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Didn't Judge Jackson say Bill Gates had a God complex? ...or was that Napolean complex.

Jason
ProfQuotes

I did that for a while, the problem is the footprint is way too big. I'm working on a "case" out of plexiglass that has all the components mounted to the outside so its very easy to get at to upgrade anything.

Jason
ProfQuotes

That was one of the first things I considered. I never thought I'd run a porn site though. :)

Jason
ProfQuotes

I run a student quotes website at student.profquotes.com. I'd like to register studentquotes.com but it's in the hands of a cybersquatter. There's no way I'd consider buying it from them, and I doubt anyone else is more likely to want the domain. If I really wanted another domain for studentquotes badly enough, there's too many variations for cybersquatters to be a problem; other TLDs or hyphens already give enough alternatives that it would cost more to register them all than the squatter is asking for studentquotes.com.

Jason
ProfQuotes

If the problem exists between the steering wheel and driver's seat, the manufacturers have a special liability exemption.

Jason
ProfQuotes

If someone's negligence allows their computer to participate in a DoS, why should they have to pay money to a 3rd party regulatory body or government?

Jason
ProrQuotes

The troll moderations just proves my point. Without insulting linux, I simply implied it is not the ultimate solution to every problem and I got modded down.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Also, am I the only one who's getting the impression that Linux-based PDA's fall behind the curve in terms of time to market and features?

Nope, you're not. PalmOS offers a clean elegant interface for a PDA; it works very well. There's also thousands of apps available. What is the advantage of buying a Linux-based PDA except that this is slashdot, where everything has to be linux and open source, no matter how impractical.

Jason
ProfQuotes

They use elephant weights in the article to make it easier to visualize. A Hurricane is 40 million elephants. That's just so much easier to visualize than 240 million tons (cubic meters) of water.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Exactly my point. If you can write a game that appeals to the masses and sell a million copies, why do extra work to make it have more substance and only sell 100k copies?

Jason
ProfQuotes

At 256 meg, this mp3 player's capacity is about the same as a single minidisc, but it's not expandable. Minidiscs cost under $2 each, and the files can be re-arranged on them like with an mp3 player. The battery life on a minidisc player is better than the yepp player too which doesn't make sense since the yepp doesn't have to power a motor. A CD based mp3 player is much larger than a minidisc player (even if it's designed for the 8cm CDs), and the battery life is terrible.

Jason
ProfQuotes

It's good to see not all countries have turned themselves over to corporate interests, but a victory in France (which doesn't exactly have a history of putting foreign corporate interests ahead of their own citizens) doesn't say much about the tide in the US.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Monopoly leaves very little room for strategy. The strategy simple; buy anything you can. Sure different properties have different payout percentages, but you're not going to turn down a red property because orange has a better payout.

The dice have too much influence in the game, you have no control at all over where you land, but where you land is all-important. As if that wasn't random enough, they throw in cards just to increase the random element.

Ultimately, whoever has the best luck completing monopolies right at the beginning will win even though it can take hours for them to finally win. I guess this is where you're saying the beginning is tedious because all you do is buy everything in sight; there's no thinking, and the end is tedious because all you do is throw the dice over and over until pure random chance picks the winner; once everyone has their properies and hotels there are no decisions to be made.

The other killer is it's an elimination type game. What are the first people eliminated supposed to do for the next couple of hours while the game continues?

I think the main reason Americans don't like board games is Monopoly is the main introduction to the genre. It would be much better to start people off with something like Acquire. It's at about the same level of difficulty and strategic complexity as Monopoly, but it doesn't have a lot of the problems I've just mentioned.

The random elements in Settlers are the starting locations of the tiles which is essential because you don't want to play the same game every time and the production rolls. The production rolls follow a probability distribtion; you know how often in the long run each region will produce and you can hold a hand of resources, so it's not much of a random element. If you want it to be less random, a lot of people play it with a deck of dice instead.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Companies are concentrating on mass-appeal over fun. In the early 90's, a game was a huge hit if it sold 100,000 copies. Today, with numbers like that it would be considered a flop. Because of that, the newer games are dumbed-down to appeal more to the masses. Eye-Candy is considered more important than playability.

It's the same situation in the board game industry. Everyone's played monopoly (which is a lousy game), but who here has even heard of Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan which are two of the best games on the market now.

Jason
ProfQuotes

If you're doing big downloads, 56k is already painfully slow, so this will only make it worse.

For typical websurfing you spend most of the time reading a page and a small portion loading new pages. It seems like both users downloading a new page at the same time will only happen occasionally, so most of the time, they can share the 56k connection without even noticing.

On the rare occasion where both users do load a page at the same time, it's still working at half speed, so it's not a major problem for how uncommon it is.

Jason
ProfQuotes

But that would be like a baseball game without crackerjacks ;)

Jason
ProfQuotes

You don't see telephone companies selling phones that won't work unless you call someone with another phone made by them, do you?

No, but up until relatively recently you couldn't get your own phone at all, you had to lease them from the phone company. That way they could also make sure you didn't just plug in another phone without paying an extra fee for the other jack because you couldn't buy a phone at all. Today, who would think of paying an extra fee for each phone jack? It's free. There are still a lot of elderly people paying $5-10/month to lease phones they've been paying for for 30 years or more. It's sad that the phones are worth less than 1 month's fee.

IM is still in it's infancy so there will be silly restrictions like this.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Unfortunately I never saw Beakman's world, but I'm firmly in the Bill Nye is an idiot camp.

Jason
ProfQuotes

I learned about this sort of thing watching Mr. Wizard's World when I was a kid. I gained my interest in science watching this show.

Jason
ProfQuotes

The spies in the Iranian government can still see who is connecting to the anonymizing service, so they'll be able to treat them as harshly as if they accessed the "worst" possible sites.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Generating the heat to toast the bread still takes a few CPUs. Intel and AMD are working on their next-generation chips that should be powerful enough to only need a single CPU to toast bread.

Jason
ProfQuotes

First, I was talking about an american uploading it to an off-shore account. They would certainly be held accountable to US laws.

Second, even if a non-American did it, the US would still consider it within their right to arrest them if they visit the US. Just ask Dmitry Sklyarov.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Even if you host it on a website outside the US, you are still legally responsible and well within reach of the US authorities. Sure it might make it harder to link the site to you, but once the link is made, the fact that it's hosted offshore won't provide any legal defense.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Five billion is already over 32 bits.

Jason
ProfQuotes

I find it funny that so many people replied to you to defend TiVo so passionately. Their model seems as bad as anything MS does, but because people like their shiny toy, they not only overlook it but defend it.

Jason
ProfQuotes

One of the reasons MS is so big is that early on, windows was one of the most pirated pieces of software ever, so that could be good for Linux.

Jason
ProfQuotes

I'm pretty sure it was the 68k. I did a lot of work with the 6802 (basically the same thing as a 6800 but it just needs a crystal instead of an external clock). It's a pretty nice CPU, but it's not in the same league as the 8088 and 68000. A quick websearch seems to confirm that it's the 68k.

Jason
ProfQuotes

A quick websearch leads to a lot of different explainations for why IBM picked the 8088 over the 68000. Some of the reasons I just found are IBM having a large supply of the intel chips on hand, IBM having a pre-existing arrangement with intel where they gave intel rights to their bubble memory in exchange to rights to the 8088 (that doesn't make much sense), and 68000 required more expensive support hardware. I didn't find any sites mentioning my explaination, but that's what I read in the early 80's when it was happening.

Jason
ProfQuotes

IBM designed the PC around the Motorola 68000 cpu, but when they were ready to start production, they found out the 68k was physically too big for their fabrication equipment, so they had to switch to the smaller and inferior Intel 8088. When they switched they also added circuity to kludge the 8088 into their design, and that kludge was eventually incorporated into the 286 and the legacy of it is still with us.

The design for the CPU though was and still is Intel's.

Jason
ProfQuotes

It will be interesting to see what they try next.

Maybe claim that since they created the x86 platform, the Opteron contains their IP and any Opteron users owe them $750/CPU in licensing.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Ohm's law is "voltage dropped across a load is directly proportional to the current through the load, for a constant load". What does this have to do with the law the article talks about?

Jason
ProfQuotes

From the article: The fog screen enables many novel applications indoors. Interesting applications include walk-thru advertisements on shops or malls, or a walk-thru screen in world-class museums, corporate showrooms, trade fairs, theme parks, special events, spas, theatres, science centers, lobbies, etc. We can extend the technology to limited outdoor usage.

Does anyone else find it find it very disturbing that the first application they suggest is advertising?

Jason
ProfQuotes

How do you know that just because you can't make calls or see anything on the screen the phone is really off? It might even have a small internal battery that charges off the main battery and powers the tracker when the main battery is disconnected.

Jason
ProfQuotes

But it includes processing. If the disposable film camera is $5, that means you have to find a place that will develop it for $6 including the CD. I don't know of anywhere to get film developed that cheaply.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Why do people buy books that claim to be aimed at dummies? Just because you're a novice doesn't mean you're a dummy. The computer books are also very condescending, the tone of them is talking down to the reader. The Sams TY series are much better for new users.

Jason
ProfQuotes

The Photon does use a resistor. All batteries have an internal resistance, and for those crappy little watch batteries, it's high enough to limit the current to the LED. Also, those are 3 volt lithium batteries so you are still using double the voltage needed, and lithium batteries have a flat discharge curve.

An alkaline battery fluctuates from 1.6 to 1.2 volts over its life time, a White LED typically drops 2.9 volts, so if you use 2 alkalines in series, you'll start with 0.3 volts dropped across the resistor, so the LED will fluctuate from full brightness to nothing in half the battery life. That is wasteful. If you use 3 batteries, you'll start with 1.9 volts dropped across the resistor, when the batteries are half used up, you'll still have 1.3 vols dropped across the resistor so it's at 2/3rd brightness. When the batteries are fully used up, you're still getting light. That is more effecient.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Mouse buttons have a horrible tactile feel for trying to enter morse code. Even using a keyboard key would be a lot better.

Jason
ProfQuotes

What do you think you're talking about?

The datasheet is right here for NiMH. That is a very flat horizontal curve until the cliff right at the end. For comparison, the Alkaline curve is here (look on page 2). That curve drops steadily throughout the life.

Jason
ProfQuotes

1. The voltage drop of the LED is unrelated to the voltage of the battery; the battery voltage just needs to be greater than the drop across the LED for the LED to light.
2. For a given brightness of LED, the current needs to be the same; it wouldn't be enormous for a higher voltage. In theory, the LED is a short circuit anyway, to the current is whatever the battery can put out regardless of voltage (at least for the split second until the LED fries.
3. There is a current limiting resistor in series with the LED, which according to Kirchov's voltage law has the rest of the voltage dropped across it. So in that case, you know the resistance and voltage dropped across the resistor, therefore you know the current through it, and by Kirchov's current law, you know the current through the LED.

It's too bad the moderators marked this BS informative.

NiCd and NiMH batteries hold their terminal voltage until almost completely discharged too, they are both actually slightly better than Li-ion in that respect. They will also work will at current draws of up to 1C for NiCd and 2C for NiMH with no loss of performance.

The Lithium batteries that can do 2.5Ah @ 3.6 volts in an AA form factor aren't even rechargable.

Jason
ProfQuotes

The NiMH rechargable batteries last about twice as long in a digital camera than the best alkalines.

An AA alkaline has about 3 amp-hours of charge, and the NiMH has about 1.7, but you only get the full amount of power if you discharge the battery slowly. A digital camera draws about 1 amp, and the high current drain is too much for an alkaline battery. NiMH batteries can easily handle the drain. At 1 amp, a 3Ah alkaline won't even last 1 hour, but the 1.7Ah NiMH will last pretty close to the 1.7 hours. The energizer website has some nice graphics of battery life vs current drain for all the kinds of batteries they make.

The only real downside to NiMH batteries is they will self-discharge in about 3 weeks, and they don't deal well with just sitting around for months at a time, so they're only good for things that are used a lot.

A good guideline is if the alkaline batteries last less than 6 months, use NiMH instead, but keep in mind you'll have to recharge them every 3 weeks.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Now where'd I put that DivX of Days of Thunder.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Now you must buy the whole thing again for a new stick.

The whole thing costs a fraction of what a new stick for the atari cost, and that doesn't even take into account 20 years of inflation.

These games are great for the $10-$20 they cost. If they were built like the old atari stuff, they'd cost $50 like the old atari joysticks and then very few people would buy them.

Jason
ProfQuotes

The rest goes to the lawyers. Isn't mass tort law great?

Jason
ProfQuotes

With all the crap sony's media arms have been pulling, no self-respecting slashdotter would buy any sony product.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Yes, but you only get paid for 8 hours/day, so as far as the company is concerned, that'll all you contribute.

Jason
ProfQuotes

It's funny how there seems to be such a strong anti-robot attitude here. Asimov's robot stories always took place in a world that was afraid of robots. Everyone I know who's read his books found that strange but it looks like he was right after all.

Jason
ProfQuotes

I think you are thinking of He2.

There is no such thing as He2. Helium has a full valence shell so it's natural state is just He. Do you think that putting 2 after an element symbol means "gas" or "elemental"?

As for the halon, there are various type of varying degrees of 'badness'.

Halon is a CFC. It is mildly toxic to humans, but very destructive to the ozone layer. When halon is heated (say during a fire when), it becomes extremely toxic to humans, just like freon.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Actually, I'm using the fact that the University of Waterloo is a 40 minute plane ride from Toronto where we connect to the backbone. The round trip is 80 minutes. We ignored the time it takes to write and read the discs.

So you're using those [RM]IAA 'equivalent' CD-burners?

Whis is the MIAA?

Jason
ProfQuotes

But that's one specific application; transferring large files. In the general case, you can't replace an internet connection with a high latency connection no matter how great the bandwidth. The point of the exam question was to emphasize the difference between latency and throughput.

Jason
ProfQuotes