Thanks for the heads up! That looks like a great project.
I'll fire up VMWare and give it a try.
There are so many things that I hate about Dreamweaver, and just a few things that keep me there. It really isn't one of the last things holding me to windows.
A nuke on the surface isn't enough to destroy an asteroid, or alter it's course. You may get hit with 3 or 4 smaller peices, but they'll still be plenty big to do massive damage.
A nuke beneath the surface would be more effective, but is a major undertaking, especially went you don't know the composition of the asteroid.
Really, if a big one is coming for us we're just dead, regardless of what hollywood says...
I like Trillian, a lot, but switched to Gaim as part of a moral stand in support of Open Source, and haven't regretted the switch.
1.0 is great and stable. I use ICQ / AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber, all simultaneously and it works pretty much flawlessly.
My MSN always shows me as offline and they can't send me messages, but I can send them messages. I strongly suspect this is some screwiness with the MSN protocol.
All in all I really like Gaim, and don't really miss Trillian. At the same time I switched from Office to Open Office, and haven't regretted that switch either.
Eventually I'll lose XP altogether, but I still use Dreamweaver MX 2004, which doesn't have an Open Source WYSIWYG counterpart as far as I've been able to find, so I'm stuck here for the time being (and no, crossover office / wine don't work).
I really considered an SFF computer to replace my aging one, but in the end opted for a really SFF with a built in display: A laptop.
The one big downside with a laptop is the slow spinning hard drives. The performance in that department is noticeably slower. I'll retain final judgement until I bump the RAM from 256MB to 1GB.
Other than that I'm very satisfied with mine, and like the portability. I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 (with 256MB of RAM Doom 3 was barely playable at 640 X 480)...
I think the only way to effectively deal with an oncoming asteroid are:
1) Send a lander out that anchors and deploys a large solar sail, using the power of the suns particles to divert the asteroid.
2) Send a lander out that attaches an array of small (comparably) rockets that slowly alter the course of the asteroid. Much tougher on an asteroid such as this one that tumbles on two axis'.
Unfortunatlely, both are unlikely to succeed because they need a long time to work, and we never see these things until it's a little too late...
I don't care if it's 2 dozen or 2 thousand. The point is, the people who bag on space elevators on slashdot are likely not the ones qualified to discount the idea.
That said, I still think the number of people on the planet with the applicable knowledge of the physics, engineering, materials, and practical application necessary to understand space elevators enough to discredit them is very small.
I'm simply commenting on the fact that there are probably only about 2 dozen people on the planet with the practical, applicable knowledge and experience to say with any sort of certainty that a space elevator was physically impossible and a bad idea, and I highly doubt they are the people who regularly dismiss (not refute) the idea on Slashdot.
Personally I see no reason that it won't work, once the effort and money necessary is put into it.
Carbon nanotubes is certainly the forerunner. Even at todays technology, a carbon nanotube ribbon (very thin but rather wide) would be strong enough for small payloads.
In fact, for very small (100 - 200 lbs) payloads, a spider silk ribbon (which can now be made en masse thanks to the mammory glands in goats) may even be strong enough (a cable about the size of yarn or the ink container inside a bic pen can hold up the largest airplane we have).
Also, to avoid the need for a large winch in space, you have one satellite that is used as a tug to pull the ribbon out into space, using the fixed station as a guide. The satellite flies 62,000 miles out into space, and voila', the payload is at the fixed station.
As it comes back, with a gentle nudge from burners on the payload chassis, and the payload end makes it's way back to earth in a slow and controlled manner (no 15,000 degree heat from going 12,000 MPH through the atmosphere).
The round trip should take about 4 - 6 hours by current, very educated estimates made by highly skilled engineers who are very, very versed on the subject.
People like you and I (and Bush) shouldn't waste our time strainging our tiny little brains to figure out why it won't work. It will.
Nothing will further space exploration more than a space elevator.
Even a simple one, little more than a winch that can lower payloads to space and back safely, would bring cheap solar power and a station on the moon within easy reach.
It's not that Microsoft *doesn't* upgrade IE, it's that they *can't*.
They really screwed the pooch when they integrated IE so heavily into the OS. There is simply no other explanation for going so long without any new innovation in the browser market, when other browsers are growing in features, stability, and security by leaps and bounds.
There were quite a few articles on this point a few years ago. The problem is even more pronounced now.
And I highly doubt Microsoft has learned their lesson with Longhorn. This, above all else, will be Microsoft's undoing, IMHO.
Breaking websites in alternate browsers is a very evil but genius strategy of Microsoft.
On the surface it appears that their CSS implementation just sucks, but that isn't true.
It is engineered to be non-compliant in very specific ways to make sites designed and previewed in IE look terrible or not even render in alternate browsers.
Very smart. Very devious. I called ahead and made reservations for Microsoft management to have their own special room in hell...
Really, how many reasons do people need to switch to another browser before they do it?
I know a LOT of really intelligent, well educated people, many of whom are programmers or use linux in a server environment, who still use IE / Outlook [Express] on their desktops.
That is just begging for it.
I tell them over and over again the risks, and they still stay where they are. Ironically, complete neophites switch over as soon as I tell them about Firefox / Thunderbird.
This is standard fare for Microsoft. They patch the particular exploit, rather than the vulnerability that allowed it.
Fatal mistake, and one they make VERY often. Remember all of the RPC viruses we had one after the other? Same vulnerability, different exploits, one bandaid after another.
I despise it when doctors treat symptoms rather than the underlying problem. This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft.
You assume he is even storing that data.
It is quite possible the whole site is just a fraud to install his malware.
Why store email addresses he already has? He sent the spam to that address in the first place.
If I were in his shoes, doing what he'd doing, I'd have no reason to store the addresses.
It would be interesting to "remove" a very specific account that is known nowhere else and see if it magically starts getting spam.
Using the remove page as an email harvester is the only reason I can see to store the addresses entered (a lot of people put in ALL of their addresses on pages like this, not just the one that they receieved the email at).
Here is the perfect way to DDOS a site like this...
Pick a non-malicious, graphics intensive site on the same server:
http://www.xcelent.biz/d/
If you have a website, particularly a high traffic one, add a 1 x 1 IFRAME to your site that loads their site.
Now, everyone that comes to your site loads their site. The best part is, your IP and URL never show up in their logs.
With only a few high traffic sites doing this, I'm not sure how their server could survive. And if it did, their bandwidth bill certainly would not.
Slashdot Mirror
Stop being nit-picky. We regularly hear something is "the size of a postage-stamp", but we don't expect it to be as THIN as a postage stamp, do we?
It is very hard to get in right now. I've set FlashFXP to retry 1,000 times every 15 seconds. We'll see how that goes.
The more of us that keep this connection tied up doing innocent things for the next 48 hours, the better.
There really needs to be a distributed DDOS for spammer sites, virus sites, etc. Use The Force for good, I say.
One way or the other, yes, Sept 29, 2004 will go down in the history books.
I am quite confident in Burt and his team. The man is a genius who likes simplicity and really thinks through his stuff.
Good luck to them!
Thanks for the heads up! That looks like a great project.
I'll fire up VMWare and give it a try.
There are so many things that I hate about Dreamweaver, and just a few things that keep me there. It really isn't one of the last things holding me to windows.
Yeah, I have zero need for eye candy, so I don't have any turned on.
In fact, I really have a rather vanilla install, with 10 buddies on 4 different protocols.
But I use it quite frequently, and it hasn't crashed yet.
Thanks for the link, that is a heck of a lot cheaper than the other drives I was able to find a few months ago.
A nuke on the surface isn't enough to destroy an asteroid, or alter it's course. You may get hit with 3 or 4 smaller peices, but they'll still be plenty big to do massive damage.
A nuke beneath the surface would be more effective, but is a major undertaking, especially went you don't know the composition of the asteroid.
Really, if a big one is coming for us we're just dead, regardless of what hollywood says...
It's not like he said Ferrari's or some other expensive exotic car.
My wifes new Ford F-150 cost as much as a 3000GT did.
He probably had a couple $400 car payments. Easy to cover for anyone with a good work ethic and self control.
No big deal. Get over it.
Make sure you are running the latest version.
I use Gaim under XP and it has been very stable. Try upgrading your GTK, too, assuming you are on windows.
My experience with Gaim has been good, once I got used to it and they released a few upgrades. 1.0 is rock solid.
I like Trillian, a lot, but switched to Gaim as part of a moral stand in support of Open Source, and haven't regretted the switch.
1.0 is great and stable. I use ICQ / AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber, all simultaneously and it works pretty much flawlessly.
My MSN always shows me as offline and they can't send me messages, but I can send them messages. I strongly suspect this is some screwiness with the MSN protocol.
All in all I really like Gaim, and don't really miss Trillian. At the same time I switched from Office to Open Office, and haven't regretted that switch either.
Eventually I'll lose XP altogether, but I still use Dreamweaver MX 2004, which doesn't have an Open Source WYSIWYG counterpart as far as I've been able to find, so I'm stuck here for the time being (and no, crossover office / wine don't work).
I really considered an SFF computer to replace my aging one, but in the end opted for a really SFF with a built in display: A laptop.
The one big downside with a laptop is the slow spinning hard drives. The performance in that department is noticeably slower. I'll retain final judgement until I bump the RAM from 256MB to 1GB.
Other than that I'm very satisfied with mine, and like the portability. I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 (with 256MB of RAM Doom 3 was barely playable at 640 X 480)...
I think the only way to effectively deal with an oncoming asteroid are:
1) Send a lander out that anchors and deploys a large solar sail, using the power of the suns particles to divert the asteroid.
2) Send a lander out that attaches an array of small (comparably) rockets that slowly alter the course of the asteroid. Much tougher on an asteroid such as this one that tumbles on two axis'.
Unfortunatlely, both are unlikely to succeed because they need a long time to work, and we never see these things until it's a little too late...
Now Richard Gere will be going around trying to get trapped in falling buildings...
Oh, wait, that was rats, not gerbels.
Nevermind...
I don't care if it's 2 dozen or 2 thousand. The point is, the people who bag on space elevators on slashdot are likely not the ones qualified to discount the idea.
That said, I still think the number of people on the planet with the applicable knowledge of the physics, engineering, materials, and practical application necessary to understand space elevators enough to discredit them is very small.
The elk hunt starts in 2 1/2 weeks, I look forward to the day I can bring my laptop and use a live feed to track the elk herd... :}
I know, I know, it will never happen, but a guy can dream.
Maybe this is a good problem for an aerial kite camera solution
I'm simply commenting on the fact that there are probably only about 2 dozen people on the planet with the practical, applicable knowledge and experience to say with any sort of certainty that a space elevator was physically impossible and a bad idea, and I highly doubt they are the people who regularly dismiss (not refute) the idea on Slashdot.
Personally I see no reason that it won't work, once the effort and money necessary is put into it.
Carbon nanotubes is certainly the forerunner. Even at todays technology, a carbon nanotube ribbon (very thin but rather wide) would be strong enough for small payloads.
In fact, for very small (100 - 200 lbs) payloads, a spider silk ribbon (which can now be made en masse thanks to the mammory glands in goats) may even be strong enough (a cable about the size of yarn or the ink container inside a bic pen can hold up the largest airplane we have).
Also, to avoid the need for a large winch in space, you have one satellite that is used as a tug to pull the ribbon out into space, using the fixed station as a guide. The satellite flies 62,000 miles out into space, and voila', the payload is at the fixed station.
As it comes back, with a gentle nudge from burners on the payload chassis, and the payload end makes it's way back to earth in a slow and controlled manner (no 15,000 degree heat from going 12,000 MPH through the atmosphere).
The round trip should take about 4 - 6 hours by current, very educated estimates made by highly skilled engineers who are very, very versed on the subject.
People like you and I (and Bush) shouldn't waste our time strainging our tiny little brains to figure out why it won't work. It will.
Nothing will further space exploration more than a space elevator.
Even a simple one, little more than a winch that can lower payloads to space and back safely, would bring cheap solar power and a station on the moon within easy reach.
Anyone in the white house listening?
It's not that Microsoft *doesn't* upgrade IE, it's that they *can't*.
They really screwed the pooch when they integrated IE so heavily into the OS. There is simply no other explanation for going so long without any new innovation in the browser market, when other browsers are growing in features, stability, and security by leaps and bounds.
There were quite a few articles on this point a few years ago. The problem is even more pronounced now.
And I highly doubt Microsoft has learned their lesson with Longhorn. This, above all else, will be Microsoft's undoing, IMHO.
Breaking websites in alternate browsers is a very evil but genius strategy of Microsoft.
On the surface it appears that their CSS implementation just sucks, but that isn't true.
It is engineered to be non-compliant in very specific ways to make sites designed and previewed in IE look terrible or not even render in alternate browsers.
Very smart. Very devious. I called ahead and made reservations for Microsoft management to have their own special room in hell...
Really, how many reasons do people need to switch to another browser before they do it?
I know a LOT of really intelligent, well educated people, many of whom are programmers or use linux in a server environment, who still use IE / Outlook [Express] on their desktops.
That is just begging for it.
I tell them over and over again the risks, and they still stay where they are. Ironically, complete neophites switch over as soon as I tell them about Firefox / Thunderbird.
I guess the meek really will inherit the earth.
This is standard fare for Microsoft. They patch the particular exploit, rather than the vulnerability that allowed it.
Fatal mistake, and one they make VERY often. Remember all of the RPC viruses we had one after the other? Same vulnerability, different exploits, one bandaid after another.
I despise it when doctors treat symptoms rather than the underlying problem. This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft.
I have friends that insist on using MSN too. They're problem. If they get owned, it ain't my fault! I've tried to get them to switch.
I use Gaim on Win XP, and the new 1.0 works great! Jabber is the bomb, too.
You assume he is even storing that data. It is quite possible the whole site is just a fraud to install his malware. Why store email addresses he already has? He sent the spam to that address in the first place. If I were in his shoes, doing what he'd doing, I'd have no reason to store the addresses. It would be interesting to "remove" a very specific account that is known nowhere else and see if it magically starts getting spam. Using the remove page as an email harvester is the only reason I can see to store the addresses entered (a lot of people put in ALL of their addresses on pages like this, not just the one that they receieved the email at).
Here is the perfect way to DDOS a site like this... Pick a non-malicious, graphics intensive site on the same server: http://www.xcelent.biz/d/ If you have a website, particularly a high traffic one, add a 1 x 1 IFRAME to your site that loads their site. Now, everyone that comes to your site loads their site. The best part is, your IP and URL never show up in their logs. With only a few high traffic sites doing this, I'm not sure how their server could survive. And if it did, their bandwidth bill certainly would not.