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Quickies

Quickiefest 2000 80

Posted by emmett from the lawyers-guns-and-money dept.
Feign Ram wrote in to tell us about cool Gnome screen shots for PDAs and mobile phones. An Anonymous Coward wrote in with a webpage devoted to the rules of Shotgun. atomic212 shared the news about Claudia Schiffer's Palm Pilot." JohndaBuddhist wrote in about Eric Idle's tour, where he sings hits from the Monty Python days. I went to this, and it ruled. Dungeon Dweller told us about Search Bastard. jpbelang wrote in about the scientific destruction of a Magic 8-Ball. Scott shared a good article called Deciphering Anime over at Mediajunkies. thegrommit told us about the Star Wars telnet client for Windows. Anonymous Squonk told us about SearchSpell, a typo search database. Another Anonymous Coward wrote in about a Hoverboard at Future Horizons. I'm still waiting for my flux capacitor. Neuroprophet gave us a link to Mike "Head writer of MST3K" Nelson's article for The Philanthropy Roundtable.
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Quickiefest 2000 More

Quickiefest 2000

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  • I don't like these Quickiefests. (Score:3)

    by Chiasmus_ ( 171285 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @12:03PM (#985004) Journal
    As I mentioned in the subject line, I don't like these Quickiefests. Many of you are probably wondering, "Why doesn't Chiasmus_ like these Quickiefests? I think they're a fun way to get a lot of worthless information at once." Fortunately, I have reasons.

    1. Without any coherent topic for discussion, the responses tend to be more than 75% trolls.

    2. Because of this, moderators get frustrated, because they want to moderate something up, which brings in all the karma whores who post six worthless paragraphs on any given quickie.

    3. Any topic which doesn't deserve a coherent discussion doesn't belong on Slashdot anyway.

    4. Quickies are usually mind-numbingly stupid, like that "eight ball" thing that's been on the internet for six years.

    5. If we're going to have trollfest discussions anyway, can't you at least include links to some Natalie Portman sites?

    6. Signal 11 is guaranteed to post at least one rambling message or bad joke for each quickie.

    Those are my six reasons that this discussion is worthless and nobody, including me, should post to it.
  • Sure the about page was kinda funny, but the search was worthless...just searched one of those dmoz.org direcotories.

  • Re:I don't like these Quickiefests. (Score:3)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @12:05PM (#985006)
    I've also notice that some people post the long boring lists during quickies discussions.
  • Too bad that SearchSpell doesn't suggest correction from "then" to "than". I've noticed that many posters would sometimes need help getting that right.

    If you didn't get the point, consider text "Coca-Cola is better then Pepsi."
  • Man, my computer takes about 4 sec to start gnome on a Pent2 400mhz,
    What kind of 386 are you running it on? Of course it will be SLow, but wouldn't you like to say,
    "Hey, Gnome just crashed" While you have your Cell phone in hand?

  • Shotgun! (Score:1)

    by NME ( 36282 )
    Our rule was that you could trump the person calling shotgun by saying, "That's not how we call it around here." and then taking it by force.

    -nme!

  • Shotgun Stories From the Real World (Score:4)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @01:56PM (#985010) Homepage
    Ahh, things are always more obvious than they appear. Just the other day, my coworkers and I were talking about the 'mysterious' web site which had the rules of Shotgun. Now we have our guide.

    See, for the people in my office, calling Shotgun is a ritual. Most often, it is called in the form of 'Shotgun! I rule!" (similar to the oldie-but-goodie prayer, "God bless this food, amen, eat!" Shotgun is a battle of wits, not just of skill, for many of us are getting older and doing more and more things, and it is sometimes difficult to remember to call Shotgun when leaving the building for a quick lunch trip. Some of us are better than others. I just returned to this company after being away for school. The hunters had separated themselves from the gatherers, but now I've disturbed the mix (nothing trains you for Shotgun quite like college).

    Some rules are missing, though. Listed below are a few of the rules that we throw into the mix.

    The False Shotgun
    This is similar to a false start. The person calls Shotgun without realizing that the group isn't driving anywhere. Punishment can be anything from a slight razzing to a full-blown beating.

    Everyone Must Be Together
    While not everyone must hear, everyone must be in a group together. That means that while some people are coming up from the bottom floor and the others are coming down from the top floor, you can't call Shotgun.

    Best Two Out Of Three
    If Shotgun must be decided using Rock/Scissors/Paper, you must win two out of three. It's too easy to get lucky in RSP (despite what some coworkers might think of their RSP skills).

    Victory Dance
    While not quite a rule of Shotgun, it has become custom to celebrate shortly the victory of Shotgun. This is most often done by throwing both arms in the air while shouting, "I rule!" but can also be represented by finger pointing, cries of "Old man too slow!" or running and jumping.

    Anyway, Shotgun is definitely one of the great amateur sports on the planet (and for those with the strictest of definitions of sport, yes, you can get killed playing Shotgun, especially if you throw in the 'everyone must be outside' rule).
  • The beauty of searchspell is that I can fix things like this as soon as they are brought to my attention. "than" is now a suggested option for this search, but unfortunately still not number one (because "then" is a pretty common word in itself) I'll start working on phrase analysis in phase three, after a bit more algorithm tweaking. That will mean a massive increase in database size though, so I'll need a bit more muscle. But thanks to everybody who's slashdotted my site, I have a ton of data to analyze first. Does anyone know how well MySQL performs on databases of over 20GB? - Joe Petrow http://www.searchspell.com

  • Disablity issues (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Re Hovercraft

    I personally use a manual sports wheelchair to move around in day to day life even though i a, very independent and can stand on my own. One of these would be veryvery usefull for places a wheelchair cannot go (even when the wheelchairee plays basketball and races at a national level).

    I could now go in the forests and stuff with my mates - or even visit places like Egypt (assuming i was allowed in) as sand + wheels != good fun man i need to get one!!!!!

    Good Bye student loan - Hello Hovercraft :o) -borg

  • How did you know it was me?
  • In our variant of shotgun (the International Shotgun Convention), anyone may call shotgun as soon as the driver's body breaks the plane of the door while exiting the building. This takes away the advantage of people waiting outside.

    The most clever shotgun escapade ever, though, was when my evil friend called the driver on his cellphone. The driver and I were going over to pick him up, and called him to let him know. I had shotgun assured. He then called the driver on his cell phone, asked him if we were in the parking lot yet, then asked the driver to hand me the phone, at which time he said "shotgun". Bastard.
  • It's a PII/300 w/ 64 megs. Just running GNOME 1.2 + sawmill with no extra startup programs, other han a few applets.

    It could be because I'm running this from a loopback file on the widoze drive. This sucks, but my dad won't let me re-partition :-(. Defragging actually seemed to make things worse; maybe it marked the file for the end of the drive.

    nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
  • But that exception to the shotgun rules regarding females is definitely not sexist... Women can bitch about it being sexist, but it's ladies first, regardless... It's an insult to a real man's honor to allow anything. Even if the female in question isn't the driver's g/f, she should still be able to overrule shotgun if the driver feels like pimping his wheels, ya know?

    That article on Deciphering Anime is really really good... Point those borderline otaku to it, it should take them over the line, or at least get them to stop thinking of it as 'those cartoons with the big eyes.'
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • The screen shots are 240x320 resolution with colors - so it seems to be WindowsCE based PDA. Although with Gnome being a total bloated piece of software, only Windows CE PDA who have 16 or 32 MB of RAM and RISC CPUs can handle it.
  • We have also created rules favoring the driver...

    The driver decides
    The driver settles any disputes with the shotgun calling (I've seen it get violent).

    The driver my call a Shutgun embargo
    The page calls then shotgun gapers, we call them shotgun whores. When one is a shotgun whore for too long the driver can call a 1 time embargo by saying "Shot gun block", allowing someone else to then call shotgun. If the whore whores too long, then a shotgun embargo can be placed upon the person for the ammount of time specified by the driver.

    I think that sums it up...
  • "It was recently reported that Bill Gates contributed another $5 billion to his already pretty large endowment"

    Hey, we can all be proud of what we have down there, but how many of us can give $5 billion to them?
  • After the whole naked-dancer "No, she's supposed to artistically convey simplicity, really" ad campaign Palm started last year[...]

    Was she naked? I never saw any evidence that she was. All you see in the ad is her bare legs, arms, and shoulders. For all we know, she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit.

    You should blame your own imagination for whatever nudity you think you saw.


    --

  • As it said on the page, its great for configuring cisco routers. So I grabbed it and now the whole NOC is grabbing copies as I type. It certainly has the best idea for a telnet function I've seen in a long time. Good for a laugh.

    Now, if we can only port it over to some unix management stations, this telnet client will rule the day for monitoring the boring log output from some machines. On NT, it eats 100% of the CPU, and it is missing basic VT102 keys to make it useful. But for the price, one can't complain.

    the AC

  • Claudia and my palm (Score:5)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @12:10PM (#985022)
    Just thinking about Claudia turns me into a palm pilot.

    .

    .

    ... (double entendre) ...

    .

    .


    --

  • Look at the bottom of the hovercraft page. Their other products include free energy, time travel, UFOs, and levitation. Wow, these guys must be smart. Maybe they had that smartness gene implanted like that slashdot story yesterday.
    nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
  • You can customize slashdot so that you never have to see quickies again. If you don't like trolls, surf at a higher theshhold.

  • The insults are much less annoying than Advertising

  • After the whole naked-dancer "No, she's supposed to artistically convey simplicity, really" ad campaign Palm started last year, I'm not surprised they're hiring a supermodel to sell their widgets. I know they're trying to tap into the female half of the market, but that was ostensibly why they did the nude woman ads.

    And boy, was that ever a goofy headband. Yikes.

  • Shotgun (Score:1)

    by MrEd ( 60684 )
    Nobody really cares, I know, but I have two additions to the list of shotgun rules:

    Firstly, (and more importantly)

    The Shotgun occupant is responsible for 'Shotgun Duties' such as filling the car at gas station stops, pushing the pedestrian walk light to cheat at intersections, and any other small menial task that requires exiting the vehicle. Shotgun privileges cannot be ursurped by other passengers when the Shotgun passenger is performing these duties.

    Secondly,

    In a situation with two passengers traveling to and from one location, the Shotgun privileges are to be split between them, one riding on the way there, one on the way back.

    These two rules help to equalize the difference between passenger seats... especially important when you have a shitty car with miniscule back seats.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Try Again

  • Shotgun Special Cases (Score:3)

    by Skankmofo ( 12963 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @03:23PM (#985030) Homepage
    These were not mentioned in the link, and are posted in my car for passenger reference:

    The driver has final say in all ties and disputes. The driver has the
    right to suspend or remove all shotgun privileges from one or more
    persons.

    Special Cases

    These special exceptions to the rules should be considered in the order
    presented; the case listed first will take precedence over any of the
    cases beneath it, when applicable.

    1. In the instance that the normal driver of a vehicle is drunk or
    otherwise unable to perform their duties as driver, then he/she is
    automatically given Shotgun.

    2. If the instance that the person who actually owns the vehicle is not
    driving, then he/she is automatically given Shotgun, unless they decline.

    3. In the instance the the driver's spouse, lover, partner, or hired
    prostitute for the evening is going to accompany the group, he/she is
    automatically given Shotgun, unless they decline.

    4. In the instance that one of the passengers may become so ill during
    the course of the journey that the other occupants feel he/she will toss
    their cookies, then the ill person should be given Shotgun to make
    appropriate use of the window.

    5. In the instance that only one person knows how to get to a given
    location and this person is not the driver, then as the designated
    navigator for the group they automatically get Shotgun, unless they
    decline.

    6. In the instance that one of the occupants is too wide or tall to fit
    comfortably in the back seat, then the driver may show mercy and award
    Shotgun to the genetic misfit. Alternatively, the driver and other
    passengers may continually taunt the poor fellow as they make a three
    hour trip with him crammed in the back.

    The Survival of the Fittest Rule

    1. If the driver so wishes, he/she may institute the Survival of the
    Fittest Rule     on the process of calling Shotgun. In this case all rules
    are suspended and the passenger seat is occupied by
    whoever can take it by force.

    2. The driver must announce the institution of the Survival of the
    Fittest Rule     with reasonable warning to all passengers.
    This clause reduces the amount of blood lost by passengers and
    the damage done to the vehicle.

  • Future Horizons [futurehorizons.net] is a total ripoff of yet another company, Information Unlimited [amazing1.com] ( even I laugh out loud when I visit either of their sites ).

    But then again, they've had that "taser" that ionizes air to allow the transmission of electricity through air for a 2 years. And that's been verified. You never know...

    -----------------------------

  • I've fallen off a snowboard going faster than that, but I still do it.
  • So now I'm free to pursue development of an "open source" 8-Ball!

    I'll promote it with the tagline GNU-Eight-Ball - the original Blue Screen of Death

    I could use one of those transparent Christmas Tree ornament, some blue dish soap, a D&D die and anti-Microsoft slogans on each die surface....
  • Well, I should restate that in the name of political correctness, less I be slaughtered by the moderators.

    It may not be a rip off, but I've seen I.U. around for quite a while, while this company is a general newcomer, with a less than spectacular bussiness approach. Just covering my ass...

    -----------------------------

  • http://www.futurehorizons.net/saber.htm
    These look like they're just neon lights with a hand grip...
  • This is just ubercool. I also noticed they refered to themselves as a Helixcode and Eazel sister-company, which I interpret as a way of saying that they are serious on using the GPL instead of a lame OpenSource license.
    Wonder when I can get this for my PalmPilot :)
  • Nope, it's not software. The DMCA doesn't apply.

    --

  • Posted by 11223:

    Maybe it's an X-server problem - are you running XFree 3.3.x or 4.0? That's about how long GNOME takes to start on my SPARCStation 20.
  • Does anyone know what the mysterious anesthetizing blue liquid is? I think something a little more scientific (and intelligent) than a taste test is in order. Anyone?

    --

  • Your second rule was implicitly stated in the official rules, and your first rule is implied by the second. Your third rule is merely a slight variation on the rule about the driver's girlfriend.

    Your remaining rules, however, should be considered for inclusion on the official site.

    --

  • article [philanthro...dtable.org]

    Informative!
  • ... what PDA is this going to run on?

    seanmeister
  • Dunno... Saw on cad-fu [cadfu.com] people talking about the video games using Java on cell phones. I'm not convinced that these have real usability, though?!
  • It's always been important to me to have all of my electronic accessories (Palmtop, cell-phone, pager) match each other, and match my clothes... not.

    But then again, I've always been a fashion monger... not.
  • Since only 3 cities remain I hope all those who didn't know the Nudge-Nudge Rap was coming to town live in those few areas who have yet to be visited. How did you like it TO? From what I heard the Chicago and Washington, D.C. (the one I attended) performances were by far the best, the former because his family and kids were in attendence and the latter because we were filmed and got to watch the pickups. BTW, were any other cities filmed? Anyway if you haven't, go see it! It rocks!!!

    Be Seeing You,

    Jeffrey.
  • Put your hands in plain sight! Onanism is a SIN! Yes, a SIN against GHOD, I tell you!

    Seriously, that was the first thing that popped in to my head too. You beat me to it. :)

  • Re:Hmm... (Score:2)

    by tew ( 6080 )
    My sources say no.
  • But see...
    That's what makes slashdot great! All the sortof meta-data / overhead. It wouldn't be slashdot without trolls lurking under the -1 bridge, and mindelss quickies and whatnot.
    Otherwise this place would just be cnn.com, or worse, cnet... Quickies [and more recently, slashback] are good places to concentrate this meta-data stuff.


    So, the worth of this discussion is, uh, qualitative, not quantitative.
  • Now, there's no denying that his songs from Python are funny as hell, but he doesn't exactly have the most pleasant singing voice, and enthusiasm for the songs only carries it so far. :)

  • Haiku (Score:4)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Wednesday June 21, 2000 @12:39PM (#985050) Journal
    Slashdot users drool
    A quickie would be best with
    Claudia Schiffer
  • The thing described by the article is nothing but a conventional hovercraft in a somewhat reduced form factor, and it has very little to do with the nifty things os Back To The Future.

    However, real geeks' hoverboards are hinted at here [amazing1.com]. They are solid state devices, based on magnetic confinement of ionized air to form the air cushion. It might draw too much current to be practical, though. Anyway, I'm drooling on these to become practical, as they would be infinitely more k3w1 than the bulky hovercraft thingies.

  • Feign Ram wrote in to tell us about cool Gnome screen shots for PDAs and mobile phones.

    Why would you want screenshots of GNOME on a PDA or mobile phone?

    :-)

    ---

  • Re:Hmm... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Reverse engenieering of a Magic 8-Ball eh? Isn't that illegal?
    Right, but "reverse engineering" the "magic" 8-ball well into the wee hours of the morning has helped me cope with the drudgery of work and family many a time.
  • Hey are you in a Band?

    eeauw blech! I'll take the clam juice. Yoink!
    --

  • This thing doesn't run high enough off the ground to "run over you"... it'd just bump into you. But even if it DID run over you, so what? Your hair would get messed up. It's all just air under there.
  • I CALLED SHOTGUN FIRST!!

    The lameness filter it lame, as are all filters. I meant to post that comment in all caps, because you're require to YELL Shotgun.

  • Senario time...
    You start going sideway down a hill....you can't stop. You hit a large rock (taller then the height of the board), and it flips on top of you. Wouldn't this hurt?
    And my point was more along the lines of...if it got away from you...it could be damaged, or lost...
  • "This left him and the occupants of his wagon susceptible to sneak attacks from Indians and the subsequent scalpings that would result."
    "Defending against bandits is no longer the priority of Shotgun however"

    So was the original shotgun position to fight off indians or bandits? Or just indian bandits?

    Tsk tsk... Bit sloppy of them I'd say. Otherwise, good page. Now I can direct people here when they try to steal shotgun from me.
  • Ya know I heard a rumor the Claudia is leaving that magician guy Doug Henning [doughenning.com] I think. And is going to marry a Barry Brains. She is going to keep her name but hyphenate with his, Claudia Schiffer-Brains.
    hahahahaha
    --
  • We actually have something similar at school. In fact, I have a copy of the plans somewhere. All you need is a piece of plywood, a tarp, and duct tape and the ability to cut holes. Oh, and the motor out of a shop vac. If I get around to it I'll put them up on a website. They're really fun, and but hard to control. I was going to try to modify the plans to add some sort of fan propeller. We'll see.
    --
  • Maybe try to use the fastVram X option?
  • Bah...

    Niftyness.com [udel.edu]

    is better than most of these... -GS
  • I can't seem to get a copy that isn't a corrupted zip file.
    Anyone else having this problem?

  • X 4.0, with a 3DLabs Permedia 2.

    Oh well, as long as I just run straight sawmill, I probably can liv with it.
    nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
  • ... or watered-down ink. If you've ever made the mistake of putting the wrong end of a leaky ball-point pen in your mouth, you'd notice that the ink has roughly the same properties they describe.
    - It tastes terrible.
    - It makes your tongue numb.
    - It STAINS.

    I'm not so sure about the headache part. Perhaps that's more of a psychological effect of tasting an unknown substance.

    LouZiffer

  • Posted by 11223:

    How's e on your system? Tried KDE1.91 (it's sweet)? Considered buying an Accelerated-X driver for your card? I've had problems with Permedia 2 cards and XFree.
  • did you check out the lightsabers? At http://www.futurehorizons.net/saber.htm [futurehorizons.net] . Also you can buy anti gravity ships. Oh my. And learn all about new age medicine. Hmm, yeah I'll really get on that hoverboard now......
  • e? hahahahaha. The one possible thing that could be worse than sawmill+gnome is e+gnome.

    I might try kde someday, I dunno. I doubt the problem is with gnome.

    Accelerated X might help, but it's non-free. I'll look things up and see if anyone else has had problems with Permedia 2 under X.

    Hey, thanks for all your help.
    nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
  • I've always wanted Cladia to recommend a palm computer for me, that's why I've held off buying one.

    Lord know's I don't want an informed opinion to delude my consumers dollar!!

  • Actually, if you took the hoverboard, and made it into a small hover-go-cart... that would be cool... at 20 MPH (32 km/h) that would kick pretty nicely...
  • GNOME on a cell phone?? Can you say slow? I thought you could.

    Seriously, GNOME is my favorite desktop and all that, but even on my home computer with fairly decent speed, it takes upwards of 15 seconds to start up.
    nuclear cia fbi spy password code encrypt president bomb
  • Just wait till PETE (people for the ethical treatment of eightballs) gets a look at this. Of course, after they're done litigating the hell out of PETE.org (People for the Evisceration and Taxedermy of eightballs).

  • Re:Schiffer hawking Palms (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They should use the supermodels to demonstrate just how small the pilot really is.

    'Look, it even fits in here'
  • I mean, back in the 70's it was predicting the nature of software in the 90's-- "Outlook not so good".

    *rimshot*

  • FYI, I found the link on Opengl.org [opengl.org] - shouldn't be too difficult to port it over to a *nix box if you can get the source.
  • > 3. Any topic which doesn't deserve a coherent discussion doesn't belong on Slashdot anyway.

    Im curious.... what, in YOUR opinion, DOES 'belong' on Slashdot?

    I tend to think whatever 'the compound <tm>' in Michigan thinks is 'sweet <tm>' belongs here.. :) but i may be wrong
  • Let's see... you enter some figures on the screen, you pull the string attached to the back of the Palm to wind up the motor, and get funny answers like:

    "Hehehe, I hate math. It's soooo hard...."* [hawken.edu]


  • Oops, maybe they should passwd protect this ?

    www.claudiaschiffer.com/stats

    Christopher McCrory
    Lead Bithead, Netus Inc.
    chrismcc@netus.com
    admin@netus.com
  • I have an ad that was used for a "sexuality in advertising" presentation, it's got that dancer, back to the camera sitting, palm pilot in her hands (which are on the floor by her butt) covering her crack, and underneath it says:

    Simply Palm.

    It's really a pretty picture, if it wasn't such a piece of corperate art . . . get rid of the palm, put something else there, ya know.

    Anywho, it's a nekkid chick.

    later

  • Actually, a streamlined OS can make things pretty fast. They already have Linux running on a Compaq iPaq, which is a 206Mhz StrongARM CPU based PDA with a CPU that runs more efficiently than the x86 instructions set of a Pentium III 300 Mhz!

    More information about installing Linux on a Compaq iPaq is at:
    http://www.handhelds.org/Com paq/iPAQH3600/install.html [handhelds.org]

    (This is an early release of Linux - this site is actually hosted by Compaq, who recently released full hardware specs on the iPaq including low level registers and ports, making their iPaq an attractive "open" platform to program on)

    There are pictures of the iPaq:
    http://www.compaq.com/products/h andhelds/pocketpc/ [compaq.com]

    The iPaq is a PocketPC with flash ROM - you can actually replace WinCE with a PDA version of Linux. The screenshots of Gnome are 320x240 - so you probably could install Gnome on this Compaq iPaq PDA sometime in the near future.

  • Your snowboard prolly isn't a $1,400(US) , 2 ton truck
  • Reverse engenieering of a Magic 8-Ball eh? Isn't that illegal?
  • That hoverboard (watched the movie clips) looks pretty cool...and I would love to have one. But I don't think it is safe enough to operate. First off, if you fall off what stops the machine? And further more, what stops it from running over you?
    You could lose your balance quickly on these. The guys riding them didn't look like they had much balance or control either...just a bit.

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