguistic ingenuity is hereby proposed. May I have a second?
Easy as pie. Assuming the seller can fly it, he simply does so (to the point of delivery) and charters a private jet home.
Hey, how about this? The "enable advanced features" button pretends to enable power user features, but only fabricates different scenarios to test the user's response to them? For example, for a month after clicking this button, a luser would see e-mails in his inbox which are manufactured by the software to see whether he's dumb^H^H^H^Htrusting enough to click on an e-mail like "I need you help to access my money" or "Incease your {p*n*s|br**st|p*cs} size now!!!" Satisfactory performance over a sufficient period of time would enable actual use of advanced features.
If that idea is too impractical, what about just linking advanced features to the presence of quality AntiVirus software? Whenever I'm called in to work on a clien't computer, I check their antivirus protection and strongly recommend Norton if it isn't already installed. (I am multiOStral, consulting for Macs and PCs, and learning Linux.) You could have the button saying "Enable Power Features" check for the presence of updated AV software. If same is not present, the box would say:
Does anyone know how much damage a naive luser could actually do with AV software installed?