Domain: compaq.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to compaq.com.
Comments · 578
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Re:PDA accelerometers for scrolling patented
Meh. HP, er, Compaq, er, Digital's Itsy, from their WRL linkified is likely to be prior art.
They even had a Doom port that used motions to control gameplay. -
Re:News and MicropaymentsPaypal doesn't count as a micropayment broker -- it's fee structure just doesn't work unless your transaction is at least 5 bucks. I don't accept a system as supporting micropayments unless it supports literal nickel and dime payments -- and ideally it should support transactions for a fraction of a cent. That's the level you have to reach before people will use your system without worrying about frittering away their rent.
I first heard of micropayments about a decade ago, when DEC started working on Millicent. As the name implies, Millicent was originally intended to handle transactions as small as a thousandth of a cent. A few years ago, they were still around, though they'd scaled down (up?) to a hundredth of a cent.
If I could read any article in the Wall Street Journal for, say, 10 cents per article, I'd probably do so regularly. Right now, my options are to buy a whole issue for a dollar, buy a subscription for $200/year, or go to the public library and wait for the guy with the foil hat to finish with it. None of these options is worth the money/effort, so I only read the Journal when I run across a discarded copy.
OK, maybe those guys don't want me to read their stuff, but the folks at the Times and the Post certainly do. They just haven't tried a delivery method that allows them to make a decent profit doing so. Subscriptions don't work, advertising doesn't work. Micropayments might or might not work -- we won't know for sure until we give it a real try. So far, nobody has done that, and I still don't have a plausible explanation why not.
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Re:"Co-opt Java"
Sun's Java Desktop System seems to be doing quite well.
10,000 to the United India Insurance Company, 500,000 to 1,000,000 per year to the China Standard Software Co, and approval from the UK government for a 5 year purchase agreement.
Downloadable Java applets seem to be doing quite well on the internet, including for games, custom user interfaces, security applications, etc.
At the company I work at, one of our main design tools is a java application that you just copy from the server (essentially download) and run. The developers came from another company where they were doing the same thing.
NASA is using Java to control the Mars Rovers, and track satellites.
More and more tools built by Computer Science researchers are in Java, like this Bayesian Network tool, or are switching from other languages to Java, like this static program verification tool.
In short, I think you completely missed it with your answer. -
Inane support callsThere are several. This is one.
But the tab key? Surely you jest! What about the 'any' key?
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Bah!
I had a DECTalk from circa 1987 that could sing. It even had many voices - Perfect Paul, Beautiful Betty, etc. You've never lived until you've heard Perfect Paul singing "Ave Maria". I wrote a MIDI to DECtalk converter long ago.When you turn it on, it says, "DECTalk version two point zero is RUNning".
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cucumber illumination
Ages ago, the Digital Western Research Lab (which became Compaq and then merged into HP Labs) had a technical note and video along these lines... quite funny.
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Re:licensing Apple's design, not technologywhat is truly sad about this is that DEC Systems Research Center (aka DEC SRC, aka Compaq SRC, now part of HP Labs and basically moribund) built a pocket-sized HDD jukebox in 1998.
needless to say, none of SRC's parent companies pushed it hard enough. (Compaq did sell PJBs commercially for a while.) so now HP gets to license the iPod...
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Re:PC world clout
The iPaq is made by Compaq, a division of HP.
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HP LaserJet
My wife brought an HP LaserJet 6P into my life and it works fine with my Linux box (Redhat 7 onwards).
It's been very reliable and we haven't changed toner in about 2 years. Of course, we don't print that much.
They have 3 printers priced at $200, $400, and $600, information is here. -
Re:iPAQ
Yes, it was called "Rock 'n' Scroll" and you can read about it here.
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Re:ATA Spec
According ot HP/Compaq it is based on ATA-3 specifications. There is a whitepaper discussing it here.
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Alternatives
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Re:Why just home?
Ever hear of VMS?
So, when do you plan to get born? Are we invited to your first birthday?
Before my time. Heck, before my birthYou can still buy brand new OpenVMS systems. If you want to play with one, sign up for the free test drive program. Lots of fun toys to play with (not only VMS, also stuff like Red Hat on Itanium, HP-UX etc.).
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Re:Unite behind Live CD's
The problem with your argument is that when you buy a Windows PC from Dell, HP, IBM, etc, Office doesn't cost $600, and Windows doesn't cost $100-$300. When you ship the volumes that those vendors do, and agree to pay Microsoft a license fee for every machine sold, rather than every machine the products are shipped on, the cost of Office and Windows likely drops below $50 each. When Dell was selling desktops with Red Hat Linux, they chose to use one of the retail editions, and it ended up that the Linux PCs they sold cost more than the Windows PCs they sold. I'll grant that Dell should have chosen the free version of RH, so we could truly see the MS tax. But most consumers don't know that. All they saw was that the Dell machine with Linux cost more than the Dell machine with Windows. Even now, HP is selling the d220 with Mandrake Linux for $84 more than with Windows. They do this because the expensive Linux distros are more user-friendly than the free ones.
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The Itsy seemed more interesting...
but it never went anywhere. Digital/Compaq had a prototype that used a tilt sensor for navigation (I think it even had a touch screen). If there ever was a cool credit card PDA, this would have been it.
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Re:Was alpha really nice? How?
No, the StrongARM ISA derives from the ARM ISA, which DEC licensed from Acorn UK (or ARM UK, whoever). AXP being DECs other modern CPU, yes, they would have applied lessons learnt in its design to the design of AXP, but the architecture is otherwise not really related to AXP (other than both being RISC), SA-110 was designed to be a simple, low-power CPU, at the expense of some speed, while AXP never had the power constraints.
There's a good paper on the StrongARM SA-110 in the DEC Technical Journal somewhere. /me googles, see:
http://research.compaq.com/wrl/DECarchives/DTJ/DTJ P00/
AXP was released in '92, long before PA8k. Indeed DEC gave Linus an Alpha in '94 for him so that he could port Linux to Alpha - AXP was the first non-i386 architecture Linux port, Linux was also a fully 64bit OS and userland well before most commercial Unix implementations. -
Yeah, well I'm still sueing Compaq
for violating the DMCA on giving away this secret
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Re:Obligatory...I'm amazed Homer didn't consult compaq/hp on this.
Compaq FAQ: Where do I find the "Any" key on my keyboard? (FAQ2859)
The term "any key" does not refer to a particular key on the keyboard. It simply means to strike any one of the keys on your keyboard or handheld screen.
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Re:Some more keys.
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Re:Outstanding, but...
Look no further, Compaq has the answer.
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For those who don't know...
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Re:Hmm..."They still haven't told me what the 'any key' does"
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Re:It makes me wonder...
I can't remember if I saw this on Slashdot - so here is is again.
Any-key explanation -
Re:Open source Fortran
I use the Intel compiler for one project that I work on for the ia32 and ia64 platforms. The newer ones 7.1 are the best. I've had many miscompiled applications with full optimization with earlier releases. The C/C++ compilers from Intel are excellent too. Its not uncommon for me to recompile something that was compiled with gcc and get a 2x speedup.
The Compaq (HP) fortran compiler is also freely available, and it produces good output as well.
In my experience, the best compilers for a given platform are made by the same people that make the processors. Sun -> Sun compiler, Intel -> Intel compiler, Alpha -> Compaq(HP) compiler, etc.
I hate to say this, but GNU f77 is a joke. My ./configure scripts will bail if you only have that compiler because it does not either compile the app, or produces junk (I don't remember which). -
Re:Wow!
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It's quite old...
As you can read at the bottom of that page:
Created: 10/8/2001 2:13:42 AM
Modified: 10/25/2002 11:07:05 AM
Author: Mevans
Again:
Where is the NUM LOCK Key?
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Re:$600 for a thin client?
This is Slashdot.Why would anyone look at the HP Website and check prices.
The 533 MHz = $349
The 733 MHz = $369 -
Re:OK, here's a real one
The HP xw4100 with Linux preloaded looks more like a real computer.
While that model is a bit more... expandable, all versions seem to include the infamous "Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Professional (SP1) Tax" - even the models preloaded with the state-of-the-art option of Red Hat Linux 7.3.
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Re:Too bad it's a "budget" PC
The order form offers up to 512MB RAM and the option of a 7200RPM 80GB hard drive. Even with that, the specs for this model lists "2.0GB maximum system memory". It's really not a bad box for the price, for people who would rather buy preconfigured systems instead of building them from parts.
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Itanium Workstations with Linux Preloaded
We have a few of the HP Itanium workstations that came with Red Hat Linux preloaded, so they are selling some machines with Linux preloaded on them. Of course, for $8k+, they'd better come with the OS preloaded, right?
;-) -
Didn't Compaq do this first?
What about CRL's "Rock n' Scroll" interface?
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Anyone remember the itsy
The itsy had one of those a while back one of those Compaq/HP research PDA's that features the "rock'n'scroll" control. Much the same and now quite old.
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Re:Any Key?
And here's the FAQ that proves it, for you nay-sayers.
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Re:Obligatory Simpsons reference
Why, I'm glad you came to slashdot with your question. Compaq was friendly enough to provide all the information on your support issue that you need to be a real hacker [grin].
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Re:they're showing some....
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HP Test Drive
Have you tried this? You can test drive a bunch of different systems and OSs.
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Re:Home page
Guess what-
http://www.smb.compaq.com/dstore/MiddleFrame.asp?p age=config&ProductLineId=429&FamilyId=1558&BaseId= 8795&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&AirTime=Fa lse
HP/Compaq sells desktops with Linux preinstalled, so quit your whining. -
What Linux Buys YouAlso on HP/Compaq's site, I was marveling at the pricing on the first two configurations here. RedHat costs more than Windows!?
Then I noticed one other "slight" difference in the configuration.
:-) Hell, I know which option I'd take! -
Not available yet for complete review - d330
Okay I wanted to see what the windows tax was and the d220 didn't have Mandrake available in any of the customization options.. Searched for Mandrake and found the d330. Looking side by side.. there's no cdrom drive?
The price difference between the 3rd and 5th computer is only $56, but then you have to buy a damn cdrom (no optical drive). Where's the incentive when I'll just have to go buy my own CDRom and bump the price up to the Windows price - Where's the incentive to the end user (not me the gentoo user)? There's supposed to be some kind of price break here...
What gives?
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Re:Itsy bitsy Itsy had it first
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Itsy at DEC WRL
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Itsy at DEC WRL
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Itsy at DEC WRL
I think this was one of the features they had built for the project at DEC (or Compaq or HP or whatever) WRL a number of years back.
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Itsy at DEC WRL
I think this was one of the features they had built for the project at DEC (or Compaq or HP or whatever) WRL a number of years back.
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you mean like...
like the Itsy Rock 'n' Scroll? There are many other instances of this idea. It's surprising that commercial systems aren't using it that much.
Maybe if someone produced a SD or CF tilt and motion sensor, this would catch on a bit more. -
HP Itsy
If you think this is cool, you should also check out the HP Itsy. You interact with said device by holding it at different angles, and hitting one button. Yes, you can play Doom like that
:)
~pi -
Re:I'd love to know"Please enlighten us as to how allowing a third party to distribute a cheap knockoff of a design that Apple spent years creating will bolster Apple's image of quality and help them increase revenue."
IBM makes more money than Apple selling PC hardware. They allowed Dell, Compaq etc. to "distribute a cheap knockoff" of their design.
Sure - Clones entered the market where the IBM previously was alone and IBM's share did what?
I'll give you a hint - click here.
-T
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Gadgets
If you're ambitious enough to enter everything into your PDA, all the power to ya'. Otherwise, I found it handy for boring classes to be able to read the news (basically like bringing an electronic magazine to class). You may think it sounds funny and that only flunkies would do such a thing, but I gaurentee there will be courses you show up for the sole reason to either receive or hand in assignments. The rest of the time is just filler. If you do get a PDA, make sure you get 802.11 support with it.
I think the only device you really need is a good computer. Laptops are nice because you can take them to group sessions, but not necessary. A desktop will give you more features for a lower price. I would get a desktop and save my money to get a newer one in two years when it's obsolete. Most public campuses here in the Midwest seem to be Microsoft campuses, so you might as well get a Windows machine and buy/steal Office from your University right away (unless you're an Art/Music student, you'll want to check with your department as you'll likely find more value in a Macintosh).
If you get a laptop, get a wireless NIC with it! Printer isn't absolutely necessary because you'll have access to printers on campus or possibly at work, depending where you work. You'll probably want a decent sized hard drive for P2P. An LCD monitor is hella-sweet in the dorms.
Here's a tip: Don't buy a piece of crap, overpriced, used computer from "a friend your dad knows" or from schmuck in the newspaper. Dell and HP Compaq always have new machines for around $300-$400, and if you look around, they often have new machines in the low $300's, which leaves more room to add the features you really need/want. If you're really looking to pinch pennies, buy a machine from Dell with the things they offer cheap (like video cards and DVD burners) and buy the stuff they sell expensively from an alternate source (like Memory or CD readers). Make sure you get name brand memory, though, as Dell's can be a bit finicky with cheap memory. I've had good luck with Kingston ValueRAM in my Dells.
And let's not forget about the Golden rule of the dorms - he who owns a DVD burner and the right software makes the friends.
;) Dell often has a deal where you can get a DVD burner for $99.I recommend a decent size TV too (~25") and a DVD burner that can read all types of media, because I know my roommates and I spent a lot of time playing video games and watching TV...unless you're a girl...then just get some rollerblades and some hot pants or something from Wet Seal or whatev.
Let's recap - a good computer (I prefer a desktop), a good TV, and a beer fridge. Any further questions? Oh yeah, and some helpful, off-topic advice:
- College is not primarily for education. It's merely a system our society has created to determine who is willing to jump through more hoops than the others.
- Don't be bummed that you didn't get the GPA you got in high school. There is a good chance you will either a) fail a course, or b) drop it before you fail it. And you will probably take at least a course or two over.
- It doesn't really matter what you major in. Don't let it stress you out. Just study what you're good at. They're pretty much all the same anyway...
- Most importantly: NOT EVERYONE IS MEANT TO GO TO A UNIVERSITY. If you can't handle it, don't worry. Try something else. It doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means it's not for you. Some people have PhD's, but that doesn't mean anyone below them is stupid. Different strokes for different folks. Remember that, especially when you get all depressed about some bad grade(s) you get.
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Re:Corporations are at fault?
Agreed. And not only that, but the big computer corporations often started with class A (16 million addresses) blocks, and acquired more over time. HP, for one, has its own class A, Compaq's class A, Digital's class A, and I believe also has Tandem's class A as well. That's 48 million IP addresses. I bet that a full
.001% are actually in use. And all the other old IT companies (IBM, Sun, SGI, etc.) probably are similarly inefficient. -
Ethernet is not Aloha, Damnit!Please do not propagate misinformation about Ethernet.
See:
Measured Capacity of an Ethernet: Myths and Reality, David R. Boggs, Jeffrey C. Mogul, Christopher A. Kent .
Ethernet is CSMA/CD, not CSMA. The collision detection mechanism arbitrates access to the medium, it is not there for flow control. Collisions are not bad.