Posts by Demian Phillips 120 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2007
Sportsters were mostly shit.
Now as a BBS sysop I can say that courier modems were good quality product, and the price reflected that.
Unlike every other modem I have ever used, a courier can be interrupted by someone picking up a handset on the modem line and after the handset is placed back on the hook, re-negotiate and continue what it was doing, instead of dripping the connection.
They were not the greatest modem (well maybe for a time when BBS systems used them for interconnects and would get an HST connection) but were good.
It's simply the government hiding the Land that Time Forgot (the whole south atlantic thing is a lie), since it's only accessible via a dangerous submarine ride. On top of that I bet we have some kind of "The Village" level treaty to not screw with the natives. Better to block it out then have thousands of Germans going there to put towels over the nicer bits.
The palet that an IBM rack ships on is not some flimsy cheap bit of junk. Good solid structure bits(6x6 beams I think) and strong thick plywood for the planks (top is a solid board).
I dont see how it could have broken/fell over unless the rack was being held higher then sanity should allow. At over 1200 Lbs. (assuming rack with servers/UPS) I wouldnt have it more then a couple inches off the floow during movement.
The DOJ and FBI have stopped breafing Congress. They claim it is because congress awas leaking information about the case.
Recently I have heard rumors that the anthrax is somehow related to Battelle, a 3.8 Billion dollar a year not for profit (yah right) contractor. They are based in Columbus Ohio.
"Even if their chapatis blow up"
I was unaware of the threat of exploding flat bread. Can you share some information on this? There are a number of Indian resturants in the local high tech/upper class area and we need to keep an eye out for any binary explosive combinations. Beer and Vindaloo are already on the list, so lets keep those food based terrorists under watch before the French get any ideas. Oh damn, they have had Crêpe Suzette technology for over a century.
Novell owns the copyrights to UNIX (thats what the court says).
The trademark UNIX is owned by the Open Group(www.unix.org), they are not The SCO Group or Novell.
Copyrights do not need to be defended to be kept valid (if a known infraction is let continue damages can be affected in court). Trademarks must be defended or they risk falling into common use.
The Diebold voting machines are made by a company that Diebold bought when they wanted to get into the voting racket.
Unfortunately none of the ATM division management seem to have any say or input into the company they bought.
The sadist thing is it uses a MS access database for vote data. No password either I hear.
People who have portable communications devices (who are not doctors) and say it's for emergencies don't do it so that they can be contacted in an emergency. It is so they can contact someone in an emergency.
Not that hard to figure out.
Are you are against turning off phones at the theater and other places where it is rude to disturbe the rest of us as well?
Well it looks like Microsoft can brag about being better at something then Sony. PS2 units die regularly (shit drives mostly) and the most I ever heard someone going through was six of them. The guy actually paid full retail for each one on top of that. IMO crazy.
At least Xbox 360 owners are able to get a free replacement from my windows/office license fees. This puts the losses of xbox (first and 360) at what, around six billion?
Since this is a set of LED, shouldnt they have tried to make them go through the range in order of "coolest" to "hottest" colors?
Orange, purple, light blue, green, blue, red does not IMO lead to a good visual impression of heat.
An order like purple, blue, light blue, green, orange, red IMO is a better progression for showing a rise in temp, you get a rise in color.
A blinding array of white LEDs light should be reserved for when it goes nova.
Well, it appears that this whole of creation is like a paddle ball. And the fundamental thing about paddle ball is you need someone to get it going, otherwise it just sits there and does not do much.
I don’t know where you can put creationism in. I mean I guess someone has to make the paddle, and the ball, and the stringy bit, but the more important thing is whose hand is on the paddle.
Actually you will find that XP (SP2 fullt slipstreamed fresh install) by default turns on autorun for all drive letters.
When you insert a memory stick, USB drive enclosure or anything it will pop up a box and start scanning for media types, and once it thinks it knows what you put in brings up a "What do you want to do every time this is inserted" dialog screen.
I have verified this on OEM and corporate installs.
I believe you can change this with a policy editor, and you can turn it off with the tweakui power toy (if you go into this you will see that it is turned on for all drive letters).
Sometimes the people who rule us do entertain crazy plans.
"Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba (TS),"
Back in the 60's the Joint Chiefs (I think that’s because they smoked a lot of hashish) cooked up an idea to have a civilian flight full of vacationing collage students (dummy) shot down (by our own forces) on it's way to Cuba and claim it sent out a mayday about a Cuban MIG and that it was what shot it down.
Another plan was to attack one of our own naval ships with a full crew, kill them all and blame the Cubans. The idea was Americans would step right in line because Navy personal were lost. As a second option (notice it was not the first or only option) they suggested maybe using a dummy ship might work, but with no service men dead, it would look fishy. So then they say to create fake military personnel and then insult/desecrate Arlington by having fake funerals for fake soldiers who were fake killed to justify a war.
Another idea was to kill boatloads of Cuban refugees (wow talk about kicking people who are down), so much for "Give us your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.".
From the book "Body of Secrets"
"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories like "the CIA did 9/11" (but if anyone can show proof I will listen) but this does sound a bit like recent events.
Evil is not something strictly in the hearts of our enemies, we all have the capacity. What makes the difference is a person’s ability to not act on those impulses or view those ideas as good.
I'm sure these people sitting in places of power had/have "good intentions".
Taking a backup offsite (usually IT top level types, but I have seen rotations like in Ohio all over the US) is not done for security. It's done to try to ensure that if a disaster strikes and the building/datacenter/servers are not there/functional in the morning you have only lost maybe a day worth of data.
There are companies that will come by and pick it up, but half the time they are about as secure as the intern’s car until they finish the route.
Small organizations and non profit ones most often seem to use the take home method from what I have seen.
Just recently I saw one of the presidential "contenders" (republican I think). Say he was now against stem cell research.
His reason was that recently he was talking about the subject with a researcher who explained that any embryos created were destroyed after (15 I think) a few days.
He then dais that right then he imagined a room full of these “human beings” being killed off and that’s why he changed his support.
He FUCKING IMAGINED a scene from the Matrix or some other bad SCI-FI and used that to base his judgment of reality on.
Instead of doing the smart thing and asking to see how the whole process was handled or learning more, he imagined it. Shit! Imagine this loser gets into office. Remember the last time we did something on a national level because of something we imagined (daycare based child molestation rings on every block, WMD in Iraq, trickle down economics)?
We are so fucked if this is the best we can hope to elect.
I can imagine all politicians are pederasts, does that mean it's all right to lock em up and brand them sexual predators for life?
I'm all for restricted access to things inappropriate for children.
BUT.
"Games are meant to be about fun and yes I will admit that sometimes an acceptable amount of violence can be fun but there is no excuse for realizing such a game where the object of the player is to be a murder that has to kill innocent people; this is only one victory against the sick minded mentality of the media these days but an important one non-the-less."
I haven’t paid much attention to Manhunt 2, but having played Manhunt 1 (and finished it). In light of the content of Manhunt 1 I would like to comment.
For starters you are an anti-hero.
The games story has you as a death row inmate who is being executed (because your character did murder someone, there is no dispute). The execution is faked and you are smuggled out of the prison and taken to some rich (I think politician) mans private estate. He gets his jollies by taking hardened criminals and dropping them in his custom little playground. He has invited various groups of thugs and killers to hunt you (hence the title of the game Manhunt).
None of the people trying to kill you are ever depicted as anything better or more human then your character (in fact they are often worse). Even the level with the police it turns out they are all on the take from this guy and just as bad as all the other killers in the game.
You are not killing "innocent people". When you are faced with innocents you must protect them.
There are at least 3 points in the game where you have to save people. In the first instance there is a homeless guy you are told you need to get from point A to point B alive and intact through these groups of murderers. In the second you have to save some of your family members (they are not murderers or anything, just normal people) that the rich guy has kidnapped and placed in danger (if you do manage to save them, the rich man has them killed anyway later in the game and you are shown this via some TV sets in the mall level). In the third instance I can think of there is a reporter you have to keep safe (as I remember dirty cops are out to kill her) so she can expose the whole thing that is going down.
Is it a game of huggy-kissy full or moral actions and good? No, it is not. But neither are many entertainment products available to adults with no more control then a rating notice.
Just because you can kill someone graphically in the game does not mean that you have to use those methods. Yes the rich man likes it when you are brutal and if content (art and such as I remember) are a goal they give you more "points", but you have free will.
AFAIK no one has made a game that matches your made up reality of what the content in Manhunt 1 is and after checking the web for info about 2 it seems to be not what you describe either, looks more like a V for Vendetta type situation (but localized to the people who were doing the research).
How about people stop attacking imaginary demons and go deal with some of the things that exist in the real world?
I read the headline and was hoping there was a resurgence of education along the lines of building/tinkering/learning Electronics.
Anyone can learn to press a button. What helps people is leaning what’s going on when the button is pressed.
You wouldn’t say people are learning mechanics these days and go on to talk about how they know how to operate a car.
I suppose it's time for me to look into that cane purchase (I'm only 34) so I can start waving it at young whippersnappers and complain loudly that back in my day we used leaded solder and we liked it. Kids these days with their ROHS!
How can you only presume that muscle with no nerves would not feel pain?
There are no nerves to transmit electrical signals and there is no brain to receive those signal to so there is no "presumably" about it!
Likely what will happen is a team of cops will be called out one day to investigate some happenings at the "Real Meat Factory" and things will go "pear shaped" from there. If you want to simulate this future, play a game published by Eidos called Project Eden.
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