You'd better have enough RAM that you don't need swap. You only get a limited number of writes with Flash memory. Your flash would be failing within a year on the swap areas, I'd bet.
One thing that always gets missed in these discussions is that all these numbers only come in to play if the same exact photograph is taken with both cameras.
In my personal experience, I do much better photography with digital than with film. The cost constraints of film are gone (very real to me, even if a pro can afford to shoot 20 rolls of film a day, I can't) so I take a lot more photos. By shooting more, I get more experience. I get instant feedback, so I can develop better technique faster by seeing what I'm doing wrong and correcting it a few minutes later.
Before digital, I took snapshots. Now that I've got a digital SLR, I'm slowly gaining skill and doing more of what I would call photography.
If a medium inherently enables better work for whatever reason, then it's superior, no matter what its technical merits.
I'm just wondering; if someone plants zombies and uses them to send spam, is that a prosecutable case of identity theft? Your IP address can be tracked down and linked to you, and a case can be made that the spammer is hiding behind your identity, pretending to be you.
If this could be established in court, then every spammer that uses zombies to spam could be tried for identity theft.
It's also possible that the same precident could be used for people who do DDOS attacks.
Oh, I don't like UPS, in fact I prefer FedEx over UPS. But if I have my choice, I'll pick USPS, or Airborne Express. I've had the least amount of trouble with them. USPS handled almost all my 150 or so eBay sales shipments a few years ago when I was cleaning out, and no package was reported damaged. One of the five that I sent UPS (buyer's choice) was damaged. Every package I get via USPS looks like it was just picked up at the shipper, carried by hand 20 feet and placed in my box.
But as has been mentioned, I'm sure there are depots where they are understaffed and underpaid, and stuff gets abused. Probably true of all companies.
After some thought, I agree that this guy was in the wrong to mess with them, at least, after the first one. He found one, he didn't know what it was until he dug it up. Once he realized what the thing was, and that it had been put there on purpose, the only 100% right thing to do would be to rebury it and not unearth any more.
I have no problem with his using passive detectors (frequency counter) to locate the units, but digging them up is over the line.
So he mapped GPS coordinates to ID numbers. So what? Who does this help? Just having the coordinates is good enough.
These are obviously NOT "abandoned property" - finding a walkman or an FRS radio by the side of the road, yeah, sure, it's yours unless it has a name on it. But these are no different than a road sign or anything like that owned by the government. Sure, I can go get road signs with a wrench if I wanted some, but that doesn't mean it's legal or right.
Yes, it was (indirectly) said. They said that he agreed to either produce the sensor or pay restitution for it in exchange for getting let loose with a 1 year laying low and shutting up stipulation. If they'd actually found it in his posession, he'd probably be unhappy in prison right now.
Man, at least PRETEND to read the article first. There are linked pictures, everything is clearly marked: U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
There is reason for having secret areas. "We're paying for it" does not mean I get to walk in to the oval office and hang around during a meeting between Dubya and Rummy, or that I get to go to Langsford and videotape someone punching passwords into the nuke arming systems, or "borrow" some weapons control software.
The only thing is, here, they put the sensors on public land, which is NOT marked out as restricted area. I don't personally have a problem with that; I can point a webcam out the window at a public park, they should be able to put a camera in a hiking area. These sensors are LESS intrusive than a camera, they just sense cars passing by.
But they shouldn't be able to put you in federal FMITA prison if you wander off with a piece of equipment you find in the desert. If they want to keep it from getting stolen, they should embed them in the top of a 55 gallon drum full of concrete, and bury that with the top a bit below the surface.
The funny thing is how much businesses come to believe that FedEx can do no wrong. Mostly they're excellent, but there are some areas of the country where they're NOT the best, and some businesses refuse to listen to you when you tell them what the "conditions on the ground" are.
I had a friend who was a pharmacist at a hospital in northern Michigan (UP, Keweenaw area). He ordered some medical supplies from a place, and said "ship them UPS overnight. *DO* *NOT* ship them FedEx." Well, they shipped them FedEx overnight.
About 5 days later the boxes were still not there. He called them and said "You shipped them FedEx, didn't you?" They had, and (as he knew) FedEx in that area is not guaranteed. They weren't going to drive 180 miles round trip from the depot to deliver one stinkin' package. They put all the boxes on a pallet, and when there's enough to bother, then they send out a truck.
UPS, OTOH, has a local depot, and plenty of packages come into the area, so they have no problems delivering overnight (though there is a cutoff line, way out on the peninsula, where they don't guarantee 10:30 delivery anymore).
This was 20 years ago, I'm betting FedEx has a local presence now, but I know there are still parts of the country where there are better choices than FedEx.
This story always comes to mind when I'm watching the commercials where the guy didn't use FedEx, so the package is delayed.
Yes, and if you're using a bidirectional service, you need to factor in the cost of having the dish and transceiver professionally installed. Anybody who isn't blind or comatose can put in a receive-only satellite dish, but ones with uplink require much more precise installation. The FCC requires a licensed installer. Most "satellite installer" contractors are NOT qualified or licensed to install a bidirectional link.
Yes, the whole premise was really pretty ridiculous. Their language supposedly consists of referring to historical events, but you're using standard language symantics to do the referring.
Doing a "communicate with a species that thinks differently than we do" episode is a great idea, but this was a poor implementation. They didn't come close to convincing me that there was an unbridgable gap between the species, and that we couldn't possibly have communicated before. If everything is stated in terms of historical reference, then you're recursing infinitely; you have to use a historical reference to say what a wall is, and what the action "to fall" is, and so on.
Admittedly, a really GOOD alien-ness episode wouldn't sell on prime-time, or even in a movie; you need to read a book for that because you need either the narrative or the first-person thread to get inside the other's head.
I had always assumed that the Google name originates with the song "Barny Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes" - At least, that has SOMETHING to do with a search engine. And I'm betting it predates the term google that means a big number.
It amazes me how in the UK, where warning notices are to be seen quite often in filling stations, that imbeciles continue their pathetic and unnecessary conversations while filling. If I see one near me, I move, and quickly...... It is a criminal offence under the petroleum spirit regulations, it is time that it was enforced properly.
Heck, I'd be happy if they just enforced the rule that states you must remain at the filling point while pumping. Every day I see people walking away, getting in their cars to wait for the pump, etc.
I, personally, twice in the last 6 years, have witnessed gasoline spilling out of a vehicle when the nozzle failed to kick off. One was a few spots over from me, I ran over and shut off the nozzle. About 2 gallons of gas on the ground.
Another time, I was **driving by** and saw gas spilling from a pickup with nobody around. I whipped into the station, came in close to the truck, slammed into park, jumped out, ran to the truck, and shut off the valve. The whole time, there was a woman inside the truck, talking on her cell phone. You should have seen the look on her face when I came roaring up, jumped out and ran at her truck. Of course, the look on her face when she realized she'd just pumped about 15 gallons of gas on the ground, under her truck, was pretty good too.
She just kept yapping "how did this happen?" I just said something like "the valves aren't perfect, sometimes they don't work. That's why you're REQUIRED BY LAW to stay by the valve when the gas is pumping. See, it says so right there on the pump." I just walked away; she was obviously not the kind of person who actually uses her brain or anything. She was still yammering when I went into the station to report the spill and wash the gas off my hands.
I was in Illinois once, and a station attendant actually got on the PA and said "Pump 4, you must stay within sight of the pump." When they didn't, she cut the flow to that pump.
I've gotten whacked with charged flash caps a number of times. It's about enough power to make you jump a bit and shake your hand. The article talks about "holding it on someone for 5 seconds" - well, that won't do a damn thing; this is a capacitor, it discharges and that's it. There's a charging circuit, but it's very wimpy; it takes the circuit 5 to 10 seconds to put that much energy into a cap for a few millisecond shock. You want a deterrent? Learn to run fast. You're going to need it, ESPECIALLY if you try to use one of these things.
Could be implemented like George Carlin's traffic ticket system. Everyone gets a dart gun and shoots cars when the driver's being an asshole. Cops get to issue "asshole" tickets to anyone whos car looks like a pincushion.
If you need this seat, your saddle isn't adjusted properly. I've had parts of me go to sleep that never should, until I learned how to get it set right. Now that my saddle is proper, no problems.
Beware of saddles that are too soft; if your "sit bones" sink in, it'll let your center bits sink down into the seat and numb up.
Recumbents put you in a normal seat rather than a saddle, so your butt has something to push against. This means you can push harder than what you weigh, allowing your legs to generate more power.
'bent newbies tend to be very hard on their knees until they learn to downshift and spin the pedals faster.
They are not necessarily more efficient, but they can be very comfortable on long rides, they can have a ton of cargo space (particularly 'bent trikes) and can tow decent trailers.
The problem with internal drivetrains is that they're a bit less efficient and generally don't have the range of a chain drive. They stay clean, but it's nearly impossible to beat the efficiency of chain drive, and they never have as many gears available either.
This may not be as big a deal with mountain bikes; I don't mountain bike but I imagine a lot of the time they're either grinding up hills or flying down them; even when they're on level trails, you don't want to go 25 MPH on a dirt trail, so they probably don't need the high ranges that a road bike does.
The classic diamond shape is actually pretty damned efficient. I think some recumbent designs are good too, but they're largely designed for long distance comfort. I just bought a new bike, and I passed up recumbents for a basic hybrid commuter.
It's hard to beat a good stiff road bike with high pressure tires for efficiency.
I also bike commute to work (10 miles one way), though I am a car driver as well. I live in Michigan, and since I switched from a road bike to a hybrid bike this year, I'm *considering* biking in the winter, but normally I only get about 5 months a year on the bike. I also don't ride in the rain, though I'm planning on dumping some money into some good goretex rain gear.
When I can't bike, public transportation is NOT an option (this is true in most areas of the country). It's about 5 miles into town to get to a bus stop, and that's a local commuter line; if I wanted to go more than 20 miles, I'd have to get off at the greyhound station 15 miles away and transfer there. Amtrak goes right through town here but I don't even know where the nearest depot is; about 30 miles I think; they don't even slow down through my town.
Still, between my bike and my Ford Taurus, I'm averaging about 120 MPG the last couple of weeks:-)
My point was, the vast majority of windows users are drooling idiots, but even they are starting to become aware of the situation. I realize that the average/. reader has been aware of this sort of thing for years and years. I still remember the days when everyone said "Don't be stupid, you can't catch a virus via email."
Now that at least some Windows users are starting to become aware of this sort of thing, are Mac users next? Most Mac users I talk to do nothing but go on about how they never have to worry about this sort of thing. Seems like a group of users that's that overconfident in their systems are ripe for infection.
Other than "floor it out of the light" those instructions work for all cars. Anybody can probably get 5 to 10 more MPG out of whatever they're driving by doing that stuff. Good advice.
You don't need a hybrid to get 50 MPG; there are many cars on the market that will do it. I think hybrids are an interesting technology, but I don't think it's worth the added complexity to get pretty much the same mileage you could get with a nice TDI turbodiesel, and for less money.
I think this argument is parallel with the argument that [insert manufacturer] makes crappy cars that break down. It all depends on how you treat your hardware.
Good point. I recently was in an email discussion about the reliability of cars. I mentioned that my repair bills are almost nonexistant; I buy 70,000 mile tires and actually get that much out of them, brakes on my car typically last 80,000 miles or more, I've never burned out a clutch, etc, etc. Most people either didn't believe me, or thought I was just damn lucky.
But I drive pretty sedately; if the light is red a quarter mile up, I slow down early, so I can coast through at 25 MPH instead of going 50 to the light, braking hard, having to stop and then re-accellerate from zero. I tend to set the cruise a couple under the limit and relax in the right lane. etc.
I know a person at work who was complaining about how crappy brakes are these days, because she needed new ones every year. She was getting about 15,000 miles, and the brakes were worn to nothing. Turns out she drives like a nutcase.
Slashdot Mirror
You'd better have enough RAM that you don't need swap. You only get a limited number of writes with Flash memory. Your flash would be failing within a year on the swap areas, I'd bet.
One thing that always gets missed in these discussions is that all these numbers only come in to play if the same exact photograph is taken with both cameras.
In my personal experience, I do much better photography with digital than with film. The cost constraints of film are gone (very real to me, even if a pro can afford to shoot 20 rolls of film a day, I can't) so I take a lot more photos. By shooting more, I get more experience. I get instant feedback, so I can develop better technique faster by seeing what I'm doing wrong and correcting it a few minutes later.
Before digital, I took snapshots. Now that I've got a digital SLR, I'm slowly gaining skill and doing more of what I would call photography.
If a medium inherently enables better work for whatever reason, then it's superior, no matter what its technical merits.
I'm just wondering; if someone plants zombies and uses them to send spam, is that a prosecutable case of identity theft? Your IP address can be tracked down and linked to you, and a case can be made that the spammer is hiding behind your identity, pretending to be you.
If this could be established in court, then every spammer that uses zombies to spam could be tried for identity theft.
It's also possible that the same precident could be used for people who do DDOS attacks.
Oh, I don't like UPS, in fact I prefer FedEx over UPS. But if I have my choice, I'll pick USPS, or Airborne Express. I've had the least amount of trouble with them. USPS handled almost all my 150 or so eBay sales shipments a few years ago when I was cleaning out, and no package was reported damaged. One of the five that I sent UPS (buyer's choice) was damaged. Every package I get via USPS looks like it was just picked up at the shipper, carried by hand 20 feet and placed in my box.
But as has been mentioned, I'm sure there are depots where they are understaffed and underpaid, and stuff gets abused. Probably true of all companies.
Use this phrase, I've found it useful:
"If you ship FedEx, the package will be refused."
After some thought, I agree that this guy was in the wrong to mess with them, at least, after the first one.
He found one, he didn't know what it was until he dug it up. Once he realized what the thing was, and that it had been put there on purpose, the only 100% right thing to do would be to rebury it and not unearth any more.
I have no problem with his using passive detectors (frequency counter) to locate the units, but digging them up is over the line.
So he mapped GPS coordinates to ID numbers. So what? Who does this help? Just having the coordinates is good enough.
These are obviously NOT "abandoned property" - finding a walkman or an FRS radio by the side of the road, yeah, sure, it's yours unless it has a name on it. But these are no different than a road sign or anything like that owned by the government. Sure, I can go get road signs with a wrench if I wanted some, but that doesn't mean it's legal or right.
Yes, it was (indirectly) said. They said that he agreed to either produce the sensor or pay restitution for it in exchange for getting let loose with a 1 year laying low and shutting up stipulation. If they'd actually found it in his posession, he'd probably be unhappy in prison right now.
Man, at least PRETEND to read the article first. There are linked pictures, everything is clearly marked:
U.S.
GOVERNMENT
PROPERTY
There is reason for having secret areas. "We're paying for it" does not mean I get to walk in to the oval office and hang around during a meeting between Dubya and Rummy, or that I get to go to Langsford and videotape someone punching passwords into the nuke arming systems, or "borrow" some weapons control software.
The only thing is, here, they put the sensors on public land, which is NOT marked out as restricted area. I don't personally have a problem with that; I can point a webcam out the window at a public park, they should be able to put a camera in a hiking area. These sensors are LESS intrusive than a camera, they just sense cars passing by.
But they shouldn't be able to put you in federal FMITA prison if you wander off with a piece of equipment you find in the desert. If they want to keep it from getting stolen, they should embed them in the top of a 55 gallon drum full of concrete, and bury that with the top a bit below the surface.
The funny thing is how much businesses come to believe that FedEx can do no wrong. Mostly they're excellent, but there are some areas of the country where they're NOT the best, and some businesses refuse to listen to you when you tell them what the "conditions on the ground" are.
I had a friend who was a pharmacist at a hospital in northern Michigan (UP, Keweenaw area). He ordered some medical supplies from a place, and said "ship them UPS overnight. *DO* *NOT* ship them FedEx." Well, they shipped them FedEx overnight.
About 5 days later the boxes were still not there. He called them and said "You shipped them FedEx, didn't you?" They had, and (as he knew) FedEx in that area is not guaranteed. They weren't going to drive 180 miles round trip from the depot to deliver one stinkin' package. They put all the boxes on a pallet, and when there's enough to bother, then they send out a truck.
UPS, OTOH, has a local depot, and plenty of packages come into the area, so they have no problems delivering overnight (though there is a cutoff line, way out on the peninsula, where they don't guarantee 10:30 delivery anymore).
This was 20 years ago, I'm betting FedEx has a local presence now, but I know there are still parts of the country where there are better choices than FedEx.
This story always comes to mind when I'm watching the commercials where the guy didn't use FedEx, so the package is delayed.
First, it won't work on me because like everyone else here, I've blocked external images from email.
Second, I'll send a nice little return email, thanking me for giving my email AND theirs to the spam databases.
This is a nice little scam.
Yes, and if you're using a bidirectional service, you need to factor in the cost of having the dish and transceiver professionally installed. Anybody who isn't blind or comatose can put in a receive-only satellite dish, but ones with uplink require much more precise installation. The FCC requires a licensed installer. Most "satellite installer" contractors are NOT qualified or licensed to install a bidirectional link.
Not really, but washing helps a lot.
Citrus based hand cleaners (used by mechanics) will work great.
Yes, the whole premise was really pretty ridiculous. Their language supposedly consists of referring to historical events, but you're using standard language symantics to do the referring.
Doing a "communicate with a species that thinks differently than we do" episode is a great idea, but this was a poor implementation. They didn't come close to convincing me that there was an unbridgable gap between the species, and that we couldn't possibly have communicated before. If everything is stated in terms of historical reference, then you're recursing infinitely; you have to use a historical reference to say what a wall is, and what the action "to fall" is, and so on.
Admittedly, a really GOOD alien-ness episode wouldn't sell on prime-time, or even in a movie; you need to read a book for that because you need either the narrative or the first-person thread to get inside the other's head.
I had always assumed that the Google name originates with the song "Barny Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes" - At least, that has SOMETHING to do with a search engine.
And I'm betting it predates the term google that means a big number.
It amazes me how in the UK, where warning notices are to be seen quite often in filling stations, that imbeciles continue their pathetic and unnecessary conversations while filling. If I see one near me, I move, and quickly...... It is a criminal offence under the petroleum spirit regulations, it is time that it was enforced properly.
Heck, I'd be happy if they just enforced the rule that states you must remain at the filling point while pumping. Every day I see people walking away, getting in their cars to wait for the pump, etc.
I, personally, twice in the last 6 years, have witnessed gasoline spilling out of a vehicle when the nozzle failed to kick off. One was a few spots over from me, I ran over and shut off the nozzle. About 2 gallons of gas on the ground.
Another time, I was **driving by** and saw gas spilling from a pickup with nobody around. I whipped into the station, came in close to the truck, slammed into park, jumped out, ran to the truck, and shut off the valve. The whole time, there was a woman inside the truck, talking on her cell phone. You should have seen the look on her face when I came roaring up, jumped out and ran at her truck. Of course, the look on her face when she realized she'd just pumped about 15 gallons of gas on the ground, under her truck, was pretty good too.
She just kept yapping "how did this happen?" I just said something like "the valves aren't perfect, sometimes they don't work. That's why you're REQUIRED BY LAW to stay by the valve when the gas is pumping. See, it says so right there on the pump." I just walked away; she was obviously not the kind of person who actually uses her brain or anything. She was still yammering when I went into the station to report the spill and wash the gas off my hands.
I was in Illinois once, and a station attendant actually got on the PA and said "Pump 4, you must stay within sight of the pump." When they didn't, she cut the flow to that pump.
I've gotten whacked with charged flash caps a number of times. It's about enough power to make you jump a bit and shake your hand.
The article talks about "holding it on someone for 5 seconds" - well, that won't do a damn thing; this is a capacitor, it discharges and that's it. There's a charging circuit, but it's very wimpy; it takes the circuit 5 to 10 seconds to put that much energy into a cap for a few millisecond shock.
You want a deterrent? Learn to run fast. You're going to need it, ESPECIALLY if you try to use one of these things.
Could be implemented like George Carlin's traffic ticket system. Everyone gets a dart gun and shoots cars when the driver's being an asshole. Cops get to issue "asshole" tickets to anyone whos car looks like a pincushion.
If you need this seat, your saddle isn't adjusted properly. I've had parts of me go to sleep that never should, until I learned how to get it set right. Now that my saddle is proper, no problems.
Beware of saddles that are too soft; if your "sit bones" sink in, it'll let your center bits sink down into the seat and numb up.
Recumbents put you in a normal seat rather than a saddle, so your butt has something to push against. This means you can push harder than what you weigh, allowing your legs to generate more power.
'bent newbies tend to be very hard on their knees until they learn to downshift and spin the pedals faster.
They are not necessarily more efficient, but they can be very comfortable on long rides, they can have a ton of cargo space (particularly 'bent trikes) and can tow decent trailers.
The problem with internal drivetrains is that they're a bit less efficient and generally don't have the range of a chain drive. They stay clean, but it's nearly impossible to beat the efficiency of chain drive, and they never have as many gears available either.
This may not be as big a deal with mountain bikes; I don't mountain bike but I imagine a lot of the time they're either grinding up hills or flying down them; even when they're on level trails, you don't want to go 25 MPH on a dirt trail, so they probably don't need the high ranges that a road bike does.
The classic diamond shape is actually pretty damned efficient. I think some recumbent designs are good too, but they're largely designed for long distance comfort. I just bought a new bike, and I passed up recumbents for a basic hybrid commuter.
:-)
It's hard to beat a good stiff road bike with high pressure tires for efficiency.
I also bike commute to work (10 miles one way), though I am a car driver as well. I live in Michigan, and since I switched from a road bike to a hybrid bike this year, I'm *considering* biking in the winter, but normally I only get about 5 months a year on the bike. I also don't ride in the rain, though I'm planning on dumping some money into some good goretex rain gear.
When I can't bike, public transportation is NOT an option (this is true in most areas of the country). It's about 5 miles into town to get to a bus stop, and that's a local commuter line; if I wanted to go more than 20 miles, I'd have to get off at the greyhound station 15 miles away and transfer there. Amtrak goes right through town here but I don't even know where the nearest depot is; about 30 miles I think; they don't even slow down through my town.
Still, between my bike and my Ford Taurus, I'm averaging about 120 MPG the last couple of weeks
OTOH, I smile a little more every time the price goes higher. $3, here we come! It would be interesting to see if idiots ever stop buying SUVs.
My point was, the vast majority of windows users are drooling idiots, but even they are starting to become aware of the situation. /. reader has been aware of this sort of thing for years and years. I still remember the days when everyone said "Don't be stupid, you can't catch a virus via email."
I realize that the average
Now that at least some Windows users are starting to become aware of this sort of thing, are Mac users next?
Most Mac users I talk to do nothing but go on about how they never have to worry about this sort of thing. Seems like a group of users that's that overconfident in their systems are ripe for infection.
Other than "floor it out of the light" those instructions work for all cars. Anybody can probably get 5 to 10 more MPG out of whatever they're driving by doing that stuff. Good advice.
You don't need a hybrid to get 50 MPG; there are many cars on the market that will do it. I think hybrids are an interesting technology, but I don't think it's worth the added complexity to get pretty much the same mileage you could get with a nice TDI turbodiesel, and for less money.
I think this argument is parallel with the argument that [insert manufacturer] makes crappy cars that break down. It all depends on how you treat your hardware.
Good point. I recently was in an email discussion about the reliability of cars. I mentioned that my repair bills are almost nonexistant; I buy 70,000 mile tires and actually get that much out of them, brakes on my car typically last 80,000 miles or more, I've never burned out a clutch, etc, etc. Most people either didn't believe me, or thought I was just damn lucky.
But I drive pretty sedately; if the light is red a quarter mile up, I slow down early, so I can coast through at 25 MPH instead of going 50 to the light, braking hard, having to stop and then re-accellerate from zero. I tend to set the cruise a couple under the limit and relax in the right lane. etc.
I know a person at work who was complaining about how crappy brakes are these days, because she needed new ones every year. She was getting about 15,000 miles, and the brakes were worn to nothing. Turns out she drives like a nutcase.