This is not the Internet we are talking about, it is a dedicated system. I guarantee you that every single line of code in this application will be audited to the brink of death. This is not the movies or some cyberpunk novel. Breaking into these kinds of systems is not as easy as you seem to think.
Right! Which is why it would be a lot easier to find a pretty girl to get one of the ground-based remote operators drunk, get him to give her a tour of the neat-o facility and...
Systems may be relatively secure, but the humans are so frail.
I call BS!! To what model terminal are you refferring? Mod 5? Are talking about mainframe graphics, or true desktop GUI? Which OS?
I work for a mid-sized county, and we upgraded our mainframe a couple of years ago. Admittedly, it's not a high-end mainframe, but the thing started slogging running a *single* X-windows session to a Linux VM running on it.
I consider the lack of an at-will defragger to be a shortcoming of Mac OS X. Sure, as you observed, software updates end up doing a defrag at the end (at least I assume that's what happens when it spends many minutes "oprimizing system performance"), but I'd like the option to defrag a disk at will (say, before starting a multi-track audio recording project) without having to buy a third-party product.
Electric heaters? In California? Between the warm weather, the hot-air from the constant political nonsense, and the incredible sucking coming from Hollywood, I'd think they wouldn't need electric heaters much there.
Well, considering that, here in CA, we all walk around in bikinis and Speedos sipping iced margaritas year-round, we *do* require a smidge of heating.
But, seriously, I live on the coast in Northern California, and, while it's a moderate, Mediterranean climate, it *does* get chilly in the mornings sometimes.
Hey! I'm counting on the incandescents to be inefficient--I use them to heat my home!!
If they want to target something, let them ban electric heaters. People ought to be running P4 servers as space heaters. At least *do* something with all that electricity!
Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh!
Don't I know it!!! I assume you mean client-side VBScript, which only works in IE. Server-side VBScript (in ASP, or VB.NET in ASP.NET) works just fine, since plain HTML is sent to the browser.
Recently, while troubleshooting an error in one of our customer's server-side code, I came across a web-form with a client-side VBScript validator. Underscoring the fact that the "developer" didn't understand what was going on, there was a disclaimer on the page that the form only works on "Internet Explorer and other browsers that support ASP". Of course, ASP had nothing to do with the incompatibility, it was the client-side VBScript.
It almost goes without saying, but the code had FrontPage written all over it!!
Yah, I know the example was flawed--that's why I prefaced it with "what if".
I've read a biography about Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM at Columbia U. and what a raw deal he got from RCA. Of course, that was a while ago (my reading of the bio), so many details escape me, but he ended up a pretty broken man.
[sarcasm]Yet another example of corporations putting the public interest ahead of profits[/sarcasm].
Here in Santa Cruz, we're currently using robots to inspect our sewers. My buddy made a TV show (on Community TV--like Public Access) of the raw footage from the sewer robot set to soothing music. Must-see TV!!
I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
Well, maybe it's not the best use of M$'s resources, but I think Gordon Bell has earned his fun after a long career of doing useful things (DEC):
"count in the open" does not necessarily mean count by hand. With paper voting, the ballots are still largely counted by machine. However, if there is a discrepancy, the paper votes *can* be hand-counted in a recount. With purely electronic voting, a hand recount is not possible.
When we had 2 billion humans- we could do just about anything we wanted and the planet would be okay. With 9 billion- the tolerances are much finer.
I agree completely. Of course, where I differ from the ZPG (Zero Population Growth) folks is: I believe the Earth can sustain an arbitrarily large sized population.
However, we cannot sustain the current population of the planet if everybody is going to live the typical American lifestyle of today. If you look at what the typical American consumes each day in terms of natural resources in comparison with the average Bangladeshi, it's pretty amazing.
We can, and we must, live more sustainably. The degree of inefficiency with which we (Americans) live is deplorable.
Well at the least, cows farting and belching has an effect (pretty big too from what I remember). (you can google this easily).
No need, I remember the story. What can be measured and quantified is the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere by cow farts. You can correlate that with global warming. The point I make, is that it's not scientifically possible to prove that one *causes* the other.
It makes sense that 1 billion breathing humans crammed into an area the size of india would affect the microclimate (increased Co2, increased moisture). But no citations here.
No argument here. It makes perfect sense. When Londoners were burning coal to stay warm in the 1800's the sky was grey with soot. No doubt that affected microclimate (what to speak of air quality). But the microclimate and the global climate, while interrelated, are not one and the same.
As the article points out, there have been mitigating effects to increases in "greenhouse gases" detected (though, as the article also points out, special interests cherry-pick the research they choose to cite). Our planet is a very complex and resilient system. That isn't to say we ought to pollute without care. Rather, I'm simply saying: we don't know where the breaking point is.
In short, common sense dictates we ought to stop "shitting in our mess kit". But let's not confuse common sense and science.
It has no known toxic level. It can't kill.
I assume you're talking about THC here. If you're smoking cannabis, you're also getting all the other stuff. The tar alone would cause your lungs to collapse if you were chain-smoking it.
Maybe pure THC doesn't have a *known* toxic level, but from what I remember, in studies, pure THC generated psychosis and other nasties. The associated "cannabinoids" are what give marijuana the characteristic high.
Funny thing: The THCs in cannabis have anticarcegenic propreties. That's not widely reported though.
No doubt, there are many medicinal uses for the kind herb. That said, no doubt, smoking it isn't the best way to use it as medicine.
"People breathing has been known to cause historical climate changes. Fires to keep humans warm have had even more pronounced effects."
Huh? Do you have a citation for this? As much as I am in favor of conservation and not poisoning ourselves, I still have yet to see just how anybody can prove causation (which does not equal correlation) between human activities and climate change. It's just not possible (the system is too complex--too many variables).
Look at a picture of the Earth...what covers most of it...water.
You can cut down all the rainforests (I hope they don't) and it might have an effect globally (certainly it'll have an effect on local climate), but phytoplankton in the ocean are, IIRC, the largest biological source of oxygen.
That may be true *statistically* speaking, but do you actually believe that?!?!?!
Most folks just can't afford to smoke enough ganja to kill them.
People say the CIA "gave Bob Marley cancer", but isn't a much more probable explanation is that massive ammounts of dope he smoked compromised his immune system?
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This is not the Internet we are talking about, it is a dedicated system. I guarantee you that every single line of code in this application will be audited to the brink of death. This is not the movies or some cyberpunk novel. Breaking into these kinds of systems is not as easy as you seem to think.
Right! Which is why it would be a lot easier to find a pretty girl to get one of the ground-based remote operators drunk, get him to give her a tour of the neat-o facility and...
Systems may be relatively secure, but the humans are so frail.
I call BS!! To what model terminal are you refferring? Mod 5? Are talking about mainframe graphics, or true desktop GUI? Which OS? I work for a mid-sized county, and we upgraded our mainframe a couple of years ago. Admittedly, it's not a high-end mainframe, but the thing started slogging running a *single* X-windows session to a Linux VM running on it.
I consider the lack of an at-will defragger to be a shortcoming of Mac OS X. Sure, as you observed, software updates end up doing a defrag at the end (at least I assume that's what happens when it spends many minutes "oprimizing system performance"), but I'd like the option to defrag a disk at will (say, before starting a multi-track audio recording project) without having to buy a third-party product.
Just explaining the lack of a BSD is going to be comedy gold baby!
Surely you mean BSOD (as in Blue Screen of Death). Mac has plenty of BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution).
Electric heaters? In California? Between the warm weather, the hot-air from the constant political nonsense, and the incredible sucking coming from Hollywood, I'd think they wouldn't need electric heaters much there.
Well, considering that, here in CA, we all walk around in bikinis and Speedos sipping iced margaritas year-round, we *do* require a smidge of heating.
But, seriously, I live on the coast in Northern California, and, while it's a moderate, Mediterranean climate, it *does* get chilly in the mornings sometimes.
Hey! I'm counting on the incandescents to be inefficient--I use them to heat my home!!
If they want to target something, let them ban electric heaters. People ought to be running P4 servers as space heaters. At least *do* something with all that electricity!
Some sites even insist on using VB, in place of Javascript - ugh!
Don't I know it!!! I assume you mean client-side VBScript, which only works in IE. Server-side VBScript (in ASP, or VB.NET in ASP.NET) works just fine, since plain HTML is sent to the browser.
Recently, while troubleshooting an error in one of our customer's server-side code, I came across a web-form with a client-side VBScript validator. Underscoring the fact that the "developer" didn't understand what was going on, there was a disclaimer on the page that the form only works on "Internet Explorer and other browsers that support ASP". Of course, ASP had nothing to do with the incompatibility, it was the client-side VBScript.
It almost goes without saying, but the code had FrontPage written all over it!!
Yah, I know the example was flawed--that's why I prefaced it with "what if".
I've read a biography about Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM at Columbia U. and what a raw deal he got from RCA. Of course, that was a while ago (my reading of the bio), so many details escape me, but he ended up a pretty broken man.
[sarcasm]Yet another example of corporations putting the public interest ahead of profits[/sarcasm].
Wow, AC has my vote for President!!!
I will second this without anonymity!!
It's all about priorities.
I can see the point of having competition, but having incompatible hardware is going a bit too far, isn't it?
What if, during the early days of broadcast TV, you had to chose between UHF and VHF? Or, with terestrial radio, FM and AM?
Seems kinda screwy!!
Here in Santa Cruz, we're currently using robots to inspect our sewers. My buddy made a TV show (on Community TV--like Public Access) of the raw footage from the sewer robot set to soothing music. Must-see TV!!
Well, if you read the news, you're fully aware that a lot of "science" is later revealed to be bullshit.
I wouldn't be so smug if I were you.
The article was on a British site. I'm assuming they were talking about the UK.
That's 7.5 Gb/s (*small* "b"). Factor of 8 difference (8 bits per byte).
Lastly, he's lived in Brooklyn his whole life. Fine.
Actually, he's lived in Santa Cruz County, California for 15+ years. Dunno where you got the Brooklyn thing.
As for getting a job, he's practically an invalid at the moment.
I wonder if they have a small, portable version that can be directed at radar cameras, and other 'public' cameras, to blind them to one's presences?
Laser pointer? $10 at Fry's.
I don't like this idea at all. I commend them for tackling such a large endeavor but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.
Well, maybe it's not the best use of M$'s resources, but I think Gordon Bell has earned his fun after a long career of doing useful things (DEC):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Bell
"count in the open" does not necessarily mean count by hand. With paper voting, the ballots are still largely counted by machine. However, if there is a discrepancy, the paper votes *can* be hand-counted in a recount. With purely electronic voting, a hand recount is not possible.
When we had 2 billion humans- we could do just about anything we wanted and the planet would be okay. With 9 billion- the tolerances are much finer.
I agree completely. Of course, where I differ from the ZPG (Zero Population Growth) folks is: I believe the Earth can sustain an arbitrarily large sized population.
However, we cannot sustain the current population of the planet if everybody is going to live the typical American lifestyle of today. If you look at what the typical American consumes each day in terms of natural resources in comparison with the average Bangladeshi, it's pretty amazing.
We can, and we must, live more sustainably. The degree of inefficiency with which we (Americans) live is deplorable.
Well at the least, cows farting and belching has an effect (pretty big too from what I remember). (you can google this easily).
No need, I remember the story. What can be measured and quantified is the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere by cow farts. You can correlate that with global warming. The point I make, is that it's not scientifically possible to prove that one *causes* the other.
It makes sense that 1 billion breathing humans crammed into an area the size of india would affect the microclimate (increased Co2, increased moisture). But no citations here.
No argument here. It makes perfect sense. When Londoners were burning coal to stay warm in the 1800's the sky was grey with soot. No doubt that affected microclimate (what to speak of air quality). But the microclimate and the global climate, while interrelated, are not one and the same.
As the article points out, there have been mitigating effects to increases in "greenhouse gases" detected (though, as the article also points out, special interests cherry-pick the research they choose to cite). Our planet is a very complex and resilient system. That isn't to say we ought to pollute without care. Rather, I'm simply saying: we don't know where the breaking point is.
In short, common sense dictates we ought to stop "shitting in our mess kit". But let's not confuse common sense and science.
It has no known toxic level. It can't kill. I assume you're talking about THC here. If you're smoking cannabis, you're also getting all the other stuff. The tar alone would cause your lungs to collapse if you were chain-smoking it.
Maybe pure THC doesn't have a *known* toxic level, but from what I remember, in studies, pure THC generated psychosis and other nasties. The associated "cannabinoids" are what give marijuana the characteristic high.
Funny thing: The THCs in cannabis have anticarcegenic propreties. That's not widely reported though. No doubt, there are many medicinal uses for the kind herb. That said, no doubt, smoking it isn't the best way to use it as medicine.
"People breathing has been known to cause historical climate changes. Fires to keep humans warm have had even more pronounced effects."
Huh? Do you have a citation for this? As much as I am in favor of conservation and not poisoning ourselves, I still have yet to see just how anybody can prove causation (which does not equal correlation) between human activities and climate change. It's just not possible (the system is too complex--too many variables).
Look at a picture of the Earth...what covers most of it...water.
You can cut down all the rainforests (I hope they don't) and it might have an effect globally (certainly it'll have an effect on local climate), but phytoplankton in the ocean are, IIRC, the largest biological source of oxygen.
"Of course, cannabis kills 0"
That may be true *statistically* speaking, but do you actually believe that?!?!?!
Most folks just can't afford to smoke enough ganja to kill them.
People say the CIA "gave Bob Marley cancer", but isn't a much more probable explanation is that massive ammounts of dope he smoked compromised his immune system?
It's been a tough day, but I know I can count on /. to cheer me up :O)