I'm thinking more of a snowboarder. No, the boots shouldn't actually lift the person, just prevent him from falling. IE, if the person leaned forward far enough, the boots would reach their maximum tilt and go no further. I don't think the boots should ever attempt to "throw" the user forward. Then again, the boots are just one part and I think if you really were to build a simulator with such a design, you'd add a simple harness or program the simulator to halt if the person tilted forward and couldn't right himself.
Well, if you are drunk all bets are off. If you lose your balance otherwise, your body automatically reacts by taking a step in the direction of the imbalance. So if someone leaned back too far, all that would happen is they would momentarily lose their balance, take a step back and correct it. As long as the servos respect the ground plane there is really no danger.
Now, in an extreme situation where say the user trips and falls into a horizontal position. The boots would probably lock up at their maximum pitch and as long as there is proper ankle support (boots would be necessary for this) its enough to support one's weight.
In an ideal situation, there would be additional servos that control wires leading to a standard special effects harness (a belt with two loops on either side). It could be possible to use these keep the user upright at all times while still allowing freedom of motion.
And with crossing legs, the only motion that would be a problem would be where one foot was passing over another foot. As long as you were to move your foot around in front of the other, I should think it possible to cross them at least in a standing position. Simulating crossed legs in a sitting position is probably not high on the list of 3D simulation goals.
Boots that have a two poles attached to the them via free-motion ball-and-socket joints. One pole is attached to the tip of boot, the other attached to the heel.
Servos that can track and tilt the pole apply enough resistance to keep the boots level and counter the weight of the wearer.
As the person moves, pressure sensors inside the boot read the direction and strength of the force, and the servos compensate accordingly.
For example. When flat, the servos provide enough force to simulate the ground plane. When the person lifts his or her foot, pressure sensors on the top of the boot register this force, and the servos release grip on the poles to allow the boot to move up. When the person lowers his or her foot, sensors on the bottom of the boot register this force, and the servos remain flexible until the software detects that the user's foot has hit the ground plane or an object, at which point they clamp down on the pole.
Using this system, it would be possible to simulate walking, running, jumping, climbing, kicking, even fighting.
Combine this with a similar setup for the hands (using gloves) and the complete immersive 3D holodeck-type enviroment can be simulated.
So, does anything like this exist, and is there even a name for this?
Slashdot should really make an extra allowance of moderation points and update the message to request moderators use them on this topic.
There are a lot of good, good idea wallowing in +1 or +2 despair because moderators stopped after the usual 50 or so posts and have moved on to new topics.
This is a much too popular topic for standard moderation rules (700+ posts and it isn't even one of those major troll fests).
In fact, I will be flat out fricking flabbergasted if this post right here gets moderated...up or down.
Someone wanna prove me wrong and prove that moderators are still sticking it out and giving good posts a chance at the judges eyes?
"A method or process that uses web communications protocols (aka "HTML or PHP or ASP or perl") to submit a news article containing a hyperlink with the web address of a competing company's website, so that when said link is submitted to high traffic news sites (aka "Slashdot.org") it will cause thousands of user clients (aka "readers") to follow said link and cause the competing company's website to be knocked offline by a high volume and completely legal distributed high traffic flood (aka "the Slashdot effect").
Actually I was referring to their majority stake in @Home which in turn has a majority stake in every cable modem provider so...in a sense there is nothing to stop @Home from offering TV and telephone service and then giving AT&T a pretty big jump on being the only coast-to-coast provider of TV/phone/data over one wire.
But that's just speculation. I'm sure DSL is planning the same thing...just over twisted pair instead of coax.
So even though ISPs can perform the function of both telecommunications AND cable services...they should not be bound by the rules and regulations of either?
How...comforting. All AT&T has to do is start running their phone service over their coast-to-coast @Home and look! I'm not a national monopoly again! I'm an ISP!
Actually, all you have to do is sign up for Pre-Paid Legal Insurance.
For $25/month, you are protect from civil lawsuits with about 50 hours of free legal respresentation (this is usually enough to settle any case since rarely do cases go beyond that and the coverage increases by 10 hours per year for each year you continue service). They will also handle traffic tickets, IRS audits and write two letters per issue on your behalf in case you want to do a little legal bullying of your own.
Coverage takes effect immediately and covers your spouse and children (unless they have recently changed that policy). Some professions, like commercial truck driver, need special additional coverage due to the high risk of personal lawsuits that their professions generate.
All in all, I signed up two years ago and have yet to even use the civil suit protection. Usually a letter from a lawfirm with an impressive letterhead is all it takes to get the matter dropped. Once the other guys think you've called their bluff and actually hired a lawyer, I have found they usually back down.
If interested, check out the website
http://www.prepaidlegal.com/
Legal insurance is fast becoming as important, if not more important, than home/car insurance. After all, if you car gets stolen you lose your car. If your home burns down, you lose your home. But if some nut slips on a french fry you dropped, sues you, and actually wins then you'll end up losing your home, car, and your salary for the next few decades to boot. Scary, ain't it?
Blah, I'm disappointed this got a mod up. It's such an obvious stretch. I mean, is there any tenable connection between Leo and Lars (well, besides the fact that they both start with "L")?
A better line would have been - in other news George Lucas decided to add some soundtrack elements from Metallica. On being brought on, Lars had this to say: "Totally sweet! But if I find any fan site posting suggestions for song lyrics I'll kick their ass!"
But that's just my two cents worth...better luck next time.
I like this show, but TLC never reruns it
on
More Junkyard Wars
·
· Score: 3
At least not that I have ever seen.
I found it in time for the last three or four shows. I would love to watch it again from the beginning to see what I missed. CBS is rerunning the whole Survivor saga so I don't know why TLC doesn't do the same for Junkyard Wars. If they are lacking the room they can please drop the Christopher Loser show. I want to see a boat made from a car, not a cabinet door made from chicken wire.
Also, this brings up an interesting tagent, why is it that no network seems to understand the value of continuity? How many times have you wanted to start watching a show, but felt it wasn't worth the bother since you had missed so much and wouldn't understand it? Why is it so damn rare that you ever see a marathon of one show running in the proper airdate sequence. I think right now down in Australia, one of the networks is running non-stop Simpsons episodes in this fashion.
I pray for the day that devices like TiVo and ReplayTV make it possible to truly have an entire channel dedicated to a certain show. I just pisses me off that even when such a device becomes practical, there is the little matter of it taking me ten years for all of the various episodes to show up on the air so I can record them.
I'll quit now before I get further off tangent. By the way, has anyone else notices that 90% of the work seems to be done in the last 15 minutes? It starts out and they are drawing on the board for an hours...so see breaks for lunch...by the time you get to the final hour there is like 50% completion on the project. A little careful editting and suddenly the damn thing is complete. I think it's a bit faked myself because a lot of the competitions end up being pretty close...which some of those contraptions are so horrid you would think the competition would be an absolute blowout.
I really hope they are not selling these devices with the intent to lock you into their ZapMedia portal. But I really want to know a few more under the hood details:
1) Will the hard drive be encrypted ala TiVo or will I be able to replace it with a larger on?
2) Will I be able to transfer file in and out via the ethernet port or just in?
3) What is the operating system and will it be possible to alter it to play MPEG-4 files like DivX nAVI or pAVI?
Boy I hope someone does a review of one of these things. I'm a little hesistant to sign up for something that might not be anything different than what APEX/TiVo does for twice the price.
Hell! Maybe your Mom won't know what C:\Windows is for so let's name it
C:\This Is Your Operating System So Do Not Touch This Folder Please Thank You
I still think that there should be an option somewhere to force Windows*.* to conform to 8.3 for no other reason that personal preference. Maybe your mom won't use it but I certainly would.
It's just my personal pet peeve and it was finally close enough to being on-topic that I could scream about it.
What the hell is this? Is Microsoft is actually going to force console-dwellers to type out this pig of a path every time we want to so much as touch our data? Or maybe sit there trying to count out six letters so we can ~1 it?
I am sick to death of Microsoft picking these assinine directory names and then locking them off with giant fences in the registry.
C:\Documents and Settings
C:\Temporary Interenet Files
C:\System Volume Information
C:\Downloaded Program Files
WTF!?!?
C:\Docs
C:\Temp
C:\SVol
C:\DPrg
WHY WHY WHY can't I do a massive registry search-and-replace and be done with this crap once and for all? I swear...it is this stuff that will drive me to UNIX more than any other problem Windows has thrown at me. I refuse to give up 8.3 compatibility for my older/dual-boot systems and I refuse to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome just because I like a console interface. I would kill for/etc/bin/dev folders.
Yes I know about the name autocompletion registry trick in NT but it is unreliable at best. I get used to file X being three TABs away but suddenly I make a new dir or new file and then I have to relearn its now four TABs away.
http://www.mojonation.com for users and
http://www.mojohackers.org for developers
Decentralization, file encyption and micro payments. True, the whole Mojo economy is still in a beta state (right now there is an abundance of available space and not a whole lot of content...this tends to cheapen the value of free space and mess with the economy) but in only two months it's gone from something that wouldn't even run on my WinNT system to something that I have been able to publish many files and have my friends those files by just sending them a nice little URL.
Check it out. Right now we need some good open content to fill up all the available blocks and start putting the system through its paces.
So put one box outside the firewall and do all your serving and "questionable actions" from there. Put several backdoors on the box with horribly complicated access passwords that you don't write down. Then when the cops come with the warrant, your lawyer and expert witness can point to BO2K or Sub7 and declared that all the illegal activity could have been done remotely by whoever infected your box. You gaming PC was obviously infected by some Diablo trainer you ran and whoever did it has made me his unwilling victim.
Reasonable doubt. Why should OJ be the only one to benefit from it?
For the crime of singing the song "Oops, ye didth it again" in the Olde Tavern of Havernook on the morn of the fifth day of the eleventh month, without remittance of expected royalties to His High Lord the Duke of Media.
Offered reward of 1000 gold pieces.
Known to be travelling in the company of Robin of Locksley (a.k.a. Robin of the Hood). Reward for incidental capture of Locksley shall be an additional one hundred pence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't laugh, if RIAA develops time travel this is how the story will go. And Disney will make an animated feature about it where Bard Arturus is hung and all the kingdom rejoices.
Oh I see, so running Shoutcast or Napster won't get your computer seized but doing it over any other protocol like FTP or DCC will?
Should the government be able to SEIZE your computers for violation a corporation/school TOS agreement? Imagine how happy that would make AOL if they could have the police grab the computers of anyone who used the word "dick" in a chat room.
I agree that if someone is abusing bandwidth, there's no reason the university should stand for it. The letter from RIAA should have gotten his connection yanked and that's that. If the university wants to block Napster so be it, but do you see how this has gone completely beyond that?
This kid didn't have permission from RIAA or the artists to offer those MP3s to anybody but neither does any of the million or so people on Napster who are doing the exact same damn thing only on different ports with the Superior Court's blessing (for refusing to shut Napster down).
That's what pisses me off. Everyone who has read a paper in the last year knows that the whole status of file sharing is up in the air so I think it is appalling that an under-budgetted police agency would waste one thin dime prosecuting this nonsense when the higher courts could turn around and declare non-commercial file sharing to be legal.
Software piracy has a clear history. But music "piracy" if you want to call it that does not and this is the first time that I've heard of someone facing criminal charges for doing something that hasn't really even been defined as a crime by the court system.
God help us if the police departments decide that spreading MP3s is consider "trafficking a controlled substance"...which from the quote sounds like the exact path this is headed. Then in states like LA and CA they'll be all to keep all the wonderfully expense computers the seize and resell them to finance their SWAT team's new toys.
It's not like campus police don't have anything better to do. How many rapes and muggings are there in a year?
And yes because some money-hungry corporation gets a law passed then the already-thin police budgets now have to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on a professional forensic analysis of some student's hard drive.
Is this what the founding fathers had in mind when they penned "no unreasonable search and seizure"? You know he won't see that hardware returned until it is no longer worth its weight in scrap metal.
What if some company passes a law that not tying your shoelaces is a crime? Are the police gonna start prosecuting that one?
This seems like a breakdown in separation of powers. How many blue laws are still on the books but wholly ignored by the police? Laws about sodomy come to mind, or spitting on the Sabbath. Sure, the legislative branch handed us this piece of crap we call the DMCA, but I blame the executive brance for becoming a private army at the beck and call of corporations. If I was a police chief and some company called to complain about a kid sharing music...I'd tell them to take a number and where to stick it.
Feh. Just my two cents.
Still, makes you want to go install Scram Disk as soon as possible.
[Note: Gigabit switch...$1400? Woof...okay, let's wait for the new Apples to push Gigabit prices down a bit...let me drop my standards to 100Base-T]
1) 8-port 100Mb hub ($100)
2) Dazzle MPEG-1 capture card ($200) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus lets say another $20 for the interface from one to the other.
3) 6GB Hard drive ($100) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus another $20 for the interface from one to the other.
4) Cheapo video card with TV-out ($50) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus $20 for the interface from one to the other.
5) Palm/Visor ($150) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus again $20 for the interface.
By my calculations, this "uber pimp" system (as CmdrTaco would call it) should cost a total of $600-700 bucks...which is pretty much what a Replay or high-end TiVo would cost you!
I have seen hard drives with ethernet connections to use a quick and easy file servers, and I can't imagine it would be hard to get data from a video card onto a network like some VNC or X server thing...so even if those interfaces cost $100 the whole system should still clock in under $1000.
I'd buy it.
There's also an important part...if the system is built around standard tech and using open design, I already have most of a JoeShmoe Digital VCR system!
I have plenty of hard drive space, so I can skip the storage units. I have a capture card, so I can skip at least one input unit (tho I have many sources so I would want more than one). I already have the 100Mb hub. Really all I'm lacking is a cheap video terminal so that I can have MPG file at point A show up on TV-out at point B.
Now MPEG-2...thanks to the premium associated with DVD production...is going to cost an arm and a leg. But I don't see a system like this costing $5000. Purchasing a computer to do each task would still only cost me $2000.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking more of a snowboarder. No, the boots shouldn't actually lift the person, just prevent him from falling. IE, if the person leaned forward far enough, the boots would reach their maximum tilt and go no further. I don't think the boots should ever attempt to "throw" the user forward. Then again, the boots are just one part and I think if you really were to build a simulator with such a design, you'd add a simple harness or program the simulator to halt if the person tilted forward and couldn't right himself.
= -
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Well, if you are drunk all bets are off. If you lose your balance otherwise, your body automatically reacts by taking a step in the direction of the imbalance. So if someone leaned back too far, all that would happen is they would momentarily lose their balance, take a step back and correct it. As long as the servos respect the ground plane there is really no danger.
= -
Now, in an extreme situation where say the user trips and falls into a horizontal position. The boots would probably lock up at their maximum pitch and as long as there is proper ankle support (boots would be necessary for this) its enough to support one's weight.
In an ideal situation, there would be additional servos that control wires leading to a standard special effects harness (a belt with two loops on either side). It could be possible to use these keep the user upright at all times while still allowing freedom of motion.
And with crossing legs, the only motion that would be a problem would be where one foot was passing over another foot. As long as you were to move your foot around in front of the other, I should think it possible to cross them at least in a standing position. Simulating crossed legs in a sitting position is probably not high on the list of 3D simulation goals.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Boots that have a two poles attached to the them via free-motion ball-and-socket joints. One pole is attached to the tip of boot, the other attached to the heel.
= -
Servos that can track and tilt the pole apply enough resistance to keep the boots level and counter the weight of the wearer.
As the person moves, pressure sensors inside the boot read the direction and strength of the force, and the servos compensate accordingly.
For example. When flat, the servos provide enough force to simulate the ground plane. When the person lifts his or her foot, pressure sensors on the top of the boot register this force, and the servos release grip on the poles to allow the boot to move up. When the person lowers his or her foot, sensors on the bottom of the boot register this force, and the servos remain flexible until the software detects that the user's foot has hit the ground plane or an object, at which point they clamp down on the pole.
Using this system, it would be possible to simulate walking, running, jumping, climbing, kicking, even fighting.
Combine this with a similar setup for the hands (using gloves) and the complete immersive 3D holodeck-type enviroment can be simulated.
So, does anything like this exist, and is there even a name for this?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Slashdot should really make an extra allowance of moderation points and update the message to request moderators use them on this topic.
= -
There are a lot of good, good idea wallowing in +1 or +2 despair because moderators stopped after the usual 50 or so posts and have moved on to new topics.
This is a much too popular topic for standard moderation rules (700+ posts and it isn't even one of those major troll fests).
In fact, I will be flat out fricking flabbergasted if this post right here gets moderated...up or down.
Someone wanna prove me wrong and prove that moderators are still sticking it out and giving good posts a chance at the judges eyes?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bah, I deliberately did a text search for "slashdot effect" before I made my post and here it is already as "/. effect".
= -
Hrm, well just FYI I wasn't intending to rip you off, although I did do a more patent-esque explanation than you.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"A method or process that uses web communications protocols (aka "HTML or PHP or ASP or perl") to submit a news article containing a hyperlink with the web address of a competing company's website, so that when said link is submitted to high traffic news sites (aka "Slashdot.org") it will cause thousands of user clients (aka "readers") to follow said link and cause the competing company's website to be knocked offline by a high volume and completely legal distributed high traffic flood (aka "the Slashdot effect").
= -
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Actually I was referring to their majority stake in @Home which in turn has a majority stake in every cable modem provider so...in a sense there is nothing to stop @Home from offering TV and telephone service and then giving AT&T a pretty big jump on being the only coast-to-coast provider of TV/phone/data over one wire.
= -
But that's just speculation. I'm sure DSL is planning the same thing...just over twisted pair instead of coax.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So even though ISPs can perform the function of both telecommunications AND cable services...they should not be bound by the rules and regulations of either?
= -
How...comforting. All AT&T has to do is start running their phone service over their coast-to-coast @Home and look! I'm not a national monopoly again! I'm an ISP!
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It wouldn't fit. Damn 120 char limit. I had to fiddle with the words a bit just to get the quote itself in the box. =(
I've found my new sig quote.
= -
I think is the perfect way to summarize the great gulf that lies between the law and the citizens who are expected to know, understand and follow it.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Actually, all you have to do is sign up for Pre-Paid Legal Insurance.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
For $25/month, you are protect from civil lawsuits with about 50 hours of free legal respresentation (this is usually enough to settle any case since rarely do cases go beyond that and the coverage increases by 10 hours per year for each year you continue service). They will also handle traffic tickets, IRS audits and write two letters per issue on your behalf in case you want to do a little legal bullying of your own.
Coverage takes effect immediately and covers your spouse and children (unless they have recently changed that policy). Some professions, like commercial truck driver, need special additional coverage due to the high risk of personal lawsuits that their professions generate.
All in all, I signed up two years ago and have yet to even use the civil suit protection. Usually a letter from a lawfirm with an impressive letterhead is all it takes to get the matter dropped. Once the other guys think you've called their bluff and actually hired a lawyer, I have found they usually back down.
If interested, check out the website
http://www.prepaidlegal.com/
Legal insurance is fast becoming as important, if not more important, than home/car insurance. After all, if you car gets stolen you lose your car. If your home burns down, you lose your home. But if some nut slips on a french fry you dropped, sues you, and actually wins then you'll end up losing your home, car, and your salary for the next few decades to boot. Scary, ain't it?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Blah, I'm disappointed this got a mod up. It's such an obvious stretch. I mean, is there any tenable connection between Leo and Lars (well, besides the fact that they both start with "L")?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
A better line would have been - in other news George Lucas decided to add some soundtrack elements from Metallica. On being brought on, Lars had this to say: "Totally sweet! But if I find any fan site posting suggestions for song lyrics I'll kick their ass!"
But that's just my two cents worth...better luck next time.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Wow, if you meant that as pun, bravo. +1 Very Clever.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
On the otherhand if you were making some clusless observation and only now get the double meaning...never mind.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
At least not that I have ever seen.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
I found it in time for the last three or four shows. I would love to watch it again from the beginning to see what I missed. CBS is rerunning the whole Survivor saga so I don't know why TLC doesn't do the same for Junkyard Wars. If they are lacking the room they can please drop the Christopher Loser show. I want to see a boat made from a car, not a cabinet door made from chicken wire.
Also, this brings up an interesting tagent, why is it that no network seems to understand the value of continuity? How many times have you wanted to start watching a show, but felt it wasn't worth the bother since you had missed so much and wouldn't understand it? Why is it so damn rare that you ever see a marathon of one show running in the proper airdate sequence. I think right now down in Australia, one of the networks is running non-stop Simpsons episodes in this fashion.
I pray for the day that devices like TiVo and ReplayTV make it possible to truly have an entire channel dedicated to a certain show. I just pisses me off that even when such a device becomes practical, there is the little matter of it taking me ten years for all of the various episodes to show up on the air so I can record them.
I'll quit now before I get further off tangent. By the way, has anyone else notices that 90% of the work seems to be done in the last 15 minutes? It starts out and they are drawing on the board for an hours...so see breaks for lunch...by the time you get to the final hour there is like 50% completion on the project. A little careful editting and suddenly the damn thing is complete. I think it's a bit faked myself because a lot of the competitions end up being pretty close...which some of those contraptions are so horrid you would think the competition would be an absolute blowout.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I really hope they are not selling these devices with the intent to lock you into their ZapMedia portal. But I really want to know a few more under the hood details:
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
1) Will the hard drive be encrypted ala TiVo or will I be able to replace it with a larger on?
2) Will I be able to transfer file in and out via the ethernet port or just in?
3) What is the operating system and will it be possible to alter it to play MPEG-4 files like DivX nAVI or pAVI?
Boy I hope someone does a review of one of these things. I'm a little hesistant to sign up for something that might not be anything different than what APEX/TiVo does for twice the price.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
How much hand-holding is enough?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hell! Maybe your Mom won't know what C:\Windows is for so let's name it
C:\This Is Your Operating System So Do Not Touch This Folder Please Thank You
I still think that there should be an option somewhere to force Windows*.* to conform to 8.3 for no other reason that personal preference. Maybe your mom won't use it but I certainly would.
It's just my personal pet peeve and it was finally close enough to being on-topic that I could scream about it.
=P
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator?
/etc /bin /dev folders.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
What the hell is this? Is Microsoft is actually going to force console-dwellers to type out this pig of a path every time we want to so much as touch our data? Or maybe sit there trying to count out six letters so we can ~1 it?
I am sick to death of Microsoft picking these assinine directory names and then locking them off with giant fences in the registry.
C:\Documents and Settings
C:\Temporary Interenet Files
C:\System Volume Information
C:\Downloaded Program Files
WTF!?!?
C:\Docs
C:\Temp
C:\SVol
C:\DPrg
WHY WHY WHY can't I do a massive registry search-and-replace and be done with this crap once and for all? I swear...it is this stuff that will drive me to UNIX more than any other problem Windows has thrown at me. I refuse to give up 8.3 compatibility for my older/dual-boot systems and I refuse to give myself carpal tunnel syndrome just because I like a console interface. I would kill for
Yes I know about the name autocompletion registry trick in NT but it is unreliable at best. I get used to file X being three TABs away but suddenly I make a new dir or new file and then I have to relearn its now four TABs away.
[/end rant]
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Then they really owe British Telecom some serious dough for all the hyperlinks they've been using.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
http://www.mojonation.com for users and
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
http://www.mojohackers.org for developers
Decentralization, file encyption and micro payments. True, the whole Mojo economy is still in a beta state (right now there is an abundance of available space and not a whole lot of content...this tends to cheapen the value of free space and mess with the economy) but in only two months it's gone from something that wouldn't even run on my WinNT system to something that I have been able to publish many files and have my friends those files by just sending them a nice little URL.
Check it out. Right now we need some good open content to fill up all the available blocks and start putting the system through its paces.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So put one box outside the firewall and do all your serving and "questionable actions" from there. Put several backdoors on the box with horribly complicated access passwords that you don't write down. Then when the cops come with the warrant, your lawyer and expert witness can point to BO2K or Sub7 and declared that all the illegal activity could have been done remotely by whoever infected your box. You gaming PC was obviously infected by some Diablo trainer you ran and whoever did it has made me his unwilling victim.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
Reasonable doubt. Why should OJ be the only one to benefit from it?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
~~~~~~ WANTED ~~~~~~~
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
The evil, dreaded BARD ARTURUS OF RHODES.
For the crime of singing the song "Oops, ye didth it again" in the Olde Tavern of Havernook on the morn of the fifth day of the eleventh month, without remittance of expected royalties to His High Lord the Duke of Media.
Offered reward of 1000 gold pieces.
Known to be travelling in the company of Robin of Locksley (a.k.a. Robin of the Hood). Reward for incidental capture of Locksley shall be an additional one hundred pence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't laugh, if RIAA develops time travel this is how the story will go. And Disney will make an animated feature about it where Bard Arturus is hung and all the kingdom rejoices.
- JoeShmoe
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Oh I see, so running Shoutcast or Napster won't get your computer seized but doing it over any other protocol like FTP or DCC will?
...which from the quote sounds like the exact path this is headed. Then in states like LA and CA they'll be all to keep all the wonderfully expense computers the seize and resell them to finance their SWAT team's new toys.
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Should the government be able to SEIZE your computers for violation a corporation/school TOS agreement? Imagine how happy that would make AOL if they could have the police grab the computers of anyone who used the word "dick" in a chat room.
I agree that if someone is abusing bandwidth, there's no reason the university should stand for it. The letter from RIAA should have gotten his connection yanked and that's that. If the university wants to block Napster so be it, but do you see how this has gone completely beyond that?
This kid didn't have permission from RIAA or the artists to offer those MP3s to anybody but neither does any of the million or so people on Napster who are doing the exact same damn thing only on different ports with the Superior Court's blessing (for refusing to shut Napster down).
That's what pisses me off. Everyone who has read a paper in the last year knows that the whole status of file sharing is up in the air so I think it is appalling that an under-budgetted police agency would waste one thin dime prosecuting this nonsense when the higher courts could turn around and declare non-commercial file sharing to be legal.
Software piracy has a clear history. But music "piracy" if you want to call it that does not and this is the first time that I've heard of someone facing criminal charges for doing something that hasn't really even been defined as a crime by the court system.
God help us if the police departments decide that spreading MP3s is consider "trafficking a controlled substance"
This whole thing makes me sick.
- JoeShmoe
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It's not like campus police don't have anything better to do. How many rapes and muggings are there in a year?
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And yes because some money-hungry corporation gets a law passed then the already-thin police budgets now have to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on a professional forensic analysis of some student's hard drive.
Is this what the founding fathers had in mind when they penned "no unreasonable search and seizure"? You know he won't see that hardware returned until it is no longer worth its weight in scrap metal.
What if some company passes a law that not tying your shoelaces is a crime? Are the police gonna start prosecuting that one?
This seems like a breakdown in separation of powers. How many blue laws are still on the books but wholly ignored by the police? Laws about sodomy come to mind, or spitting on the Sabbath. Sure, the legislative branch handed us this piece of crap we call the DMCA, but I blame the executive brance for becoming a private army at the beck and call of corporations. If I was a police chief and some company called to complain about a kid sharing music...I'd tell them to take a number and where to stick it.
Feh. Just my two cents.
Still, makes you want to go install Scram Disk as soon as possible.
- JoeShmoe
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Don't you watch Star Trek?
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We'll have Heisenberg compensators to take care of that.
- JoeShmoe
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Here's my math based on prices from CDW:
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[Note: Gigabit switch...$1400? Woof...okay, let's wait for the new Apples to push Gigabit prices down a bit...let me drop my standards to 100Base-T]
1) 8-port 100Mb hub ($100)
2) Dazzle MPEG-1 capture card ($200) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus lets say another $20 for the interface from one to the other.
3) 6GB Hard drive ($100) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus another $20 for the interface from one to the other.
4) Cheapo video card with TV-out ($50) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus $20 for the interface from one to the other.
5) Palm/Visor ($150) plus 100Mb NIC ($20) plus again $20 for the interface.
By my calculations, this "uber pimp" system (as CmdrTaco would call it) should cost a total of $600-700 bucks...which is pretty much what a Replay or high-end TiVo would cost you!
I have seen hard drives with ethernet connections to use a quick and easy file servers, and I can't imagine it would be hard to get data from a video card onto a network like some VNC or X server thing...so even if those interfaces cost $100 the whole system should still clock in under $1000.
I'd buy it.
There's also an important part...if the system is built around standard tech and using open design, I already have most of a JoeShmoe Digital VCR system!
I have plenty of hard drive space, so I can skip the storage units. I have a capture card, so I can skip at least one input unit (tho I have many sources so I would want more than one). I already have the 100Mb hub. Really all I'm lacking is a cheap video terminal so that I can have MPG file at point A show up on TV-out at point B.
Now MPEG-2...thanks to the premium associated with DVD production...is going to cost an arm and a leg. But I don't see a system like this costing $5000. Purchasing a computer to do each task would still only cost me $2000.
- JoeShmoe
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