I got off it really quick. I found the article funny as hell once I realized it was bogus. But, it seems now the humor department link is in the article. There must be bonuses for captcha viewing impressions. Cuz, I sure dont' see many ads... Captchas can become Gotchas...
Captcha: "analyze"
(well, in THIS case, it could be anal-ize considering the unnecessary vitriol and anger that quickly popped up...
Or, anal-eyes, since it seems weird stuff gets put up, as if well, impressions are in vogue or something...)
Yeh, SurfLant/Com-whatever-Lant can have the Man from Atlantis paddle-powered ships.... I'm on the West Coast doin' my own thing...heheheh...
Ever heard of a guy named Cusanelli? He and a team recently got a patent for a certain stern flap/wedge design to smooth out the pitching of a ship. (Non-obviousness of the patent, to my mind, is open to argument, as I believe I read from books published in the 70's covering this kind of idea, and even if not in English, certainly, I think I can reasonably presume, Japan in WWII and Russia with their mind-boggling multitudes of ship engineering approaches must have something on this. I think prior art is out there somewhere..)
But, this wedge thing they got the patent for is not a propulsion device --they may as well use paddle wheels, but those are not efficient for warships: no rapid reversal, huge, noisy, memories of the Mississippi River/Delta steamships, antiquated, easily susceptible to damage (enemy inflicted or local sabotage); no easy redundant, compact 2nd prime mover.... on and on.. Forward screw propulsion was considered more than 10 years ago, but it's not in vogue, and there are technical issues to be resolved, tho there ARE a number of advantages. But, the "which end is the bow/where is the bridge going to be" would have to be overcome, I suppose. IIRC, it's to save fuel through helping the propeller be more efficient in a more locally stable region of water. Or, I'm merging that with my readings of Naval Ship Handling, Modern Ship Design and other sources, in which I think that "densifying" the body of water just above and abaft the props might give the blades more "bite" or push. OTOH, at some speeds, the stern wash might just undo my suppositions.
Reportedly, it increases fuel efficiency but I've been wondering whether it has some favorable acoustical effect/s on stern wake/wash. Meaning: not necessarily a cover story FOR, but certainly a beneficial gain to disturb cavitation bubbles or just normal slow-cruising wake to cut down the distance of certain harmonics. I'm no acoustics/naval engineer, but when I read things, my mind leaps to 2 or more alternative possibilities. Not with grounding in fact or science necessarily, but NEVER believe that a disclosed purpose is the ONLY purpose for some things.
I designed a ship with not ONE flap, and not for the purported/actual reasons the Carderock team did. Mine is split, and to impart some roll or heel stabilization at the stern, and to throw it off to enhance certain tactical turning diameter maneuvers I imagine in certain combat scenarios. I still have fin stabilizers on my designs, but I found it personally attractive to have split flaps. I am not sure (can't recall, and don't remember whether or not I made paper notes that) other countries' navies might be scale model testing or CFD modeling or full-scale testing split flaps.
Amazing, tho. The flaps on the DDG-51s are NOT terribly big, and they are fixed-angle and took a LOT of work to hash out what the optimal angles and lengths would be. I think the report alluded to there *might* being positionable flaps, but I'd decided that not being an engineer, and going for a "kewlness factor", (hey, I'm designing a fictional navy, and I don't inherit institutionalized baggage or architectural stylistics and such), I include hydraulic actuators to deal with this, and just insert an adjustable bladder between the hull and the flap forward edge to keep water below the flap from swirling or traversing past the hinges (corrosion control attempt on my part...) and to cut down on the local disturbance. BUT, REAL engineers can CFD test or report that they already did test this, and debunk my ideas if they want.
But, a UC Berkeley professor perused my 4 ships I singly designed, and he shook his head. He said, "YOU should be getting PAI
I guess it's better to trawl often before stuff we paid taxes for ends up for sale and affordable only to those with discretionary or programmed budgets....
Seems the government is selling docs to make some cash... But, it was QUITE an interesting read. It took a while to recall/dredge up some terms to make Google bring up these pages of URLs...
Maybe the assassin/killer was playing a TRUE game of Russian Roulette?
as for:
"by MMC Monster (602931) Alter Relationship on Friday November 24, @04:26PM (#16979636) I wouldn't call it ineptitude. All of medicine goes by the doctrine: "If you here hoofs, look for horses, not zebras." As you said, this is a fairly unusual form of poisoning. I'm surprised it was even diagnosed properly (assuming that it was, of course). IANAT (I am not a toxicologist), but the effects of a poison are typically not known until someone succumbs to it. While others have been poisoned by this particular element, it couldn't have been that many people compared to all the other possible toxins available."
WELLLLLL....
I've always wondered whether horses and zebras really sound all that different. Of course, other than the horse going "haroruroo haorururoo , haroruroo haorururoo"... (Too bad I haven't seen breathless zebras in documentaries... I might be tempted to text that sound, too...)
If I were the medic, I'd look for the horse's HOOVES, to see where it'd been stepping.
"Dudley Goodhead, from the UK's MRC Radiation and Genome Stability Unit, agrees that the poisoning must have been "a high-tech operation". But he points out that, in one respect, it was "stupid" because it left such an easily detectable trail. Further analysis of the polonium, and any other associated isotopes, could provide important clues as to its origins, he says."
-- Someone wanted him guaranteed D.E.A.D., DEAD! as in eRADicated... -- Someone doesn't care that polonium would be detected or traced to the Sushi bar.
-- Someone knows that polonium is an emitter, but is so small they can pass it through airports undetected or virtually so
-- Someone wants to deliver a message that as long as polonium can be produced or stolen, NO one is safe if the server of the poison has access to the target's food or drink or to the target's supplier of food or drink
Those ideas being posited, I suspect that was some HOT Sushi. Maybe hotter than hot. I wonder how cold the Sushi chef's hands are anymore. I heard (well, in a Korean film) that women don't make good Sushi chef's because their hands are too warm. But, after handling or fearing having handled polonium such chefs might be a bit warmer than usual.
And, for some reason, I am thinking "Appolonia", that group from the 80's...
In 1986, I was on the mess deck conversing with other shipmates about (then) Soviet "wake homing torpedoes" and how such a concept would render CVS pretty much a major effing boondoglle over night, since they could more accurately discern carrier screws and wake disturbance from the lighter decoy cruisers/destroyers and expendable frigates. I said if *I* were Soviet, THAT is where I'd spend my money, and on and on. My RMC (Radioman Chief) overheard me. I'd not seen any message traffic about the topic, and it's not part of radioman duties. But, THAT DAY, there was such traffic, on the watch section after mine. I happnend to reader of Clancy, and several of his predecessors, and even had in my seabags and my bunk and stand up lockers umpteen number of books on naval warfare, ships, and such, bought from various commercial sellers. I'd also been a fan of Star Trek, and as a kid, ALL SORTS of ideas swirled in my head. My chief reamed the HELL out of me, tho the captain and others never cared. They knew where I was coming from or didn't care since maybe they were tired, busy, or whatever. I thought my chief was going to have the CO try to strip me of my clearance, tho. That was on my second ship.
On my first ship, I was DC (damage control) qualified, was working on Division Damage Control Petty Officer (ahead of time, but well on track to get it had I not transferred to "A" School), and, due to articulate speaking, was made the "Captain's Phone Talker" and had to be on the Bridge whenever we conducted UNREPs (Underway Replenishments), usually the connected ones (CONREP) since I was also Flight Deck Helo Chock/Chainman-qualified) and had to be there during VertREPs; small arms weapons qualified, stood Petty Officer of the Watch, Roving Patrol (where I had to check the ammo holds; after all, the AE-26 class was capable of carrying nukes, not that I ever knew whether or not we had any aboard...) It was scary sometimes... We once had a fuze-less bomb slip out of the aluminum cage/crate and it fell about 40 down to the pier. All I knew as dozens of people flew like bats to starboard from port yelling "TAKE COVER! BOMB DOWN!" or something like that. In Jan 85, when I was barely a month aboard. I figured they knew more than I did, so I took cover, too. Fortunately, it didn't have any ability to actually detonate (the fuze was removed, and supposedly the AEs carried bombs, but the CVs and CVNs actually had the fuzes themselves...) Another time some dipshit deck ape-struck-for-Gunners Mate was caught smoking cigs in the bomb hold. Word around the ship was this guy's response was, "Awe Gunny, don't worry 'bout it-- we do this ALL THE TIME." Oh, really. Hypergolic fuel vapors were probably detectable, and that ONE lucky day, the ship's Gunner caught that guy, with others, and took him to mast (Captain's Mast). The skipper was PISSED. A number of the ship's hands were there as witnesses to the smoking as well as co-masted shipmates, or there as interested shipmate observers to the proceedings. Captain gripped the podium with whitened knuckles and lifted it aside smoothly and got into that guy's face and growled at him: "DO YOU ****KNOW*** what would have happend if this SHIP BLEW UP???!!! OUR ***ANCHOR*** WOULD BE IN ***MICHIGAN***!!!!" Our ship was Flint, named after Flint Michigan. For you landlubbers, ammo ships tend to be named after explosive or pyrotechnic things: Pyro, Haleakela, Flint, etc... So, I have ALWAYS if on the day that guy got caught whether or not THAT day we had nukes on board. Why? Cuz we were puttering around in the East Pacific. I know the anchor wouldn't go maybe 4 or 5 miles if we DID have nukes and they somehow sympathetically detonated, but the thought crossed many of our minds about the presence or absence... ) But, I was luckier. I'd once dropped one of my.45 cal clips down a 15-foot sheer ladder when on rounds to one of the holds in "The Cage", where IFFF we had nukes, I'd have to sight for signs of tampering, unauthorized personnel, etc... Not wanting to be "jumped" (Hey, I took m
But, what about sulfur and other corrosive products? Won't this be an issue with any ports or valves between the gases and the sea water? I'm no chemist nor engineer, so it's just a thought.
As for this Slash thread, this stuff has been talked about for I think that past 30 years. At least feeding bubbles out of ports along the hull, not just for acoustic advantages, but to assist ridding the hull of boundary layer and other debilitating forms of friction. Hydroplaning works to a degree, and only up to certain displacements owing partly to construction materials and manufacturing costs. There was talk of emitting special "soap-like" fluids, and that WOULD be advantageous-- if one disregards the fact the fluid has weight, takes up volume, adds to displacement, and has all sorts of associated equipment with the same negatives. Even powerdery substances carried would penalize in terms of weight/increased displacement. Propellers and rudder improvements, stabilization fins, and improved hull and reduced appendage surface area all help. Triple-hull or catamaran hulls are "in vogue" these days, again up to certain displacements. They looks kewl and sexy and with stealth being a hot topic (hey, if the USAF stealth enhances it's aircraft, then the world will follow suit. If the USN stealth enhances its ship, the world follows suit. All the state-funded militaries have to play keep-up and the ship-building industry is one of the major economic benefactors, keeping yards open, work split across the surviving ones...)
There are books about CVNs, BBs CGs DDs, SSNs and SSBNs, but NONE of them goes into the details I do (I even created a fuel consumption table by reverse engineering out of misinformation and outright lies just by using some GE SFC information published for the benefit of ship operators who need this info in marketing speak...) I calculate my hull will sail about 10,000 nm. Even the Chinese "Luhai" is reportedly able to sail 13.155 nm (yep, she's lighter, but not much smaller, and the ship uses diesels IIRC or maybe it's indigenous GTMs since GE wouldn't any longer sell LM-2500's to China...)
But, If you're interested in contemporary ships, naval fiction, and naval architecture, in one setting see my stuff at:
you can download 5.tif files that make up the inboard and outboard elevations as well as the deck plans (general arrangement) I designed as an alternative DDG-51 class. In my mind, I saw myself designing an alternative that would rate being classed a cruiser (and, I despise the word "destroy" -- it's too loaded, bombastic, and there are no more "torpedo chaser" missions, so the term "destroyer" hangs on culture, history, and such, and several nations already presciently declared the term "outmoded", among other things.
But, my design, while I strove for "buildability" won't likely be built. I am a bit politically charged, and even IF the USN *likes* my design, I am sure I will *never* be patted on the back or thanked or said something nice to about it. I don't care, actually. It's my take on a mad world and my ideas to improve it would only muck things up for the few privileged powerful nations and accelerate (I wish) global stability.
Aside from that, one of my hulls uses 3 Azi-Pod (a patented term for "Azimuthal Pod" IIRC).I showed it (wel, my concept sketch I made in 1991 or so, as the hull with the pods wasn't actually drawn until ~ May 2005) in Dec 2004 at Funenokagakukan, near Tokyo, to a maritime museum librarian whose interest lie in naval warships, and he gave me a thumbs up (he couldn't speak English) almost as SOON as he saw the pods. OTOH, an naval architect at a firm in the heard of Tokyo took a different tack: He barraged me with questions such as "What is your block coefficient" Prismatic this, and cross-section that... I'm not an engineer, and I TOLD him that. I modeled my hull on the real hulls' dimen
These things become commoditized? How about going around and femtosecond-blasting jewelry of the rich and famous. Or, visiting a jewelry store and blasting their jewels through the glass? I see a sudden uptick in sales of surveillance cameras for jewelry stores and other places where "black is beautiful" is likely to destroy their businesses.
I wonder if what this thing would do to the teeth of those gold-mouth rappers and people on the streets. What? You got an interview toMORROW? 1-800-DENTIST will be smiling all the way to the black-back-to-gold bank.
If these things can femto-blast a few dozen times, automobile taggers will have a field day. So will body shops getting work orders.
Oh, is that Diet Pepsi or Regular? I can't tell. It's a black six-pack. Hate that local deputy in a small town? Sit next to him/her at the diner and femto-blast their nickel-plated revolver black, or patch-black, since most of it will be in the holster. (assuming this small-town cop/sheriff is playin' Buford Pusser or Duke Calley or something from the 70's...)
Ben Wah balls can now be blackened...
You can pretty much "blacken the shit" out of anything metal.
But, I see the biggest "bang" for mischief coming from laser-pointer sized femto-second blasters. Well, as long as they don't emit light doing their work. If so, then maybe the dance club would be an interesting place to use this thing...
It's bad enough when you go to Fry's Electronics and they want to swipe your DL for a CASH RETURN. I had to explicitly tell the cashiers "DO NOT SWIPE MY DRIVER'S LICENSE" before giving it to them for the return item. They STILL play dumb, and try to do it. Well, at least a few years ago they did.
I remember listening to the radio in 2002/3 about this crap these clubs are doing. It started mostly by clubs on the east coast, and they were really getting noticed when they sold the information to 3rd parties or directly themselves sent patrons "Happy Birthday" and discount patron cards and such. This is DANGEROUS, especially since some states may have little or no encryption in their cards. Banks, grocery stores and other swipe, so these damned clubs, under the pretext of screening out past troublemakers, swipe. I wouldn't be surprised if they are also doing it as part of a bounty hunt to reap a reward by law enforcement if they nab a dumb guy. They also claim it's to put a dent in underage drinkers and such entering the bars. That's bullshit, since if they THINK the ID is fake or being misused, they already have the power to confiscate it, detain the "suspect" until police arrive, and then they should let the POLICE swipe the card for authenticity and holder identification.
I will NEVER enter a f*cking club that wants to swipe my ID. (I guess if I ever have cause to be on the East Coast and friends want to drag me to a club, I'll have to decline, unless it's one that doens't swip... I refuse just on principle...) All they need to do is keep a hot sheet on the wall of rejects, and ban them. When they swipe mag stripes which are NOT secure, who KNOWS what information they could pick up. And, with properties selling and being lumped in as co-properties (think of the TV and radio stations...) when will it end? Your name will be in a database of diverse companies that don't NEED your name. Entering a damned club is not a license for them to sell and market your information. If that is how they supplement their income, then they won't be getting money from me.
I'd rather seem IBM/Lotus bring Lotus SmartSuite into this decade, as opposed to letting it linger in 1998 codeland. Unfortunately, it has been allowed to be trampled by even OpenOffice.
Yet, OO.o has NO decent end-user database, such as Lotus Approach. Forms and grids are normal, but Approach has integrated charts, reports, and a reasonably acceptable crosstab view, too. I showed a Cal Berkeley student took a computer programming class some of the stuff I do in Approach, and he gasped, recounting how maddening it was to do some stuff in Java, how it took WEEKS debugging shit. I'm not a programmer, and cringe at the thought of being forced to become one when I can do 80% of what I need to do by using WYSIWYG apps like Approach for my database, chart and forms needs. I can even hook it up to MySQL backends so I don't need to rely upon.dbf.
Lotus Word Pro has non-modal dialog boxes and smart tools/smart palettes that allow WYSIWYG editing without jumping in and out of dialogs just to see things as they *might* appear on paper.
It is quite heartbreaking that IBM and Sun and OO.o are not collaborating to merge the best of SmartSuite and OO.o. Together, they'd be a swift kick in the jewels for ms office.
I sure wish I'd win the Powerball or something over $200M. I'd try to buy SmartSuite, pull as Shuttleworth, and hire devs to bring SmartSuite up to date. Pay off the assholes who are hanging the pre-merger patent thingy over IBM's head, keeping SmartSuite from being decompiled, run thru QT/Trolltech and Glade, and depriving hundreds of thousands or a couple million Linux and SmartSuite lovers from having a combination to die for.
I'm forced to use ms orifice in the workplace, and I *occasionally* fire up OO.o, but the interface is to mshaft-like, too huge, and wasting my screen space. I prefer SmartSuite's tighter, crisper, snappier interface. Lotus SmartSuite, inside Win98, in Win4Lin, in Mandrake 10.1, in 256 MB RAM on an 800 MHz computer, with Firestarter and Etherape (chewing RAM) with a couple browsers (Konqueror, chewing more than 25 MB RAM) with MULTITUDES of tabs open, opens in about 4 seconds. I even give windoze 98 120 MB of RAM. and SmartSuite opens STILL in about 4 seconds. WHY, WHY, WHY the hell cannot OO.o open that fast, withOUT the fast-start-like gimmickry tool? It's depressing and maddening simultaneously.
Gods, let me win a Powerball I'd damn near buy or clone SmartSuite and then demand IBM accept a decent cut of the profits, after dealing with those pre-merger patenteers who are in the way of things.... I'd give the SMARTSUITE END USERS what they want: SmartSuite natively run in Linux, kernel-independent, KDE/Gnome-independent (like, for the LIFE of me, WHY the hell is CUPS a major dependency for KDE 3.2, so much so that I could not even upgrade, nor remove libcups without ripping out ALL of KDE? I had to fall back to Gnome, manually install the 1.1.23.17 libcups, then cups and common, and drivers and THEN install KDE on top of it, all because I cannot use Mdv 2007 with Win4Lin (for windoze 98, and I SURE as hell (as yet) have no reason to fork over $200 for hexed-p or two-kay when w98 is a smaller footprint on my machine) because of the 2.6.17 kernel. Well, THAT problem is because win4lin the company screwed us w98 users who don't NEED win4lin for w98 tech support, we just need an environment for w98 that is kernel-independent. And, our thanks: they come out with win4lin virtual server and desktop that deprive/deny the use of w98.
Anyway, IBM, please, please give us SmartSuite users a non-wine, non-win4-lin, non-emulator environment fresh upgrade to Lotus SmartSuite. Please?
and I realize now that I'd forgotten that english is STILL in thees sites' names.
But, honestly, I could swear that in Mozilla I'd seen Asian or Korean fonts in the URL/location bar only a few weeks ago. I'd been playing around with explicitly searching for information using Korean fonts in the URL at:
Personally, if China "forks" the Internet, then good for them. The country is burgeoning with people clamoring for access to information from everywhere, whatever the source. At some point, if lucky, some of them will become entrepreneurs. At the very least, a few hundred thousand new DNS entries per day could ensue. Why should ICANN be the gatekeeper of OTHER NATIONS' domestic registries? When those registries are to be sought and interacted with, why should ICANN solely control the registries. Domestically, I am sure a country can wall off itself, but internatonally, it could find itself isolated, unless it very, very technically and successfully side-steps ICANN and ends its single-source control. Does it still make sense to have only ONE sole source for TLD access? (Aside from "TLD")...
But, I suppose that if China DOES fork things, the US would probably "retaliate" by domestically blocking any and all in and outbound traffic using the "rogue" DNS apparatus. I know that if I had an information addiction that was fed by a rogue DNS or TLD system and the US politically cut it off, I'd be PISSED. Anyway, I feel it is only a matter of time before numerous countries and locales join up and for the thing. I suspect it would be instigated by the current anti-US sentiment that most likely won't be going away any time soon. Besides, a forked Internet would just make things more interesting. Might even create a few thousand more domestic IT/programming jobs.
... was very, very nicely put. It, to me, just underscores that any foot-dragging on the accented and Chinese/Asian character sets adoption would be an unacceptable denial of additional color and nuance to the ways of accessing the Internet.
As inconvenient as this may be, create a response form from which the person chooses the desired or intended URL. For example, one seeks a site with no accent, but 3 variations exist. The look or search would bring them all back and prompt the user to select one. Helpfully, their email entry or search term will precede or follow the domain or URL as applicable (in a locale or language rules set).
Right now, when e-mailing, people still incorrectly enter company names, even in English. So, what is their response? They fall back on a business card, a PDA entry, some scrap of paper, or even a search engine, or a phone call, or out of laziness, they give up. But, a mailing interface smart enough to seek the known registry of companies and non-commercial sites could bring back the options and let the user decide.
Currently, any foot-dragging on the issue smacks of "pre-eminence" or "we had it first and WE'LL decide what and when." Obviously, that didn't hold back on Japan or China. Now, these other countries want technology to be used to resolve their exclusion in what is a language-set exclusive club. By keeping the web to a handful of languages, particularly in English, it almost could be seen as wanting to ensure that English is the default language for business and international communications. If accented languages enter the scene, then all sorts of unforseen permutations in business, communications, and economics might occur, much to the dismay of some (certain governments?).
Personally, I think there is PLENTY of technology and brainpower to have solved this issue 5 years ago. There just was no pressure. Now, I don't by any means think ONE single person is holding this up. I think there are many forces and "interests" asking that this be deferred as long as possible. Normally, geeks and techies like challenges. This is a big-as-hell challenge if there EVER was one, yet it's being stonewalled, just like Asian languages are or have been. If Linux can support dozens of languages at the desktop (heck, Mandriva offers multitudes from which to select not only for install, but for desktop use), then why cannot ICANN and the registries follow suit? Oh, umm... yeh...
Jesus H. Christ, man! Korea and Taiwan. In BOTH cases the USA/CIA IMPLICITLY gave the local forces permission to (or looked the other way when approach for input) use their MILITARY units against students.
It was a bloody, SAD even in the history of each, but relatively speaking Tienanmen, by many accounts, was NOT as bad as in South Korea and in Taiwan. These happenend. The western news likes to IGNORE IT. (Where are YOU from? There are any NUMBER of esteemed, unreproachable authors (not myself) and historians who can rip you on that topic.)
Nevertheless I deeply respect Admiral Zheng He's fleet for NOT ravaging, mowing, down, conquering, or otherwise imposing any "China Will" upon the rest of the world. I believe what goes around comes around, and SOMEDAY China will rightfully challenge (not open the first shot, but merely challenge by presence) the USA or the flag-waving USN. It will just be equilibrium in the spheres of influence. NO ONE COUNTRY deserves, nor has some implicit privilege or right to run everything.
(That bit was a bit off topic, but if you and your assigning ME homework instead of just elucidating for the audience what I alluded would have helped. I dislike the misplaced, selective media amnesia... Do YOU?)
Your assignment is to do the rest. Find out WHY the US is footdragging in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. If you lack imagination: The US wants to keep China from gaining more traction. It keeps Korea from reunifying. It keeps Taiwan from being overrun, supposedly, by PRC. PRC isn't going to INVADE anyway-- the KMT and local officials already ALLOW/ED enough businesses to de facto turn over the tech to the mainland. Chinese nationals have direct access to the plants used/owned/built by/for Intel, AMD, IBM, Cisco, and the rest. So much smoke and mirrors are at play, most of this is about which country has the biggest balls to stare down the other and which can take the most control from its citizens and STILL look good at the end of the day.
Console games (went after original players in this space) Real Estate (INT WTF) Keyboards (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents) Mice (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents) Joysticks (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents) On-line Reservation Systems (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents) On-Line email servers (bought Hotmail).....
So, if mshaft feels any BIOS manufacturer is not "with the program by making life easier for Linux users, developers and systems integrators", then most likely mshaft WILL enter that space, too. There, was that so hard to grasp? It's really up to mshaft to ignore or screw the smaller guy, and big-business and corrupt government make it all to perpetually easy.
this is why I ban double-click. As I gather, they once were a paper mail-order catalog type of company, peddling Sears and Penny's and Wards and such type stuff. Then, along came the computer and the Internets and then the cookies. Somewhere in this, a smarter portion of government told double-dick they couldn't amass the ELECTRONIC on-line ordering and compile and combine it with the paper catalog information they'd been amassing for decades.
Now, every damn where there's x10, doubleclick, icc.intelliserv, overture, uuva*d*vip, eqnj*advip*, akamai, nextag, mediaplex, and hundreds of others I have to keep updating my firewall AND browser to block. Yeh, it makes for hop-scotchy surfing, but if I can screw with the cookie monster, then it's worth it. I'd LIKE to be able to edit the cookies to falsify information (to make it gibberish, not to down their computers, mind you), but I guess, that would be like breaking the law and the government would like to make an example of me after some slimy-ass SIG gets the ball rolling.
But, as I see it, cookies are like trespass, mostly. Even when we block them, there are technologies that effectively can bypass or augment the cookies problem and we STILL have to figure out how to stay ahead of them. I wouldn't be surprised if cookies are the distraction and some other technology is already in use, say, data-grabbing Java-script apps. They are like corporate or stealth collector RPVs flying into my computer for no express purpose other than to sniff, catalog, reduce and resell me as information, most of the time useless, and most of the time not paying or benefitting me directly. Yeh, spare me the marketing spiel. Free web pages, free e-mail...
Oh GOOD. IF the paper is soft or softenable, I could go about a year without buying TP. Government paperwork reduction act. Yeh, my ACT of REDUCing the PAPER to WORK for my ass...
but let it heal --incorrectly, and then crush its nut. Rip off its toe nails, and put it in shackles. And, put around its neck one of those BR II collars. Finally, a way to tame that beast might just work... A hunch-backed, knee-knocking, light-footed behemoth. Even Sasquatch would win a beauty contest between the two...
There are at least TWO ASIAN, non-Communist, democratic, friends-of-the-US countries that had student dissident uprisings after 1960, and their death counts were HIGHER than at Tienanmen Square. Yet we rarely get ANY press or writing about this. Always Mainland China the evil, oppressive, censoring one. Whipping boy for politicians and cozy buddy for on-the-cheap foreign manufacturers and foreign politicans and foreign tax collectors. I don't see why PRC/China hasn't decided to ease up just based on THIS.
Oh, and yeh, there are a LOT of foreign nationals who work in China and vastly under-report their earnings. Effectively committing tax evasion, just like they would if they could back home. (Not sure about this part, but I also understand that the tank did NOT run down that man, but he was under the body cavity area, uncrushed. If THAT is true, then there are a lot of opportunistic and sensationalistic jerks in the media who need to be brought up/flogged...)
I wonder if China's Wikipedia site will report about the foreigners there who are exploiting the system.
the BIOS could be wholly bypassed by Linux BIOS, then I could get my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-FX215 from 2001) booting via a USB-connected hard drive. See, my l/t suffered ad "hardware controller failure" and it cost me time and data last year. The machine otherwise works: BIOS, PCMCIA, USB, sound, CD/DVD devices in the bay, battery charging (tho the battery life is dismal). Well, the ON-BOARD NIC doesn't work, so I had to buy a card bus NIC, which works fine.
Funny thing is, the BIOS allows booting via ATAPI device, but if I had adaptors, I could probably put the hard disk in the CD ROM bay tray and then use the CDROM externally. I suppose this wouldn't work for installing or using a Live Disk of Linux.
But, what IS a silver lining about this is that I can surf on a diskless, Mandriva One-live DVD machine and not worry about attacks as much as I might be concerned with my fixed-disk machines. I can just shut down and reboot, as clean as the DVD from the magazine. Only problem is that I haven't bothered to save my Konqueror preferences (hmmm, funny, the Slash spell checker recognizes Konqueror, but not Mandriva as a correctly spelt word, or is that my local M1 DVD?) to floppy or to the USB HDD. Even so, I need to learn how to adjust the "guest" account to use them so I don't have to reset/customize a few settings.
But, then microsoft would just starve the BIOS and MOBO makers of marketing dollars. Sure, make it compatible/supportive of Vista, but them mshaft will just make the OS kernel check the BIOS maker ID-- IDs assigned by mshaft. As much as I'd love to see the hardware more Linux-friendly, I have no doubt it'll still be some time off.
Heck, I have TWO EZ-Cam webcams I bought back in 2001 or 2002. The designers sometimes allow their contract manufacturers to change up components for almost-the-same depending upon the prices in the commodities or components market.
It happened when I worked for a maker of multiplexers/demultiplexers. During burn-in, whole racks of equipment would just go to shit because the contract manufacturer sometimes sourced crappy (but supposedly- or almost-identical) components to put on the MOBOs. My director was a smart guy and traced the problems to that. Dell does the same thing. I had one Dell tech on the phone and seduced/challenged him into admitting that Dell from time to time changes board components even in the same make/model of machine without telling the consumers/purchasers of the equipment. Even when I was in the company IT department before moving to Customer Support & Manufacturing, my IT manager saw I was having problems with one or 2 boxes. He told me those were a pair Dell had quietly made changes to and were to be replacing them at Dell's cost. So, TWICE in the same company, in under 2 years, I got burned by secret changes.
What does it mean? Anyone buying boatloads of hardware for some large lab or emulation or scientific project might have some wayward machines having spurious, untraceable problems. All because a component on the MOBO was switched. I HAD to get the Dell guy on the speaker phone during a tech support call, and it was timely. I worked for a friend who told me I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Having been insulted and demeaned in front of others by him (some non-Dell MOBO machines were just reFUSING to be Ghosted (Norton) and he blamed it on me and incompetence even tho I told him of my experiences with Dell and other products, and that the problem HAD to be in the MOBO he had just bought, a comment to which he took great exception), I was on the phone with Dell and got my over-the speaker answer. Swapping the MOBO on the NON-DELL box solved the problem. I never got an apology from that day.
As for my EZ-Cam cameras, one has a shitty Conexant chip. No distro of Mandrake since 2001, no Mandriva, no Ubuntu, or Suse, or any other distro I tried could get that damn camera to shoot or show images. They DID SEE the camera, but could not activate it. Meanwhile, another camera of the same markings, DID work. Years ago I opened both and took pictures and found what I suspected: different components, yet same model/type, etc.
So, it won't be that hard for mshaft to software discriminate against Linux-friendly BIOS code unless... well, unless, I suppose, that code is cross-licensed with Novell/Suse and mshaft, too.
Hopefully, Linux devs will become so nimble that the BIOS makers might be bypassed altogether. But, the hardware makers will still likely solder or epoxy on some firmware-laden chip that will refuse to work with Linux BIOS footprints.
They've got a few Ken Starlings heading departments and a reportedly missing Federation Timeship Aeon sequestered under the buildings.
Janeway will be BACK: for the timeship, the deep-fried alien jerky, AND the KFC chickens. And, she'll pick up a few humons from the White House to supply the Vidiians, cuz she's in NO mood to donate organs today. Fixing the timeline is a byatch!
Slashdot Mirror
I got off it really quick. I found the article funny as hell once I realized it was bogus. But, it seems now the humor department link is in the article. There must be bonuses for captcha viewing impressions. Cuz, I sure dont' see many ads... Captchas can become Gotchas...
Captcha: "analyze"
(well, in THIS case, it could be anal-ize considering the unnecessary vitriol and anger that quickly popped up...
Or, anal-eyes, since it seems weird stuff gets put up, as if well, impressions are in vogue or something...)
Yeh, SurfLant/Com-whatever-Lant can have the Man from Atlantis paddle-powered ships.... I'm on the West Coast doin' my own thing...heheheh...
Ever heard of a guy named Cusanelli? He and a team recently got a patent for a certain stern flap/wedge design to smooth out the pitching of a ship. (Non-obviousness of the patent, to my mind, is open to argument, as I believe I read from books published in the 70's covering this kind of idea, and even if not in English, certainly, I think I can reasonably presume, Japan in WWII and Russia with their mind-boggling multitudes of ship engineering approaches must have something on this. I think prior art is out there somewhere..)
But, this wedge thing they got the patent for is not a propulsion device --they may as well use paddle wheels, but those are not efficient for warships: no rapid reversal, huge, noisy, memories of the Mississippi River/Delta steamships, antiquated, easily susceptible to damage (enemy inflicted or local sabotage); no easy redundant, compact 2nd prime mover.... on and on.. Forward screw propulsion was considered more than 10 years ago, but it's not in vogue, and there are technical issues to be resolved, tho there ARE a number of advantages. But, the "which end is the bow/where is the bridge going to be" would have to be overcome, I suppose. IIRC, it's to save fuel through helping the propeller be more efficient in a more locally stable region of water. Or, I'm merging that with my readings of Naval Ship Handling, Modern Ship Design and other sources, in which I think that "densifying" the body of water just above and abaft the props might give the blades more "bite" or push. OTOH, at some speeds, the stern wash might just undo my suppositions.
See:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cusanelli+stern+fla ps&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Reportedly, it increases fuel efficiency but I've been wondering whether it has some favorable acoustical effect/s on stern wake/wash. Meaning: not necessarily a cover story FOR, but certainly a beneficial gain to disturb cavitation bubbles or just normal slow-cruising wake to cut down the distance of certain harmonics. I'm no acoustics/naval engineer, but when I read things, my mind leaps to 2 or more alternative possibilities. Not with grounding in fact or science necessarily, but NEVER believe that a disclosed purpose is the ONLY purpose for some things.
I designed a ship with not ONE flap, and not for the purported/actual reasons the Carderock team did. Mine is split, and to impart some roll or heel stabilization at the stern, and to throw it off to enhance certain tactical turning diameter maneuvers I imagine in certain combat scenarios. I still have fin stabilizers on my designs, but I found it personally attractive to have split flaps. I am not sure (can't recall, and don't remember whether or not I made paper notes that) other countries' navies might be scale model testing or CFD modeling or full-scale testing split flaps.
Amazing, tho. The flaps on the DDG-51s are NOT terribly big, and they are fixed-angle and took a LOT of work to hash out what the optimal angles and lengths would be. I think the report alluded to there *might* being positionable flaps, but I'd decided that not being an engineer, and going for a "kewlness factor", (hey, I'm designing a fictional navy, and I don't inherit institutionalized baggage or architectural stylistics and such), I include hydraulic actuators to deal with this, and just insert an adjustable bladder between the hull and the flap forward edge to keep water below the flap from swirling or traversing past the hinges (corrosion control attempt on my part...) and to cut down on the local disturbance. BUT, REAL engineers can CFD test or report that they already did test this, and debunk my ideas if they want.
But, a UC Berkeley professor perused my 4 ships I singly designed, and he shook his head. He said, "YOU should be getting PAI
Here's some stuff...
m aran+hull+flight+deck&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
e =UTF-8&q=high-speed%2C+small+naval+vessel&btnG=Sea rch
+ platform&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
(Damn, it doesn't pay to only save URLs, only to find in a year they've gone for sale or disappeared...)
http://www.google.com/search?q=naval+research+tri
and here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o
I don't know how some of the stuff ends up at stormingmedia, but that one they want for $29 was freely available just in 2005 when I had seen it.
and this one, too:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sea+force+a+basing
I guess it's better to trawl often before stuff we paid taxes for ends up for sale and affordable only to those with discretionary or programmed budgets....
Seems the government is selling docs to make some cash... But, it was QUITE an interesting read. It took a while to recall/dredge up some terms to make Google bring up these pages of URLs...
Enjoy!/Bon-read-a-tit!
Maybe the assassin/killer was playing a TRUE game of Russian Roulette?
as for:
"by MMC Monster (602931) Alter Relationship on Friday November 24, @04:26PM (#16979636)
I wouldn't call it ineptitude. All of medicine goes by the doctrine: "If you here hoofs, look for horses, not zebras." As you said, this is a fairly unusual form of poisoning. I'm surprised it was even diagnosed properly (assuming that it was, of course). IANAT (I am not a toxicologist), but the effects of a poison are typically not known until someone succumbs to it. While others have been poisoned by this particular element, it couldn't have been that many people compared to all the other possible toxins available."
WELLLLLL....
I've always wondered whether horses and zebras really sound all that different. Of course, other than the horse going "haroruroo haorururoo , haroruroo haorururoo"... (Too bad I haven't seen breathless zebras in documentaries... I might be tempted to text that sound, too...)
If I were the medic, I'd look for the horse's HOOVES, to see where it'd been stepping.
"Dudley Goodhead, from the UK's MRC Radiation and Genome Stability Unit, agrees that the poisoning must have been "a high-tech operation". But he points out that, in one respect, it was "stupid" because it left such an easily detectable trail. Further analysis of the polonium, and any other associated isotopes, could provide important clues as to its origins, he says."
s -polonium-poisoning-suggests-sophistication.html
I got that from:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10668-exspy
My take is this:
-- Someone wanted him guaranteed D.E.A.D., DEAD! as in eRADicated...
-- Someone doesn't care that polonium would be detected or traced to the Sushi bar.
-- Someone knows that polonium is an emitter, but is so small they can pass it through airports undetected or virtually so
-- Someone wants to deliver a message that as long as polonium can be produced or stolen, NO one is safe if the server of the poison has access to the target's food or drink or to the target's supplier of food or drink
Those ideas being posited, I suspect that was some HOT Sushi. Maybe hotter than hot. I wonder how cold the Sushi chef's hands are anymore. I heard (well, in a Korean film) that women don't make good Sushi chef's because their hands are too warm. But, after handling or fearing having handled polonium such chefs might be a bit warmer than usual.
And, for some reason, I am thinking "Appolonia", that group from the 80's...
In 1986, I was on the mess deck conversing with other shipmates about (then) Soviet "wake homing torpedoes" and how such a concept would render CVS pretty much a major effing boondoglle over night, since they could more accurately discern carrier screws and wake disturbance from the lighter decoy cruisers/destroyers and expendable frigates. I said if *I* were Soviet, THAT is where I'd spend my money, and on and on. My RMC (Radioman Chief) overheard me. I'd not seen any message traffic about the topic, and it's not part of radioman duties. But, THAT DAY, there was such traffic, on the watch section after mine. I happnend to reader of Clancy, and several of his predecessors, and even had in my seabags and my bunk and stand up lockers umpteen number of books on naval warfare, ships, and such, bought from various commercial sellers. I'd also been a fan of Star Trek, and as a kid, ALL SORTS of ideas swirled in my head. My chief reamed the HELL out of me, tho the captain and others never cared. They knew where I was coming from or didn't care since maybe they were tired, busy, or whatever. I thought my chief was going to have the CO try to strip me of my clearance, tho. That was on my second ship.
.45 cal clips down a 15-foot sheer ladder when on rounds to one of the holds in "The Cage", where IFFF we had nukes, I'd have to sight for signs of tampering, unauthorized personnel, etc... Not wanting to be "jumped" (Hey, I took m
On my first ship, I was DC (damage control) qualified, was working on Division Damage Control Petty Officer (ahead of time, but well on track to get it had I not transferred to "A" School), and, due to articulate speaking, was made the "Captain's Phone Talker" and had to be on the Bridge whenever we conducted UNREPs (Underway Replenishments), usually the connected ones (CONREP) since I was also Flight Deck Helo Chock/Chainman-qualified) and had to be there during VertREPs; small arms weapons qualified, stood Petty Officer of the Watch, Roving Patrol (where I had to check the ammo holds; after all, the AE-26 class was capable of carrying nukes, not that I ever knew whether or not we had any aboard...) It was scary sometimes... We once had a fuze-less bomb slip out of the aluminum cage/crate and it fell about 40 down to the pier. All I knew as dozens of people flew like bats to starboard from port yelling "TAKE COVER! BOMB DOWN!" or something like that. In Jan 85, when I was barely a month aboard. I figured they knew more than I did, so I took cover, too. Fortunately, it didn't have any ability to actually detonate (the fuze was removed, and supposedly the AEs carried bombs, but the CVs and CVNs actually had the fuzes themselves...) Another time some dipshit deck ape-struck-for-Gunners Mate was caught smoking cigs in the bomb hold. Word around the ship was this guy's response was, "Awe Gunny, don't worry 'bout it-- we do this ALL THE TIME." Oh, really. Hypergolic fuel vapors were probably detectable, and that ONE lucky day, the ship's Gunner caught that guy, with others, and took him to mast (Captain's Mast). The skipper was PISSED. A number of the ship's hands were there as witnesses to the smoking as well as co-masted shipmates, or there as interested shipmate observers to the proceedings. Captain gripped the podium with whitened knuckles and lifted it aside smoothly and got into that guy's face and growled at him: "DO YOU ****KNOW*** what would have happend if this SHIP BLEW UP???!!! OUR ***ANCHOR*** WOULD BE IN ***MICHIGAN***!!!!" Our ship was Flint, named after Flint Michigan. For you landlubbers, ammo ships tend to be named after explosive or pyrotechnic things: Pyro, Haleakela, Flint, etc... So, I have ALWAYS if on the day that guy got caught whether or not THAT day we had nukes on board. Why? Cuz we were puttering around in the East Pacific. I know the anchor wouldn't go maybe 4 or 5 miles if we DID have nukes and they somehow sympathetically detonated, but the thought crossed many of our minds about the presence or absence... ) But, I was luckier. I'd once dropped one of my
But, what about sulfur and other corrosive products? Won't this be an issue with any ports or valves between the gases and the sea water? I'm no chemist nor engineer, so it's just a thought.
.tif files that make up the inboard and outboard elevations as well as the deck plans (general arrangement) I designed as an alternative DDG-51 class. In my mind, I saw myself designing an alternative that would rate being classed a cruiser (and, I despise the word "destroy" -- it's too loaded, bombastic, and there are no more "torpedo chaser" missions, so the term "destroyer" hangs on culture, history, and such, and several nations already presciently declared the term "outmoded", among other things.
As for this Slash thread, this stuff has been talked about for I think that past 30 years. At least feeding bubbles out of ports along the hull, not just for acoustic advantages, but to assist ridding the hull of boundary layer and other debilitating forms of friction. Hydroplaning works to a degree, and only up to certain displacements owing partly to construction materials and manufacturing costs. There was talk of emitting special "soap-like" fluids, and that WOULD be advantageous-- if one disregards the fact the fluid has weight, takes up volume, adds to displacement, and has all sorts of associated equipment with the same negatives. Even powerdery substances carried would penalize in terms of weight/increased displacement. Propellers and rudder improvements, stabilization fins, and improved hull and reduced appendage surface area all help. Triple-hull or catamaran hulls are "in vogue" these days, again up to certain displacements. They looks kewl and sexy and with stealth being a hot topic (hey, if the USAF stealth enhances it's aircraft, then the world will follow suit. If the USN stealth enhances its ship, the world follows suit. All the state-funded militaries have to play keep-up and the ship-building industry is one of the major economic benefactors, keeping yards open, work split across the surviving ones...)
There are books about CVNs, BBs CGs DDs, SSNs and SSBNs, but NONE of them goes into the details I do (I even created a fuel consumption table by reverse engineering out of misinformation and outright lies just by using some GE SFC information published for the benefit of ship operators who need this info in marketing speak...) I calculate my hull will sail about 10,000 nm. Even the Chinese "Luhai" is reportedly able to sail 13.155 nm (yep, she's lighter, but not much smaller, and the ship uses diesels IIRC or maybe it's indigenous GTMs since GE wouldn't any longer sell LM-2500's to China...)
But, If you're interested in contemporary ships, naval fiction, and naval architecture, in one setting see my stuff at:
www.otanashide.com
www.dreadyacht.com
At:
http://dreadyacht.com/4.html
you can download 5
But, my design, while I strove for "buildability" won't likely be built. I am a bit politically charged, and even IF the USN *likes* my design, I am sure I will *never* be patted on the back or thanked or said something nice to about it. I don't care, actually. It's my take on a mad world and my ideas to improve it would only muck things up for the few privileged powerful nations and accelerate (I wish) global stability.
Aside from that, one of my hulls uses 3 Azi-Pod (a patented term for "Azimuthal Pod" IIRC).I showed it (wel, my concept sketch I made in 1991 or so, as the hull with the pods wasn't actually drawn until ~ May 2005) in Dec 2004 at Funenokagakukan, near Tokyo, to a maritime museum librarian whose interest lie in naval warships, and he gave me a thumbs up (he couldn't speak English) almost as SOON as he saw the pods. OTOH, an naval architect at a firm in the heard of Tokyo took a different tack: He barraged me with questions such as "What is your block coefficient" Prismatic this, and cross-section that... I'm not an engineer, and I TOLD him that. I modeled my hull on the real hulls' dimen
On the dark side of the Moon, or the marked side of the dune?
And all these years I thought is was a "windy day in Arizona"....
These things become commoditized? How about going around and femtosecond-blasting jewelry of the rich and famous. Or, visiting a jewelry store and blasting their jewels through the glass? I see a sudden uptick in sales of surveillance cameras for jewelry stores and other places where "black is beautiful" is likely to destroy their businesses.
I wonder if what this thing would do to the teeth of those gold-mouth rappers and people on the streets. What? You got an interview toMORROW? 1-800-DENTIST will be smiling all the way to the black-back-to-gold bank.
If these things can femto-blast a few dozen times, automobile taggers will have a field day. So will body shops getting work orders.
Oh, is that Diet Pepsi or Regular? I can't tell. It's a black six-pack. Hate that local deputy in a small town? Sit next to him/her at the diner and femto-blast their nickel-plated revolver black, or patch-black, since most of it will be in the holster. (assuming this small-town cop/sheriff is playin' Buford Pusser or Duke Calley or something from the 70's...)
Ben Wah balls can now be blackened...
You can pretty much "blacken the shit" out of anything metal.
But, I see the biggest "bang" for mischief coming from laser-pointer sized femto-second blasters. Well, as long as they don't emit light doing their work. If so, then maybe the dance club would be an interesting place to use this thing...
It's bad enough when you go to Fry's Electronics and they want to swipe your DL for a CASH RETURN. I had to explicitly tell the cashiers "DO NOT SWIPE MY DRIVER'S LICENSE" before giving it to them for the return item. They STILL play dumb, and try to do it. Well, at least a few years ago they did.
I remember listening to the radio in 2002/3 about this crap these clubs are doing. It started mostly by clubs on the east coast, and they were really getting noticed when they sold the information to 3rd parties or directly themselves sent patrons "Happy Birthday" and discount patron cards and such. This is DANGEROUS, especially since some states may have little or no encryption in their cards. Banks, grocery stores and other swipe, so these damned clubs, under the pretext of screening out past troublemakers, swipe. I wouldn't be surprised if they are also doing it as part of a bounty hunt to reap a reward by law enforcement if they nab a dumb guy. They also claim it's to put a dent in underage drinkers and such entering the bars. That's bullshit, since if they THINK the ID is fake or being misused, they already have the power to confiscate it, detain the "suspect" until police arrive, and then they should let the POLICE swipe the card for authenticity and holder identification.
I will NEVER enter a f*cking club that wants to swipe my ID. (I guess if I ever have cause to be on the East Coast and friends want to drag me to a club, I'll have to decline, unless it's one that doens't swip... I refuse just on principle...) All they need to do is keep a hot sheet on the wall of rejects, and ban them. When they swipe mag stripes which are NOT secure, who KNOWS what information they could pick up. And, with properties selling and being lumped in as co-properties (think of the TV and radio stations...) when will it end? Your name will be in a database of diverse companies that don't NEED your name. Entering a damned club is not a license for them to sell and market your information. If that is how they supplement their income, then they won't be getting money from me.
I'd rather seem IBM/Lotus bring Lotus SmartSuite into this decade, as opposed to letting it linger in 1998 codeland. Unfortunately, it has been allowed to be trampled by even OpenOffice.
.dbf.
Yet, OO.o has NO decent end-user database, such as Lotus Approach. Forms and grids are normal, but Approach has integrated charts, reports, and a reasonably acceptable crosstab view, too. I showed a Cal Berkeley student took a computer programming class some of the stuff I do in Approach, and he gasped, recounting how maddening it was to do some stuff in Java, how it took WEEKS debugging shit. I'm not a programmer, and cringe at the thought of being forced to become one when I can do 80% of what I need to do by using WYSIWYG apps like Approach for my database, chart and forms needs. I can even hook it up to MySQL backends so I don't need to rely upon
Lotus Word Pro has non-modal dialog boxes and smart tools/smart palettes that allow WYSIWYG editing without jumping in and out of dialogs just to see things as they *might* appear on paper.
It is quite heartbreaking that IBM and Sun and OO.o are not collaborating to merge the best of SmartSuite and OO.o. Together, they'd be a swift kick in the jewels for ms office.
I sure wish I'd win the Powerball or something over $200M. I'd try to buy SmartSuite, pull as Shuttleworth, and hire devs to bring SmartSuite up to date. Pay off the assholes who are hanging the pre-merger patent thingy over IBM's head, keeping SmartSuite from being decompiled, run thru QT/Trolltech and Glade, and depriving hundreds of thousands or a couple million Linux and SmartSuite lovers from having a combination to die for.
I'm forced to use ms orifice in the workplace, and I *occasionally* fire up OO.o, but the interface is to mshaft-like, too huge, and wasting my screen space. I prefer SmartSuite's tighter, crisper, snappier interface. Lotus SmartSuite, inside Win98, in Win4Lin, in Mandrake 10.1, in 256 MB RAM on an 800 MHz computer, with Firestarter and Etherape (chewing RAM) with a couple browsers (Konqueror, chewing more than 25 MB RAM) with MULTITUDES of tabs open, opens in about 4 seconds. I even give windoze 98 120 MB of RAM. and SmartSuite opens STILL in about 4 seconds. WHY, WHY, WHY the hell cannot OO.o open that fast, withOUT the fast-start-like gimmickry tool? It's depressing and maddening simultaneously.
Gods, let me win a Powerball I'd damn near buy or clone SmartSuite and then demand IBM accept a decent cut of the profits, after dealing with those pre-merger patenteers who are in the way of things.... I'd give the SMARTSUITE END USERS what they want: SmartSuite natively run in Linux, kernel-independent, KDE/Gnome-independent (like, for the LIFE of me, WHY the hell is CUPS a major dependency for KDE 3.2, so much so that I could not even upgrade, nor remove libcups without ripping out ALL of KDE? I had to fall back to Gnome, manually install the 1.1.23.17 libcups, then cups and common, and drivers and THEN install KDE on top of it, all because I cannot use Mdv 2007 with Win4Lin (for windoze 98, and I SURE as hell (as yet) have no reason to fork over $200 for hexed-p or two-kay when w98 is a smaller footprint on my machine) because of the 2.6.17 kernel. Well, THAT problem is because win4lin the company screwed us w98 users who don't NEED win4lin for w98 tech support, we just need an environment for w98 that is kernel-independent. And, our thanks: they come out with win4lin virtual server and desktop that deprive/deny the use of w98.
Anyway, IBM, please, please give us SmartSuite users a non-wine, non-win4-lin, non-emulator environment fresh upgrade to Lotus SmartSuite. Please?
Whupps.. Yep, you now remind me that I have seen numeric sites. I sit corrected. I guess I'd gotten too much of Sina and Baidu...
& oe=UTF-8
0 05/01/03/200501030500036/200501030500036_2.html
But, when I use Google to search for a Chinese Character and get pages back, they have English URLs, true.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%8A%A9&ie=UTF-8
http://www.dongailbo.co.kr/docs/magazine/weekly/2
http://www.91985.com/
http://www.chosun.com/
and I realize now that I'd forgotten that english is STILL in thees sites' names.
But, honestly, I could swear that in Mozilla I'd seen Asian or Korean fonts in the URL/location bar only a few weeks ago. I'd been playing around with explicitly searching for information using Korean fonts in the URL at:
http://bemil.chosun.com/
I'll have to reinstall Mozilla and recreate my steps.
FORKIN' AYE!
Personally, if China "forks" the Internet, then good for them. The country is burgeoning with people clamoring for access to information from everywhere, whatever the source. At some point, if lucky, some of them will become entrepreneurs. At the very least, a few hundred thousand new DNS entries per day could ensue. Why should ICANN be the gatekeeper of OTHER NATIONS' domestic registries? When those registries are to be sought and interacted with, why should ICANN solely control the registries. Domestically, I am sure a country can wall off itself, but internatonally, it could find itself isolated, unless it very, very technically and successfully side-steps ICANN and ends its single-source control. Does it still make sense to have only ONE sole source for TLD access? (Aside from "TLD")...
But, I suppose that if China DOES fork things, the US would probably "retaliate" by domestically blocking any and all in and outbound traffic using the "rogue" DNS apparatus. I know that if I had an information addiction that was fed by a rogue DNS or TLD system and the US politically cut it off, I'd be PISSED. Anyway, I feel it is only a matter of time before numerous countries and locales join up and for the thing. I suspect it would be instigated by the current anti-US sentiment that most likely won't be going away any time soon. Besides, a forked Internet would just make things more interesting. Might even create a few thousand more domestic IT/programming jobs.
... was very, very nicely put. It, to me, just underscores that any foot-dragging on the accented and Chinese/Asian character sets adoption would be an unacceptable denial of additional color and nuance to the ways of accessing the Internet.
As inconvenient as this may be, create a response form from which the person chooses the desired or intended URL. For example, one seeks a site with no accent, but 3 variations exist. The look or search would bring them all back and prompt the user to select one. Helpfully, their email entry or search term will precede or follow the domain or URL as applicable (in a locale or language rules set).
Right now, when e-mailing, people still incorrectly enter company names, even in English. So, what is their response? They fall back on a business card, a PDA entry, some scrap of paper, or even a search engine, or a phone call, or out of laziness, they give up. But, a mailing interface smart enough to seek the known registry of companies and non-commercial sites could bring back the options and let the user decide.
Currently, any foot-dragging on the issue smacks of "pre-eminence" or "we had it first and WE'LL decide what and when." Obviously, that didn't hold back on Japan or China. Now, these other countries want technology to be used to resolve their exclusion in what is a language-set exclusive club. By keeping the web to a handful of languages, particularly in English, it almost could be seen as wanting to ensure that English is the default language for business and international communications. If accented languages enter the scene, then all sorts of unforseen permutations in business, communications, and economics might occur, much to the dismay of some (certain governments?).
Personally, I think there is PLENTY of technology and brainpower to have solved this issue 5 years ago. There just was no pressure. Now, I don't by any means think ONE single person is holding this up. I think there are many forces and "interests" asking that this be deferred as long as possible. Normally, geeks and techies like challenges. This is a big-as-hell challenge if there EVER was one, yet it's being stonewalled, just like Asian languages are or have been. If Linux can support dozens of languages at the desktop (heck, Mandriva offers multitudes from which to select not only for install, but for desktop use), then why cannot ICANN and the registries follow suit? Oh, umm... yeh...
IT Minister will tell us tomorrow... about 5,000 photons before ago
(yeh, that's english...)
http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/11/16/0323202.shtml
But, he will be caught off-guard when the Thai IT Coup of 2007 occurred
Captcha: sender
Jesus H. Christ, man! Korea and Taiwan. In BOTH cases the USA/CIA IMPLICITLY gave the local forces permission to (or looked the other way when approach for input) use their MILITARY units against students.
It was a bloody, SAD even in the history of each, but relatively speaking Tienanmen, by many accounts, was NOT as bad as in South Korea and in Taiwan. These happenend. The western news likes to IGNORE IT. (Where are YOU from? There are any NUMBER of esteemed, unreproachable authors (not myself) and historians who can rip you on that topic.)
Nevertheless I deeply respect Admiral Zheng He's fleet for NOT ravaging, mowing, down, conquering, or otherwise imposing any "China Will" upon the rest of the world. I believe what goes around comes around, and SOMEDAY China will rightfully challenge (not open the first shot, but merely challenge by presence) the USA or the flag-waving USN. It will just be equilibrium in the spheres of influence. NO ONE COUNTRY deserves, nor has some implicit privilege or right to run everything.
(That bit was a bit off topic, but if you and your assigning ME homework instead of just elucidating for the audience what I alluded would have helped. I dislike the misplaced, selective media amnesia... Do YOU?)
Your assignment is to do the rest. Find out WHY the US is footdragging in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. If you lack imagination: The US wants to keep China from gaining more traction. It keeps Korea from reunifying. It keeps Taiwan from being overrun, supposedly, by PRC. PRC isn't going to INVADE anyway-- the KMT and local officials already ALLOW/ED enough businesses to de facto turn over the tech to the mainland. Chinese nationals have direct access to the plants used/owned/built by/for Intel, AMD, IBM, Cisco, and the rest. So much smoke and mirrors are at play, most of this is about which country has the biggest balls to stare down the other and which can take the most control from its citizens and STILL look good at the end of the day.
Well, mshaft didn't start out in a LOT of places:
.....
Console games (went after original players in this space)
Real Estate (INT WTF)
Keyboards (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents)
Mice (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents)
Joysticks (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents)
On-line Reservation Systems (branding and encroachment on smaller incumbents)
On-Line email servers (bought Hotmail)
So, if mshaft feels any BIOS manufacturer is not "with the program by making life easier for Linux users, developers and systems integrators", then most likely mshaft WILL enter that space, too. There, was that so hard to grasp? It's really up to mshaft to ignore or screw the smaller guy, and big-business and corrupt government make it all to perpetually easy.
this is why I ban double-click. As I gather, they once were a paper mail-order catalog type of company, peddling Sears and Penny's and Wards and such type stuff. Then, along came the computer and the Internets and then the cookies. Somewhere in this, a smarter portion of government told double-dick they couldn't amass the ELECTRONIC on-line ordering and compile and combine it with the paper catalog information they'd been amassing for decades.
Now, every damn where there's x10, doubleclick, icc.intelliserv, overture, uuva*d*vip, eqnj*advip*, akamai, nextag, mediaplex, and hundreds of others I have to keep updating my firewall AND browser to block. Yeh, it makes for hop-scotchy surfing, but if I can screw with the cookie monster, then it's worth it. I'd LIKE to be able to edit the cookies to falsify information (to make it gibberish, not to down their computers, mind you), but I guess, that would be like breaking the law and the government would like to make an example of me after some slimy-ass SIG gets the ball rolling.
But, as I see it, cookies are like trespass, mostly. Even when we block them, there are technologies that effectively can bypass or augment the cookies problem and we STILL have to figure out how to stay ahead of them. I wouldn't be surprised if cookies are the distraction and some other technology is already in use, say, data-grabbing Java-script apps. They are like corporate or stealth collector RPVs flying into my computer for no express purpose other than to sniff, catalog, reduce and resell me as information, most of the time useless, and most of the time not paying or benefitting me directly. Yeh, spare me the marketing spiel. Free web pages, free e-mail...
Oh GOOD. IF the paper is soft or softenable, I could go about a year without buying TP. Government paperwork reduction act. Yeh, my ACT of REDUCing the PAPER to WORK for my ass...
(Hmmm... but, is the ink toxic when wet?)
(captcha: legume)
but let it heal --incorrectly, and then crush its nut. Rip off its toe nails, and put it in shackles. And, put around its neck one of those BR II collars. Finally, a way to tame that beast might just work... A hunch-backed, knee-knocking, light-footed behemoth. Even Sasquatch would win a beauty contest between the two...
There are at least TWO ASIAN, non-Communist, democratic, friends-of-the-US countries that had student dissident uprisings after 1960, and their death counts were HIGHER than at Tienanmen Square. Yet we rarely get ANY press or writing about this. Always Mainland China the evil, oppressive, censoring one. Whipping boy for politicians and cozy buddy for on-the-cheap foreign manufacturers and foreign politicans and foreign tax collectors. I don't see why PRC/China hasn't decided to ease up just based on THIS.
Oh, and yeh, there are a LOT of foreign nationals who work in China and vastly under-report their earnings. Effectively committing tax evasion, just like they would if they could back home. (Not sure about this part, but I also understand that the tank did NOT run down that man, but he was under the body cavity area, uncrushed. If THAT is true, then there are a lot of opportunistic and sensationalistic jerks in the media who need to be brought up/flogged...)
I wonder if China's Wikipedia site will report about the foreigners there who are exploiting the system.
the BIOS could be wholly bypassed by Linux BIOS, then I could get my laptop (Sony Vaio PCG-FX215 from 2001) booting via a USB-connected hard drive. See, my l/t suffered ad "hardware controller failure" and it cost me time and data last year. The machine otherwise works: BIOS, PCMCIA, USB, sound, CD/DVD devices in the bay, battery charging (tho the battery life is dismal). Well, the ON-BOARD NIC doesn't work, so I had to buy a card bus NIC, which works fine.
Funny thing is, the BIOS allows booting via ATAPI device, but if I had adaptors, I could probably put the hard disk in the CD ROM bay tray and then use the CDROM externally. I suppose this wouldn't work for installing or using a Live Disk of Linux.
But, what IS a silver lining about this is that I can surf on a diskless, Mandriva One-live DVD machine and not worry about attacks as much as I might be concerned with my fixed-disk machines. I can just shut down and reboot, as clean as the DVD from the magazine. Only problem is that I haven't bothered to save my Konqueror preferences (hmmm, funny, the Slash spell checker recognizes Konqueror, but not Mandriva as a correctly spelt word, or is that my local M1 DVD?) to floppy or to the USB HDD. Even so, I need to learn how to adjust the "guest" account to use them so I don't have to reset/customize a few settings.
But, then microsoft would just starve the BIOS and MOBO makers of marketing dollars. Sure, make it compatible/supportive of Vista, but them mshaft will just make the OS kernel check the BIOS maker ID-- IDs assigned by mshaft. As much as I'd love to see the hardware more Linux-friendly, I have no doubt it'll still be some time off.
Heck, I have TWO EZ-Cam webcams I bought back in 2001 or 2002. The designers sometimes allow their contract manufacturers to change up components for almost-the-same depending upon the prices in the commodities or components market.
It happened when I worked for a maker of multiplexers/demultiplexers. During burn-in, whole racks of equipment would just go to shit because the contract manufacturer sometimes sourced crappy (but supposedly- or almost-identical) components to put on the MOBOs. My director was a smart guy and traced the problems to that. Dell does the same thing. I had one Dell tech on the phone and seduced/challenged him into admitting that Dell from time to time changes board components even in the same make/model of machine without telling the consumers/purchasers of the equipment. Even when I was in the company IT department before moving to Customer Support & Manufacturing, my IT manager saw I was having problems with one or 2 boxes. He told me those were a pair Dell had quietly made changes to and were to be replacing them at Dell's cost. So, TWICE in the same company, in under 2 years, I got burned by secret changes.
What does it mean? Anyone buying boatloads of hardware for some large lab or emulation or scientific project might have some wayward machines having spurious, untraceable problems. All because a component on the MOBO was switched. I HAD to get the Dell guy on the speaker phone during a tech support call, and it was timely. I worked for a friend who told me I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Having been insulted and demeaned in front of others by him (some non-Dell MOBO machines were just reFUSING to be Ghosted (Norton) and he blamed it on me and incompetence even tho I told him of my experiences with Dell and other products, and that the problem HAD to be in the MOBO he had just bought, a comment to which he took great exception), I was on the phone with Dell and got my over-the speaker answer. Swapping the MOBO on the NON-DELL box solved the problem. I never got an apology from that day.
As for my EZ-Cam cameras, one has a shitty Conexant chip. No distro of Mandrake since 2001, no Mandriva, no Ubuntu, or Suse, or any other distro I tried could get that damn camera to shoot or show images. They DID SEE the camera, but could not activate it. Meanwhile, another camera of the same markings, DID work. Years ago I opened both and took pictures and found what I suspected: different components, yet same model/type, etc.
So, it won't be that hard for mshaft to software discriminate against Linux-friendly BIOS code unless... well, unless, I suppose, that code is cross-licensed with Novell/Suse and mshaft, too.
Hopefully, Linux devs will become so nimble that the BIOS makers might be bypassed altogether. But, the hardware makers will still likely solder or epoxy on some firmware-laden chip that will refuse to work with Linux BIOS footprints.
They've got a few Ken Starlings heading departments and a reportedly missing Federation Timeship Aeon sequestered under the buildings.
Janeway will be BACK: for the timeship, the deep-fried alien jerky, AND the KFC chickens. And, she'll pick up a few humons from the White House to supply the Vidiians, cuz she's in NO mood to donate organs today. Fixing the timeline is a byatch!