We gave umbrella's to beta testers a couple of years ago; the tall ones that one usually associates with golfing. It was considered odd at the time, but since then we've had lots of positive comments on how much everyone appreciated them. BTW, we had the product logo silk screened onto them.
This is the best piece of advice posted to this discussion. There have been some suggestions elsewhere in this discussion to ground the ethernet cables at multiple points. This seems to be the intuitive thing to do; however, it isn't---such suggestions are assuming that the entire hull of the ship is at the same ground potential (not a reasonable assumption). Use the Allen-Bradley instructions and you will stay out of trouble.
All of this is supervised and watched by my wife and I -- we don't use any parental filters since we've found they just don't work, and it's just better to keep a watchful eye anyway.
Congratulations. I wish more parents saw it that way. Unfortunately, most want to use the computer as a babysitter.
Parental filters do work! The problem isn't with the filter its with how people choose to use them. Filters supplement parental involvement, they don't replace it.
The original poster's words say that they keep a watchful eye on how their children use the computer. While I believe that statement, it is not possible to monitor every moment of a child's computer use while also living your own life.
We use squidGuard on our home firewall. It is in place as much for me as for my children (I have 4, ages 14 through 5). I have no desire to be assaulted by pornographic images, and I see no point in my children having to be exposed to them either. The filter helps keep accidents from happening.
The immediate knee jerk reaction that anti-filter advocates trundle out is that filters are imperfect, they filter out things they shouldn't and don't filter everything they should. What these anti-filter advocates forget is that people aren't perfect either: I sometimes open links that look innocuous but turn out to be undesireable.
Filters aren't inherently bad; rather, they are a very useful safety net.
Protext---the text-based word processor that was originally released for the AtariST, Acorn, and Amtrad PC---is still available for sale. See http://home.btconnect.com/tigerteam/protext/ for more info. There isn't a Linux native version, but it is a light-weight MS-DOS program that should run under the appropriate Linux-hosted emulator.
Our Corporate email system limits email size to 2 meg. The IT department also provides an officially supported FTP/SAMBA server, with Internet facing and Intranet facing access. Got a big document? Send an email with a link to the document on the FTP/SAMBA server. If the receiver needs to save a copy of the document, they copy it off the server. If a copy isn't permanently needed, it will be automatically be purged from the FTP server (depending upon what directory you've dropped the file into: 1-day drop box, 5-day drop box, 30-day drop box, etc.).
Email systems (and voicemail for that matter) have over the years sporadically supported a feature that allows the sender to delete unread/unlistened messages. Sadly, I know of know OSS email system that supports this functionality.
Where I work, we use MS Exchange configured in Enterprise mode. There is a feature to allow unread email messages to be "recalled"; however, the implementation of the feature is such that each email-reader (User Agent) can disable the feature completely or disregard individual recall requests.
My personal use of the feature is most often to recall an email that contains an error. I then substitute a corrected version of the email. When this works, and the message is recalled successfully, it removes from my communication the possibility that the receiver will save the email that contained the bad data, and not save a follow-up email that explains the errors of the first email.
While some will argue that it is a user's *right* to be able to read every email sent to them, it is just as easy to construct an argument that until an email is read it is the sender's *right* to be able to un-send it. To my mind, anytime we can put in place technology that allows poeple to correct their mistakes (be they emotional mistakes or technical/informational ones) it makes it easier for us to all get along with one another. The less stress we inject into our workplace/relationships, the better!
So now we get opcodes to do 'send TCP/IP packet' and such?
I can't wait for the first TCP/IP exploit patch for Linux on this new processor:
1. Power down machine
2. Attach anti-static strap to wrist
3. Remove old CPU
4. Install new CPU
5. Power-up machine
Lastly, my feel good comment was in relation to the extra hours spent on the golf course. It was a bit of a flame and I probaby should have deleted that comment before posting.
Please check your facts re: the UK. The last I checked (5 minutes ago at UK Highway Code), the UK still uses Miles per Hour to measure highway speed. The odometers in cars are still miles too. I agree that the UK is ahead of Canada (where I live) and way ahead of the US, but non-metric units still unnecessarily abound.
It's sad to hear that Indiana may bow to peer pressure from the rest of the world w.r.t. Daylight Savings Time (DST). There have been a number of very credible studies done over the past decade, and DST costs lives (and money) due to the manner in which it disrupts our body clock.
The grand hypocracy of the whole DST gambit is the DST supporters' claim that the energy savings justify DST; i.e., let's annually sacrifice a few thousand people to save a bit of energy.
If DST supporters truly want to put an open and honest argument on the table for their position, their cost-benefit analysis needs to account for the lost lives, lost quality of life due to personal injuries, lost productivity, lost monies, etc., in addition to tallying up the energy savings and extra time spent on the golf course.
Why is it too much to expect that people turn their brains on, fire a few neurons, and produce cogent thought? DST is yet another example of, "It *feels* good so it must the right thing to do."
One of the interviewees said, "But in general: say you woke up one day and everyone on earth simultaneously agreed to switch from windows/icons/mouse to some new paradigm. It would still take 20 years, trillions of dollars, and be mind-blowingly difficult."
This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.
System/application developers frequently forget this point and underestimate the importance of backward compatibility. Evolution will always win in a war with revolution; even if revolution wins a few of the early battles.
Why should you pay anything for listings in the UK? In the UK, every station provides its TV listings through the Videotext associated with that station. It strikes me as very odd that the TiVO wouldn't simply read those listings.
The proprietary TiVO listings service can probably provide more scheduling detail than the station provides through Videotext (e.g., is this a rerun or a first run), but out of the box there is no technical reason the TiVO shouldn't provide its basic autorecording functionality without ever connecting to a server.
The discussion probably went like this:
Engineer: I coded up the videotext retrieval functionality last night.
Marketing: WHAT! Burn the code. It's imperative we coerce every buyer into a lifetime of servitude to the great and powerful TiVO...
How does someone decide, ahead of time, without seeing a movie, that he or she wants to see an edited version?
How does anyone decide ahead of time whether or not a XXX rated film contains the advertised porn?
I too find it very disturbing that anyone trusts the information presented on the cover of the movie, or that people trust the rating agencies. People have no business trusting anyone except themselves. Never delegate anything!
Moreover, it is truly frightening that people are censoring their own inputs. What right do these viewers have to limit their daily intake of smut, violence, and profanity? If Hollywood produced it, they must be forced to watch it!
...such a feature still only removes the ads temporarily (the original content is available to the viewer)...
At any time the viewer can borrow the unedited version of the movie and view it. Albeit, there is a longer time delay than one would experience with ReplayTV, but given the business model Clean Flicks is using---where members of the coop use a temporary copy of the original DVD---the essence of the transaction is the same.
BTW, thanks for correcting my incorrect product reference (i.e., TIVO when I should have written ReplayTV).
Before anyone objects to your assertion that Clean Flicks is engaged in "fair use", they should check out how Clean Flicks runs its operation: About Edited Movies. I agree with you, it's fair use.
If Clean Flicks' editing procedure isn't fair use, then a TIVO's ad-skipping feature is also not fair use. The broadcasters have released their video stream, and any automated editing of that video stream by the TIVO is not too dissimilar to what Clean Flicks is doing: Clean Flicks is simply inserting another mechanical method in place of what the TIVO does in one's home.
It is also worth checking out this Boston Globe article, which provides background on a number of Clean Flicks' competitors---some of which work solely through the distribution of edit lists that you use on your PC or through a controller to a standard DVD player: ClearPlay and Family Shield Technologies.
To reiterate, their current business model is fair use.
Have you considered PoE-based solutions? Here's one from 3Com, the NJ100 Network Jack (and a review of it by Tom's Hardware). While the NJ100 is not intended for use inside a closed box, using one of these would allow you to route power along with data between the various modules in one of your systems.
Mouse Gestures (aka Gestural Commands, or Strokes) have also been around for many years; their inclusion in Opera, and now Mozilla, is wonderful and it is great to see this old idea finally gaining favour.
I first saw Strokes demonstrated in late 1986, in an AtariST-based 3D CAD product called JILCAD (written by Lee Hall). I don't know if Lee thought up the idea himself or whether he was implementing a feature he had seen elsewhere.
One neat JILCAD feature that I have never seen replicated elsewhere was the use of two cursors (with a right-click menu): the mouse cursor and a "placed cursor". Left clicking the mouse would position the "placed cursor" (to select a line or point, or to indicate a starting position) in the drawing plane. Moving the mouse to another position would indicate a second location(leaving the first cursor in place). The user would then right-click and choose a command off the menu---the right-click would cause a menu cursor to appear on the menu bar (a menu pallet, actually). For example, to find the midpoint between two points in the drawing: click on the first point, position the mouse cursor over the second point, right-click and select the find the midpoint function.
I agree, it's impossible without severly hacking the mouse; however, the idea is excellent. Now that it's been thrown out on the table, maybe one of the mouse manufacturers will incorporate the concept into one of their mice.
How to find the answer to the question the user has posed:
Start your browser. Don't use anything except Internet Explorer, since the answer to this question is so easily found that the asker has demonstrated that they require all the Microsoft hand-holding they can get!
Type "GPS NTP" in the search box and click on the [search] button.
Read the pages pointed to in the resulting links.
Post apology to slashdot, for wasting everyone's time.
This has to be the lamest question in the history of "Ask Slashdot".
<Whine>
The Slashdot moderators are getting as bad as the US Patent Office. After spending many hours searching the web, I've posed much harder questions than this to "Ask Slashdot" and had them rejected.
For example, "What experiences can people share of building small sound-proof enclosures for their firewall/server kit?" Did you know that there is almost no information posted on the web, or posted to USENET, about this topic? There don't even appear to be any commercial products in this space (except for large and expensive commercial racks) for use by computer hobbiests trying to shoehorn their habit (sorry, I meant hobby) into a home shared with other people.
Come on moderators, spend a little time thinking about what you accept/reject!
Slashdot Mirror
We gave umbrella's to beta testers a couple of years ago; the tall ones that one usually associates with golfing. It was considered odd at the time, but since then we've had lots of positive comments on how much everyone appreciated them. BTW, we had the product logo silk screened onto them.
This is the best piece of advice posted to this discussion. There have been some suggestions elsewhere in this discussion to ground the ethernet cables at multiple points. This seems to be the intuitive thing to do; however, it isn't---such suggestions are assuming that the entire hull of the ship is at the same ground potential (not a reasonable assumption). Use the Allen-Bradley instructions and you will stay out of trouble.
Why not go ask your local video mega-rental store (Blockbuster, etc.) what they do?
Parental filters do work! The problem isn't with the filter its with how people choose to use them. Filters supplement parental involvement, they don't replace it.
The original poster's words say that they keep a watchful eye on how their children use the computer. While I believe that statement, it is not possible to monitor every moment of a child's computer use while also living your own life.
We use squidGuard on our home firewall. It is in place as much for me as for my children (I have 4, ages 14 through 5). I have no desire to be assaulted by pornographic images, and I see no point in my children having to be exposed to them either. The filter helps keep accidents from happening.
The immediate knee jerk reaction that anti-filter advocates trundle out is that filters are imperfect, they filter out things they shouldn't and don't filter everything they should. What these anti-filter advocates forget is that people aren't perfect either: I sometimes open links that look innocuous but turn out to be undesireable.
Filters aren't inherently bad; rather, they are a very useful safety net.
Protext---the text-based word processor that was originally released for the AtariST, Acorn, and Amtrad PC---is still available for sale. See http://home.btconnect.com/tigerteam/protext/ for more info. There isn't a Linux native version, but it is a light-weight MS-DOS program that should run under the appropriate Linux-hosted emulator.
Joe offers basic line/word wrapping functionality, and the JSTAR option offers basic Wordstar key-commands.
Our Corporate email system limits email size to 2 meg. The IT department also provides an officially supported FTP/SAMBA server, with Internet facing and Intranet facing access. Got a big document? Send an email with a link to the document on the FTP/SAMBA server. If the receiver needs to save a copy of the document, they copy it off the server. If a copy isn't permanently needed, it will be automatically be purged from the FTP server (depending upon what directory you've dropped the file into: 1-day drop box, 5-day drop box, 30-day drop box, etc.).
Basix
Email systems (and voicemail for that matter) have over the years sporadically supported a feature that allows the sender to delete unread/unlistened messages. Sadly, I know of know OSS email system that supports this functionality.
Where I work, we use MS Exchange configured in Enterprise mode. There is a feature to allow unread email messages to be "recalled"; however, the implementation of the feature is such that each email-reader (User Agent) can disable the feature completely or disregard individual recall requests.
My personal use of the feature is most often to recall an email that contains an error. I then substitute a corrected version of the email. When this works, and the message is recalled successfully, it removes from my communication the possibility that the receiver will save the email that contained the bad data, and not save a follow-up email that explains the errors of the first email.
While some will argue that it is a user's *right* to be able to read every email sent to them, it is just as easy to construct an argument that until an email is read it is the sender's *right* to be able to un-send it. To my mind, anytime we can put in place technology that allows poeple to correct their mistakes (be they emotional mistakes or technical/informational ones) it makes it easier for us to all get along with one another. The less stress we inject into our workplace/relationships, the better!
So now we get opcodes to do 'send TCP/IP packet' and such?
I can't wait for the first TCP/IP exploit patch for Linux on this new processor:
1. Power down machine
2. Attach anti-static strap to wrist
3. Remove old CPU
4. Install new CPU
5. Power-up machine
Lastly, my feel good comment was in relation to the extra hours spent on the golf course. It was a bit of a flame and I probaby should have deleted that comment before posting.
Please check your facts re: the UK. The last I checked (5 minutes ago at UK Highway Code), the UK still uses Miles per Hour to measure highway speed. The odometers in cars are still miles too. I agree that the UK is ahead of Canada (where I live) and way ahead of the US, but non-metric units still unnecessarily abound.
It's sad to hear that Indiana may bow to peer pressure from the rest of the world w.r.t. Daylight Savings Time (DST). There have been a number of very credible studies done over the past decade, and DST costs lives (and money) due to the manner in which it disrupts our body clock.
The grand hypocracy of the whole DST gambit is the DST supporters' claim that the energy savings justify DST; i.e., let's annually sacrifice a few thousand people to save a bit of energy.
If DST supporters truly want to put an open and honest argument on the table for their position, their cost-benefit analysis needs to account for the lost lives, lost quality of life due to personal injuries, lost productivity, lost monies, etc., in addition to tallying up the energy savings and extra time spent on the golf course.
Why is it too much to expect that people turn their brains on, fire a few neurons, and produce cogent thought? DST is yet another example of, "It *feels* good so it must the right thing to do."
One of the interviewees said, "But in general: say you woke up one day and everyone on earth simultaneously agreed to switch from windows/icons/mouse to some new paradigm. It would still take 20 years, trillions of dollars, and be mind-blowingly difficult."
This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.
System/application developers frequently forget this point and underestimate the importance of backward compatibility. Evolution will always win in a war with revolution; even if revolution wins a few of the early battles.
Why should you pay anything for listings in the UK? In the UK, every station provides its TV listings through the Videotext associated with that station. It strikes me as very odd that the TiVO wouldn't simply read those listings.
The proprietary TiVO listings service can probably provide more scheduling detail than the station provides through Videotext (e.g., is this a rerun or a first run), but out of the box there is no technical reason the TiVO shouldn't provide its basic autorecording functionality without ever connecting to a server.
The discussion probably went like this:
Engineer: I coded up the videotext retrieval functionality last night.
Marketing: WHAT! Burn the code. It's imperative we coerce every buyer into a lifetime of servitude to the great and powerful TiVO...
How does anyone decide ahead of time whether or not a XXX rated film contains the advertised porn?
I too find it very disturbing that anyone trusts the information presented on the cover of the movie, or that people trust the rating agencies. People have no business trusting anyone except themselves. Never delegate anything!
Moreover, it is truly frightening that people are censoring their own inputs. What right do these viewers have to limit their daily intake of smut, violence, and profanity? If Hollywood produced it, they must be forced to watch it!
At any time the viewer can borrow the unedited version of the movie and view it. Albeit, there is a longer time delay than one would experience with ReplayTV, but given the business model Clean Flicks is using---where members of the coop use a temporary copy of the original DVD---the essence of the transaction is the same.
BTW, thanks for correcting my incorrect product reference (i.e., TIVO when I should have written ReplayTV).
Before anyone objects to your assertion that Clean Flicks is engaged in "fair use", they should check out how Clean Flicks runs its operation: About Edited Movies. I agree with you, it's fair use.
If Clean Flicks' editing procedure isn't fair use, then a TIVO's ad-skipping feature is also not fair use. The broadcasters have released their video stream, and any automated editing of that video stream by the TIVO is not too dissimilar to what Clean Flicks is doing: Clean Flicks is simply inserting another mechanical method in place of what the TIVO does in one's home.
It is also worth checking out this Boston Globe article, which provides background on a number of Clean Flicks' competitors---some of which work solely through the distribution of edit lists that you use on your PC or through a controller to a standard DVD player: ClearPlay and Family Shield Technologies.
To reiterate, their current business model is fair use.
Have you considered PoE-based solutions? Here's one from 3Com, the NJ100 Network Jack (and a review of it by Tom's Hardware). While the NJ100 is not intended for use inside a closed box, using one of these would allow you to route power along with data between the various modules in one of your systems.
Mouse Gestures (aka Gestural Commands, or Strokes) have also been around for many years; their inclusion in Opera, and now Mozilla, is wonderful and it is great to see this old idea finally gaining favour.
I first saw Strokes demonstrated in late 1986, in an AtariST-based 3D CAD product called JILCAD (written by Lee Hall). I don't know if Lee thought up the idea himself or whether he was implementing a feature he had seen elsewhere.
One neat JILCAD feature that I have never seen replicated elsewhere was the use of two cursors (with a right-click menu): the mouse cursor and a "placed cursor". Left clicking the mouse would position the "placed cursor" (to select a line or point, or to indicate a starting position) in the drawing plane. Moving the mouse to another position would indicate a second location(leaving the first cursor in place). The user would then right-click and choose a command off the menu---the right-click would cause a menu cursor to appear on the menu bar (a menu pallet, actually). For example, to find the midpoint between two points in the drawing: click on the first point, position the mouse cursor over the second point, right-click and select the find the midpoint function.
I agree, it's impossible without severly hacking the mouse; however, the idea is excellent. Now that it's been thrown out on the table, maybe one of the mouse manufacturers will incorporate the concept into one of their mice.
How to find the answer to the question the user has posed:
This has to be the lamest question in the history of "Ask Slashdot".
<Whine>
</Whine>
A quick Google search using the proper name shows that these worms live in Hawaii too (i.e., not only Vietnam): http://home.hawaii.rr.com/cpie/Fwater3a.html
That's gotta be the most polite request to cease and desist that I've ever read.
For those who don't live in Ottawa, here's a short lexicon:
"Carleton" is one of Ottawa's two local universities.
"CJOH" is the primary local commercial TV station.