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Quickies

Don't Believe The Quickies 108

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-takes-a-nation-of-quickies dept.
Gleb sent us an IETF draft for electricity over IP (yeah it's old, but it's funny). dbcooper noticed that New Scientist mentioned a kit spaceship for $500k. Oh, and here's some (warning! Over 18 and over!) Odd Javascript that I can't even begin to describe, but it's so odd that I just had to share it. l@ps@n pointed out some Star Wars Origami that is actually pretty sweet. Mr. Fusion urges us to fry that Voodoo3 with two neon sign transformers and watch the fireworks. Phrogman noted that SpaceRef has posted some amazing time-lapse movies assembled from the Hubble space telescope showing stars blowing gas (insert joke here). zenray notd that this month's SC Magazine does a market survey about tools needed to do a forensics-quality copy of disk drives. Basically the requirement is to be an exact byte-for-byte copy; 'dd' gets their BEST BUY award. Congrats! mommydearest wrote in to plug that Ultimate Chaos is hosting the Ultimate AOL CD Invention contest here (grand prize is an IDE RAID controller!). Best I ever came up with was wallpaper (during my cubist period I filled up a wall). An anonymous reader found the x10-men which ain't exactly X10, and it ain't exactly X-Men, but it is truly frightening. And finally, what with election coming up and all, it's a good thing that LafinJack wrote in to let us know that Joe Leiberman and Dick Cheney have joined the ranks of political quake 3 skins available. Taunt and kill them before doing so becomes treason!
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Don't Believe The Quickies More

Don't Believe The Quickies

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  • I'm wondering about the legal rational behind this. Is there actually a law that says you can't depict your pres/veep getting killed or something? It seems to me like this is a pretty obvious first amendment issue. I would consider a quake skin of the president to be a form of satire which should be protected along with all other fun offensive-to-the-government stuff like political cartoons.

    But in this day and age, who knows.

    Nick

  • dd (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    Disk Duplicator

    Who woulda thunk it?

    ...if you don't like dd, you're probably just bitter about paying for GHOST... :)

    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Joe Leiberman and Dick Cheney have joined the ranks of political quake 3 skins available. Taunt and kill them before doing so becomes treason!

    This would be, of course, unconstitutional, and not just because of the 1st amendment. Article III Section 3 reads in part: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Unless Quake3-skin makers constitute their own sovereign state external to the United States, it could not be construed as treason. What's more, under that same clause, you'd either have to confess openly in court, or be convicted on the testimony of two witnesses to the act. So, if you frag alone in the dark, you're safe.

    And if you're considering whether this is not on topic, ask yourself, "What exactly is on topic in Quickies articles?"

  • AOL Disks (Score:4)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:14PM (#755002) Journal
    Back Before AOL even had the cds we had a contest where we took all of the old AOL disks and gave them to schools. The program was called Floppies for kiddies. You really should check it out. Look for it on Google
  • I always wanted to build a parabolic mirror out of AOL CDs with the sole function of melting all future AOL CDs.

    Wonder how that would fare in the contest :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Warning: Odd Javascript is R-rated (Score:3)

    by Wench ( 9309 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:16PM (#755005) Journal
    A small warning in the text would have helped.

    I didn't really want a bunch of naked chicks bouncing around on my screen here at work. Or in fact even at home, though I do appreciate the javascript artistry. Now if they were naked Ian Thorpes, you would have another story for the home choice...

  • My heart skipped a beat when I saw the star movies. I think it's awesome that we have been looking long enough and hard enough that we can start to put things like this together. It really makes these things seem 'real' in a way that static images cannot.

    -josh

  • TV Code (Score:1)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    You must have Javascript enabled to see what's happening here. You must be 18 months of age or older, capable of moving the mouse around on the screen. You must be able to see graphics. You must be Buddhist. You must know your mother's maiden name and the last four digits of your social security number. You must not have ever seen a full episode of Beverly Hills 90210 or any of its clones (eg: Full House, Empty Nest, or Barbarella). You must agree to our Privacy Statement and agree that DoubleClick.Net owns your soul. You must not think impure thoughts or read bad books.

    I fail on several points, which is probably why the thing doesn't work for me. Anybody know the Javascript code for detecting trash-TV viewers?

    __________

  • Oh, and here's some (warning! Over 18 and over!) Odd Javascript that I can't even begin to describe...

    um...
  • Alright, so those're pretty cool. But, from someone who's been folding for most of his existance, Joseph Wu's Origami Page [vancouver.bc.ca] still is among the greatest, and has what might be the greatest X-Wing Model [vancouver.bc.ca] (2 notes: 1, it's a .pdf file, 2, it's the "Chi-Wing Fighter" to avoid copyright infringement, no relation to the starship we know). There's no limit to what one can do with a square of paper (and people are pushing that limit [zork.net] (yet another note, warning, adult content) all the time...
  • That would be committing a hate crime, but go ahead and blast the brains out of the Cheney Q3 model.
  • Hey, that changed quick! Thanks dudes!
  • The first person to post a version of the javascript page [dyndns.org] that works [netscape.net] in Mozilla gets a cookie [doubleclick.com]! Bonus points if you make it still work in Netscape 4 [netscape.net]!

    --

  • You should see some of the parody pages that Bush has (www.gwbush.com [gwbush.com], look at the listing of parody sites on the page). He tried to have the sites pulled, and is talking about there being 'limits to freedom' and calling for registration of all political websites.

    Now, that's actually scary. If this man gets elected, it just might become law.
  • "The ship will use engines made from ceramic materials and burn a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen, generating a maximum 3g of thrust."

    3 grams? I'm impressed...

  • What I'm trying to figure out is... (Score:4)

    by jesser ( 77961 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:25PM (#755015) Homepage Journal
    how do you click the thumbnails if they keep moving around?

    --

  • You must not think
    impure thoughts [...]

    Kinda tough with all those naked girls bouncing around the screen, don't you think?
  • Ok. The javascript thing is slashdotted so I'll probably never know why I have to be 18. (I'm not.) AND, I had a chance at winning the AOL CD contest, but knowing slashdot someone'll probably make a webserver made entirely out of CDs and destroy any chances I have. Slashdot sucks.

    -----

  • Well, it wouldn't be treason. But what the author is talking about is the 1917 law which made threats directed toward the President a federal violation.

    I don't think the Secret Service (who would be the ones investigating such threats) would consider Q3 skins to be an actual physical threat...

  • And it's a "Linux command," no less! And here I thought dd(1) predated Linux by a decade or so...

  • Re:TV Code (Score:4)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:36PM (#755020)
    You must have Javascript enabled to see what's happening here. You must be 18 months of age or older...

    Hmmm, I definitely qualify for the age requirement, considering I'm 257 months of age.

    Plus, we get the awesome warning from CmdrTaco, too:

    (warning! Over 18 and over!)

    Whee! Reminds me of Airplane!

    Man: "Gentlemen, I'd like you to meet your Captain. Captain Over."
    Clarence: "Gentlemen, welcome aboard."
    Man: "Captain, your navigator Mr Unger and your first officer Mr Dunn."

    Clarence: "Unger."
    Unger: "Over."
    Dunn: "Over."
    Clarence: "Dunn!"

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Anyone have a pole pig they can try that voodoo 3 stunt with? Now THAT will make a spark!
  • Oh boy this rocks.. I happen to have about 10000 (actual number) aol cds sitting in my living room in huge cardboard boxes.

    If you call the AOL 800 number and ask to talk to someone in charge of distrubuting disk and tell them that you have a store. They will send you HUGE boxes of them. And they ship them priorty mail too. My roommate and i were going to wall paper our living room in them (shiney side up of course)

    http://jonsnews.blogspot.com

    my slashdot of weird stuff that I find

  • I have a huge pile of AOL cds... Hey, lets built a battlebot!

    --cr@ckwhore

  • Re:dd (Score:2)

    by pb ( 1020 )
    dd *is* a Linux command; (c)1999, FSF.

    Just because it was *also* one of those original Unix commands... well, Unix is used to namespace collisions. However, I'm sure any Unix purist would agree that the Linux command ls (GNU ls, that is) isn't Unix ls. Therefore, it's a Linux command.

    (or, if you're RMS, a GNU/Linux command? Possibly a Linux GNU Userland Command? LGUC? Nah... just a Linux command; forget RMS, he doesn't understand about convenience and common usage in language at all. And if he rants one more time about it, I'm going to start calling him GNU/RMS, and start asking him for DNA samples so we can do research, and contribute the changes back...)

    But you're right, that *is* confusing. Maybe we should start a dd FAQ, in the spirit of the Pong FAQ [classicgaming.com]...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • Re:dd (Score:1)

    by cfish ( 61161 )
    i got a SuSE 6.4 and the man page for "dd" says,

    GNU fileutils 4.0 November 1998

    ... where is it in the kernel code, can you point out?

  • Re:GAH and Mirror Available (Score:4)

    by Tairan ( 167707 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:46PM (#755026) Homepage
    Mirror over at http://www.johncglass.com/mirror/ mousetest.htm [johncglass.com]

  • *sigh*

    Please read my post again, and smack yourself for me.

    Especially the parts about "GNU", "RMS", and "common usage".

    If you aren't unconscious by now, understand that in the common usage of the English language as regards this subject, everything in a "Linux distribution" will henceforth be referred to as "Linux" whether you like it or not. People will call Redhat 7, X, SuSE and ls "Linux". And they won't call Redhat 7 "Redhat 7.0", either. And no one will pronounce either "Linux" or "either" the same, either. Ha ha ha.

    Okay? Are we done yet?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

  • My name is tbo... (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @03:51PM (#755028) Journal
    ...and I've never received an AOL CD in my life *sob*. I've begged friends to give me theirs, not so that I could actually sign up, but so I wouldn't feel different, but it just isn't the same. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but I just hope Steve Case is happy.
  • Now I've seen it all!
  • "Ultimate Chaos is hosting the Ultimate AOL CD Invention contest here (grand prize is an IDE RAID controller!)"

    Wow! I'm so glad they're giving out such an apropos prize for the competition. I mean, with IDE RAID, I can finally get the data mirroring capabilties of SCSI.. without the ability to have more than two devices per channel, the speed, nor the reliability. Now I can use those amazingly reliable Maxtor harddrives to make two of their 40gb drives into one, big 80gb drive!

    Kinda like how AOL gives you connections to other people, without all that Internet stuff you'll never use.

    Thank you, Ultimate Chaos!

    (PS: irony [dictionary.com] is a key factor in this post. Everyone should get a certain amount of it in their daily diet.)
    --
  • The program was called Floppies for kiddies

    No thanks, I won't be searching for that. Sounds like an attempt to take me to a NAMBLA page or something!
  • You can be your favorite slashdot personality.
    Which would uou be?
  • Wow. This is a feat that's harder than hiding from the IRS, the RIAA, the MPAA, and annoying telemarketers. And you want to undo this miracle? :-)

    Actually...that would be pretty easy. Just e-mail your request to this address [mailto]. He'll be glad to send you a few.

  • You can only commit treason if you are a government employee. So if a CIA agent decides to leave a packet containing nuclear secrets at my doorstep and I ring up the Libya Embassy and say "Hey guys, guess what I just found!" ... The CIA guy gets the chair, not me. Instead, I'd probably be nailed under one of the new (and stupid) 'terrorism' acts that congress passed. And if by some quirk of fate there is no law, they'll just charge me with something bogus and then as soon as I show up for court, find me in contempt of court and throw me in jail for life (Yes, they really can do this).

    --

  • But what about the children in Columbine being secretly and subtly trained by the evil, evil gaming industry to prepare for the overthrow of the US Government? That's what these skins are about! You think kids will know the difference between a skin and an elected official?!

    Mr Katz? Where are you?!?

  • From the Jargon file [slashdot.org]:
    [Unix: from IBM
    JCL [slashdot.org] ] Equivalent to cat [slashdot.org] or BLT [slashdot.org] . Originally the name of a Unix copy command with special options suitable for block-oriented devices; it was often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's dd the root partition onto a tape, then use the boot PROM to load it back on to a new disk". The Unix dd(1) was designed with a weird, distinctly non-Unixy keyword option syntax reminiscent of IBM System/360 JCL (which had an elaborate DD `Dataset Definition' specification for I/O devices); though the command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. The jargon usage is now very rare outside Unix sites and now nearly obsolete even there, as dd(1) has been deprecated [slashdot.org] for a long time (though it has no exact replacement). The term has been displaced by BLT [slashdot.org] or simple English `copy'.
  • I prefer to burn my presidents in effigy. (I'm just a little old fashion that way.)
  • How did they do that?

    I went to the page, and my mouse changed into the "waiting" symbol and stayed that way?

    I guess it's just javascript making it look like you've been slashdotted!

  • No need to use Google, the Floppies for Kiddies Recycled Disk Project can be found at floppiesforkiddies.org [floppiesforkiddies.org].
  • "a laptop computer with special software will help the pilot fly the craft."

    There is NO WAY I'll ever put my trust in a standard laptop computer to pilot a spaceship. At my school laptops are standard issue, and the amount of hardware related problems I see every week is enough to steer me away from the thought of laptops in mission-critical situations.

    As for the "special software", I certainly hope it doesn't run on any existing OS, as they're all WAY too unstable. (you can't deny that, Linux zealots ;)

    "The ship will use engines made from ceramic materials and burn a mixture of methane and liquid oxygen,"

    How expensive would this fuel be? I understand that the basic elements are abundant, but surely it would cost a lot to prepare. Anyone have any idea?

  • "You must be 18 months of age or older,"

    Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've found the youngest poster here, at an early age of no more than 17 months!
  • That was Airplane! 2 - The Sequel. The original Airplane! had Captain Clarence Over and Roger Murdock, and Victor (lastname?)4 The exchange went something like this:

    Tower: "You have clearance Clarence"
    Over: "Roger. Clarence has Clearance"
    Murdock: "Huh?"
    Over: "Ok, Roger"
    Murdock: "What's the vector Victor?"

    -
  • 3 * 9.8 Newtons of force. g = 9.8 kg*m/s^2 (N)
  • As well it should! Bad language makes for bad feelings! A bird in the hand gathers no moss, for time is fleeting! A rolling stone is worth two in the bush! Mocking Republicans makes Baby Jesus cry!!
    -----------

  • Re:TV Code (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's the actual quote, courtesy of the IMDB:

    Murdock: "We have clearance, Clarence."

    Clarence Oveur: "Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?"

    Tower voice: "Tower's radio clearance, over!"

    Clarence Oveur: "That's Clarence Oveur! Oveur."

    Tower voice: "Roger."

    Murdock: "Huh?"

    Tower voice: "Roger, over."

    Roger Murdock: "Huh?"

    Captain Oveur: "Huh?"
  • GOsh, this is REALLY a perfect timing. Just as I am about to write a review on proposed book on lambda switching etc. Desperately trying to remain serious.
  • //go.sysin dd *

    Here comes the data!

    /*
    //

    The dd command is *the* major command if one deals with data/tapes. Get a weird tape? Don't know the format? Don't know the block size? Use dd! Byte swapped? conv=swab! Fricking old IBM EBCDIC character set? conv=ascii.

  • As I understand it, treason can be committed by any citizen who undertakes an act of aiding an enemy or acting as an agent of an enemy of the United States in an act of warfare. It may be easier to prove when you're an employee or soldier (depending on what oaths were required), but it's still possible.

  • Re:Treason not possible (Score:3)

    by Wonko the Sane ( 25252 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @04:53PM (#755049) Journal

    If you are talking about the United States:

    Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
    according to the constitution [constitution.org]. I don't know where you get this "You can only commit treason if you are a government employee" unless there is some admendment I don't know about...
  • the laptop wouldnt actually be controlling the craft dumbass. it would be mechanical controls..prolly a joystick or equivalent with the laptop used for navigation and course calculation mainly. just like the shuttle.

  • Kitten design is 18 months from flying (Score:3)

    by meckardt ( 113120 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @04:55PM (#755051) Homepage

    You can read more detailed information about the Kitten over on Jim Hill's business site at ThriftySpace.com [thriftyspace.com]. Cerulean Freight is scrounging for financial backing at the moment, but once they get over this relatively minor hump, I expect they should be able to prove out Kitten pretty quickly.

    But, as you will be able too see over on ThriftySpace.com, the Kitten (which isn't even designed to reach Low Earth Orbit) is just Cerulean Freight's prototype. They expect to produce a working vehicle next called Calico,that would be capable of reaching orbit with a payload of almost two tons. Like the Kitten, it would be able to make quick turnarounds.

    -Mike
    http://meckardt.net [meckardt.net]
    http://orbitalhabitat.com [orbitalhabitat.com]
  • I thought the javascript thing was going to show you the difference between the male and female orgasm, in javascript(it shakes the screen around differently)
  • I'm an idiot, and you can see so if you look at my signature.

  • The laptop wouldn't be used to actually fly the spacecraft. Probably more just to run appropriate map software. But as far as using a laptop in a spacecraft... wasn't it just last week I read about the laptop being used on the space shuttle?

    Fuel... methane, propane, and liquid oxygen, from the ThriftySpace.com web site. The first two are commercially available (natural gas & the stuff you use for bbq's). LOX is a little trickier to handle, but not much worse than any other cryogenic liquid. You may even remember the guy who used to light a bbq [purdue.edu] with liquid oxygen.

  • Everybody always fries hardware and wonders what it is that made it stop working. Well, if you think about it, it stopped working when the chip fizzled and the smoke came out ... so I'm pretty sure that it's smoke that makes chips work. I hear Intel uses some mirrors too!

  • dd -v- encase (Score:3)

    by 10.0.0.1 ( 153985 ) on Monday September 25, 2000 @05:34PM (#755056) Homepage
    The review that gave dd the best buy award really made my day. I actually used dd to make an exact copy of someone's 2.1 gig drive. I was an "expert witness" for the defendant in a civil case.
    The plaintiff's attorney and expert insisted that their tool (encase) was better. They got all boo-boo faced when I booted Red Hat and used a two-letter f'n system utility to do the job of their $1,600 piece of software.
    They spent an hour looking for "some kind of autoexec.bat or config.sys file" to make sure this terrible Linux thingy wasn't erasing their precious evidence.
    So at least one "expert" (heh) agrees with the review.
  • Well it is kinda funny.. but geez what a waste

    JOhn

  • Note it says $10 million to the company that first makes a reusable vehicle, not the first one that makes a safe, reusable, reliable vehicle. One can cut corners to make it reusable and/or for cost that sacrifice safety.

    I'd prefer if the second group that made such a vehicle got a reward instead of the first should the first one neglect any safety issues. One could make a reusable vehicle that works fine via remote control, but has poor airlocks around the people inside of it.

  • By reading this post you agree to send me $500,000 to buy my own spaceship kit. Failure to comply to this agreement is a violation of contract and you will be prosecuted in court.
  • Look closely at the amazing time-lapse movies. The first one is actually becomming some sort of lizzard man. This is really weird......

  • Re:I can not wait for the slashdot skins (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm Bruce Perens, yes I'm the real Perens
    All you other Bruce Perens are just trolling has-bens
    So won't the real Perens please stand up?
    Please stand up, please stand up

    Cuz I'm Bruce Perens, yes I'm the real Perens
    All you other Bruce Perens are just trolling has-bens
    So won't the real Perens please stand up?
    Please stand up, please stand up

  • Yeah, but those nine minutes are pretty cool.

    IMHO, though, the original British version "Robot Wars" is better. They make the robots run through an obstacle course first, and then a knock-stuff-down competition before the three battles begin. You can't win by just making a battle bot, since you have the other stuff to get to first.

    Wow this is getting OT, but oh well. If you're lucky your local PBS station will air Robot Wars. (If you're really lucky you'll live in the UK! <g>)


    --

  • Jargon Lexicon [tuxedo.org] entry: magic smoke [tuxedo.org]

    -- Sig (120 chars) --
    Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
  • Listen, if you think it's unsafe and you don't like that, nobody's forcing you to fly in it.

    Frankly, if I had the chance to fly in the Kitten and my chances of coming back alive were as low as, say, 33%, I'd jump at it like there was no tomorrow (and maybe there wouldn't be). You may like your life to be nice and safe, and that's fine with me, but you have no right to force that on other people.
  • and calling for registration of all political websites.

    Why not? We already let the FEC demand that you register political advocacy and expenditures in other media. Under the current unregistered undiclosed environment, the Big Evil Multinational Megacorps and The Rich could spend as much as they wanted on web sites without getting caught. So Bush isn't advocating anything different for online campaigning than John McCain, Joe Haeglin, Ralph Nader, or Al Gore advocate for all campaigning.

    Of course, one could argue that free speech is important. Unfortunately, Harry Browne doessn't have a chance in hell of getting elected, and everybody else believes that there must be limits on freedom to protect the gullible public from itself.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • I own two high voltage sign transformers, a 15,000 V 30 mA and a 12,000 V 60 mA. Bought them used for less than $10 from a local sign company. I've used them to fry just about everything i can think of. Gummi bears are kind of neat to fry, and still taste good afterwards. When frying electronics i use a pair of high voltage wires i built with alligator clips on the ends. I clip one to the side of the device to be toasted, and wave the other over the equipment to areas that interest me. If you put an arc directly through a capicitor for long enough they sometimes explode. Most components just melt except for chips which you can draw lightning traces in.
  • I'm really upset at your post. It is simply not up to Slashdot grammar standards.
    Don't you think that should have been "votaress" rather than "votary"?

    Thank you very much!
  • Plate mail! Plate mail!
    (don't event think of stealing my idea) ;)
  • Ian Thorpe is only 17. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Child pornography is a crime round these parts.
  • You need to use two hands... and quit jigglin' the mouse like that!
  • I just hope I never see a "Penis Bird Guy" skin.

  • These Modern Times (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So I guess I've been slashdotted. Sorry to y'alls that tried to get to my site earlier this evening when I was being hammered. My web servers are holding up just fine, it's that darn narrow DSL pipe that isn't helping us out.

    The funny thing is, when I figured out why my girlfriend couldn't browse the web anymore, I told her about what a great honor this is, and she's just angry 'cuz she can't check out her own web page chat board! I swear, these webmasters are all so self-centered. She went off in a huff to watch TV, and now she's making fun of me because I'm posting to slashdot.

    Use the mirror, mentioned above, and if you want to do non-MouseTest stuff, try PhiloVivero dot Com [philovivero.com] for a while. I'm moving out of static HTML and into Wiki anyway, so going to my wiki [faemalia.org] and be amazed. Source code at SourceForge.

    In response to some, there are no typos on that page. I really do mean 18 months of age or older. And if you're not buddhist, you can't view the page. Also, if you are considering building a working Star Wars replica spacecraft out of AOL CDs and $500,000, then all restrictions (except the DMCA) don't apply to you!

    --
    Philo Vivero

  • And when I duplicated the partitions, I was able to mount them using the Amiga Fast Filesystem kernel driver. Shweet! I got a really nifty external SCSI drive in exchange for recovering that drive. Now we're waiting for an Amiga emulator with the stuff to play Rocketz.

    dd has been the Swiss Army Chainsaw of Strange Device Recovery for me. I've even made a custom bootfloppy, dd'ed it into an image, scp'ed the image onto my buddie's router with a blank disk sitting in it, and then created the floppy for him all the way across town. Give me two letter UNIX commands any day!

  • [JIM LEHRER]: All right, so we have a bunch of quickies. Today's panel consists of one person: d.valued, a Slashdot-dot-org regular, self described 'Karma whore', and the only person who was close enough to the studios so that we could ask him off the street. Where are the regular persons, you ask? The pundits and newspaper reporters? We had to cut them out for the rest of the election season because the damned Corporation for Public Broadcasting check, bounced! Yes, you cheap bastards, support PBS [pbs.org] and maybe next time we can actually use CAMERAS! [d.valued]: It's good to be here. [JL]: Shut up, start typing, and let's review!
    • Issue 1: Internet over Power Lines.
    Instead of worrying about how slow that 56k modem is in connecting to my porn, err, news sites, now we can save the phones for more important things, like actually talking to people. [d.v]: Uh, I don't like the thought of a T1 that everyone can access. I'll stick with phone lines, or better yet, cable modems! it is illegal to tap a cable line without a high-level-of-proof warrant! : [JL]: Fine, whatever.
    • Issue Two: A Spaceship For A Half-Million? Apparently, it's possible to buy a kit that will let you use methane and liquid oxygen to fly sub-orbitally!
    One nice thing about methane: EVERYONE produces it! Maybe I can swipe a bottle of oxygen and fly to the Caymans and enjoy my offshore accounts! [d.v]: No contest! I'll get you drinks! [JL]: No way. I don't swing that way!
    • Issue Three: Linux is the Best Way To Copy A Disk.
    [d.v]: Please to be reading the laptop. [JL]: "Don't Trust The State"? [d.v]: No, the OTHER one. [JL]: "Linuxgruven." I see. I don't touch Unix with a ten foot pole. [d.v]: Loser. [JL]: Hey, I make the snide remarks!
    • Issue Four: The Presidential Quake Skins: A Threat for the future?
    This skin is another problem with video games in this country! The violence implied with this, uh, 'skin', is obvious: you are to kill the VP's! Another skin - which my sources tell me is 'damned kool', the Republican and Democratic candidates are also targets! [d.v]: You should see my skin. It's Ralph Nader. And NOTHING sticks to him. You should see it against the Republocrats and Democritans. [JL]: Thank God I'm out of time. I have to screw with my social-security check to make sure I can afford HEAT in the studio next week! Good night!
  • Um, at what point are they going to have to come up with a design that would fly? The weight balancing on these is way off, and the elevator surfaces on Calico are completely inadequate and with the required angle of attack are totally blocked off by the body of the vehicle. Not to mention that I've never seen a _square_ leading wing edge before ;) yeesh! Can we see this again when somebody with a shred of instinct has done the drawings? Certainly if you put enough engines on it you can make a brick fly- but if it's designed like these craft 'fly' would roughly mean 'describe a pretty arc connecting the ground (stubbornly) with the ground (violently).

    Can't they at least steal the basic shape of NASA's X-24 lifting body? (the photograph in the article is the X-24, not 'Kitten'!) That flies- their illustrations would not, not if you strapped Shuttle boosters to them.

    Yeesh- I've had my airplane designs recently sassed as 'stoner aerodynamics', but _this_ is _ridiculous_. What would that be then, quaalude aerodynamics? :)

  • Re:Licensed Porn? I'm torn! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If they'd been of Natalie Portman, it'd be a different matter, eh?
  • As for the "special software", I certainly hope it doesn't run on any existing OS, as they're all WAY too unstable. (you can't deny that, Linux zealots ;)

    Umm.. I don't see why a RTOS like Wind River VxWorks or QNX wouldn't be reliable enough for this; they already run things like nuclear power plants (and VxWorks was the OS on the Mars Pathfinder project back in '96.)
  • In the sc review they say: "The dd process consistently failed when the output file reached 2,147,483,647 bytes, just one byte short of 2^31(2,147,648). Then we wrote a script to break the output file into pieces suitable for burning to CD-ROM. "..... Sadly, they did not include this script.

    What you want is:

    dd(1), split(1), and a pipe.

    "Don't bother me. I'm eating."

    For the reverse process you can use cat(1), a pipe, and dd(1).

  • Gee, I thought it was a real nerd joke. The X10 Window System and the X-Men. Like the T-shirts that came out at the same time as the Malcolm X movie, featuring a huge X, and in smaller print "version 11, release 4" and in even smaller print "don't worry, It's a nerd thing".

    Now what is this _other_ X10 thing? They have an particular ugly web side, which made it difficult to see what they were trying to sell.
  • A little bit of an easier way to make a capacitor explode is to simply reverse polarity (obviously electrolytic) and double the voltage. Did this many times in electronics class scaring the living hell out of substitute teachers :)
  • It got the pics from my hdd. Wait! Those are on my unmounted partition!

    Uhhh...shit. I said too much. :)
  • you don't need high voltage to see caps explode. Just plug a tantulum capacitor in backwords at twice it's rated voltage (for sure fire, though they often explode when backwards at rated voltage) and it really is better than a firecracker.
  • X10 is a protocol for controlling appliances via power lines. For example, if your computer was fitted with an X10 interface, you could use it to control any X10-aware devices on the same electrical system; including lightbulbs, toasters, TV's, air conditioners, whatever. Of course, you have to go to the grief of making those devices X10 aware; and usually also installing an isolator so that you can't control your neighbours lights, and he can't control yours.
  • From the AOL disk thingie.
    The submissions must contain at LEAST one AOL CD used creatively. The more you use, however, the better your chances of winning. You can use as many CD?s as you like, but the discs must be the central focus of your project


    Come on! Surely the most creative use of AOL CD's involves the least number of disks.



    I mean really, how much imagination does it take to envisage a 24 foot Yellowfin Tuna made out of hundreds of AOL cd's? But creating a replica of the Eiffel tower out of a single disk? Now that takes imagination!



    The comp. should be the most creative use of the least number of AOL cd's



    The big problem is this approach does not take enough of those nasty silver-ish coasters off the general market



  • You think kids will know the difference between a skin and an elected official?!

    Easy, when you shoot the skinned NPC, the blood comes out red.

    Rich

  • I've seen this javascript effect before at:

    http://drooldonkey.org

    still, it's very cool. The only problem is that this effect runs slow on Celerons. Damn cheap floating point....

  • JeffK from SomethingAwful put together a Flash demo that tells the world about Linux.Oh well, I thought it was funny at least:
    Lunix Falsh [somethingawful.com]


    --------
  • Man frying your video card looks like as much fun as throwing monitors off of four story buildings. Fire is always appreciated and thanks for sharing , good luck on any future projects!

    Ferric the Mysterious God of Suicide
  • Irony, noun, the effect of being made of iron.
    ----
  • You can get a huge metal spike rammed up your (insert oriface here) for free, but nobody is out waiting in line for it.
    (sarcasm) Hmm, I wonder why (/sarcasm)
    ----
  • I also thought of that, it would be excellent. I've got around 100 assorted poxy CDs, some of which are AOL (and I'm not even in America!!!). We've got heaps of sun here in Oz, see how it goes.....
  • As senior web-developer and head programmer of the moustachecounter [f2s.com] open source project, I can tell you that this is a rip off - We tried to attract slashdot attention, but no deal. Obviously you need pictures of nakkid wimen to make your self seen on the /. scene - and I'm truly shocked that geeks actually harbor sexual interests, when they should all be hacking away on some serious stuff.

    I write this postmortum as I have been shot due to a grave programming error that caused the moustachecounter [f2s.com] to malfunction, but that is another story, you see I got distracted by some very intense and explicit footage I found on the Internet.

    ad astra

  • //go.sysin dd *
    Or as we used to sing,

    go.sysin dd *, do dah, do dah.

    --

  • Battlebots suck. [...] Even Barney and Friends has more content.
    Did anybody else here get a sudden flash of Barney being attacked by one of those whirlygig robots and getting turned into shredded upholstery? "I wuv ooo. Ooo wuv meeee." *CLANK*.

    --
  • well the link did however give out his personal info. so I changed the password to plexor and corrected his typos. yeah I did something nice for a troll, go figure.
    begin pun
    I guess I don't believe in karma
    /end pun
  • Marc is one of the best origamists in the country. He is doing a Winnie the Pooh series, and has done the Mos Eisley cantina band. I've seen him as part of a variety show in Minneapolis, where he will take requests from the audience, and fold anything requested. I have never seen him stumped.
  • I still can't get over the fact that the Hubble just magnifies the light that hits the lens and doesn't actually see through space, through all those light YEARS.
  • no, that won't do shit for the landfill.

    the more aol cd's get burned up in this comp, in real big objects, the better...

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