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Slashback: Failure, Errors, Misery 78

Posted by timothy from the visiting-slc-utah-next-week!- dept.
Slashback tonight with bits on those things that go up coming down; those things meant to go up but which save the trip and just stay down; a nitpicking dissenter (kidding!) on the spelling and goodness of automated supervisory privileges for Canadian televisions; and a nostalgic look back at the ring-mice of yesteryear.

One day it will happen, just not yet. The launch of India's first GSLV anticipated on Slashdot a few days ago appears to have flopped. As Jon Erikson writes: "The launch of the GSLV-D1 has failed. The takeoff was successful, but shortly after its launch flames could be seen coming from the side of the rocket and the launch was aborted. As of yet there is no explaination. The story is here at BBC News." And fiscally-minded defence budget points to Rediff's story on same.

Correction, correction! The name of the country is not "Kanada," either. Jeremy Burman of Toronto's Myubi Search Technologies wrote in response to the recent post about Canadian broadcasters' V-Chip readiness, saying: "You posted a Canadian V-Chip piece to Slashdot earlier today but, unfortunately, the source both misspelled and got the CBC's name wrong. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is one of our country's greatest treasures; the institution of the V-Chip will allow parents more freedom in allowing their children to watch shows, giving the kids control of their TV time and helping them learn independence that much sooner."

The real Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are the ones to blame or praise for all this child liberation, not the devious Candadian Broadcast Company.

Why we used these back in the boiler room, a hundred years ago, and they were old-hat then, too! Isaac Grover of the SJSU College of Engineering writes of the head-tracking pointer system which made a recent appearance on these pages:

"This is *not* new technology. In my Win3.1 days I used a similar device by Spectrum (now Kantek/Spectrum at www.kantek-spectrum.com) called the RingMouse. It has since gone unsupported by Spectrum, but they are still out there and in use (google:RingMouse).

And surprisingly it is still superior to the capabilities of the Naturalpoint device in that it was three-dimensional in applications that supported it."

Wei muss Alles Be Immer About Mir?! Unlike Iridium, which has been pretending to have human owners ever since it gained sentience a few months back, Mir has bit the bullet, bought the farm, shuffled off this mortal coil (or rather back onto it), and is no more. Except possibly for some big titanium balls. (Every space collector's dream?)

Cryptacool writes: "http://www.mirreentry.com posted videos (finally) but it doesn't seem to be the footage from the planes rather captured from a video camera on the ground." Knave trickery, but just as well, since none are available in a Linux-friendly format right now :(

And slathering writes: "CNN.com reports that there are decent odds of bits of charred Mir washing up on the shores of pacific islands. The guy they interviewed thinks that the pieces would be worthless but I imagine they'd fetch a reasonable amount of money on eBay."

Now how much would you pay?
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Slashback: Failure, Errors, Misery More

Slashback: Failure, Errors, Misery

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  • But what about the fungus? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It lived inside and outside the spacecraft, it ate metal and plastics [slashdot.org], and now it's on earth. This can't be a Good Thing.
  • Or better yet, the kids could go do something independent instead of watching TV.

  • Oh man, no way!! They are one of the greatest sources of comedy on the TV these days! I find them hilarious (for puerile and foolish reasons, obviously).

    ~Cederic

  • SLC? (Score:1)

    by dwlemon ( 11672 )
    What the hell are you going to do here in Salt Lake?
  • elite spoof, my friend. Even did the URL up nice and pretty with the decimaled IP format [slashdot.org].
    [Offtopic] those style of spoofs are gonna get real dangerous, real fast[/offtopic]

    As for Mir collectibles: titanium balls? I get yer titanium balls right'chere. (c'mon, it had to be said.)
  • Why stop at that? The cell phone commercials are teeth-grindingly irritating. I'd love to smack that Sprint "Secret Agent" myself. Cut out any car commercial that imparts no useful information, but merely spotlights how only stupid people buy the car advertised, ie. the Toyota Tundra. Apparently Tundra drives are too stupid to drive in a straight line, at a moderate speed. If I never see another drug commercial, it'll be too soon.

    Just a few suggestions to start out.

    --
  • I didn't say anything about the Sprint chick, now did I? I was talking about the Maxwell Smart wannbe.

    Eva IS a hottie, ain't she? Still not as funny as Al Bundy was at that, though.

    --
  • heh, that's what the Mute button on the remote is for.
    I don't really surf during commercials, I just Mute and wait for the show to come back on.
    My roommate's old girlfriend commented on how quick I was with blocking the commercials when a Feminine Product commercial came on. I asked her if she wanted to watch it; she just said "Point noted" and we left it at that ;)

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • Even better is thinking carefully about the connection between more tv watching and independence.
  • "You posted a Canadian V-Chip piece to Slashdot earlier today but, unfortunately, the source both misspelled and got the CBC's name wrong. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is one of our country's greatest treasures; the institution of the V-Chip will allow parents more freedom in allowing their children to watch shows, giving the kids control of their TV time and helping them learn independence that much sooner."

    War is peace; freedom is slavery. Oceania is at war with East Asia; Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

    --
  • Except possibly for some big titanium balls.

    Let's all try to be mature about this.

  • I don't mean to question your sincerity about wanting to avoid snickering, Mr. Spooge Demon, but ...
  • It's "Eastasia". One word.

    You also forgot "Ignorance is strength", which would be the operative clause here.

  • Big Titanium Balls (Score:3)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @04:30PM (#328787) Journal
    When I was in the army we talked about guys who "had two big brass ones". Titanium. This "Mir" guy must be one rough mutha!
  • I totally agree. Me and my wife decided that one income IS enough. in fact, taking into account daycare, gasoline, business clothes, etc, we were only making a couple hundred bucks a month by her working. So now she is a stay at home mom, the house runs smoothly, we have more time for the kids in general, and life is good.

    Damn feminists.
    .e.
    www.perceive.net [perceive.net]
  • Actually, the name of the country is Kanada. If you speak Finnish, that is.

    (So yeah, we spell a few things differently. So what? =)
  • What happens after ring mouse drivers allow multiple devices to be installed in the system?

    One finger typists are replaced by one finger mousers. That population would probably be exactly the same size as the current set of Mac users....

  • hmmmm.....very true.....I didnt think of that...

    however it makes sense....afterall, if there are no posts, there cannot be a first post.

    so I'll amend the rule:

    for all Nth posts where N > 0 there exists one post N^2/N - (N - 1) that is first.
  • I looked at a ringMouse page [worklink.net] that said : "Increases Productivity: Most efficient way to execute mouse commands. Hands and eyes never have to leave the keyboard or screen." So I'm wondering, how, if your ring mouse is a 3D spacial pointer, do you use it without moving your hands (to which the ringmouse is attacted) away from your home key position?
    -Daniel
  • Pride is a powerful tool for raising a living breathing human being, assuming the parents have any pride in themselves.

    Oh well, Machines will start behaving like humans as we evolve them, and maybe then teenagers will shoot mechanical students designed to teach kids how to behave. I can't wait.
  • The parents can trust that the kids won't be able to get on any bad channels, so they could give the kids the remote and let them decide what to watch, instead of keeping them from changing the channel for fear of hitting a channel the parents didn't like.

  • Correction on GSLV - Not flopped, not launched (Score:5)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @04:35PM (#328795) Homepage
    The tidbit about the Indian GSLV is incorrect. The rocket did not actually launch. The GSLV launch vehicle has four strap on booster stages (liquid fueled) and a solid first stage. Typical launch profile is to ignite the liquid boosters 4.5 seconds before launch and run engines up to operating thrust. If they have met thrust levels within that time period, the solid propellent center stage (which cannot be extinguished) is ignited and the launch hold bolts released.

    What happened w/ the GSLV is that their launch computer ignited the booster stages but one of them failed to reach operating thrust when it was supposed to, so it aborted the launch by shutting down those engines before the solid core was ignited.

    The rocket did NOT take off, despite the overenthusiastic announcer who initially yelled 'Takeoff!'. The launch was properly aborted and safed by their computers (which operated exactly as designed) and the rocket (with payload) is intact and ready for future launch (once the engines on the booster stages are replaced or certified for use and the problem is fixed).

    There was no flop, no crash, no nuthin.

  • Why stop at the V chip? (Score:5)

    by Robber Baron ( 112304 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @04:18PM (#328796) Homepage
    Why doesn't somebody come up with something really useful like a chip that blocks those disgusting "feminine hygine" commercials from being shown on TV's belonging to single guys? Call it the "Y" chip. You'd have single guys buying them up like crazy!
  • > eBay [ebay.com] has had various MIR Pieces [ebay.com] for days...

    There are five auctions (at this time) all for about a buck each, no bids no any of them (only one is marked 'new'), and all but one say something like: "Yes, this could possibly be a real piece of the Mir space station" ... so they're all unverified as well as being trash picked from the sea.

  • Better, More direct link to video [mirreentry.com] (this skips the pop-up and confusing main page.)
  • Except possibly for some big titanium balls.

    Check!

    --

  • all your mir pieces are belong to us!

    You have worse grammar than CmdrTaco. It's piece, singular.

    By the way, it's "set UP US", not "set US UP".

    (Read More... [everything2.com])
  • I don't remember the name of the product, but I used one of those head-mounted mouse pointers with a 128K Mac back in 1985 or 1986 timeframe. It wasn't accurate for very fine movement, and I got a headache and stiff neck after using it for a few days.

    I believe it was based on infrared, and had a receiver that sat on top of the Mac, and a headphone-style headband with 3 transmitters, one on each side and one on top of the head, and a button that attached below the space bar for mouse clicks. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the more I used it, the bigger PITA it became.

  • Don't you love euphamisms? (Score:3)

    by HerrGlock ( 141750 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @03:10PM (#328803) Homepage
    "the V-Chip will allow parents more freedom in allowing their children to watch shows" HELLOOO, maybe what we need is to have the parents spend more TIME with the kids instead of taking over the parenting duties.

    Maybe if parents actually sat down and talked to the kids or took them out to do family stuff we wouldn't NEED the V-Chip because then the parents would know what the kids were doing and would actually be part of their lives instead of relying on the electronic babysitter.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • Your bonfire wont be hot enough. What woud suggest is you do the following to create an authentic piece of MIR junk....

    1) Strap one frying pan to a acetelene (sp) bottle. Preferable off a oxy welding unit. Place in enclosed space.

    2) Initiate a leak in bottle.

    3) Remotely light spark. The resultant explosion, should you not be in the blast radius (and it will be quite considerable blast) shoud accelerate the pan to near sonic levels and bend it into new and exciting shapes.

    4) Find what remains of pan, convey to another gas-axe, heat until white hot. As the junk fell into the sea, quench in brine.

    5) Allow to cool.

    6) Sell on EBAY for $100,000 dollars. You'll need every penny to fend of the lawsuits and repair the damage to the neigbourhood.
  • No doubt, eh? Everybody bitches about how those dirty companies like Doubleclick are collecting personal data about people's surfing habits for the purposes of targeting their advertising. But I got to thinking one day... Imagine if they could do that for TV?

    Computer: Oh look, Ryan has sat down in front of the television. Stop playing ads for tampons and denture cream, and bring on the beer commercials featuring monster trucks and bikini girls!

  • 1,600 Google [google.com] pages couldn't be wrong, could they?

  • The guy in that video sounded like Steve Jobs with a new graphics card..."That is A-mazing!"
  • CNN has a better video. Much longer and comes in Quicktime, Real, and Windows Media.

    Deep Link [cnn.com]

    Related article with link to vid [cnn.com]

  • I'm sure the feminine hygine marketers would love nothing more than to not waste their money on you... perfect targeted advertising is every sales(and accounting) departments dream.
  • Actually, the biggest problem with sex on the television is falling off of it. *rim shot* Thanks, folks...I'm here all week.
  • If it survived re-entry on Mir i think its already down anyway
  • It gave some more confidence in humanity when I saw they were not bidded on.
  • There was a little thing that went over your finger in the mid-90's that claimed to be able to track changes in your brain waves so as to control a pointer. I saw it at the mall and a magazine.

    Never bought it, but interested if anyone knows whether it would work.

  • Old Hat Indeed (Score:4)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @04:11PM (#328814) Journal
    Why we used these back in the boiler room, a hundred years ago, and they were old-hat then, too!

    Seems like alot of what we have seen over the past few weeks is re-cycled one way or another.

    For Example, the Latest from Microsoft: The Tablet PC. (formerly know back in Win 3.1 days as Pen Computing [pencomputing.com])

    but pen computing isn't old hat (to read the article at my link) - I wonder what is available in Linux? it would be amusing to steal his thunder there as well.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [clik.to] comic strip

  • this guys on fire!
  • YESSSSSS just what I've always wanted! REAL LIVE duct tape wrapped around a clothes hanger direct from a burned up commie space station!!! CHRISTMAS IN JULY!!! CHRISTMAS IN JULY!!! AND THERE AREN'T EVEN ANY BIDS ON IT YET, SWEET!
  • your night got ruined by a rotting commie coffee can, bill gates, and a couple of twigs, BWAH HA HA HA
  • Yeah it was cool to watch MIR come down, but we all know the truth surrounding these events. Russia is finally attacking. Sure, their first shot missed, but we won't be so lucky the next time!
  • (if you haven't figured it out already, most of them are fakes)

  • MIR Pieces? Come and get'em.. (Score:3)

    by Sodakar ( 205398 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @03:10PM (#328820)
    eBay [ebay.com] has had various MIR Pieces [ebay.com] for days...
  • http://www.navisitestreaming.net/wmedia/2/mir/mirf inaledited/300_mirfinal.wvx
  • Anyone know where to get a Mir video without trees? How about in some other format than Window's Media? The combination of the two made me so frustrated that it ruined my night.

  • Errors? (Score:3)

    by Sabol ( 210513 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @04:02PM (#328823)
    If slashdot issued corrections for all the errors in the posts, we'd be up to necks in Slashbacks. :)
  • all your mir pieces are belong to us!

  • ...the institution of the V-Chip will allow parents more freedom in allowing their children to watch shows, giving the kids control of their TV time and helping them learn independence that much sooner.

    That's just one of those statements you have to read a couple of times, slowly and carefully, to fully appreciate. Like a fine wine.

  • I live in South Africa and we've got a TV broadcaster named MNET( http://www.mnet.co.za ) which has been offering services similar to the V-Chip since the mid eighties. Parents can enter a PIN code and a rating code. If a movie rated 2-16 starts the image and sound is encoded so you can't see/hear what's going on. I "hacked" this by entering the PIN code before my parents did. They could never figure out why that feature didn't work :-) Luckily they didn't phone the company to find out why!!!
  • That didn't read brainwaves, it read minute muscle spasms that occured when you wanted to move the cursor. Your finger would move just slightly in the direction you wanted the cursor to move. One of my old CS-teachers had one... and I played with it... it was kinda amusing to press your finger against the sensor as hard as you could...

  • .... (Score:3)

    by loucura! ( 247834 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @03:46PM (#328828)
    There are several ways of using a mouse without actually using a mouse. MIT's wearable computing department [mit.edu] has a link to the eyemouse.

    the eyemouse [wearcam.org]

  • Hmm...
    Its nice to know that Ignorance, Stupidity, and Racism are still alive in the Age of Informtion.
    Somethings will never change I guess.

    I have one question though.
    With your rights crumbling away around your ears, and private companies trying to tell you that you no longer own all that new stuff you bought, and Goverments (seemingly) randomly turning in to near police states when it comes to the freedom of information, WHY ARE YOU STILL CONCERNED WITH WHAT COLOR SOMEONE IS? Or religion, or sexual orientation, etc.

    Grow up or Die off already. Its a brave new world and views such as racism are archaic at best.

    sorry for the rant, but stupidity like this in a forum like this really bothers me.

    RA7

    -
  • I love this [netcraft.com]. So they can use Linux for the server but they can't bother to put up linux friendly media? How I love corperate America....
  • you expect parents to take responisbility for their children and spend time with them? who are you kidding? we need more stuff! we have to buy buy buy buy everything to make oursleves and our children happy. we want our kids to have everything.... except loving parents who spend time with them. raising kids? that's for the school, police, and society to do. we just bring in the cash.

  • Don't they work 8-5 jobs?

    Both of them? Mine sure didn't. One income was plenty. But I have to agree, the choice between spending time with your kids or getting a bigger car than the neighbours is a tough one indeed...
  • Whenever anyone complains about television the horror is always violence. When they start censorship however the target is always sex.

    This is probably because they know that many people's problem with sex on the television is not getting enough of it.

  • For a piece of Mir, I'd trade my two Karma Whore accounts on Slashdot

    OK. here is how I make them. First you go to a junkyard and find either a LADA or a SKODA. Then you chop off a bunch of stuff with an oxy-acetalene cutter.

    Next you throw the stuff off the top of a large building.

    Then you light a bonfire in the back garden, get the thing up to a really nice heat thenstick a couple of sacks of charcoal on the top. When the flames have died back you have peak heat, stick your 'remains' on top.

    By now your wreckage should be almost unidentifiable. So you will need to make it a bit more Soyuz like. Adding a hamer and sickle design or communist star is the next step. Make sure you don't make this too central or it will look suspicious.

    Congratulations komrade you now have something that not only looks like MIR wreckage, it probably functions as well in its current state as the original did in orbit.

  • TV is bad... There's a few good shows, mostly comedy... but 99% is total crap....

    Tim
  • Dr. Laura? Is that you? I didnt know you read slashdot!
  • In addition to this, what the market needs is a chip that will block out:

    Televangelists
    MTV (useless anyway for last 10 years, as we all know)
    VH1 Behind the Music (Leif Garrett episode)
    Old episodes of Three's Company (except episode with John Ritter's scrotum)
    Survivor
    When Animals Attack! (oops, we like that one)
    WWF Smackdown
    Home Shopping Club
    HGTV
    Barney (but not the Teletubbies)
    Everything shown on the Lifetime (for women) channel

    In fact, forget everything else, I want the Lifetime (for women) channel off my TV set.
  • On GSLV
    Dr Kasturirangan said ISRO would initially launch its own communication satellites by using the GSLV with indigenously developed cryogenic engines. It would save India more than $20m per launch. Arianespace, one of the major international space players, charges up to $70m for a satellite launch.

    At this rate, they can afford to crash a few more before it'd be like paying someone else to launch a rocket. NASA had its ups and down when it took off and finally they were able to get someone on the moon. (using hollywood style technology). Hey at least India has the director of the 6th Sense to whip up the effects.

    On Canada Correction, correction! The name of the country is not "Kanada,"

    WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOOT
    "http://www.mirrentry.com posted videos (finally) but it doesn't seem to be the footage from the planes rather captured from a video camera on the ground." Knave trickery, but just as well, since none are available in a Linux-friendly format right now :(

    Mir's descent was fast as hell and even the captured footage of it looks like a streak of fire nothing glamorous. However if you need some kicks, and we all know APRIL FOOLS is just a tick tock away.... Check out the "Hidden Casualties of Mir [space.cnn.comsearch]" -- what the governments won't tell you ...

    Stupid News [antioffline.com]
  • I'm tired of hearing this argument agaisnt the
    V-CHIP ... that somehow the parent can involve
    themselves in the life of their child to render it
    a needless peice of technology. I don't especially like the idea of a V-CHIP, but for conservative parents who intend on shielding their child from the hollywood gloss and occasional reality:

    How can we expect parents to constantly monitor what their children are watching on TV? Don't they work 8-5 jobs? And even on weekends, are parents supposed to be constantly checking up to make sure nothing improper is being displayed?

    Another issue is friends. What "goes" under one roof may not be followed under another.

    There really isn't a 100% effective way of shielding a child from the world, IMHO. I personally think the evening news is a lot worse then a lot of the "entertainment" out there. Oh, I stand corrected: The news *is* entertainment, just justified, because it's mention of every negative event happening in the world currently that can fit in a two-three hour period. What a marvelous display of hypocrisy if a parent can condemn material a child may find enticing and leave the news on during meal time.
  • I am real surprised no one has posted a Linux friendly URL yet. In any case, I don't know how it compares to those Windoze Media files, but space.com has a nice little video [space.com], complete with dramatic music in stereo. And it is available in RealPlayer, as well as Quicktime and the ubiquitous Windoze Media.

    Click on Reentry Video.

  • So, let's get this straight... the Slashdot folks are talking about errors in the spelling of the CBC and the RingMouse, but no mention of their laughable coverage of Apple's new OS X? Over the last week or so there have been many trivial [slashdot.org] sumbmissions posted while there's hardly a peep about a new (BSD, Darwin) open-source based OS that will become the largest UNIX distro within a year? This despite the large media atention given to it and user interest? Hey, I watch CBC NewsWorld [cbc.ca] every day and misspelling their name is not somethnig to be proud of; but I don't think that this nor what EvansData mistakenly put in a poll [evansdata.com] is exactly newsworthy compared to something like OS X. Come on Slashdot, post some of the many OS X story submissions you get everyday. Fix the real errors on the site.
  • For a piece of Mir, I'd trade my two Karma Whore accounts on Slashdot, my Natalie Portman Grits collection, an 8x10 glossy picture of the Goatse.cx autographed by Cyborg Monkey, and the password to the secret backdoor accounts that were installed in MySQL last time the Slashcode got cracked.

  • Mir has bit the bullet, bought the farm, shuffled off this mortal coil (or rather back onto it), and is no more.

    This allusion to Monty Python's parrot sketch is made all the more ironic by the fact that the talk about it goes on and on, just as with the unfortunate parrot. All that's missing is for somebody to swing it around and bang it on the counter.

    Also, I carry two titanium balls everywhere I go so I don't understand what's so interesting there.

    --
    "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"

  • Personally, (if I actually watched TV, that is) I would view a TV with a v-chip as a challenge. See, this thing should really be heralded as a training device for all future pre-school 31337 h4x0rs. I can just see the headlines, too: "Canadian preschooler confiscated for hacking his family's tv set to display PBS, which was blocked by his parents due to its obscene nature. This bad/evil/tormented/ hacker will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. He was heard to say, while being arrested, 'but I just wanted to watch Mr.Rogers!' How sad. In other news..." I can't wait for the web appliances with censoring equipment hardwired right into the damn thing. And then the copy protecting cdrom drives, and the shackles, and the govenment logged email systems...etc, etc, etc...
  • Doesn't that seem really unnecessary to you? I don't know about others, but I always make a habit of using the word "spheres" in place of "balls" whenever possible. It prevents quite a bit of snickering and misunderstandings.

    --

  • During the heyday of the USSR NASA actually had two backups for everything it made: the actual backup plus the cardboard mockup with hammer and sickle that Russia made for the evening news.

    --

  • No thanks. I've always feared that they'd be a real drag.

    ...if ya know what I'm sayin'.

    --

  • Nope, I think it is still bad news. The last thing parents need is another excuse to plop their kids down in front of the TV and forget about them.

    --

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