Wow, another Bester/"Stars" fan? I thought I was among the five people left in the world who loved this story.
Not at all. It's just that most people who love it know it as "The Count of Monte Cristo."
Actually, if I had a kid who was into science fiction I'd love to give them "The Stars My Destination" (which I agree is a terrifically entertaining read and a great story in its own right even if Bester did cop the basic plot from Dumas) and then *after* they'd read it rent a movie production of "The Count of Monte Cristo" to see if they recognized it as the same story. I know it took me a surprisingly long time to work that out..
One of the low points in my career as a sysadmin was trying to explain to a new and particularly clueless manager why his scheme to call each machine on the network by its university property tag number was a poor idea. In the end he was so enamored by his own bureaucratic "logic" that I couldn't convince him that a 10-digit alphanumeric property tag number wasn't a suitable mnemonic device for people to use (in fact, for most people it would have been easier to remember the 12 digits of the dotted quad form of the IP address) and ultimately I gave him what he insisted on and set up DNS records as requested for each of the machines. Of course the happy thing about DNS is you can give a machine multiple names, so just because he thought of, say, the departmental mail server as U2953A6CD9.[dept].[university].edu didn't mean everybody else had to remember it that way.
Which is why I recommend that if you have a mandate for using cumbersome enumerative or descriptive naming schemes imposed by some part of your organization that you consider using multiple naming conventions for your machines, or at least a system of handy aliases for commonly used hostnames.
Is this some kind of joke? What the hell do you need USB for?
For just a moment, don't think of it as a router. Think of it as a low-power-consumption custom Linux server with a certain amount of RAM and a certain amount of flash storage. Now think about other options for such a device -- perhaps as a SAMBA file server or a CUPS print server. I'd even like to see it with an audio output so I could hook it to a stereo ala Apple's Aiport Express -- I'm sure someone would soon have a pretty good UPnP media server software project well underway -- but if they don't want to build audio in USB would at least leave it open as an option.
Apple's got several successful products (Time Capsule & Airport Express) that exist in the "wireless access point plus more" realm. A moderately-priced decent-build-quality piece of hardware with fair extension capabilities via open-source firmware has some pretty fascinating potential.
Plus, I would hate to see a whole "secret justice" aside from the normal one.
On the plus side it gives us a fresh new example to use when trying to explain the concept of an oxymoron to people, e.g. "..you know, like 'secret justice.' "
The question is, why even both with the carriers... Firefox should be going straight to the manufacturers!
The manufacturers will produce the devices demanded by their customers. Unfortunately for your theory, you are not the manufacturer's customer. The manufacturer's customer is the carrier.
Even though it's wasn't exactly necessary (and, if you want to be uptight about it, is actually flat out wrong..) well, there was apostrophe money left in the budget and nobody wanted to see that money cut from next year's budget, so there you have it.
The Times speculates that Google may also be planning to replay the strategy that Microsoft used to bulldoze Netscape in the mid-1990s by 'cutting off' Microsoft's air supply by giving the gPhone away to handset makers and to put Microsoft Windows Mobile out of business.
Is this phone going to somehow end Microsoft's dominance in the office productivity suite or PC operating system markets? If not, then there's no way on earth it can interfere with Microsoft's "air supply". MS could lose money on Windows Mobile for 100 years (and frankly is probably already off to a pretty good start on that period) and keep funding it, as long as they consider it worthwhile as a long-term strategic position.
Yes, this is the senator who wanted "The Bridge To Nowhere", and he's very likely corrupt (the title "Senator" should be an indication), but having been to Ketchikan, and knowing why they want the bridge, there's been a long term push (think several decades) to get a bridge from the city of Ketchikan across the Tongass narrows to the spit of land they have to use for an airport. The local economy is based on fishing and tourism, which means a small permanent populations but a much larger transient population that needs to use the airport. Here's where things get tricky - what is the cost-benefit analysis on a sinking ferry full of passengers? So, yes, it's a bridge to nowhere, but the "nowhere" is a vital lifeline for the town.
Ketchikan gets around 900,000 visitors a year and tourism is an undeniably important part of the local economy. However, well over 90% of those tourists arrive by cruise ship and only a modest number of Ketchikan-bound tourists arrive by plane each day. Those that do are easily served by the existing ferry system (which runs every half hour and costs $5 for a pedestrian passenger) or by the private water taxi service.
There may be things that Steven's has done wrong or that you don't like but the "BILLIONS of dollars to bridges to nowhere" bit is a commonly parroted bit of misinformation. Do you even know where the "bridge to nowhere" even is? What is the name of the city?
Anyone who has been to the area of the proposed bridge will agree that it needs to be built..
I live in Ketchikan. If they build the "preferred" bridge alternative (which will almost certainly never happen now because of skyrocketing costs and the fact that a large portion of the money allotted has already been spent elsewhere) I will be able to see it from the front windows of my house. And I can say with total confidence that your statement that "Anyone who has been to the area of the proposed bridge will agree that it needs to be built," is false. I myself am a counter-example -- I am very familiar with the area and don't agree that the bridge needs to be built. But I'm hardly alone in this opinion -- the community of Ketchikan is very much divided over the bridge issue.
Even among supporters of the project, though, few really believe in the urgent need for a bridge. Mostly what the supporters believe in is the need for an infusion of construction dollars in Ketchikan. Try asking the community to tax itself to pay for 5% of the bridge costs and you will see how tenuous support for the bridge project really is. If you're not willing to buy something even when it's marked down 95%, it's hardly a necessity now, is it?
Why not just leave the spectrum completely open to the public like 900MHz and 2.4GHz?
Because the government wants to sell the spectrum for money rather than open it to the public which would get the government zero dollars.
Shortsighted thinking. Which do you think has netted "the government" more in tax dollars:
Auction of the mostly-unused 700Mhz frequency space, -or-
The economic benefit to government from the huge industry selling cordless phones, wi-fi access points, laptops & PDAs with built-in wi-fi adaptors, services from wi-fi service providers, and all the other other goods and services which use the 2.4Ghz band, said benefit including, but not limited to, taxes on manufacturer profits, retailer profits, employee wages for those who design, manufacture, and sell the devices, sales taxes on end-user sales and connectivity fees, and all the other fractional slices that federal, state, and local governments have managed to carve off of what has become a many-billion-dollar industry?
The RIAA is acting like a mad grizzly bear trying to claw every salmon fish passing by it on a stream in Alaska.
Hey! I live in Alaska, and I must take offense on behalf of myself and our local Ursine-Americans. They may be voracious and savage predators, but you go too far in comparing them to the RIAA.
My car has "California" emissions and I live in Connecticut. This is just one example of how California mandates things for the rest of the country. They will set some standard for voting machines, and since the state is too big for voting machine companies to write off, it will end up becoming the defacto standard.
At least you know your car is built to conform to California emission standards because they tell you that on the sticker. There are much creepier effects, such as the fact that every high school textbook in the country has to please a few political appointees on the textbook committee in Texas (to pick one example.)
Almost all products are designed to chase after the big markets. Better get used to it.
Like other cities near the Great Lakes, Toronto's temperatures are affected substantially by the large body of water sitting nearby, which absorbs heat in the summertime and sheds it in the winter..
In this case, in the first part of the winter season (which includes Christmas) while the lake is still cooling, temperatures are warmer than they would otherwise be. The effect is quite noticeable, and tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the lakefront. If/when the temperature drops low enough and the water cools enough that ice forms on Lake Ontario, the moderating affect of the water is pretty much negated, at which point temperatures drop considerably.
-25C would be unusually cold for Toronto, but not at all farfetched during a cold snap in the latter half of the winter. I guess what I'm saying is: don't judge Great Lakes winters by Christmastime weather, as the lakes have a noticeable effect on warming and cooling and at that point in the season the lakes are still shedding heat.
That said, northern Manitoba wins the winter pissing contest (note: actual pissing not recommended outdoors in -55C weather.)
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As Jonathan Swift is credited with having observed: "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
The title comes from the same root as "anathema".
This is one of those plots to get rid of all the gullible people, isn't it?
Not at all. It's just that most people who love it know it as "The Count of Monte Cristo."
Actually, if I had a kid who was into science fiction I'd love to give them "The Stars My Destination" (which I agree is a terrifically entertaining read and a great story in its own right even if Bester did cop the basic plot from Dumas) and then *after* they'd read it rent a movie production of "The Count of Monte Cristo" to see if they recognized it as the same story. I know it took me a surprisingly long time to work that out..
One of the low points in my career as a sysadmin was trying to explain to a new and particularly clueless manager why his scheme to call each machine on the network by its university property tag number was a poor idea. In the end he was so enamored by his own bureaucratic "logic" that I couldn't convince him that a 10-digit alphanumeric property tag number wasn't a suitable mnemonic device for people to use (in fact, for most people it would have been easier to remember the 12 digits of the dotted quad form of the IP address) and ultimately I gave him what he insisted on and set up DNS records as requested for each of the machines. Of course the happy thing about DNS is you can give a machine multiple names, so just because he thought of, say, the departmental mail server as U2953A6CD9.[dept].[university].edu didn't mean everybody else had to remember it that way.
Which is why I recommend that if you have a mandate for using cumbersome enumerative or descriptive naming schemes imposed by some part of your organization that you consider using multiple naming conventions for your machines, or at least a system of handy aliases for commonly used hostnames.
For just a moment, don't think of it as a router. Think of it as a low-power-consumption custom Linux server with a certain amount of RAM and a certain amount of flash storage. Now think about other options for such a device -- perhaps as a SAMBA file server or a CUPS print server. I'd even like to see it with an audio output so I could hook it to a stereo ala Apple's Aiport Express -- I'm sure someone would soon have a pretty good UPnP media server software project well underway -- but if they don't want to build audio in USB would at least leave it open as an option.
Apple's got several successful products (Time Capsule & Airport Express) that exist in the "wireless access point plus more" realm. A moderately-priced decent-build-quality piece of hardware with fair extension capabilities via open-source firmware has some pretty fascinating potential.
Surely the sysadmin of the year should be able to unbrick their own iPhone..
Even among supporters of the project, though, few really believe in the urgent need for a bridge. Mostly what the supporters believe in is the need for an infusion of construction dollars in Ketchikan. Try asking the community to tax itself to pay for 5% of the bridge costs and you will see how tenuous support for the bridge project really is. If you're not willing to buy something even when it's marked down 95%, it's hardly a necessity now, is it?
They may be voracious and savage predators, but you go too far in comparing them to the RIAA.
Almost all products are designed to chase after the big markets. Better get used to it.
Like other cities near the Great Lakes, Toronto's temperatures are affected substantially by the large body of water sitting nearby, which absorbs heat in the summertime and sheds it in the winter..
In this case, in the first part of the winter season (which includes Christmas) while the lake is still cooling, temperatures are warmer than they would otherwise be. The effect is quite noticeable, and tends to diminish rapidly with distance from the lakefront. If/when the temperature drops low enough and the water cools enough that ice forms on Lake Ontario, the moderating affect of the water is pretty much negated, at which point temperatures drop considerably.
-25C would be unusually cold for Toronto, but not at all farfetched during a cold snap in the latter half of the winter. I guess what I'm saying is: don't judge Great Lakes winters by Christmastime weather, as the lakes have a noticeable effect on warming and cooling and at that point in the season the lakes are still shedding heat.
That said, northern Manitoba wins the winter pissing contest (note: actual pissing not recommended outdoors in -55C weather.)
And some of those contours can be... provocative.