Lots of USB and SCSI (those still round?) scanners work with Linux using SANE(7). Networked scanners are harder to find, but a much better choice (scan from multiple computers, locate anywhere, no buggy USB drivers, etc.). Network printers are more rule than exception now, so why are most scanners still USB-only? To add insult to injury, most of the networkable scanners available use propriatary protocol not supported on linux.
I think HP's OfficeJet line might be the best bet. (Stay away from Brother at any cost!) I've been happily using a Officejet 7120 with linux. At $299 it's cheaper than most dedicated network scanners, and comes with a document feeder for the scanner which also works great with SANE. The built-in inkjet is supported too, but haven't used it much. I don't think the fax functions work from linux, but a windows instance running inside VMware can use it for conveniently sending faxes if you must.
Scanning on windows seems to always be a huge PITA, with buggy drivers and dialogs popping up all over the place with the wrong default settings for every document you try to scan. Using sane from the command line on linux is a huge improvement. Just hack together a script with the right parameters for the common stuff you scan, and then drop the documents in the feeder and run the "scan_bank_statement" (or whatever.) Try that on windows!
scanimage -d "hpoj:hpjd:192.168.1.55" --resolution 300 --source Auto --format=tiff >my_document.tiff
Here's an idea, why not scrap your fucking SUVs and Hummers and buy efficient vehicles instead? Or at least just quit whining? You have it fucking good.
No you stop whining! Isn't your country a democracy? Why don't you vote to abolish the gasoline tax next election if you don't like it? Here in the US we never voted for high gas taxes, which is why our gas is so much cheaper than yours.
There isn't too much to be said for European ingenuity either. If American gas prices were as high as yours, we'd have developed alternative fuels long ago. Even at the current prices, ethanol is starting to be competitive, and many cars can already run on it (E85). Last time i was over there, the only thing for sale was unleaded. At astronomical prices.
Too many Europeans have a defeatist mentality. Why doesn't France have a hydrogen economy already in place? They have had dirty cheap nuclear energy for decades, but nobody bothered to use it to produce hydrogen. They just roll over and pay OPEC plus a 200% tax bonus to the government like there was no alternative.
Instead of taking advantage of the high prices to start alternative fuel businesses and getting rich, people over there force themselves to conserve, pay taxes though the nose, drive around in ridiculous looking mini cars which probably cost more than Lincoln Navigators (after tax of course), and generally accept their declining standard of living while blaming everybody else for their problems.
And to add insult to injury, unlike France, the rest of Europe is busily decommissioning their nuclear plants and replacing them with natural gas, coal and oil, while complaining all day long about those vulgar and selfish Americans.
Fuddrucker's was only sourcing 5% of his traffic. All while his biggest "hotlinker" accounted for over 50%. He says "Most of those links aren't a huge deal to me. I'm flattered that people like my game enough to link to them. But Fuddruckers??? Hmm. I decided to investigate."
Maybe it was a little excessive putting up pictures of slaughterhouses and an essay about "how incredibly stupid their web developer is"?
I mean, it's just SO stupid and rude to link to other people's web sites, and for profit! Anybody who does that clearly deserves punishment by having their audience redirected to offensive images and essays. Thank goodness slashdot isn't owned by a for-profit comany and that their webmasters are respectable and internet savvy unlike Fuddrucker's. They would never allow hotlinking to other sites without prior permission!.. Just imagine the "bandwidth theft"!
. . .
I don't understand why anybody is applauding this guy unless they have a personal beef with Fuddruckers (no pun! no pun!), he just made an ass of himself, and people are cheering him on!.. If other webmasters were like him, every link ever posted on slashdot would end up redirected to goatcx.
Your "normalization" is completely flawed. It assumes that the average bias of all the networks is center, and that the problem is that republicans are less trusting people than democrats. Allow me to illustrate with an example:
For the sake of argument, lets say that FOX news is so biased that 100% of republicans, but 0% of democrats trust it, and that all the other networks are biased in the opposite direction and are trusted by 100% of democrats and 0% of republicans. A perfectly valid example, statistically speaking.
After applying your "formula", we must conclude that Fox actually earns a trust level of 400% from republicans (and still 0% from democrats), at the same time CNN dropped to only being trusted by 57% of democrats, even though every one of them actually trusted it completely initially (until your formula stopped them, that is).
So clearly, by your logic, if sufficiently biased in the opposite direction of the majority of the other networks, any network could become trusted by MORE than 100% of the viewers. (Who needs democratic viewers if you can get 400% of the rich and selfish republican viewers? imagine the advertising sales!)
Maybe you should drop statistics and go full time into politics? I bet if you fine-tune your statistical methods, you could win over 400% of the vote!
Yeah that's smart. In particular after realizing too late that the DVD burner's serial number is required to cash in the rebate. At the bottom of the 3 foot long BestBuy rebate form, it helpfully suggests that you write down the serial number, conveniently displayed on the back of the unit, BEFORE installing it. Thanks BestBuy.
Is there a way to get the S/N over the ATA bus?/proc/ide/hdc/identify ?
I used to have the same problem and discovered that if you clean up your windows temp directory ("Temporary Internet Files"), it'll work. Acrobat must have a bug which causes it to slow down dramatically, and eventually fail to launch at all as the number of files in the temp directory grows large (maybe >10,000 or somthing like that).
There's a setting inside in the control panel and inside IE that lets you control how much space to dedicate to temp files.
I've used a Sierra Wireless AirCard 555 (verizon wireless) with linux. Although they claim the card is 144kbps, the ping round-trip time is pretty slow, and makes sshing pretty unpleasant.
After initializing the card for the first time (using windows, it needs to update the firmware, etc.), the card works like a regular com-port/modem. Beware of wvdial though, i had to patch it to make it work reliably with the AirCard. Also see http://centerclick.org/aircard555/
I recently dumped the aircard and replaced it with a GSM phone Nokia 6820. Which not only has a fold-out QWERTY keyboard, both a commercial and a free ssh client, and bluetooth, but also an IR port which emulates a modem when put next to the IR port on a laptop. Then just dial *99# and you're in business, even when traveling abroad. (The AirCard doesn't support data calls outside of the US.)
I think it's a better deal than the dedicated wireless cards, unless you're planning on using it constantly.
It appears that the speed on the 6820 (with AT&T / Cingular service) via IR is better than the AirCard too.
The trick is to set the UPS to run "until batteries are out". The built-in prediction of remaining run-time will not tell the truth. Even after running their "test cycle" feature to determine the actual run-time. Stupid firmware obviously.
The battery voltage will be reported correctly however, so if you connect the UPS to a computer using the smart-cable, the host software can still (theoretically) determine the true remaining run-time.
Some APC UPS units have an external connector
normally used for disconnecting the built-in battery
for safe shipping or in case of fire. By replacing the
internal battery with a wire-loop, the external connector can be used to conveniently hook up large batteries. (Watch the polarity!)
The SmartUPS 1400 model pictured is a 24 volt system, so 2 serially connected deep-cycle lead acid batteries must be used.
This setup worked great during the recent hurricanes and power outages in Florida. It kept my laptop, cell phones and flashlights charged during the outages, the longest of which was about 5 days. During prolonged outages you would want to turn the UPS off, and only run it for an hour a day or so to charge smaller devices, check the news, etc.
Our politicians are 99% in the pocket of our corporations.
Yet, it's almost always other corporations that are victimized (usually big corps too, with lots of money to pay settlements.) So to say that "corporations" always lobby for software patents doesn't seem to be an entirely fair statement.
There is however one lobby that is guaranteed to be 100% behind complicated patent laws, complicated tax laws, complicated copyright laws; in fact they're guaranteed to be in favor of all laws that will stifle and hurt businesses and individuals enough to make them want to sue in court. That lobby would be the American Bar Association and just about every lawyer in the country.
Law firms are rarely mega corps, they're mostly individuals and small partnerships.
Have you ever checked how many of our congress men, presidents and presidential candidates are lawyers by profession?... Quite a revelation.
One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach.
Well, the answer would be that they would extradite the person, even if he had broken no laws in the United States, and the only crime committed in his totalitarian home land was a "speech crime" that is a constitutionally protected God given right, according to the US Constitution.
That's not true. A lead acid battery (whether sealed or not) ideally has almost zero impedance, and unlike NiCd and NiMh, it's charge level is measured by the voltage across the terminals, not the charge current delta.
So connecting bigger cells (of the same voltage) works fine, and will simply yield longer run-time (and longer charge time).
Here's a picture of my 105Ah 24v, deep-cycle battery setup for a standard APC 1400 UPS.
This UPS even has a handy battery disconnect plug on the back, which can be used to connect an external battery (double check the polarity!) provided that the internal battery is removed and it's connector is short-circuited. No need to modify the UPS at all!
That's an upside down plastic toy basket covering the batteries. A nice side effect is to always have a fully charged 12v (or 24v) power source available for specialty devices, like the smart-charger in the picture.
Lets see, the point of my post wasn't to start an
immigration debate, rather to point out the
hypocrisy in the case of the intrepid explorer
that the story was about. I see that you feel
no compassion for a guy like that. News for nerds
eh? You probably were among the people that were
screaming "screw him! not on my tax-dollar! send
him home third class and burn his home-built
plane!" Liberal Jealousy is it? If you can't have it,
don't let anybody else have it either!
The government has no problem helping millions of
people who have already violated US laws, but a
guy that flew to Antarctica without first notifying
the US government, and got stuck in storm, is going
to be made into an example for others.
Oh, I get it, you're just stupid.
Because you spotted something you don't agree
with in my post, I'm stupid?
I'm not sure it's worth the time, but whatever.
Let me refute your attack.
1. Illegal immigrants cost taxpayer money because
they utilize health services and welfare programs
to a higher degree than Americans, and on average
they pay much less taxes.
The health care system in southern California is
about to collapse because it's impossible for
hospitals there to break even. More than half
of their customers are illegals who don't pay.
California and US taxpayers pay the difference.
2. Illegals contribute jobs and profits for corporations
who are also violating the law by hiring them.
They do this because Americans would
typically demand a higher salary. This not only causes
more Americans to join the taxpayer funded
unemployment lines, but it also reduces tax revenues
because the lower wages paid to illegals. Often
no taxes at all are paid, because the salary is
below the minimum taxable income, and/or the
illegal has a large family with multiple dependents.
Why don't we just announce that a kid born anywhere
in the world is a US citizen? In practice, that's
what it's like already, except only for those
that are already criminally inclined. No honest
immigrants need apply.
Or how about just enforcing our laws in the first
place!? Sounds unreasonable to you?
BTW, the cost of finding and deporting illegals
is nothing compared to the cost of just a single
child delivery in the ER, which many of these
families do 5 or 6 of.
Here's some links:
http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html
Since you are obviously a liberal, maybe it would
be sobering to read what senator Diane Feinstein
has to say:
Illegal immigration is a problem that affects communities across the nation. However, this issue affects my home state of California disproportionately because of California's proximity to the border. In the last year, illegal immigration cost Californians almost $1.2 billion. Of that amount, California spent an estimated $980 million on emergency services for undocumented immigrants.
It's funny, because as a US taxpayer, i don't recall having a say in whether my money was to be used to fly these arrogant pinheads to McMurdo base, nor to supply then with fuel to keep warm. What are they doing there anyway?
But somehow they think a private person flying there on his own dime, in his own aircraft, who happen to encounter unexpected weather needs to be "discouraged" by not letting him buy a few gallons of fuel. Instead, try forcing him to pay for shipping his perfectly functional aircraft as cargo, which certainly will be several orders of magnitude more expensive, and use much more extra fuel, just to teach him to stay the hell out of these bureaucrats' personal continent.
Here's another idea. How about discouraging illegal immigrants that cost taxpayers billions of dollars from breaking our laws, maybe by sending them home? Or even making them pay their own way while they're here? Oh no? That's not compassionate enough? Free schools, hospitals and prisons for them!
Stick it to the guy that built his own plane and got stuck in antarctica. People like that are a real fucking problem.
If you really want to help, don't have more than one or two children. If you're not selfish at all - don't have ANY children. Those things will make a real impact.
This used to be one of my pet peeves. Although I have since realized how ill advised that argument is. It would result in those people who are responsible citizens purging themselves from the gene pool. That's a surefire way to help improve the environment and society in the future!..
Second, we already have a problem (and it's getting worse) due to the shrinking and aging productive population in the western world. The quality of the population is also being lowered due to several factors. Productive and successful people on average already have
fewer children than their unproductive counterparts. Ironically, it's thanks to the well-meaning philantropy of the hard-working producers that the irrisponsible reproductive behavior of non-producers can be sustained. At least for now.
If you believe yourself to be a model citizen, go ahead and have as many kids as you can, and pass your desirable traits on to the next generation.
It will increase our chances of breaking out of the downward spiral we're in!
Is it because Bill Gates is involved, or did (almost) everybody here decide to trade in their aspiration for freedom and pursuit of happiness for this pitiful whining about how there ought to be some law to stop these "rich bastards" from buying faster cars than most of us here can afford. It reeks of ill masked jealousy and outright socialism.
There IS an outrage in this story, and it's the fact that there already WAS a law like that, and that it took these people 10 YEARS and hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain PERMISSION from their own government (the government "by the people", charged with protecting "our rights") to import a few rare cars! It's an outrage that customs considers these cars contraband because of some ill advised regulations that clearly shouldn't apply in a situation like this.
Would the same laws make anyone who builds a custom vehicle a criminal? Saying that it's for private use off public roads clearly wasn't a defense, since the cars that were imported under "race" classification were impounded as well!
It would make a lot more sense for crash-test/emission laws to impose an additional tax on non-compliant cars. That way mass producers would make sure their cars comply, but enthusiasts willing to pay the fee wouldn't be turned into criminals for possessing "illegal" cars. Based on the principles of freedom that are supposed to govern this country, that's what i (apparently wrongly) assumed must already be the case!
This article shed some light on a very disturbing example of how our government appears to have lost its appreciation for who are the servants and who are the masters, the government or the people that elect and employ them?
Many states used to require voters to be able to read and write, and have some knowledge of history in order to demonstrate that their vote had some substance behind it, rathern than just being a lemming-vote for the guy with the biggest sign.
I think this was an excellent system, but unfortunently the supreme court declared it unconstitutional because certain races of people tended to pass the test at different rates than others. This is completely irrelevant, since the tests were applied to individuals. Whether these tests were abused is another question, but that could have been dealt with without getting rid of the whole concept.
Another system that was tried (and also banned) was voting taxes. The idea here was to disincentivice people who had no interest in politics or elections, and whose votes therefore had fairly low "signal to noise ratio" from voting. The taxes weren't supposed to be unaffordable, but just enough that people who'd rather buy beer than cast their vote, did just that.
Have you considered the possibility that the difference between individual chips and individual humans is greater than the difference between chimps and humans as well?
You can't just count the base-pairs, and say "oh look! more individual differences". It matters a lot more which actual genes differ between two individuals or two groups.
The really funny part is that most of this statistics is based on so called DNA "markers" which is mostly junk DNA, that isn't actually used to encode any genes at all, but which happens to be easy to count.
If there really were no races, how come people of the same race look distinctly alike? You must certainly agree that some genes (such as those controlling melanine production or facial features) are fairly specific to a race. So what makes you think it ends there?
It's like saying "the windows and linux user interfaces look different", but the internals are exactly the same. You would then support this conclustion with the fact that the percentage of 'A's, 'B's, and digits in the source code for each system is almost the same.
The fact that we share such a high percentage of DNA with chimpanzees is really bad news for the multi-racial advocates out there, that base their argument that all human races are the same, and even that human races "don't exist(!)", on the similarly high percentage of DNA shared between the human races.
I guess now they'll have to start fighting to end "the racist IQ test bias against chimps!"
If this was really intended to make guns safer for their owners (ie not getting shot with your own gun) there would be no need for this law.
While at the gun store, if you truly believed a "smart gun" would make you and your kids safer, wouldn't you choose to buy one without being forced to?
Folks, this is a smoke screen for the real agenda, which is to stop all small gun manaufacturer who cannot afford to develop and test this technology from doing business in New Jersey.
And once just the few large gun manufacturers remain in the state, the lawsuits will begin.
Imagine the possibilities!
Victims who got shot when the lock malfunctioned will sue, and gun owners who were unable to protect themselves or their families because their gun refused to fire will sue. Everybody on both sides will sue!
If a gun is simply intended to fire a round when you pull the trigger, you might be able to sue and win if it instead blows up in your hand.
But if the functional spec is expanded to also require the gun to correctly decide whether or not to fire when you pull the trigger, you'd have a valid claim against the maker anytime the gun fails to make the right decision. Needless to say, the lawsuits would bankrupt the large manufacturers, or force them to not do business in the state.
It's kind of like saying "You have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but nobody said you had a right to hear or read it." Just a little technicality, nothing to worry about. Think that'd pass constitutional muster?
"You have a right to keep and bear arms, but nobody will sell you any arms," since civilian lawsuits resulting from malfunctioning approved guns will destroy the makers, and makers of non-approved arms will be shut down with criminal lawsuits for making non-approved weapons.
Yes, The Creature From Jekyll Island is an excellent
book, and provides a great background to the
US monetary system. It will also explore the
(very corrupt) politics behind it.
I'm happy there are (a few) people on slashdot who
understand economics and politics, and not just
computer science.
Too many slashdotters are left-wing wackos, who have
successfully been led to believe that the LEFT is
a proponent of liberty and rights, while in reality
it's the left which has legislated away
our rights one by one, often in direct violation
of the constitution. (The federal reserve system
is a great example).
The left has been employed as a willing tool of a
wealthy few to manipulate the economical system,
all while flashing smiles and showing a "fake
apperance of populism" in front of the cameras.
They are truly the masters of lies and deceit, and
don't believe for a second the left-wing power-brokers
care about the people. Rather, they serve those
that pay the bribes and finance their election
campaigns.
It in fact works the other way around: The Federal Reserve (FDR) pays the government to print money for it.
It is paid for with, you guessed it, money!
The FDR is privatly owned by several of the largest banks in the US (a few NY banks hold a controlling interest). It is not a part of the goverment.
The FDR pays the government for the ink and the paper. The government then turns the printed bills over the the FDR, which loans them to other banks in return for interest.
It gets really absurd when the GOVERNMENT needs money and borrows it from the FDR. The government now has to pay interest, which it does with tax money.
There are claims that about 40% of the income tax we pay is used to pay interest to the FDR. The owners of the FDR pockets this money. The FDR has never been audited, and its financials are not disclosed to the american people, nor to congress.
It is the only corporation in the US who has no obligation to pay taxes (except for propery tax).
For years i've continued to be amazed by the fact that people are still using bash, when zsh is backwards compatible, and superior in every way.
Beware: Everybody who tries zsh will never use another shell again, and will be angry whenever they have to work on a machine that doesn't have zsh installed.
Unfortunentely its default tab completion settings are not very good, so you need the options i present here.
It's tab-completion control and configurability is unparalleled. It can even be set to either bash or c-shell junkie mode to emulate your favorire shell before you see the light.
Try putting this in/etc/zshrc (remove old junk RedHat keep there, or just add this)
# tune the tab completion and other options.
# yes you can tab-complete "setopt", and see all the options!
setopt autolist autoremoveslash correct nohup nobeep extendedglob appendhistory \ listtypes histignoredups hashcmds hashlistall histnostore histignorespace
# and remember your history between logins
HISTSIZE=5000
SAVEHIST=100000
HISTFILE=$HOME/.zshhist
# show user@host:/path in xterm title bar
# maybe you want an if [[ $TERM != linux ]]; wrapped around this.
precmd() { print -n "\033]0;Terminal: $USER@$HOST:$PWD\007" }
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of USB and SCSI (those still round?) scanners work with Linux using SANE(7). Networked scanners are harder to find, but a much better choice (scan from multiple computers, locate anywhere, no buggy USB drivers, etc.). Network printers are more rule than exception now, so why are most scanners still USB-only? To add insult to injury, most of the networkable scanners available use propriatary protocol not supported on linux.
I think HP's OfficeJet line might be the best bet. (Stay away from Brother at any cost!) I've been happily using a Officejet 7120 with linux. At $299 it's cheaper than most dedicated network scanners, and comes with a document feeder for the scanner which also works great with SANE. The built-in inkjet is supported too, but haven't used it much. I don't think the fax functions work from linux, but a windows instance running inside VMware can use it for conveniently sending faxes if you must.
Scanning on windows seems to always be a huge PITA, with buggy drivers and dialogs popping up all over the place with the wrong default settings for every document you try to scan. Using sane from the command line on linux is a huge improvement. Just hack together a script with the right parameters for the common stuff you scan, and then drop the documents in the feeder and run the "scan_bank_statement" (or whatever.) Try that on windows!
scanimage -d "hpoj:hpjd:192.168.1.55" --resolution 300 --source Auto --format=tiff >my_document.tiff
Here's an idea, why not scrap your fucking SUVs and Hummers and buy efficient vehicles instead? Or at least just quit whining? You have it fucking good.
No you stop whining! Isn't your country a democracy? Why don't you vote to abolish the gasoline tax next election if you don't like it? Here in the US we never voted for high gas taxes, which is why our gas is so much cheaper than yours.
There isn't too much to be said for European ingenuity either. If American gas prices were as high as yours, we'd have developed alternative fuels long ago. Even at the current prices, ethanol is starting to be competitive, and many cars can already run on it (E85). Last time i was over there, the only thing for sale was unleaded. At astronomical prices.
Too many Europeans have a defeatist mentality. Why doesn't France have a hydrogen economy already in place? They have had dirty cheap nuclear energy for decades, but nobody bothered to use it to produce hydrogen. They just roll over and pay OPEC plus a 200% tax bonus to the government like there was no alternative.
Instead of taking advantage of the high prices to start alternative fuel businesses and getting rich, people over there force themselves to conserve, pay taxes though the nose, drive around in ridiculous looking mini cars which probably cost more than Lincoln Navigators (after tax of course), and generally accept their declining standard of living while blaming everybody else for their problems.
And to add insult to injury, unlike France, the rest of Europe is busily decommissioning their nuclear plants and replacing them with natural gas, coal and oil, while complaining all day long about those vulgar and selfish Americans.
Fuddrucker's was only sourcing 5% of his traffic. All while his biggest "hotlinker" accounted for over 50%. He says "Most of those links aren't a huge deal to me. I'm flattered that people like my game enough to link to them. But Fuddruckers??? Hmm. I decided to investigate."
Maybe it was a little excessive putting up pictures of slaughterhouses and an essay about "how incredibly stupid their web developer is"?
I mean, it's just SO stupid and rude to link to other people's web sites, and for profit! Anybody who does that clearly deserves punishment by having their audience redirected to offensive images and essays. Thank goodness slashdot isn't owned by a for-profit comany and that their webmasters are respectable and internet savvy unlike Fuddrucker's. They would never allow hotlinking to other sites without prior permission!.. Just imagine the "bandwidth theft"!
. . .
I don't understand why anybody is applauding this guy unless they have a personal beef with Fuddruckers (no pun! no pun!), he just made an ass of himself, and people are cheering him on!.. If other webmasters were like him, every link ever posted on slashdot would end up redirected to goatcx.
Nicely done.
Your "normalization" is completely flawed. It assumes that the average bias of all the networks is center, and that the problem is that republicans are less trusting people than democrats. Allow me to illustrate with an example:
For the sake of argument, lets say that FOX news is so biased that 100% of republicans, but 0% of democrats trust it, and that all the other networks are biased in the opposite direction and are trusted by 100% of democrats and 0% of republicans. A perfectly valid example, statistically speaking.
After applying your "formula", we must conclude that Fox actually earns a trust level of 400% from republicans (and still 0% from democrats), at the same time CNN dropped to only being trusted by 57% of democrats, even though every one of them actually trusted it completely initially (until your formula stopped them, that is).
So clearly, by your logic, if sufficiently biased in the opposite direction of the majority of the other networks, any network could become trusted by MORE than 100% of the viewers. (Who needs democratic viewers if you can get 400% of the rich and selfish republican viewers? imagine the advertising sales!)
Maybe you should drop statistics and go full time into politics? I bet if you fine-tune your statistical methods, you could win over 400% of the vote!
Yeah that's smart. In particular after realizing too late that the DVD burner's serial number is required to cash in the rebate. At the bottom of the 3 foot long BestBuy rebate form, it helpfully suggests that you write down the serial number, conveniently displayed on the back of the unit, BEFORE installing it. Thanks BestBuy.
Is there a way to get the S/N over the ATA bus? /proc/ide/hdc/identify ?
There's a setting inside in the control panel and inside IE that lets you control how much space to dedicate to temp files.
I've used a Sierra Wireless AirCard 555 (verizon wireless) with linux. Although they claim the card is 144kbps, the ping round-trip time is pretty slow, and makes sshing pretty unpleasant.
After initializing the card for the first time (using windows, it needs to update the firmware, etc.), the card works like a regular com-port/modem. Beware of wvdial though, i had to patch it to make it work reliably with the AirCard. Also see http://centerclick.org/aircard555/
I recently dumped the aircard and replaced it with a GSM phone Nokia 6820. Which not only has a fold-out QWERTY keyboard, both a commercial and a free ssh client, and bluetooth, but also an IR port which emulates a modem when put next to the IR port on a laptop. Then just dial *99# and you're in business, even when traveling abroad. (The AirCard doesn't support data calls outside of the US.)
I think it's a better deal than the dedicated wireless cards, unless you're planning on using it constantly. It appears that the speed on the 6820 (with AT&T / Cingular service) via IR is better than the AirCard too.
The trick is to set the UPS to run "until batteries are out". The built-in prediction of remaining run-time will not tell the truth. Even after running their "test cycle" feature to determine the actual run-time. Stupid firmware obviously.
The battery voltage will be reported correctly however, so if you connect the UPS to a computer using the smart-cable, the host software can still (theoretically) determine the true remaining run-time.
Some APC UPS units have an external connector normally used for disconnecting the built-in battery for safe shipping or in case of fire. By replacing the internal battery with a wire-loop, the external connector can be used to conveniently hook up large batteries. (Watch the polarity!)
The SmartUPS 1400 model pictured is a 24 volt system, so 2 serially connected deep-cycle lead acid batteries must be used.
ups1
ups2
This setup worked great during the recent hurricanes and power outages in Florida. It kept my laptop, cell phones and flashlights charged during the outages, the longest of which was about 5 days. During prolonged outages you would want to turn the UPS off, and only run it for an hour a day or so to charge smaller devices, check the news, etc.
Our politicians are 99% in the pocket of our corporations.
Yet, it's almost always other corporations that are victimized (usually big corps too, with lots of money to pay settlements.) So to say that "corporations" always lobby for software patents doesn't seem to be an entirely fair statement.
There is however one lobby that is guaranteed to be 100% behind complicated patent laws, complicated tax laws, complicated copyright laws; in fact they're guaranteed to be in favor of all laws that will stifle and hurt businesses and individuals enough to make them want to sue in court. That lobby would be the American Bar Association and just about every lawyer in the country.
Law firms are rarely mega corps, they're mostly individuals and small partnerships.
Have you ever checked how many of our congress men, presidents and presidential candidates are lawyers by profession?... Quite a revelation.
One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach.
Well, the answer would be that they would extradite the person, even if he had broken no laws in the United States, and the only crime committed in his totalitarian home land was a "speech crime" that is a constitutionally protected God given right, according to the US Constitution.
You don't think so? Read here.
That's not true. A lead acid battery (whether sealed or not)
ideally has almost zero impedance, and unlike NiCd and NiMh,
it's charge level is measured by the voltage across the terminals,
not the charge current delta.
So connecting bigger cells (of the same voltage) works fine,
and will simply yield longer run-time (and longer charge time).
Here's a picture of my 105Ah 24v, deep-cycle battery setup for a
standard APC 1400 UPS.
This UPS even has a handy battery disconnect plug on the
back, which can be used to connect an external battery (double check
the polarity!) provided that the internal battery is removed and it's
connector is short-circuited. No need to modify the UPS at all!
http://sjoholm.com/pictures/ups1.jpg
http://sjoholm.com/pictures/ups2.jpg
That's an upside down plastic toy basket covering the batteries.
A nice side effect is to always have a fully charged 12v (or 24v)
power source available for specialty devices, like the smart-charger
in the picture.
And remember this?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/ 20040107/ap_on_bi_ge/technology_jobs_5
"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co., said Wednesday.
HP's new business plan: Fire American employees and pay Indians $1/hour to add the industry's most restrictive DRM to Apple's ipod!..
Invent!
Indeed.
The government has no problem helping millions of people who have already violated US laws, but a guy that flew to Antarctica without first notifying the US government, and got stuck in storm, is going to be made into an example for others.
Oh, I get it, you're just stupid.
Because you spotted something you don't agree with in my post, I'm stupid?
I'm not sure it's worth the time, but whatever. Let me refute your attack.
1. Illegal immigrants cost taxpayer money because they utilize health services and welfare programs to a higher degree than Americans, and on average they pay much less taxes.
The health care system in southern California is about to collapse because it's impossible for hospitals there to break even. More than half of their customers are illegals who don't pay. California and US taxpayers pay the difference.
2. Illegals contribute jobs and profits for corporations who are also violating the law by hiring them. They do this because Americans would typically demand a higher salary. This not only causes more Americans to join the taxpayer funded unemployment lines, but it also reduces tax revenues because the lower wages paid to illegals. Often no taxes at all are paid, because the salary is below the minimum taxable income, and/or the illegal has a large family with multiple dependents.
Why don't we just announce that a kid born anywhere in the world is a US citizen? In practice, that's what it's like already, except only for those that are already criminally inclined. No honest immigrants need apply.
Or how about just enforcing our laws in the first place!? Sounds unreasonable to you?
BTW, the cost of finding and deporting illegals is nothing compared to the cost of just a single child delivery in the ER, which many of these families do 5 or 6 of.
Here's some links:
http://www.cairco.org/econ/econ.html
Since you are obviously a liberal, maybe it would be sobering to read what senator Diane Feinstein has to say:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/03Releases/r-scaapII.h tm
Illegal immigration is a problem that affects communities across the nation. However, this issue affects my home state of California disproportionately because of California's proximity to the border. In the last year, illegal immigration cost Californians almost $1.2 billion. Of that amount, California spent an estimated $980 million on emergency services for undocumented immigrants.
Didn't he offer to pay for it?
It's funny, because as a US taxpayer, i don't recall
having a say in whether my money was to be used to
fly these arrogant pinheads to McMurdo base, nor
to supply then with fuel to keep warm. What are
they doing there anyway?
But somehow they think a private person flying
there on his own dime, in his own aircraft, who
happen to encounter unexpected weather needs to
be "discouraged" by not letting him buy a few
gallons of fuel. Instead, try forcing him to pay
for shipping his perfectly functional aircraft as
cargo, which certainly will be several orders of
magnitude more expensive, and use much more
extra fuel, just to teach him to stay the hell
out of these bureaucrats' personal continent.
Here's another idea. How about discouraging
illegal immigrants that cost taxpayers billions of
dollars from breaking our laws, maybe by sending
them home? Or even making them pay their own way
while they're here? Oh no? That's not compassionate
enough? Free schools, hospitals and prisons for them!
Stick it to the guy that built his own plane and
got stuck in antarctica. People like that are a
real fucking problem.
Or so says the united states government.
That's exactly what i thought while watching
Reloaded. "Zion" looked more like a bad music
video on BET than the last stand of the humans.
If that were all that was left of humanity, the
robots had obviously already won long ago!
If you really want to help, don't have more than one or two children. If you're not selfish at all - don't have ANY children. Those things will make a real impact.
This used to be one of my pet peeves. Although I have since realized how ill advised that argument is. It would result in those people who are responsible citizens purging themselves from the gene pool. That's a surefire way to help improve the environment and society in the future!..
Second, we already have a problem (and it's getting worse) due to the shrinking and aging productive population in the western world. The quality of the population is also being lowered due to several factors. Productive and successful people on average already have fewer children than their unproductive counterparts. Ironically, it's thanks to the well-meaning philantropy of the hard-working producers that the irrisponsible reproductive behavior of non-producers can be sustained. At least for now.
If you believe yourself to be a model citizen, go ahead and have as many kids as you can, and pass your desirable traits on to the next generation.
It will increase our chances of breaking out of the downward spiral we're in!
Is it because Bill Gates is involved, or did (almost) everybody here
decide to trade in their aspiration for freedom and pursuit of happiness
for this pitiful whining about how there ought to be some law to stop
these "rich bastards" from buying faster cars than most of us here can
afford. It reeks of ill masked jealousy and outright socialism.
There IS an outrage in this story, and it's the fact that there already
WAS a law like that, and that it took these people 10 YEARS and hundreds
of thousands of dollars to obtain PERMISSION from their own government
(the government "by the people", charged with protecting "our rights") to
import a few rare cars! It's an outrage that customs considers these cars
contraband because of some ill advised regulations that clearly shouldn't
apply in a situation like this.
Would the same laws make anyone who builds a custom vehicle a
criminal? Saying that it's for private use off public roads clearly wasn't
a defense, since the cars that were imported under "race" classification
were impounded as well!
It would make a lot more sense for crash-test/emission laws to impose an
additional tax on non-compliant cars. That way mass producers would make
sure their cars comply, but enthusiasts willing to pay the fee wouldn't be
turned into criminals for possessing "illegal" cars. Based on the
principles of freedom that are supposed to govern this country, that's
what i (apparently wrongly) assumed must already be the case!
This article shed some light on a very disturbing example of how our
government appears to have lost its appreciation for who are the servants
and who are the masters, the government or the people that elect and
employ them?
Many states used to require voters to be able to
read and write, and have some knowledge of history
in order to demonstrate that their vote had some
substance behind it, rathern than just being a
lemming-vote for the guy with the biggest sign.
I think this was an excellent system, but
unfortunently the supreme court declared it
unconstitutional because certain races of people
tended to pass the test at different rates than
others. This is completely irrelevant, since the
tests were applied to individuals. Whether these
tests were abused is another question, but that
could have been dealt with without getting rid of
the whole concept.
Another system that was tried (and also banned)
was voting taxes. The idea here was to disincentivice
people who had no interest in politics or
elections, and whose votes therefore had fairly
low "signal to noise ratio" from voting. The
taxes weren't supposed to be unaffordable, but
just enough that people who'd rather buy beer
than cast their vote, did just that.
Have you considered the possibility that the difference between individual chips and individual humans is greater than the difference between chimps and humans as well?
You can't just count the base-pairs, and say "oh look! more individual differences". It matters a lot more which actual genes differ between two individuals or two groups.
The really funny part is that most of this statistics is based on so called DNA "markers" which is mostly junk DNA, that isn't actually used to encode any genes at all, but which happens to be easy to count.
If there really were no races, how come people of the same race look distinctly alike? You must certainly agree that some genes (such as those controlling melanine production or facial features) are fairly specific to a race. So what makes you think it ends there?
It's like saying "the windows and linux user interfaces look different", but the internals are exactly the same. You would then support this conclustion with the fact that the percentage of 'A's, 'B's, and digits in the source code for each system is almost the same.
The fact that we share such a high percentage of DNA with chimpanzees is really bad news for the multi-racial advocates out there, that base their argument that all human races are the same, and even that human races "don't exist(!)", on the similarly high percentage of DNA shared between the human races.
I guess now they'll have to start fighting to end "the racist IQ test bias against chimps!"
If this was really intended to make guns safer for their owners (ie not getting shot with your own gun) there would be no need for this law.
While at the gun store, if you truly believed a "smart gun" would make you and your kids safer, wouldn't you choose to buy one without being forced to?
Folks, this is a smoke screen for the real agenda, which is to stop all small gun manaufacturer who cannot afford to develop and test this technology from doing business in New Jersey.
And once just the few large gun manufacturers remain in the state, the lawsuits will begin.
Imagine the possibilities!
Victims who got shot when the lock malfunctioned will sue, and gun owners who were unable to protect themselves or their families because their gun refused to fire will sue. Everybody on both sides will sue!
If a gun is simply intended to fire a round when you pull the trigger, you might be able to sue and win if it instead blows up in your hand.
But if the functional spec is expanded to also require the gun to correctly decide whether or not to fire when you pull the trigger, you'd have a valid claim against the maker anytime the gun fails to make the right decision. Needless to say, the lawsuits would bankrupt the large manufacturers, or force them to not do business in the state.
It's kind of like saying "You have a constitutional right to freedom of speech, but nobody said you had a right to hear or read it." Just a little technicality, nothing to worry about. Think that'd pass constitutional muster?
"You have a right to keep and bear arms, but nobody will sell you any arms," since civilian lawsuits resulting from malfunctioning approved guns will destroy the makers, and makers of non-approved arms will be shut down with criminal lawsuits for making non-approved weapons.
Yes, The Creature From Jekyll Island is an excellent
book, and provides a great background to the
US monetary system. It will also explore the
(very corrupt) politics behind it.
I'm happy there are (a few) people on slashdot who
understand economics and politics, and not just
computer science.
Too many slashdotters are left-wing wackos, who have
successfully been led to believe that the LEFT is
a proponent of liberty and rights, while in reality
it's the left which has legislated away
our rights one by one, often in direct violation
of the constitution. (The federal reserve system
is a great example).
The left has been employed as a willing tool of a
wealthy few to manipulate the economical system,
all while flashing smiles and showing a "fake
apperance of populism" in front of the cameras.
They are truly the masters of lies and deceit, and
don't believe for a second the left-wing power-brokers
care about the people. Rather, they serve those
that pay the bribes and finance their election
campaigns.
It in fact works the other way around: The Federal Reserve (FDR) pays the government to print money for it.
It is paid for with, you guessed it, money!
The FDR is privatly owned by several of the largest banks in the US (a few NY banks hold a controlling interest). It is not a part of the goverment.
The FDR pays the government for the ink and the paper. The government then turns the printed bills over the the FDR, which loans them to other banks in return for interest.
It gets really absurd when the GOVERNMENT needs money and borrows it from the FDR. The government now has to pay interest, which it does with tax money.
There are claims that about 40% of the income tax we pay is used to pay interest to the FDR. The owners of the FDR pockets this money. The FDR has never been audited, and its financials are not disclosed to the american people, nor to congress.
It is the only corporation in the US who has no obligation to pay taxes (except for propery tax).
For years i've continued to be amazed by the fact that people are still using bash, when zsh is backwards compatible, and superior in every way.
Beware: Everybody who tries zsh will never use another shell again, and will be angry whenever they have to work on a machine that doesn't have zsh installed. Unfortunentely its default tab completion settings are not very good, so you need the options i present here.
It's tab-completion control and configurability is unparalleled. It can even be set to either bash or c-shell junkie mode to emulate your favorire shell before you see the light.
Try putting this in /etc/zshrc (remove old junk RedHat keep there, or just add this)
# tune the tab completion and other options.
# yes you can tab-complete "setopt", and see all the options!
setopt autolist autoremoveslash correct nohup nobeep extendedglob appendhistory \
listtypes histignoredups hashcmds hashlistall histnostore histignorespace
# and remember your history between logins
HISTSIZE=5000
SAVEHIST=100000
HISTFILE=$HOME/.zshhist
# show user@host:/path in xterm title bar
# maybe you want an if [[ $TERM != linux ]]; wrapped around this.
precmd() { print -n "\033]0;Terminal: $USER@$HOST:$PWD\007" }