Looks like we'll have to come up with a different naming scheme. Someone's already trademarked the exabyte.
Couldn't it weaken the trademark to have Western Digital or Seagate making a '9 exabyte' hard drive? Or HP or Sony making an 'exabyte-class' tape drive? Wouldn't a judge find (in favor of Exabyte) that the consumer would easily be confused?
Some excellent points I hadn't thought of, especially about the motor skills. Not that I totally agree with everything you say (debate and disagreement can be healthy). If I had mod points you'd get one.
I'm wondering why we even need computers in grades K-6. I can't really see how it helps the learning process; I and generations before me did just fine without computers (the first classroom computer in our school came when I was in the 6th grade).
I can understand giving the teachers computers for tracking grades, lesson planning and such, but I think it is not appropriate to use it as an educational tool for young children.
One should learn to do basic skills -- reading, writing, arithmetic, social skills, arts -- without the use of computers. You will get a much deeper understanding this way; you will be able to solve problems much quicker.
I think it is ridiculous that grade schoolers are being made to write reports using computers. Perhaps using the internet for research is OK, but with a computer the student doesn't learn spelling, grammar, or penmanship because the comptuer does it all for him. Use the computer as a reasearch tool, but write the final report by hand. You can't learn to write by typing.
Once you learn these basic skills, then (and only then) should you use the computer. Granted, when I was that age, computers weren't widely available, but we weren't allowed to use calculators until algebra, and typing was prohibited until you were an upperclassman. If the teacher couldn't read your handwriting, well, that was YOUR problem and you got an F.
A computer is a tool, but we're teaching our kids to use them for crutches because we're too lazy to teach them how to do things for themselves.
This reminds me of those dreams where you try to run and the harder you try, the slower you get.
It's natural for humans to become tense when in a combat or high-stress situation. The ability to relax under fire is a great skill; it allows you to make wiser, more rational decisions that have a better outcome, and implement those decisions more quickly.
Classic example is my mother, whom you cannot rush. When you try to hurry her, she gets flustered, makes mistakes, and does things in the wrong order. Let her go at her own pace, usually very relaxed, and whatever she's doing will be done quicker and better.
Same thing goes for programming. Take away the deadline, and the programmer will produce a better product, if not in less time, then in not much more time.
Semi-offtopic, but I've got a bunch of carcasses laying around (computer, not human). If the BSA thugs come and blow the door off its hinges, are they going to drag me in for all the unlicensed software sitting on the hard drives of these old machines? Not that I will ever USE the machines, they're here for parts and parts only. I'm just too lazy to deformat the hard drives.
First, he says he doesn't have a digicam. Then he goes and trashes his scanner. So how in the world did he get the pictures of the contraption on the website???
I'm imagining a bucket of water precariously balanced above the door, with a string leading to the power switch of an amplifier, whose input is a microphone sitting directly in front of a speaker connected to its output, tapped to the sound card in your computer. The mic/amp generates a feedback loop which is effectively the alarm. A monitor script on the Linux box detects the input of a high-amplitude signal (the feedback) and triggers another script which dials the modem. The modem is a fax modem which sends a fax to your mother-in-law, who will see it, call you, and tell you that your house has been broken into. Being your mother-in-law, it doesn't end there. She then drives over to your place and starts giving the burglar a piece of her mind. The burglar, just to get your mother-in-law to back off, puts stuff back where it was, THEN takes out the garbage, mops the floor (where the bucket spilled), does the dishes, etc. to show how sorry (s)he is for breaking in in the first place.
EULA's typically say "if you do not agree blah blah return the software to the place of purchase for a refund." But the retailer typically has a policy of refunds only on UNOPENED software. So you have a catch-22: you can't return the software once it's opened, but you can't refuse the EULA without opening the software.
Here's the solution:
Go down to OrificeMax, Staples, Fry's, Wal*Mart, whatever your local software store is, and demand to see the EULA for some piece of software before you buy it. If they refuse to let you begin the install on a showroom computer so you can see the EULA, tell them "Fine, I'm never buying software here again." If they DO let you see the EULA, tell them "The terms of the EULA are unacceptable. I'm not purchasing the software." Then walk out. Let them cancel the installation and figure out how to repackage the software for sale (remember, the seal on the CD slipcover or jewel case has been broken by this time).
Once software companies realize that consumers won't buy software unless they can first see an acceptable EULA, things will change.
I had one customer who insisted that we had to make the flaky coax ethernet work before he'd consider upgrading to cat 5. His coax must still not be working, because he hasn't called us back... it's been over a year.
Here in the U.S. internet telephony will probably take quite a while to catch on. Why? Because landline rates are cheap (at least compared to the rest of the world). Also, the quality of American landlines tends to be high, at least better than internet telephony.
So why is it so cheap? Because of the large installed base. The most expensive part of the infrastructure -- the copper "last mile" -- is already in place, and has been for nearly a hundred years. For the most part, that copper is already paid for. Plus, there is a lot of competition.
By sake of example, my long distance carrier, Opex, charges me $0.045/min for interstate and $0.09/min for intrastate calls. International rates are reasonable.
In third world countries, there isn't a very large installed base. The cost of installing new copper is high, and in many cases equipment is still being paid off. Plus, many countries have telco monopolies that charge whatever they feel like. So naturally, people will turn to promising alternatives such as internet telephony. When I was in Guatemala two years ago, it seemed there were more cell phones than landline phones. Cell towers were everywhere, it seemed. (On a side note, I walked thru a village where the houses were mud huts with no running water... but they had TV's and cell phones... priorities???)
Summarizing: U.S. landlines are higher quality than internet telephony and at reasonable cost; 3rd world landlines low quality high cost; might as well try VOIP.
Wow. This is revolutionary. The gentleman receiving the patent has developed a way to cause a pendulum to travel in an oval orbit as opposed to the more common elliptical orbit.
An oval is, of course, asymmetric about the "short" axis (just like an egg) whereas an ellipse is symmetric about both axes.
I put my email address in a jpeg image. Haven't found a spambot yet that can decipher that.
The flaw: OCR.
Try ASCII art next time. And never use the @:
\/\/ e |3/\/\ () + |-| (a) \/\/ e |3/\/\ () + |-| * ( 0/\/\
Warning: if you spam me, you WILL be blocked. We proactively block spammers at our mail server through either the use of ipchains rules or header parsing. Our ipchains are already blocking at least a million addresses in China (only 1,277,730,500 to go).
OK, so we've got spambot prevention. Now we need some effective form of "Slashbot" protection. I envision a webserver that will detect a high number of referrals from Slashdot and put the server into "low bandwidth" mode, serving pages stripped of formatting and graphics (with links to graphics, of course) in order that content may be delivered in an efficient manner.
SOMEWHERE IN A DUNGEON FAR BELOW RIAA HEADQUARTERS (AP)-- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced it is introducing a bill tin Congress making it illegal for artists who are not members of RIAA or associated with RIAA member-labels to record songs for public listening.
The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen, President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."
When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."
Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.
My brother is a mechanic for one of the top diesel engine manufacturers.
He tells me that there are a number of performance tweaks on modern OTR (Over-the-Road) diesel engines which can be done through a laptop interface. That is, it's already implemented from the factory, all you have to do is adjust some parameters.
However, should a customer want something tweaked, they pay several thousand dollars (i.e., more HP). Sure, it only takes 15 minutes for my bro to tweak it, but the $$$ is to pay for the increased rate of failure-under-warranty. Occasionally, he'll do the tweak but not charge for it if the engine is out of warranty.
15 months is a ways out. Don't tell them. Shoot, you might find out by then you hate the job anyway. It's not uncommon for people to quit without giving reason, and they still find jobs afterward.
If you prove to be a very valuable employee, they may give you your old position when you return, but don't expect paid vacation.
If you make a habit of quitting jobs after short periods of time, then it starts to make you look bad. But quitting a first job? I think people almost expect that.
I'm sure we've all heard the one where you put a book under your pillow and the knowledge will just osmose into your brain. I always figured that with my luck, I'd just end up with a smart pillow (Honest, teacher, I wasn't sleeping, I was studying!).
Had a roomate once who dispensed with the pillow and slept with his head on a book. Never asked him why. His pillow stayed in the closet.
Slashdot Mirror
I can just see it blue screening as it lifts its leg on you.
I'd recommend this book on failure analysis, written in layman's terms using case studies:
Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail; Matthys Levy, et al.; W.W. Norton ISBN: 039331152X; Reprint edition (1994); $14.95
There is also a companion book which I have not read (because I just found out about it when searching amazon.com):
Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture; W.W. Norton ISBN: 0393306763; Reissue edition (February 18, 2002); $14.95 ($10.47 at amazon)
Looks like we'll have to come up with a different naming scheme. Someone's already trademarked the exabyte.
Couldn't it weaken the trademark to have Western Digital or Seagate making a '9 exabyte' hard drive? Or HP or Sony making an 'exabyte-class' tape drive? Wouldn't a judge find (in favor of Exabyte) that the consumer would easily be confused?
*The USPTO are idiots.*
Some excellent points I hadn't thought of, especially about the motor skills. Not that I totally agree with everything you say (debate and disagreement can be healthy). If I had mod points you'd get one.
I'm wondering why we even need computers in grades K-6. I can't really see how it helps the learning process; I and generations before me did just fine without computers (the first classroom computer in our school came when I was in the 6th grade).
I can understand giving the teachers computers for tracking grades, lesson planning and such, but I think it is not appropriate to use it as an educational tool for young children.
One should learn to do basic skills -- reading, writing, arithmetic, social skills, arts -- without the use of computers. You will get a much deeper understanding this way; you will be able to solve problems much quicker.
I think it is ridiculous that grade schoolers are being made to write reports using computers. Perhaps using the internet for research is OK, but with a computer the student doesn't learn spelling, grammar, or penmanship because the comptuer does it all for him. Use the computer as a reasearch tool, but write the final report by hand. You can't learn to write by typing.
Once you learn these basic skills, then (and only then) should you use the computer. Granted, when I was that age, computers weren't widely available, but we weren't allowed to use calculators until algebra, and typing was prohibited until you were an upperclassman. If the teacher couldn't read your handwriting, well, that was YOUR problem and you got an F.
A computer is a tool, but we're teaching our kids to use them for crutches because we're too lazy to teach them how to do things for themselves.
In your terminal emulator configuration, deselect "local echo".
This reminds me of those dreams where you try to run and the harder you try, the slower you get.
It's natural for humans to become tense when in a combat or high-stress situation. The ability to relax under fire is a great skill; it allows you to make wiser, more rational decisions that have a better outcome, and implement those decisions more quickly.
Classic example is my mother, whom you cannot rush. When you try to hurry her, she gets flustered, makes mistakes, and does things in the wrong order. Let her go at her own pace, usually very relaxed, and whatever she's doing will be done quicker and better.
Same thing goes for programming. Take away the deadline, and the programmer will produce a better product, if not in less time, then in not much more time.
Semi-offtopic, but I've got a bunch of carcasses laying around (computer, not human). If the BSA thugs come and blow the door off its hinges, are they going to drag me in for all the unlicensed software sitting on the hard drives of these old machines? Not that I will ever USE the machines, they're here for parts and parts only. I'm just too lazy to deformat the hard drives.
"Return to sendah,
Address Unknown"
Waitaminit here. What I want to know is...
First, he says he doesn't have a digicam. Then he goes and trashes his scanner. So how in the world did he get the pictures of the contraption on the website???
I'm imagining a bucket of water precariously balanced above the door, with a string leading to the power switch of an amplifier, whose input is a microphone sitting directly in front of a speaker connected to its output, tapped to the sound card in your computer. The mic/amp generates a feedback loop which is effectively the alarm. A monitor script on the Linux box detects the input of a high-amplitude signal (the feedback) and triggers another script which dials the modem. The modem is a fax modem which sends a fax to your mother-in-law, who will see it, call you, and tell you that your house has been broken into. Being your mother-in-law, it doesn't end there. She then drives over to your place and starts giving the burglar a piece of her mind. The burglar, just to get your mother-in-law to back off, puts stuff back where it was, THEN takes out the garbage, mops the floor (where the bucket spilled), does the dishes, etc. to show how sorry (s)he is for breaking in in the first place.
EULA's typically say "if you do not agree blah blah return the software to the place of purchase for a refund." But the retailer typically has a policy of refunds only on UNOPENED software. So you have a catch-22: you can't return the software once it's opened, but you can't refuse the EULA without opening the software.
Here's the solution:
Go down to OrificeMax, Staples, Fry's, Wal*Mart, whatever your local software store is, and demand to see the EULA for some piece of software before you buy it. If they refuse to let you begin the install on a showroom computer so you can see the EULA, tell them "Fine, I'm never buying software here again." If they DO let you see the EULA, tell them "The terms of the EULA are unacceptable. I'm not purchasing the software." Then walk out. Let them cancel the installation and figure out how to repackage the software for sale (remember, the seal on the CD slipcover or jewel case has been broken by this time).
Once software companies realize that consumers won't buy software unless they can first see an acceptable EULA, things will change.
--
I had one customer who insisted that we had to make the flaky coax ethernet work before he'd consider upgrading to cat 5. His coax must still not be working, because he hasn't called us back... it's been over a year.
Here in the U.S. internet telephony will probably take quite a while to catch on. Why? Because landline rates are cheap (at least compared to the rest of the world). Also, the quality of American landlines tends to be high, at least better than internet telephony.
So why is it so cheap? Because of the large installed base. The most expensive part of the infrastructure -- the copper "last mile" -- is already in place, and has been for nearly a hundred years. For the most part, that copper is already paid for. Plus, there is a lot of competition.
By sake of example, my long distance carrier, Opex, charges me $0.045/min for interstate and $0.09/min for intrastate calls. International rates are reasonable.
In third world countries, there isn't a very large installed base. The cost of installing new copper is high, and in many cases equipment is still being paid off. Plus, many countries have telco monopolies that charge whatever they feel like. So naturally, people will turn to promising alternatives such as internet telephony. When I was in Guatemala two years ago, it seemed there were more cell phones than landline phones. Cell towers were everywhere, it seemed. (On a side note, I walked thru a village where the houses were mud huts with no running water... but they had TV's and cell phones... priorities???)
Summarizing: U.S. landlines are higher quality than internet telephony and at reasonable cost; 3rd world landlines low quality high cost; might as well try VOIP.
Wow. This is revolutionary. The gentleman receiving the patent has developed a way to cause a pendulum to travel in an oval orbit as opposed to the more common elliptical orbit.
An oval is, of course, asymmetric about the "short" axis (just like an egg) whereas an ellipse is symmetric about both axes.
I put my email address in a jpeg image. Haven't found a spambot yet that can decipher that.
/\/\ () + |-| (a) \/\/ e |3 /\/\ () + |-| * ( 0 /\/\
The flaw: OCR.
Try ASCII art next time. And never use the @:
\/\/ e |3
Warning: if you spam me, you WILL be blocked. We proactively block spammers at our mail server through either the use of ipchains rules or header parsing. Our ipchains are already blocking at least a million addresses in China (only 1,277,730,500 to go).
OK, so we've got spambot prevention. Now we need some effective form of "Slashbot" protection. I envision a webserver that will detect a high number of referrals from Slashdot and put the server into "low bandwidth" mode, serving pages stripped of formatting and graphics (with links to graphics, of course) in order that content may be delivered in an efficient manner.
SOMEWHERE IN A DUNGEON FAR BELOW RIAA HEADQUARTERS (AP)-- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced it is introducing a bill tin Congress making it illegal for artists who are not members of RIAA or associated with RIAA member-labels to record songs for public listening.
The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen, President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."
When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."
Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.
So...
How much of this one million dollars will actually go to the artists whose works were infringed?
How much of it will go to line the pockets of the label executives and their money-grubbing lawyers?
If 98% (or more) would go to the artists, then I'd say "what's the gripe?". But, sadly, I suspect this is not the case.
bah. Forgot to close a tag, dingit! Shoulda been 'silicone instead.' Now it's not as funny. Oh well, when you're at karma cap, who cares?
I'd recommend silicone instead. Silicon has to be extremely hot to be injected, and would probably melt your mouse.
My brother is a mechanic for one of the top diesel engine manufacturers.
He tells me that there are a number of performance tweaks on modern OTR (Over-the-Road) diesel engines which can be done through a laptop interface. That is, it's already implemented from the factory, all you have to do is adjust some parameters.
However, should a customer want something tweaked, they pay several thousand dollars (i.e., more HP). Sure, it only takes 15 minutes for my bro to tweak it, but the $$$ is to pay for the increased rate of failure-under-warranty. Occasionally, he'll do the tweak but not charge for it if the engine is out of warranty.
but this stops me from seeing resources on my local home workgroup and even the domain at my company...
Look at the options for 'net use'. It includes options for mapping shares to hosts on different nt-domains.
15 months is a ways out. Don't tell them. Shoot, you might find out by then you hate the job anyway. It's not uncommon for people to quit without giving reason, and they still find jobs afterward.
If you prove to be a very valuable employee, they may give you your old position when you return, but don't expect paid vacation.
If you make a habit of quitting jobs after short periods of time, then it starts to make you look bad. But quitting a first job? I think people almost expect that.
I'm sure we've all heard the one where you put a book under your pillow and the knowledge will just osmose into your brain. I always figured that with my luck, I'd just end up with a smart pillow (Honest, teacher, I wasn't sleeping, I was studying!).
Had a roomate once who dispensed with the pillow and slept with his head on a book. Never asked him why. His pillow stayed in the closet.