a red, glowing suit and jump around in it like Hapkido/Jujitsu, and if we had as many JOINTS as we have BONES, then we *could* look like a fireball. Wait, would that be a conundrum? Joints count keeping up with bones count...
"For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.
During a science class, Jessica Terry, 18, discovered a tell-tale granuloma in her own pathology slide.
Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn't figure out the cause of Jessica's abdominal distress.
Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own."
Imagine the chagrin the various medical experts experienced when she inadvertently disproved numerous experts who misdiagnosed her...
"Its not like they're selling you a $200 iPhone for $400. They're selling you a $400 iPhone for $400, with a discount for signing a NEW contract. Jeez."
I say they're selling a ***$100* for $400. If the phone didn't come from Apple, or if it looked crappy, but contained the same interface, i bet it would not sell for very long at $400. It might drop to $100, then lower, until they made it obsolete and vigorously replaced it at a higher cost. But, i suppose the software AND the look are what drive this craze for an iPhone, and it sure helps Apple that it came from Apple. I wonder if the iPhone would sell as well if microsoft and Apple secretly sold it as a microsoft product but Apple got paid behind the scenes... (Yeh, i realize it wouldn't remain a secret for more than a few weeks... internal revolt by Apple employees, leaks by contract manufacturers, etc...)
At $199, it's pretty damned tempting to switch to AT&T, but that is still pricey for me. Now, if it got subsidized down to $100 or $150, and had a decent ~$50/month plan and if i could mix/match my music/media files (protected and unprotected mp3s, etc...) and if the contract contained clause that said if i verifiably moved to an area not served by them (domestically or overseas, my choice), and all i had to pay wasn an ETF of NO MORE THAN $200, maybe... maybe i might definitely buy that phone and drop my hangups over AT&T....
Well, there you go... start selling banana-shaped protectors for iPhones, and they will fit in the palm and the grip of a hand. Sexy, AND sensual iPhone... Call it an iBone... iGrip.... But, it might make Apple go bananas... Now, for the adult market, you could sell iPhal for the iBone that was the iPhone.... Might make for a backup income stream in this and the next economy...
In response to Icebike and MrCrassic, one way current iPhone users could revolt is to en mass start contributing $25 to an escrow account set up to pay developers or some network that will write software to shift all iPhones enrolled into a new, mesh, non-major-isp supported network. Maybe the packets WILL inevitably have to travel over an existing net, but if the contract terminates, and the new software turns the 3G and earlier model into something akin to a portable computer, maybe even better than the 3G S, and if that phone is on a new network not under Apple's nor under AT&T's control, then i wonder whether Apple or AT&T would have any legal right (or immunity) to brick those phones that are explicitly removed from AT&T's subscription. If the phones are tethered (by ID) and enrolled into a data bank (say, with a court or with the FCC or some cognizant agency of the government that might take a dim view on Apple or AT&T or any carrier crying foul or soul grapes fucking around with hardware that is NOT theirs...) the business model, the blueprints TO the phone still remain AT&T's and Apple's property, but the SOLD PHONE is NNNNNOTTTt any longer their property to fuck with once it's off-contract.
Now, the only way to combat that would be if Apple built in a time-bomb that starts ticking when the phone is initially activated and told what its self-destruct date is, which might be the contract expiry date + 24 hours, or some nonsense like that.
This "repurposing" of "old" iPhones, and older iPods might be a way for "green" types of people to contribute their "old" hardware to developing nations -- provided the donation area has towers or mesh nets that can actually talk to the phone. Heck, it might even change some domestic tax/donation valuation codes. If the iPhone sold at $699 is worth the same as one sold at $199, or vice versa, then what is the real value of the physical phone when sold or donated after 2 years. Maybe if enough green Apple fans en mass might start a trend where for various reasons the IRS or other tax organs may be shunned into permitting a tax break for the donor. OTOH, if no tax break is allowed for overseas recipients, then maybe schools could be wired to handle these phones as teaching assistance devices. Might create new business models. But, it'll have to be quick, decisive, and well-funded to prevent an Apple counter attack. If Apple hasn't got a big enough lobby in Washington, then it's possible that someone can orchestrate a political movement to start embarrassing manufacturers that design nearly un-upgradable hardware when software should do much more of the upgrading than fancy shell-change games. If anything, the phone body recycling market needs to be improved so all that plastic and the toxic internals are deal with.
In fairness to Apple, it could tell all the more snively/nasally of its fans to STFU or the two could work together to offset the cost of obtaining a 3G S iPhone. More, even if Apple reduced the 3G S to $199 for ALL takers, what becomes of all the now 'obsoleted' pre-3G S iPhones? There might be the possibility that 80% every single previously-sold iPhone ends up in the trash, because THAT many of them can't feasibly be recycled (possibly this negates my recycling suggestion above...)... But, if that many CAN be recovered and given new life, they definitely then belong in the hands of schools that receive them as nearly-crippled, and for-schoo-use-only, if some support will be made for leaving slack room for new product hardware sales.
"I'm wondering how this post ever made it to the slashdot front page. I haven't RTFM, but as it's from the domain comcastfuckingwithyourport53traffic.wordpress.com I don't see any reason to lend it credence."
I once lamented/assailed in/. that/. can't expect to attain journalistic credibility, and responses came to me to the effect that i was crazy to expect credibility here.
So, to your lament(?), i say, Kojak would say, "It's about page hits/impressions, baby....."
Some of this kind of "story posting" my be considered the work of miscreants in many of the more respectable journals. Now, if the IEEE or some such entity takes hold of this story and watches comcast to see if this story is false, or if the story is breaking the lid off a clandestine, localized test (maybe comcast is doing something on behalf of the NSA? Maybe in exchange for immunity from ALL sorts of future investigation/prosecution/fines...), then we might have something to talk about....
"Quote: It would be very easy to add external device with internal GPS that can send aircraft position every 5 minutes or so over its own satellite uplink. Ironically, the aircraft in question, which like most modern jet airliners was fitted with ADS-B, would have been squittering its position, altitude, groundspeed and ROC/ROD at half-second intervals continuously during the flight on 1090MHz..."
"Almag" has some interesting things to point out, too... (in that same forum)...
"I would argue that instead of it being one or the other, it would be better if the inputs could be merged. "
If i remember correctly, that was tried, and IIRC, a previous Airbus either crashed or almost crashed because the pilot and computer were fighting, nullifying or amplfying the other's inputs.
Now, if there is a "voting" system, whereby the pilot says, "fuck off, computer", but the computer has permanent rights to phone home, the airline home office could then overrule the pilot -- if the plane is still flying. To counter the risk of a rogue pilot who is NOT intent on crashing, the PA system could announce to the cabin that the home office is trying to reach to pilot. That fear of pandemonium in the cabin might curtail a cocky pilot, however, but not one bent on crashing the plane. Fortunately, such personalities are very rare. Even better would be if a hidden computer monitors everything, when the safe parameters known and unexpected but exceeded are detected, the home office could either override the pilot electronically, or set off enough alarms and slave some observation satellites onto the general area. If ANYthing, the satellites might see through some weather conditions, and if the plane does crash, it will be located in minutes, not days.
Even better, if a plane is deviating, it should set off a distress beacon IMMEDIATELY, not just to the home office, but an area-wide general alert (if this is not already being done) even if the pilot chooses not to verbally declare an emergency. Some information may be proprietary to airlines, but matterss of life, death, and corpse recovery should NEVER be the sole domain of a company, nor of its nation's transportation authorities.
Definitely, the paying/flying/traveling public deserves more. By the time the US delivers the pinger trackers, the batteries in the black boxes might be too week to get a signal up from 20k feet. It's possible some ducting and zonal properties may even redirect the stronger parts of the signal so far away that it may take more subs and more aircraft and a few more tug-towed sensors to beat the transponders' batteries to drain-time. But, i'm just writing out the side of my ass. As long as airlines don't pay money for things WE generalizing public persons think makes sense, they will always get away with paying for and upgrading only what they want, when they want, unless a government order overrules them quickly enough.
Now, if an ET sees that thing emerging into deep space, tethered to the Earth, grappling with it could be one "tough nut to swallow", as a saying goes...
Being at "-1 to keep an eye out for abuses" does NOT WORK. It's nice to show, but if it doesn't "out" abusers, then "first responders" will merely be punished for buoying an abused, worthwhile comment. The key to clipping/nipping/curbing abuses is to out the abusing account, and remove that account's ability to post or at least its ability to moderate and make it painfully slow to access pages or see firehose submissions.... something which is suspect IS being experimented with here on/..
Yesterday, my original post/comment was -1, flamebait. This AM, it was 2, Insightful, up to an hour ago (12 PM PST). Now, it's -1, Offtopic.
So, i state an opinion, which a sane, normal grammar/English teacher might be enthusiastically jump on, yet in this site chock-full of would-be intelligent people has a number of pain-pushing lurkers and some even with very low numbers who deign to seek and stomp down the rating given by someone trying to be benevolent.
This is why i've stated over an over that slashdot is a breeding ground for emotionally disturbed (but outwardly intelligent-- mostly, but not all) people who have so much frustration in their lives that they just explode and take it out on someone for the smallest little infraction they cannot tolerate. I'm NOT just talking about subscribers/readers. I am 80% sure there are a few on-duty moderators who sit back and watch and allow such scoring to occur.
I propose, as i have in the past, that slashdot create a heuristics-like scoring and capping system where punishers are denied moderating priveleges or at least have them degraded. "Balancers" would be accorded extra privileges when they promote or rescue comments. The scoring system would show how many moderators/readers read the thread scored/attacked, show the plot, and suggest from the database a handful of decent moderators/readers to weigh in to counter the effect of wingnut/one-shot/reactionary attackers who in large number (or, from the looks of things, small numbers) come along and just bury someone, not so much to suppress their comment from read-level view, but to also psychologically assail someone as if to say, "you're not welcome here -- unless you keep your TERSE opinions to yourself..."....
All it needs to look like is a combination of Tektronix oscillator and a mini-scoring table. Nothing too hard to invent, and i certainly will not recognize any patent claims, because such a thing is described here in words, and is obvious and easy to visualize, and deserves no patent protection anyway. With the brainpower at VA/slashdot, such a scoring system would go a long way toward removing digital bully power in a geek forum. (And, yeh, 99% of the time that i am a paid contributor/subscriber, i post with the No Subscriber Bonus box checked, so i automatically start low, relying only on readers to buoy me, not my ego to buoy my comments.)
If anything, such code could be Open Source developed and published as prior art before some commercial entity picks up my comments/idea and tries to patent it. If such a system exists, it ought to reviewed for patent revocation.
Encouraged to be greedier? I wish my PERSONAL income tax rate would be lowered without my having to take a sizable drop in income, but we know that that won't happen.
Here is MY response to Ballmer:
"Boo hooo hoo msoft can't stand to pay taxes? It's called being the business end of the social safety net. If you so much hate paying taxes because you think the government is misusing money, condemn the government/DOR/IRS and stipulate ms will DIRECTLY apportion its portion of taxes TO SCHOOLS and health and charity. Yeh, you tried and failed, before, but old BG was being too selective. Just dole it out..."
Of course, that won't happen either. I think ballmer is just bluffing. After all, they could offer people performance-based retention of jobs but at lower pay, in exchange for a 2-year or 3-year guarantee of keeping jobs. Slackers would be on notice and so would the star performers. Ahh, but then ms would just suffere brain drain... Won't be a pretty situation...
This is annoying, just as is "Logout", wich is best thought of as an act, so it should be writtein as "Log out", nnnnnnnoTTTTT, "Logout". When i see "logout" i think "oh, a PLACE". When i see "Log out", i thank the smarter site editor and imagine an act, not a place... But,that's just me...
and earlier, when i told a senior coworker, he said, "We don't know WHAT it is, yet. For all we know, it could be alien abduction..."... I had to laugh at that.
As for car vs plane travel, i was talking with another senior employee (very intelligent, respectable and impressive person from Germany), and he said, "Statistically, flying is safer than driving just to get TO the airport." I laughed, like the kid in Battle Royale, at the end when he realized his life was over... i laughed hard and wryly, and he had this semi-astonished look on his face, and said, "What? It's TRUE.".... I told him, "If i'm in a car, driving it, i can at least FEEL like im in control, and maybe swerve, or go off the road to avoid collision-- if i frequent the road and calculate to emergency point. If i'm in a plane and it's going down, I'm able to ony kick and scream. And do NOTHING..."
Hell, worse, i might scream crazily and kick the shit out of the seat in front of me, only to survive, but be prosecuted by an injured person complaining to the police.
Personally, i've had a SEVERELY hard landing in Vietnam on an Air France 747, back in 1998. I thought the gear would collapse or penetrate the cabin. The plane was sandy-dirty and i wondered about the weight and friction effects. I've seen shiner planes. On that same vacation, going back to San Jose, i flew out of PDX (Portland) and the SWA (Southwest Airlines) got caught in a storm, a MAJOR system that was in the area (~mid/late Jan 1998-early Feb88). Our plane was dipping and climbing, doing crazy shit. Not like in "Turbulence", but is WAS unnerving due to the amount, duration, and time. We all thought it was our last flight. The attendants were even passing out alcohol (IIRC, or it was so surreal that i seem to recall it), clapping, jumping around, and generally trying to cheer us up. When we landed, people cried, many of us clapped, people shook hands, and some stayed quiet, but it was probably most terrifying flight in my personal experience.
My brother used to be a jet engine mech in the USN. One day, they were on a MAC flight, and on rotation (I guess that's nose-up/wheels going up?) they had an engine blow. The pilot cooly and calmly got the plane back down. IIRC, from what he said, NORMALLY a pilot would gun the remaining engine and try to go around and declare an emergency and try to land ASAP. But, this pilot measured the situation and decided to get on the ground without full feet up. When they landed, he felt their survival partly or mainly hinged on the fact that this particular pilot (female) was female and had no hero complexes going on. I suppose being a jet engine mechanic, he's had LOTS of conversations with superiors and ranking enlisteds who confide certain things.
Everytime i fly, i consider it could be my very last major decision. I never give much thought to being mowed down, mugged, or an elevator floor opening up, or so on. I DO, however, enjoy some stiff turbulence now and again, but not like the Air France 747 i flew which had flapping wings. I don't recall the SWA wings... I think it was too cloudy and bad weather keeping us from seeing much most of the rougher times in that flight.
Remember the death threat against the dogs that outed a cache of discs in CHina last year? (or 2007?)
Well, i'm surprised that we haven't news reports that fake caches filled with cyanide burned out Woofie's nose...
OTOH, why bother with CN... that could get the global authorities REALLY pissed off. Instead, put dogphrodesiacs in the boxes, and give "man's best friend" a case of the woodies... Stiff, leaking dogs won't look good in public, and they'll leave stains on packages and the delivery agents will have to wear gloves and keep the boxes off their uniforms...
My work computer is set to take ms updates, and it has the.net 3.5 sp1 update.
But, for the past 3 weeks or so, Firefox (3.0.10) has been acting weird as hell on one machine. If I grab the title bar to move the browser, the browser freezes up. If I alt-tab away from or even away from and back to the broser, it unfreezes and i can surf. But, try to *MOVE* the browser, it freezes up again. Minimizing and maximizing seem ok.
I'm now wondering if ms has been f*cking around with Opera (yeh, 9.64). One one site i visit, i can submit things for a bit, then after a while submissions just WON'T go through, so i have to switch to Firefox just to get the submission through.
I don't trust ms, and things like this just further erode ANY chance to *gain* any trust from me. Obviously, so long as i am forced to use windows for some of my work or hobby, ms could care less -- as long as i cannot forensically uncover their shenanigans or tip off smarter people to uncover things.
probe (or, probiscus) up ms' derrier (or, dirty rear), the anti-trust court can say, Ben-dova, BAYBEE... This is From Russia, with LOVE..." And, to modivy some Bond, add, "For YOUR thighs ONLY"...
They let down their avantguard? Will they become avantGONE, or can they stick around because they simply know how to avantgo? If they switch into art, then can become avan(t)goh, DOH!
I'm recalling an episode or two in Trek where various alien control consoles had triangular keyboards. How anyone can get a patent will be interesting...
But, even if not (episode, or patent interests...), here are some Trek and other Sci-Fi alien writing fonts...
Slashdot Mirror
a red, glowing suit and jump around in it like Hapkido/Jujitsu, and if we had as many JOINTS as we have BONES, then we *could* look like a fireball. Wait, would that be a conundrum? Joints count keeping up with bones count...
"Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class":
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/11/teen.self.diagnosis/index.html
"For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.
During a science class, Jessica Terry, 18, discovered a tell-tale granuloma in her own pathology slide.
Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn't figure out the cause of Jessica's abdominal distress.
Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own."
Imagine the chagrin the various medical experts experienced when she inadvertently disproved numerous experts who misdiagnosed her...
"Its not like they're selling you a $200 iPhone for $400. They're selling you a $400 iPhone for $400, with a discount for signing a NEW contract. Jeez."
I say they're selling a ***$100* for $400. If the phone didn't come from Apple, or if it looked crappy, but contained the same interface, i bet it would not sell for very long at $400. It might drop to $100, then lower, until they made it obsolete and vigorously replaced it at a higher cost. But, i suppose the software AND the look are what drive this craze for an iPhone, and it sure helps Apple that it came from Apple. I wonder if the iPhone would sell as well if microsoft and Apple secretly sold it as a microsoft product but Apple got paid behind the scenes... (Yeh, i realize it wouldn't remain a secret for more than a few weeks... internal revolt by Apple employees, leaks by contract manufacturers, etc...)
At $199, it's pretty damned tempting to switch to AT&T, but that is still pricey for me. Now, if it got subsidized down to $100 or $150, and had a decent ~$50/month plan and if i could mix/match my music/media files (protected and unprotected mp3s, etc...) and if the contract contained clause that said if i verifiably moved to an area not served by them (domestically or overseas, my choice), and all i had to pay wasn an ETF of NO MORE THAN $200, maybe... maybe i might definitely buy that phone and drop my hangups over AT&T....
Well, there you go... start selling banana-shaped protectors for iPhones, and they will fit in the palm and the grip of a hand. Sexy, AND sensual iPhone... Call it an iBone... iGrip.... But, it might make Apple go bananas... Now, for the adult market, you could sell iPhal for the iBone that was the iPhone.... Might make for a backup income stream in this and the next economy...
In response to Icebike and MrCrassic, one way current iPhone users could revolt is to en mass start contributing $25 to an escrow account set up to pay developers or some network that will write software to shift all iPhones enrolled into a new, mesh, non-major-isp supported network. Maybe the packets WILL inevitably have to travel over an existing net, but if the contract terminates, and the new software turns the 3G and earlier model into something akin to a portable computer, maybe even better than the 3G S, and if that phone is on a new network not under Apple's nor under AT&T's control, then i wonder whether Apple or AT&T would have any legal right (or immunity) to brick those phones that are explicitly removed from AT&T's subscription. If the phones are tethered (by ID) and enrolled into a data bank (say, with a court or with the FCC or some cognizant agency of the government that might take a dim view on Apple or AT&T or any carrier crying foul or soul grapes fucking around with hardware that is NOT theirs...) the business model, the blueprints TO the phone still remain AT&T's and Apple's property, but the SOLD PHONE is NNNNNOTTTt any longer their property to fuck with once it's off-contract.
Now, the only way to combat that would be if Apple built in a time-bomb that starts ticking when the phone is initially activated and told what its self-destruct date is, which might be the contract expiry date + 24 hours, or some nonsense like that.
This "repurposing" of "old" iPhones, and older iPods might be a way for "green" types of people to contribute their "old" hardware to developing nations -- provided the donation area has towers or mesh nets that can actually talk to the phone. Heck, it might even change some domestic tax/donation valuation codes. If the iPhone sold at $699 is worth the same as one sold at $199, or vice versa, then what is the real value of the physical phone when sold or donated after 2 years. Maybe if enough green Apple fans en mass might start a trend where for various reasons the IRS or other tax organs may be shunned into permitting a tax break for the donor. OTOH, if no tax break is allowed for overseas recipients, then maybe schools could be wired to handle these phones as teaching assistance devices. Might create new business models. But, it'll have to be quick, decisive, and well-funded to prevent an Apple counter attack. If Apple hasn't got a big enough lobby in Washington, then it's possible that someone can orchestrate a political movement to start embarrassing manufacturers that design nearly un-upgradable hardware when software should do much more of the upgrading than fancy shell-change games. If anything, the phone body recycling market needs to be improved so all that plastic and the toxic internals are deal with.
In fairness to Apple, it could tell all the more snively/nasally of its fans to STFU or the two could work together to offset the cost of obtaining a 3G S iPhone. More, even if Apple reduced the 3G S to $199 for ALL takers, what becomes of all the now 'obsoleted' pre-3G S iPhones? There might be the possibility that 80% every single previously-sold iPhone ends up in the trash, because THAT many of them can't feasibly be recycled (possibly this negates my recycling suggestion above...)... But, if that many CAN be recovered and given new life, they definitely then belong in the hands of schools that receive them as nearly-crippled, and for-schoo-use-only, if some support will be made for leaving slack room for new product hardware sales.
Anyway...
"I'm wondering how this post ever made it to the slashdot front page. I haven't RTFM, but as it's from the domain comcastfuckingwithyourport53traffic.wordpress.com I don't see any reason to lend it credence."
I once lamented/assailed in /. that /. can't expect to attain journalistic credibility, and responses came to me to the effect that i was crazy to expect credibility here.
So, to your lament(?), i say, Kojak would say, "It's about page hits/impressions, baby....."
Some of this kind of "story posting" my be considered the work of miscreants in many of the more respectable journals. Now, if the IEEE or some such entity takes hold of this story and watches comcast to see if this story is false, or if the story is breaking the lid off a clandestine, localized test (maybe comcast is doing something on behalf of the NSA? Maybe in exchange for immunity from ALL sorts of future investigation/prosecution/fines...), then we might have something to talk about....
User, but used PCLinuxOS for about a year. I tried RH & Fedora a few days here and there....But, for those interested (not just in Fedora):
Linux Format magazine (issue 120) will carry Ubuntu as well as Mandriva 2009.1
http://www.linuxformat.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NewArchives
Issue 119 carries "Triple-booting DVD with PCLinuxOS 2009, Mepis 8 and Zenwalk 6"
http://www.linuxformat.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=NewArchives&issue=119
Not to "dis(s)" Fedora, but variety in Open Source/GNU/Linux will (hopefully) ensure ms doesn't nuke us.
Interest some:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/375937-air-france-a330-200-missing-21.html#post4967832
"Quote:
It would be very easy to add external device with internal GPS that can send aircraft position every 5 minutes or so over its own satellite uplink.
Ironically, the aircraft in question, which like most modern jet airliners was fitted with ADS-B, would have been squittering its position, altitude, groundspeed and ROC/ROD at half-second intervals continuously during the flight on 1090MHz..."
"Almag" has some interesting things to point out, too... (in that same forum)...
If i RTFA and followed this link:
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/242973/
about "direct law" in Airbus planes, i might have had less to say in my spiel above...
"I would argue that instead of it being one or the other, it would be better if the inputs could be merged. "
If i remember correctly, that was tried, and IIRC, a previous Airbus either crashed or almost crashed because the pilot and computer were fighting, nullifying or amplfying the other's inputs.
Now, if there is a "voting" system, whereby the pilot says, "fuck off, computer", but the computer has permanent rights to phone home, the airline home office could then overrule the pilot -- if the plane is still flying. To counter the risk of a rogue pilot who is NOT intent on crashing, the PA system could announce to the cabin that the home office is trying to reach to pilot. That fear of pandemonium in the cabin might curtail a cocky pilot, however, but not one bent on crashing the plane. Fortunately, such personalities are very rare. Even better would be if a hidden computer monitors everything, when the safe parameters known and unexpected but exceeded are detected, the home office could either override the pilot electronically, or set off enough alarms and slave some observation satellites onto the general area. If ANYthing, the satellites might see through some weather conditions, and if the plane does crash, it will be located in minutes, not days.
Even better, if a plane is deviating, it should set off a distress beacon IMMEDIATELY, not just to the home office, but an area-wide general alert (if this is not already being done) even if the pilot chooses not to verbally declare an emergency. Some information may be proprietary to airlines, but matterss of life, death, and corpse recovery should NEVER be the sole domain of a company, nor of its nation's transportation authorities.
Definitely, the paying/flying/traveling public deserves more. By the time the US delivers the pinger trackers, the batteries in the black boxes might be too week to get a signal up from 20k feet. It's possible some ducting and zonal properties may even redirect the stronger parts of the signal so far away that it may take more subs and more aircraft and a few more tug-towed sensors to beat the transponders' batteries to drain-time. But, i'm just writing out the side of my ass. As long as airlines don't pay money for things WE generalizing public persons think makes sense, they will always get away with paying for and upgrading only what they want, when they want, unless a government order overrules them quickly enough.
Launch it from San Fransideshow.... from near the Coit(us) Tower, of from the Stanford University "Phallic" (Hoover) Tower:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coit_Tower
http://unixpapa.com/tower/
Now, if an ET sees that thing emerging into deep space, tethered to the Earth, grappling with it could be one "tough nut to swallow", as a saying goes...
Evil Genious?
Don't rush him. He's a sleeper, and a TaiRaelian, arriving here via a wormhole, and he has a plan. He will exceed Ken Starling...
Forgot:
Being at "-1 to keep an eye out for abuses" does NOT WORK. It's nice to show, but if it doesn't "out" abusers, then "first responders" will merely be punished for buoying an abused, worthwhile comment. The key to clipping/nipping/curbing abuses is to out the abusing account, and remove that account's ability to post or at least its ability to moderate and make it painfully slow to access pages or see firehose submissions.... something which is suspect IS being experimented with here on /..
that this site behaves like an emo-machine...
Yesterday, my original post/comment was -1, flamebait. This AM, it was 2, Insightful, up to an hour ago (12 PM PST). Now, it's -1, Offtopic.
So, i state an opinion, which a sane, normal grammar/English teacher might be enthusiastically jump on, yet in this site chock-full of would-be intelligent people has a number of pain-pushing lurkers and some even with very low numbers who deign to seek and stomp down the rating given by someone trying to be benevolent.
This is why i've stated over an over that slashdot is a breeding ground for emotionally disturbed (but outwardly intelligent-- mostly, but not all) people who have so much frustration in their lives that they just explode and take it out on someone for the smallest little infraction they cannot tolerate. I'm NOT just talking about subscribers/readers. I am 80% sure there are a few on-duty moderators who sit back and watch and allow such scoring to occur.
I propose, as i have in the past, that slashdot create a heuristics-like scoring and capping system where punishers are denied moderating priveleges or at least have them degraded. "Balancers" would be accorded extra privileges when they promote or rescue comments. The scoring system would show how many moderators/readers read the thread scored/attacked, show the plot, and suggest from the database a handful of decent moderators/readers to weigh in to counter the effect of wingnut/one-shot/reactionary attackers who in large number (or, from the looks of things, small numbers) come along and just bury someone, not so much to suppress their comment from read-level view, but to also psychologically assail someone as if to say, "you're not welcome here -- unless you keep your TERSE opinions to yourself..."....
All it needs to look like is a combination of Tektronix oscillator and a mini-scoring table. Nothing too hard to invent, and i certainly will not recognize any patent claims, because such a thing is described here in words, and is obvious and easy to visualize, and deserves no patent protection anyway. With the brainpower at VA/slashdot, such a scoring system would go a long way toward removing digital bully power in a geek forum. (And, yeh, 99% of the time that i am a paid contributor/subscriber, i post with the No Subscriber Bonus box checked, so i automatically start low, relying only on readers to buoy me, not my ego to buoy my comments.)
If anything, such code could be Open Source developed and published as prior art before some commercial entity picks up my comments/idea and tries to patent it. If such a system exists, it ought to reviewed for patent revocation.
Encouraged to be greedier? I wish my PERSONAL income tax rate would be lowered without my having to take a sizable drop in income, but we know that that won't happen.
Here is MY response to Ballmer:
"Boo hooo hoo msoft can't stand to pay taxes? It's called being the business end of the social safety net. If you so much hate paying taxes because you think the government is misusing money, condemn the government/DOR/IRS and stipulate ms will DIRECTLY apportion its portion of taxes TO SCHOOLS and health and charity. Yeh, you tried and failed, before, but old BG was being too selective. Just dole it out..."
Of course, that won't happen either. I think ballmer is just bluffing. After all, they could offer people performance-based retention of jobs but at lower pay, in exchange for a 2-year or 3-year guarantee of keeping jobs. Slackers would be on notice and so would the star performers. Ahh, but then ms would just suffere brain drain... Won't be a pretty situation...
Oh, whoever moderated me 0, troll is just being a kessekkida/jipshekki... Try to educate some bastards, and they get all torqued out...
"break-in'", or "break-in"?
This is annoying, just as is "Logout", wich is best thought of as an act, so it should be writtein as "Log out", nnnnnnnoTTTTT, "Logout". When i see "logout" i think "oh, a PLACE". When i see "Log out", i thank the smarter site editor and imagine an act, not a place... But,that's just me...
and earlier, when i told a senior coworker, he said, "We don't know WHAT it is, yet. For all we know, it could be alien abduction..."... I had to laugh at that.
As for car vs plane travel, i was talking with another senior employee (very intelligent, respectable and impressive person from Germany), and he said, "Statistically, flying is safer than driving just to get TO the airport." I laughed, like the kid in Battle Royale, at the end when he realized his life was over... i laughed hard and wryly, and he had this semi-astonished look on his face, and said, "What? It's TRUE.".... I told him, "If i'm in a car, driving it, i can at least FEEL like im in control, and maybe swerve, or go off the road to avoid collision-- if i frequent the road and calculate to emergency point. If i'm in a plane and it's going down, I'm able to ony kick and scream. And do NOTHING..."
Hell, worse, i might scream crazily and kick the shit out of the seat in front of me, only to survive, but be prosecuted by an injured person complaining to the police.
Personally, i've had a SEVERELY hard landing in Vietnam on an Air France 747, back in 1998. I thought the gear would collapse or penetrate the cabin. The plane was sandy-dirty and i wondered about the weight and friction effects. I've seen shiner planes. On that same vacation, going back to San Jose, i flew out of PDX (Portland) and the SWA (Southwest Airlines) got caught in a storm, a MAJOR system that was in the area (~mid/late Jan 1998-early Feb88). Our plane was dipping and climbing, doing crazy shit. Not like in "Turbulence", but is WAS unnerving due to the amount, duration, and time. We all thought it was our last flight. The attendants were even passing out alcohol (IIRC, or it was so surreal that i seem to recall it), clapping, jumping around, and generally trying to cheer us up. When we landed, people cried, many of us clapped, people shook hands, and some stayed quiet, but it was probably most terrifying flight in my personal experience.
My brother used to be a jet engine mech in the USN. One day, they were on a MAC flight, and on rotation (I guess that's nose-up/wheels going up?) they had an engine blow. The pilot cooly and calmly got the plane back down. IIRC, from what he said, NORMALLY a pilot would gun the remaining engine and try to go around and declare an emergency and try to land ASAP. But, this pilot measured the situation and decided to get on the ground without full feet up. When they landed, he felt their survival partly or mainly hinged on the fact that this particular pilot (female) was female and had no hero complexes going on. I suppose being a jet engine mechanic, he's had LOTS of conversations with superiors and ranking enlisteds who confide certain things.
Everytime i fly, i consider it could be my very last major decision. I never give much thought to being mowed down, mugged, or an elevator floor opening up, or so on. I DO, however, enjoy some stiff turbulence now and again, but not like the Air France 747 i flew which had flapping wings. I don't recall the SWA wings... I think it was too cloudy and bad weather keeping us from seeing much most of the rougher times in that flight.
Remember the death threat against the dogs that outed a cache of discs in CHina last year? (or 2007?)
Well, i'm surprised that we haven't news reports that fake caches filled with cyanide burned out Woofie's nose...
OTOH, why bother with CN... that could get the global authorities REALLY pissed off. Instead, put dogphrodesiacs in the boxes, and give "man's best friend" a case of the woodies... Stiff, leaking dogs won't look good in public, and they'll leave stains on packages and the delivery agents will have to wear gloves and keep the boxes off their uniforms...
My work computer is set to take ms updates, and it has the .net 3.5 sp1 update.
But, for the past 3 weeks or so, Firefox (3.0.10) has been acting weird as hell on one machine. If I grab the title bar to move the browser, the browser freezes up. If I alt-tab away from or even away from and back to the broser, it unfreezes and i can surf. But, try to *MOVE* the browser, it freezes up again. Minimizing and maximizing seem ok.
I'm now wondering if ms has been f*cking around with Opera (yeh, 9.64). One one site i visit, i can submit things for a bit, then after a while submissions just WON'T go through, so i have to switch to Firefox just to get the submission through.
I don't trust ms, and things like this just further erode ANY chance to *gain* any trust from me. Obviously, so long as i am forced to use windows for some of my work or hobby, ms could care less -- as long as i cannot forensically uncover their shenanigans or tip off smarter people to uncover things.
probe (or, probiscus) up ms' derrier (or, dirty rear), the anti-trust court can say, Ben-dova, BAYBEE... This is From Russia, with LOVE..." And, to modivy some Bond, add, "For YOUR thighs ONLY"...
If it were organic, i'd dare say it could be called a.... hip-shooter...
They let down their avantguard? Will they become avantGONE, or can they stick around because they simply know how to avantgo? If they switch into art, then can become avan(t)goh, DOH!
Whatever it was, it must've been QUITE... manifold... hehehe
"Pen Pals"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_Pals_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
I'm recalling an episode or two in Trek where various alien control consoles had triangular keyboards. How anyone can get a patent will be interesting...
But, even if not (episode, or patent interests...), here are some Trek and other Sci-Fi alien writing fonts...
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4965/tfont.html
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4965/tfont.html#kazonf