It is actually the lyrics to the Kingsmen version
of the song Louie, Louie. Verse 3 mentions a
"grassy knoll" and something about @!&ABo((~`={{vb
3:42xyzzyZnorFFoo
NO CARRIER

A day or two ago it was reported that the EPA was easing
requirements for mercury emmisions to save money for power
companies. Nice that the EPA is so worried about the CEO's
bonuses. Wish they would do their job and worry about our
health.

We should have a heavy tax on mercury emmisions and use
the proceeds to subsidise windmills and LED lights.

Lighting is very small part of my electricity use.
My eyes don't like fluorescents, and I need to make
my eyes as happy as possible (one emergency eye surgery
is *more* than enough, thank you). I've been converting
some lighting to LEDs. Most of my lights get used very
rarely, so obscessing about the 3 Watt-minutes/year that
they use is silly.

Obscess a bit less about your light bulbs and instead
obscess a bit more about the *big* energy hogs in your life.
Get out of your car and use your bicycle instead. I
haven't bought any gasoline or Diesel in several years.
Insulate your attic, shade your windows in summer,
(awnings reduce the heat load an *amasing* amount!)
upgrade windows if possible. Check the weatherstripping.

>> BTW, news flash for those of you that think google has good anti-spam.
>> They don't. They false positive legit email as spam.
>
> I'm only speaking from my personal experience. I find Google's spam
> filtering to be absolutely top-notch. I only very occasionally get
> false positives in the spam folder,

Putting legit mail in a spam folder is one thing. Not delivering
legit mail at all is quite another, and gmail started doing that
at some point (date forgotten). If the only contact info for
someone you have is an email addr, (and that is common) you're stuck.

Oh, and you can't open a gmail account unless you have a cell phone
that can receive text messages. WTF?

> I've done the personal mail server dance a few times before. It's
> really a lot of work to make sure that your mail gets delivered
> everywhere and to make sure that spam is effectively filtered.

It used to work fine before so many people started the assume-you-
are-a-spammer-until-proved-innocent thing.

I hate spam as much as the next guy, but not being able to
contact people is orders of magnitude worse.

>> Web mail SUCKS.

> I think that's subjective.

OK, it is subjective. Web mail is SLOW SLOW SLOW.
Editing is a nightmare. Editing in an emacs text window
and then copy-and-paste into browser window helps, but is
still problematic. Having some company reading your mail
is evil. And you have to copy any info you want to save
back to your own computer bacause who knows when the
webmail will fail.

Webmail is a nice option to have and if you like it great.
But being forced to use it when you hate it sucks.

The discussion here is depressing.

"Get a *real* ISP."
What if there isn't one available?

"Get a business account, not a residential one."
Residential accounts need to send and receive email too.

"Spend more money for some_feature/T1 line/whatever."
Not everyone has Warren Buffet's bank account.

"Use web mail."
Web mail SUCKS.

"Have google handle your email."
And read it and sell you out to everyone.

BTW, news flash for those of you that think google has good
anti-spam. They don't. They false positive legit email
as spam.

"Get a static IP"
Shouldn't matter.

"Residential accounts can't run servers."
a) Why the hell not? server != business
b) *OUT*bound port 25 is a client, not a server.

"You might be a spammer."
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
You guys whine about the TSA thinking you might be a terrorist,
but assuming you are a spammer until proven guilty (or paying
big bucks for some "business" feature) is ok? There is a word
for that: hipocrit.

Yeah the original complaint is about a business, but the problem
is even worse for individuals.

The single line method is evil. It removes choice
from the customer. I want to avoid the cashiers
that insist on putting canned soup on top of
bread and eggs. (and get upset if you start bagging your own)
I avoid stores that use the single line method.

> Everyone who tried to do something useful in APL, put up your hand.

APL is a wonderful language.

> Restricting digital storage to ones and zeros is needlessly polarizing
> and limiting. Why not allow a 0.5 bit value?

Word is the Russians tried to build trinary computers but the
magnetic cores wouldn't stay unmagnetized.

My stupid keyboard has redundant keys for the digits and a few others,
but no Umlaut, no Eszett and no Greek letters. Who designs this crap?

Some things can't even handle plain ASCII. Can anyone explain how
to google for "DVD-RW" or for "DVD+RW" without getting a gazillion
false hits? Google would be *so* much more useful it it handled
regular expressions.

> And FreeBSD has its own effort for that as well.

Could you point me toward this effort please?

Unix grew up on machines where CPU was nearly
always the bottleneck. But over the years CPUs
have increased in speed more than i/o has, so
now i/o is often the bottleneck.

I am convinced that a process that generates
data faster than a device can sink it will
fill up memory, starving other processes.

BTW, most web forums provide a way to send
someone a "private message", but I can't find
one on slashdot. Does /. have a similar facility,
or if not, why not?

I'm running 10 hard drives, most of them have been
upgraded to 2 GB. The expansion slots are all
full, so no more controller cards. I need a *lot*
more storage space. (SATA port multipliers look
promising, but can't find much in the way of
reviews, or actual user experience.) They are
just now coming out with 3 TB drives, hopefully
the prices will come down in a few months like
they usually do. But still way too small, I need
more like 100 TB per drive. Those itsy bitsy
SSDs might be okay for a laptop (that might get
dropped) with insignificant amounts of data,
but not for serious amounts of data that needs
cost effective storage.

>> Maybe even with the IBM logo added to make that clear
> Either that or they weren't immune to product placement in the 50's

Check out _Ozzie_and_Harriet_ pushing Coke, or
_I_Love_Lucy_ pushing cigarettes.

For most applications, wired mics are better than
wireless. Sometimes the wire is even a feature.
What would Roger Daltrey do with a wireless mic?

The real problem is overpopulation.

What is the FCC's excuse for censorship now that they have killed
off analog TV and thus all TVs have the V-chip?

Even medical education shows have everything blurred out.

Violence is offensive.

American football is violent and therefore offensive.

Janet Jackson is offensive with or without a "costume malfunction".

Nearly everything coming out of a politicion's mouth is offensive,
but they are constantly on the news.

Beam me up, Scotty, the USA has "jumped the shark".

Is anyone working on reverse engineering UVD?
AMD/ATI is really dragging their feet on documenting UVD. :-(

The problem with nukes is that people have this tendendacy to
make mistakes. Make a mistake with with a windmill or solar
and you might hurt yourself and a co-worker or two. Make a
mistake with a nuke and the entire world suffers. After
Chernobyl there was radioactive fallout in the continental
United States. Go look at a map and see how far away the US
is from Chernobyl. And the problem doesn't go away in a few
days, either. Germany still has problems from Chernobyl,
over 24 years later:
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100729-28819.html

Have we learned anything in the last 24 years? BP's
problems repairing a simple plumbing leak say no.