Yes, but you're talking about the exception to the rule. In decades of mailing things I've NEVER had any problems with the USPS. Everything gets there within 5 days in a usable condition. Surely you can expect it to get scuffed a bit from being handled but that's what envelopes and packaging is for. It's certainly no different than UPS or Fedex playing package football with your boxes of replacement China marked "exremely fragile!".:-) I think the USPS deserves a lot of credit for the kinds of shit they DO put up with. Now that I've said that, I will admit I don't use the USPS at all anymore as I pay all my bills online. Much cheaper.:-)
With EToys trading at around a quarter, I wouldn't be suprised if someone like Toys'R'Us or Amazon.com came along and devoured them just out of pitty. Maybe Etoy should buy them!:-)
TIS (now NAI) had the right idea. Gauntlet provides a nice transparent application gateway firewall. Unfortunately since they EOL'd their BSDI version the only support on x86 hardware is NT. It'd really be nice if they came out with a Linux or even OpenBSD version. The only other options are Solaris or HPUX. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen. I just hope NAI keeps their head above water so they don't end up getting bought out by a company like Checkpoint. I think Firewall-1 points out that having the most popular product doesn't make it the most secure.
You know, the thing that bothers me about rxvt though is that there's no way I've seen to resize the damned thing. You have to open another window with a different font size. With xterm it's easy to go from tiny to huge, reset the console, etc. Plus, xterm seems just as fast as rxvt on my modest system (piii-733).
I seriously doubt it had anything to do with Slashdot posting it. That number has spread like wildfire via radio talk shows and such as well. I heard it on my local morning show when they called it up. Ingenious marketing campaign for the company in question by the way. Their phone bill is probably cheaper than it would have been to buy ads on TV and in newspapers to get the same coverage.
Well it certainly works for e-commerce sites. Businesses are't going to stay in business long if they blatantly tell their customer base to go piss up a rope. If a site doesn't work with my browser I simply buy from someone else. Usually the price difference is negligible (or even lower!) anyway. A bad web site that doesn't work well with a variety of cross-platform browsers just urks me to no end. The web is supposed to be platform independent!!! That's the WHOLE FSCKING POINT! If we wanted to tie it to one OS, Microsoft could've designed some proprietary application that browses over Netbios or some such ungodly protocol and uses whatever-their-buzzword-of-the-day technology is. Ah well, what can you do? Bitch and moan I suppose, or just go elsewhere. The owners of the business should be informed that they lost a customer because of the proprietary nature of their web site though as well.
You know, just semi-offtopic, but that Windows screen saver app SUCKS. My PIII-733 linux box with the text client completely blew the doors off my Win2k PC running the stupid graphical screensaver client even though they were both running 24/7. I don't remember offhand but I believe my linux box could do 4+ blocks in the time my Win2k PC did 1 (24 hours!!) WTF. That 3d display must be really inefficient.
Well, there are charitable people and then there are Microsoft execs. Microsoft execs are more akin to Satin giving away money or The Godfather giving out favors. All they ask in return is that one day they may approach you with a favor needing to be fulfilled. A body cleaned up for display, your everlasting soul, to sign an exclusive agreement forcing all your students to use Windows based products for all their classwork in exchange for the money granted to the university, etc. Simple stuff like that.
According to the video, everything is secured with a "proprietary security system". What the heck does that mean?
Means they hired a college intern for 2 weeks to hack up an Access database to store your Name, Address, CCard Number, date of birth, and SSN input from a web form. This sounds like a scam waiting to happen.
It also killed the media as a viable consumer alternative to CD's. Heaven forbid you can record on something. You're OBVIOUSLY going to be pirating the mass-marketed commercial bubble-gum garbage that the record companies put out. I don't think think a tax on CD-Rs will hold up in the USA if it ever happens. There are too many people that have the drives these days. Hell, all I use mine for are burning Linux CD's and making backups of my system. If I really wanted to listen to the bubble-gum rock I'd just play them off my hard drive or buy a car mp3 player with a hard drive.
but how on Earth do we keep our rooms from becoming toasty ovens? I've only got 7 PCs running in here and its a toasty 78F degrees. It's the middle of winter and I need to keep my window open. I need peltier coolers for my walls.
The eraser pointers are nice. My Dell (Inspiron 4000) came with the best of both worlds. Eraser pointer and a trackpad. Two sets of mouse buttons as well. Unfortunately I can't get used to the eraser pointer though and just end up using the trackpad. Unfortunately only 2 buttons.
Me - "wossamatta, never seen a real calculator before?"
Non HPer - "Man, that's fucked up. Why don't you use a _normal calculator_?"
Hehe. I get similar responses when someone asks to borrow my HP48GX. After they fiddle with it for a few seconds they tend to just ask someone else with a lame TI graphing calculator. Those TI's seem to "high schoolish" for me. OK kids, get out your $10 Crapio calculator.. we're going to work on some algebra today.
You need to just start browsing at 2. You won't see them anymore. Unfortunately you'll miss some decent posts by normal users that post at 1 as well though mixed in with the troll accounts. Moderators should take note to always browse at -1 though to make sure they're not missing anything good.
Unless you get several hundred million clients to start using the new root servers it all becomes irrelevant. Nobody is going to want to use domain names under them if no one else can get to them. Too bad someone doesn't come up with a nice open standard that is completely free and have ISC include it in the default root cache file they distribute with bind.
Seiko has a device out that sounds pretty neat. It's a binder with a digitizer pad built into it so when you write on the paper notepad it sends the text to your Palm via infrared while you write it. I didn't look into it enough to see if it actually did anything like OCR. I think it just keeps a bitmap image of your notes but still... beats writing in the chicken-scratch Graffiti when all you want to do is draw out a map or diagram and take notes in a meeting.
That's why I meant to stress "at the same time". I mean, if you can have two systems login to WON at the same time with the same CD key then something is wrong.:-) the whole system is supposed to stop that. Otherwise everyone would just pirate it and use the same CD key. I have no problem installing it on multiple computers that I own as long as I don't use more than one of them at a time for online play. I believe you can create a LAN game though and have 8 systems play on one CD key on a lan game just fine though. At least they built in a little leniancy.
Well, you call the vendor of your authorized Microsoft approved system and get technical support. They'll send out a rep to configure your OS and networking for proper operation.
Ummm. I hate to point out the obvious, but using Half-Life on two different computers with the same CD key is illegal. It's called piracy. This is EXACTLY the reason why we have all this crap in the first place. People installing one copy of the software on multiple machines without paying for the license. And no, you can't play on won.net with two computers using the same CD key at the same time.
Authentication based on IP address sucks as well. Some type of login or certification authentication process would be more appropriate in this day and age of firewalls and proxy servers. Your university could solve the problem fairly easily by setting up transparent web proxies before the traffic goes out to the net. Then just give the remote sites the IP addresses of the proxies. Sure, then everyone on the campus can get to that site, but like I said.. authentication based on IP address is stupid. Browser certificates would be a much better way to control access to resources that a library uses.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
And we can watch it all with a front row seat at fuckedcompany.com. God I love that site.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but you're talking about the exception to the rule. In decades of mailing things I've NEVER had any problems with the USPS. Everything gets there within 5 days in a usable condition. Surely you can expect it to get scuffed a bit from being handled but that's what envelopes and packaging is for. It's certainly no different than UPS or Fedex playing package football with your boxes of replacement China marked "exremely fragile!". :-) I think the USPS deserves a lot of credit for the kinds of shit they DO put up with. Now that I've said that, I will admit I don't use the USPS at all anymore as I pay all my bills online. Much cheaper. :-)
:-( (tm) That sucks.
With EToys trading at around a quarter, I wouldn't be suprised if someone like Toys'R'Us or Amazon.com came along and devoured them just out of pitty. Maybe Etoy should buy them! :-)
TIS (now NAI) had the right idea. Gauntlet provides a nice transparent application gateway firewall. Unfortunately since they EOL'd their BSDI version the only support on x86 hardware is NT. It'd really be nice if they came out with a Linux or even OpenBSD version. The only other options are Solaris or HPUX. Somehow I doubt that's going to happen. I just hope NAI keeps their head above water so they don't end up getting bought out by a company like Checkpoint. I think Firewall-1 points out that having the most popular product doesn't make it the most secure.
You know, the thing that bothers me about rxvt though is that there's no way I've seen to resize the damned thing. You have to open another window with a different font size. With xterm it's easy to go from tiny to huge, reset the console, etc. Plus, xterm seems just as fast as rxvt on my modest system (piii-733).
I seriously doubt it had anything to do with Slashdot posting it. That number has spread like wildfire via radio talk shows and such as well. I heard it on my local morning show when they called it up. Ingenious marketing campaign for the company in question by the way. Their phone bill is probably cheaper than it would have been to buy ads on TV and in newspapers to get the same coverage.
Well it certainly works for e-commerce sites. Businesses are't going to stay in business long if they blatantly tell their customer base to go piss up a rope. If a site doesn't work with my browser I simply buy from someone else. Usually the price difference is negligible (or even lower!) anyway. A bad web site that doesn't work well with a variety of cross-platform browsers just urks me to no end. The web is supposed to be platform independent!!! That's the WHOLE FSCKING POINT! If we wanted to tie it to one OS, Microsoft could've designed some proprietary application that browses over Netbios or some such ungodly protocol and uses whatever-their-buzzword-of-the-day technology is. Ah well, what can you do? Bitch and moan I suppose, or just go elsewhere. The owners of the business should be informed that they lost a customer because of the proprietary nature of their web site though as well.
You know, just semi-offtopic, but that Windows screen saver app SUCKS. My PIII-733 linux box with the text client completely blew the doors off my Win2k PC running the stupid graphical screensaver client even though they were both running 24/7. I don't remember offhand but I believe my linux box could do 4+ blocks in the time my Win2k PC did 1 (24 hours!!) WTF. That 3d display must be really inefficient.
Well, there are charitable people and then there are Microsoft execs. Microsoft execs are more akin to Satin giving away money or The Godfather giving out favors. All they ask in return is that one day they may approach you with a favor needing to be fulfilled. A body cleaned up for display, your everlasting soul, to sign an exclusive agreement forcing all your students to use Windows based products for all their classwork in exchange for the money granted to the university, etc. Simple stuff like that.
According to the video, everything is secured with a "proprietary security system". What the heck does that mean?
Means they hired a college intern for 2 weeks to hack up an Access database to store your Name, Address, CCard Number, date of birth, and SSN input from a web form. This sounds like a scam waiting to happen.
It also killed the media as a viable consumer alternative to CD's. Heaven forbid you can record on something. You're OBVIOUSLY going to be pirating the mass-marketed commercial bubble-gum garbage that the record companies put out. I don't think think a tax on CD-Rs will hold up in the USA if it ever happens. There are too many people that have the drives these days. Hell, all I use mine for are burning Linux CD's and making backups of my system. If I really wanted to listen to the bubble-gum rock I'd just play them off my hard drive or buy a car mp3 player with a hard drive.
but how on Earth do we keep our rooms from becoming toasty ovens? I've only got 7 PCs running in here and its a toasty 78F degrees. It's the middle of winter and I need to keep my window open. I need peltier coolers for my walls.
The eraser pointers are nice. My Dell (Inspiron 4000) came with the best of both worlds. Eraser pointer and a trackpad. Two sets of mouse buttons as well. Unfortunately I can't get used to the eraser pointer though and just end up using the trackpad. Unfortunately only 2 buttons.
Me - "wossamatta, never seen a real calculator before?"
Non HPer - "Man, that's fucked up. Why don't you use a _normal calculator_?"
Hehe. I get similar responses when someone asks to borrow my HP48GX. After they fiddle with it for a few seconds they tend to just ask someone else with a lame TI graphing calculator. Those TI's seem to "high schoolish" for me. OK kids, get out your $10 Crapio calculator.. we're going to work on some algebra today.
You need to just start browsing at 2. You won't see them anymore. Unfortunately you'll miss some decent posts by normal users that post at 1 as well though mixed in with the troll accounts. Moderators should take note to always browse at -1 though to make sure they're not missing anything good.
Unless you get several hundred million clients to start using the new root servers it all becomes irrelevant. Nobody is going to want to use domain names under them if no one else can get to them. Too bad someone doesn't come up with a nice open standard that is completely free and have ISC include it in the default root cache file they distribute with bind.
Seiko has a device out that sounds pretty neat. It's a binder with a digitizer pad built into it so when you write on the paper notepad it sends the text to your Palm via infrared while you write it. I didn't look into it enough to see if it actually did anything like OCR. I think it just keeps a bitmap image of your notes but still... beats writing in the chicken-scratch Graffiti when all you want to do is draw out a map or diagram and take notes in a meeting.
You know, they do a remarkably good job of forecasting what the energy usage will be. That's amazing. :-)
Bah. Just give us a rear-wheel drive Intrepid with a nice big V-8 engine in it and forgo all this fancy embedded Linux crap.
That's why I meant to stress "at the same time". I mean, if you can have two systems login to WON at the same time with the same CD key then something is wrong. :-) the whole system is supposed to stop that. Otherwise everyone would just pirate it and use the same CD key. I have no problem installing it on multiple computers that I own as long as I don't use more than one of them at a time for online play. I believe you can create a LAN game though and have 8 systems play on one CD key on a lan game just fine though. At least they built in a little leniancy.
Well, you call the vendor of your authorized Microsoft approved system and get technical support. They'll send out a rep to configure your OS and networking for proper operation.
Ummm. I hate to point out the obvious, but using Half-Life on two different computers with the same CD key is illegal. It's called piracy. This is EXACTLY the reason why we have all this crap in the first place. People installing one copy of the software on multiple machines without paying for the license. And no, you can't play on won.net with two computers using the same CD key at the same time.
Who uses IRC anymore? Isn't that what AIM is for?
Authentication based on IP address sucks as well. Some type of login or certification authentication process would be more appropriate in this day and age of firewalls and proxy servers. Your university could solve the problem fairly easily by setting up transparent web proxies before the traffic goes out to the net. Then just give the remote sites the IP addresses of the proxies. Sure, then everyone on the campus can get to that site, but like I said.. authentication based on IP address is stupid. Browser certificates would be a much better way to control access to resources that a library uses.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
And we can watch it all with a front row seat at fuckedcompany.com. God I love that site.