Can you imagine having a Beowulf cluster of these "Profit" jokes?
All I want for Christmas is my DVD writer...
on
Pioneer DVR-A05 Review
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It looks like this Christmas could be a good one for DVD writer sales. The price-point is now pretty reasonable for Joe Consumer. What's the state of the DVD editing/authoring software? I wonder if a highly rated bundle of a DVD writer and well reviewed software for Christmas could move enough units to begin to influence the war over recordable DVD formats...
Also, the Roomba form factor/size wouldn't work in my apartment. Because of the way furniture, etc. is laid out, there are quite a few spaces and corners that the Roomba wouldn't be able to get into. I suppose it would work well if you utilized Zen decorating themes.
Let's see... 2 movie tix at $12-13 each to see a movie once, or $25 for a DVD that I can watch as much as I want. Combine that with the home comfort factor and you've got a nobrainer.
Amen!
No idiots talking on cell phones.
No screaming/crying/talking kids.
Screw the popcorn, I can grill a steak, some veggies, and have some beer for what it'd cost me to pay for parking/popcorn/candy/drinks.
I can pause the movie to go get rid of some of the beer I had while eating my steak.
I can rewind the cool parts or the parts that that I didn't quite catch - can't do that in the theater when the gomer behind you is making smartass comments about some scene.
Plus, the DVD's often have interesting extras on the disk that you can't see at the theater.
So why should I go to the theater? With a decent home theater setup, I don't need 'em. Besides, if I wait until it's out on DVD, I can find out from all of the suckers that went to see the movie in the theater whether or not it's worth it. It really pisses me off when I go to the theater and find out that the movie really sucks.
But the degrees aren't as overrated as all the various tech certifications... how many of you have worked with someone with certifications that still had no clue about their systems?
If you're running Windoze, Spamkiller does a great job. It comes with a ton of standard filters, can update new additions from spamkiller.com and allows you to build all the custom filters you want. It will also do a DNS lookup on ip addresses in mail headers and allow you to send a pre-defined complaint message to abuse@, postmaster@, or any user defined e-mail address. Spamkiller runs in the background and logs into your POP mailboxes, dl's the messages and compares them to the filters... if it finds spam, it marks it as read/don't dl on the server and you never see it in your inbox. You can filter by the address, header lines, country, and text within the body of the message. You can review all the messages in SpamKiller to be sure it's only nuking the spam. I've been using it for a while and only have about 1 spam per 100 get not get caught by the filters, but as soon as it does, I make a filter for that one.:)
A better solution to the "skip 15 second" button would be to punch in a number of seconds and then hit fast forward and have it FF that # of seconds. Wonder if they could sneak that by the advertising bastards....
Music industry tracking individual MP3 sharers
on
Gnutella at One Year
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· Score: 1
"Nobody's gone after gnutella because there's nobody to go after. There is no central server to shut down like there was with Napster."
"The software, developed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), mimics all the commonly used and less-well-known file-sharing clients used to share music. The software can also be used to keep an eye on IRC chatrooms and newsgroups, according to New Zealand Web site 7amnews.com, which has obtained what it claims are screenshots of Media Tracker in operation."
and
"Media Tracker builds up a list of tracks, the networks they're being shared on - Napster, Freenet, Gnutella etc. - the sharer's IP address and the name of their host or ISP. The date and time the song at which a given song was shared is also recorded. All this is held in a database that can be used to cross-check individuals' sharing patterns and to locate ISPs with a high percentage of sharers among their subscribers. "
Looks like they may be gearing up to go after individual traders, or at least their ISP's.
Also, take into consideration that the incorporation of these standards into vendors' products is excruciatingly slow at best. Several years ago, vendors had the idea that we can take care of all of your healthcare information systems needs -- "Our system does it all!". Well, they soon learned that healthcare information systems were extremely complex and they couldn't manage/keep resources to maintain/produce such huge systems and still make a profit. Enter the age of the "Best of Breed" system. "Our system just does these few things, but it does 'em really well! You just need to buy/build an interface to get it talking to your other systems!" Many of us that work in healthcare IT cringe whenever someone mentions an interface. The results you get from stringing together lots of interfaces can often be like playing the telephone game - send a piece of information from one system through one or more interfaces, to another system and hope like hell it makes sense on the other end.
You guys are on the right track when you talk about security. I worked at one hospital that was in the "Top 10" hospitals in US News and World Report a couple of years ago and some of the stuff I saw floating across the network was scary. We had some clinical systems that sent their userid/pw across as plain text. Packets floating across the network often contained patients names, clinic notes, diagnoses, lab test results, etc., all in PLAIN TEXT! It was amazing how much information I could obtain by using an evaluation copy of a packet analyzer on an unsecured network port at this institution.
One scary trend I've noticed lately is all of the people/vendors that want to download patient information to PDA's without having adequate security on the PDA. I'm just waiting for some doc to lose his Palm and have some kind soul find it and turn it over to the local media.:)
There are lots of other issues that futher complicate the whole healthcare information system issue such as institutional politics, workflow/usability issues, etc., but I don't have time to get into them right now.
Personally, it sounds to me like these guys need a serious whack with a clue-by-4... that or they need to get out and do a bit more research on the subject at hand..
I saw somewhere (maybe/.?) that graphics card technology was improving at a rate of Moore's Law cubed... doubling performance roughly every 6 months instead of every 18 months... Looks to me like we're starting to see the beginning of the limits of "useful FPS". Since it looks like the "Usefeul FPS" dragon will be slain soon.. then what? What I'm really hoping we'll see in the next few years is some viable consumer grade VR applications and hardware. The companies are starting to produce some mainstream graphics cards that have some serious horsepower... the kind of horsepower that will be needed to drive stereoscopic HMD's...
There are more ways to snoop than just scanning packets and HTTP logs. I used Omniquad's Desktop Surveillance [ODS] software to bust a friend's wife that was cheating on him. Whenever she fired up her mail client, mIRC, or her web browser, ODS would start taking screen captures and would then email them to me. It also has keystroke logging and remote screen monitoring. She was not happy when he slammed a 1-inch thick folder of all the "evidence" on the table..
Of course, ODS is a Windoze product... but most of the offices I have been in have Windoze on most of the desktops.
C'mon.. fess up.. you guys aren't Karma Whores.. You're Karma Junkies. Karma is nothing more than Digital Crack and from lookin' at all of the replies, you guys are just jonesin' for a fix.
Well.. those sorts of problems are user interface problems. I'd really like to see a true 3D user interface where you could put windows off to the left or right (maybe something like 3D|WM)and "turn" to look at them... These sorts of HMD's are the first step in getting the idea and the hardware into mainstream use..
A company called Microvision has been making these sorts of displays for military applications, but they are now trying to bring the technology to more "mainstream" applications.
There's a morbid little web site that I've kept in my bookmarks for a while just because I like to pop in from time to time to see what kind of stuff they've got for sale... From their web site: "We specialize in unusual skulls, especially violent death victims and deformities: bullet holes, axe marks, beating deformities, elephant men, pinheads, hydrocephalics -- you get the idea." Human Skulls For Sale has some pretty funky stuff that is "reasonably" priced.. real human skulls.. some of 'em deformed from disease.. some of 'em deformed from violence... they have a couple of former stuntman skulls as well as one with a bullet hole in it.. most of 'em in the $300 - $700 range. They also sell complete articulated human skeletons... The most bizarre sounding thing is the "Bejewelled monks skulls from Tibet. Starting at $4000." - I wish they'd post some pictures of those.:) That would sure beat the hell out of those "coffee table books":)
Slashdot Mirror
Can you imagine having a Beowulf cluster of these "Profit" jokes?
It looks like this Christmas could be a good one for DVD writer sales. The price-point is now pretty reasonable for Joe Consumer. What's the state of the DVD editing/authoring software? I wonder if a highly rated bundle of a DVD writer and well reviewed software for Christmas could move enough units to begin to influence the war over recordable DVD formats...
So how long did you have the drive before it died? Do you have an estimate of how many "hours" it burned before it crapped out?
Also, the Roomba form factor/size wouldn't work in my apartment. Because of the way furniture, etc. is laid out, there are quite a few spaces and corners that the Roomba wouldn't be able to get into. I suppose it would work well if you utilized Zen decorating themes.
:)
Also, my cats would hate it.
Amen!
No idiots talking on cell phones.
No screaming/crying/talking kids.
Screw the popcorn, I can grill a steak, some veggies, and have some beer for what it'd cost me to pay for parking/popcorn/candy/drinks.
I can pause the movie to go get rid of some of the beer I had while eating my steak.
I can rewind the cool parts or the parts that that I didn't quite catch - can't do that in the theater when the gomer behind you is making smartass comments about some scene.
Plus, the DVD's often have interesting extras on the disk that you can't see at the theater.
So why should I go to the theater? With a decent home theater setup, I don't need 'em. Besides, if I wait until it's out on DVD, I can find out from all of the suckers that went to see the movie in the theater whether or not it's worth it. It really pisses me off when I go to the theater and find out that the movie really sucks.
Prior art, man.
But the degrees aren't as overrated as all the various tech certifications... how many of you have worked with someone with certifications that still had no clue about their systems?
If you're running Windoze, Spamkiller does a great job. It comes with a ton of standard filters, can update new additions from spamkiller.com and allows you to build all the custom filters you want. It will also do a DNS lookup on ip addresses in mail headers and allow you to send a pre-defined complaint message to abuse@, postmaster@, or any user defined e-mail address. Spamkiller runs in the background and logs into your POP mailboxes, dl's the messages and compares them to the filters... if it finds spam, it marks it as read/don't dl on the server and you never see it in your inbox. You can filter by the address, header lines, country, and text within the body of the message. You can review all the messages in SpamKiller to be sure it's only nuking the spam. I've been using it for a while and only have about 1 spam per 100 get not get caught by the filters, but as soon as it does, I make a filter for that one. :)
Even better, they have a webform for submitting comments at:
http://www.mckinneyisd.net/cgi-bin/contactus.plx
A better solution to the "skip 15 second" button would be to punch in a number of seconds and then hit fast forward and have it FF that # of seconds. Wonder if they could sneak that by the advertising bastards....
Wanna bet? Check out the article on theInternet Anti-Piracy System (aka Media Tracker)... also.. check out the screenshots here.
"The software, developed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), mimics all the commonly used and less-well-known file-sharing clients used to share music. The software can also be used to keep an eye on IRC chatrooms and newsgroups, according to New Zealand Web site 7amnews.com, which has obtained what it claims are screenshots of Media Tracker in operation."
and
"Media Tracker builds up a list of tracks, the networks they're being shared on - Napster, Freenet, Gnutella etc. - the sharer's IP address and the name of their host or ISP. The date and time the song at which a given song was shared is also recorded. All this is held in a database that can be used to cross-check individuals' sharing patterns and to locate ISPs with a high percentage of sharers among their subscribers. "
Looks like they may be gearing up to go after individual traders, or at least their ISP's.
if you've got some $ to burn, just get 2 separate pairs of shoes
one pair with "SWEAT" -- "yeah.. i wear em to work out"
and
one pair with "SHOP" -- "uh.. i wear 'em to the mall.."
wear the left "SWEAT" shoe w/ the right "SHOP" shoe.
Also, take into consideration that the incorporation of these standards into vendors' products is excruciatingly slow at best. Several years ago, vendors had the idea that we can take care of all of your healthcare information systems needs -- "Our system does it all!". Well, they soon learned that healthcare information systems were extremely complex and they couldn't manage/keep resources to maintain/produce such huge systems and still make a profit. Enter the age of the "Best of Breed" system. "Our system just does these few things, but it does 'em really well! You just need to buy/build an interface to get it talking to your other systems!" Many of us that work in healthcare IT cringe whenever someone mentions an interface. The results you get from stringing together lots of interfaces can often be like playing the telephone game - send a piece of information from one system through one or more interfaces, to another system and hope like hell it makes sense on the other end.
You guys are on the right track when you talk about security. I worked at one hospital that was in the "Top 10" hospitals in US News and World Report a couple of years ago and some of the stuff I saw floating across the network was scary. We had some clinical systems that sent their userid/pw across as plain text. Packets floating across the network often contained patients names, clinic notes, diagnoses, lab test results, etc., all in PLAIN TEXT! It was amazing how much information I could obtain by using an evaluation copy of a packet analyzer on an unsecured network port at this institution.
One scary trend I've noticed lately is all of the people/vendors that want to download patient information to PDA's without having adequate security on the PDA. I'm just waiting for some doc to lose his Palm and have some kind soul find it and turn it over to the local media. :)
There are lots of other issues that futher complicate the whole healthcare information system issue such as institutional politics, workflow/usability issues, etc., but I don't have time to get into them right now.
Personally, it sounds to me like these guys need a serious whack with a clue-by-4... that or they need to get out and do a bit more research on the subject at hand..
I saw somewhere (maybe /.?) that graphics card technology was improving at a rate of Moore's Law cubed... doubling performance roughly every 6 months instead of every 18 months... Looks to me like we're starting to see the beginning of the limits of "useful FPS". Since it looks like the "Usefeul FPS" dragon will be slain soon.. then what? What I'm really hoping we'll see in the next few years is some viable consumer grade VR applications and hardware. The companies are starting to produce some mainstream graphics cards that have some serious horsepower... the kind of horsepower that will be needed to drive stereoscopic HMD's...
There are more ways to snoop than just scanning packets and HTTP logs. I used Omniquad's Desktop Surveillance [ODS] software to bust a friend's wife that was cheating on him. Whenever she fired up her mail client, mIRC, or her web browser, ODS would start taking screen captures and would then email them to me. It also has keystroke logging and remote screen monitoring. She was not happy when he slammed a 1-inch thick folder of all the "evidence" on the table.. Of course, ODS is a Windoze product... but most of the offices I have been in have Windoze on most of the desktops.
C'mon.. fess up.. you guys aren't Karma Whores.. You're Karma Junkies. Karma is nothing more than Digital Crack and from lookin' at all of the replies, you guys are just jonesin' for a fix.
Well.. those sorts of problems are user interface problems. I'd really like to see a true 3D user interface where you could put windows off to the left or right (maybe something like 3D|WM)and "turn" to look at them... These sorts of HMD's are the first step in getting the idea and the hardware into mainstream use..
I think you are referring to the Virtual Retinal Displays (VRDs) that were being developed at the Univ of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab.
A company called Microvision has been making these sorts of displays for military applications, but they are now trying to bring the technology to more "mainstream" applications.
There's a morbid little web site that I've kept in my bookmarks for a while just because I like to pop in from time to time to see what kind of stuff they've got for sale... From their web site: "We specialize in unusual skulls, especially violent death victims and deformities: bullet holes, axe marks, beating deformities, elephant men, pinheads, hydrocephalics -- you get the idea." Human Skulls For Sale has some pretty funky stuff that is "reasonably" priced.. real human skulls.. some of 'em deformed from disease.. some of 'em deformed from violence... they have a couple of former stuntman skulls as well as one with a bullet hole in it.. most of 'em in the $300 - $700 range. They also sell complete articulated human skeletons... The most bizarre sounding thing is the "Bejewelled monks skulls from Tibet. Starting at $4000." - I wish they'd post some pictures of those. :) That would sure beat the hell out of those "coffee table books" :)