I'd love to find an.ISO for you to download (or provide it myself), but I believe that they deserve the money. Sure, it's all GPL, and we could legally distribute it, but it's worth the $40.
My Win2k hard drive recently died in my Thinkpad. I don't know much about Windows, but I have to use it for work. I took it to my local support guy, explained the problem ("It gets halfway through the pretty 'windows 2000' screen and never finishes"). He tried it for himself, and got the same resutls. To get any data off of it, there were two steps -- he could put it in another machine, or try to install win2k over the old version and boot on its own. The other machine would freeze in the same place every time it tried to boot with my drive in, too. The win2k installer gave wacky messages (different every time), and never in 10 attempts did start to install. His diagnosis: A partition table too corrupt to permit any use.
I told him that I wouldn't give up, but I'd take it home and wack at it with Linux. After a very pessimistic look and explanations that my data was very likely deep in the bit bucket, I was permitted to do so. Once home, I snagged my Slackware 8.0 bootable live CD, booted it up and off we went. I loaded the NTFS module, the module for my net card, and FTPed all the files I wanted to my Mac OS X machine. Say what you want about Slackware's package manager, but it's a slick distro that gets the stuff done. Don't get me wrong, booting off the CD (and loading X, which I did for kicks alone -- worked right away) can be a slow process.
The little lady and I were recently in the market for trying something new out with our tax refund. So, the option of satellite radio came up. We spend enough time commuting that it was going to be a respectable thing to do for entertainment. What do you do? Well, you go to a store, listen to the samples, and make the best decision you can.
So, we went to websites, read all the selections possible, restricions on buildings, costs, etc. Then, to Best Buy, Circuit City, all the brick and mortar places that would have a sample. Each and every one sounded like VBR MP3s at 96kbps. Sure, some of it was better than FM, but most of it was just different bad quality. I figured, despite any technical hurdles, the stores would have these things put together in the best possible configuration they could to show the gadgets off and drive some sales. Now, if none of their "demos" could get it right, my money is not going anywhere.
I realize, they were in a building, but this was their opportunity to shine! Stick the frickin antenna outside! Or did they? Salespeople didn't know the difference.
Know what you're buying. Make sure that you listen. Don't assume "CD quality" when it says "digital quality". You'd just be telling the digital cable and satellite people their marketting was right. Us Nerds/Geeks have to prove that someone understands.
And remember, you can't spell "geek" without double-e.
As an IBMer with a thinkpad, I'd like to ask a very straightforward, down to business question.
When will I have Linux running on my Thinkpad, supporting my internal IBM needs?
Seems to me that there will be some initial development cost, perhaps a bit of training, but in the end, a Linux machine would be more easily maintianed. Between exporting xterms, allowing support to telnet or ssh in and needing to be root to really screw stuff up, I think there's a great deal of leverage there. I've looked into the C4EB (Client for E-Business, for those not in IBM speak) stuff, but I can't find out how to run my Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro, Freelance, etc. (including secure tunneling aka working from home) without kludging it. Certainly, it's fit for some needs, but my job places me in a less flexible position.
My background: I'm a hardware engineer, been playing with Linux since Slackware 96 (in 1996) as a user and admin. I won't allow an unsupported distribution, like Debian or Slackware, to touch my machine, as so many IBM specific things make assumptions.
How about a CD (or 4) that I could boot to that could 1) shrink my Win2k partition 2) set aside my hibernate partition so hibernating will stop blowing away my Linux partition 3) install Linux, Gnome or KDE, Wine and integrate Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro and Freelance. Sure, I could do this on my own, investing the weeks or months that I had when I was a student, but I'm married now and my management won't support a hardware engineer playing with software on that level.
I think it'd be sweet to be able to hit a shortcut that would export to a bot, signal a telnet or whatever, so an automated script could diagnose simple problems and queue for human review if necessary.
This application will be denied. They have to state when the idea was put into practical use, and when they say that it was over 12 months ago, the USPTO will deny the application. At least, that's what I was told when I filled out the applications for my three patents. An idea is not legally patentable, and will hence be denied, if the company decides to patent it over a year after its introduction. The laws in Japan are different -- you must submit the patent BEFORE the public sees it. I'm 100% positive that I've been subjected to popunders for longer than 12 months.
With the date for this moment set around 2012 and with no replacement technology in sight...
I've seen so many people say something like this, and each time I get really vocal. CMOS will die. Eventually. Big deal. We're counting oxide thickness in angstroms now ("how many atoms are in that?"), but get this -- gate tunneling leakage, source to drain leakage, they're making this a technology we wouldn't want to take further. That's right, DC current is becoming astronomical.
Replacements? The first one I think of is BiCMOS. That's our old standby. Current FET beta ratios are quoted at 100, but it's lower for each newer technology. Bipolar, on the other hand, is 300. That means that a bipolar transistor is 3 times as strong as a FET in terms of current it can source (or sink). Bipolars are big, and currently yield poorly. Throw the weight behind the technology and I bet we get some of that learned down. (For the curious, it yields poorly because to make a pnp transistor out of n silicon, you have to dope a big bowl of p, smaller bowl of n, but really hard to overcome the p you just did and finally a pretty small bowl of p, exceptionally hard to overcome the n you just did hard. Think about how CMOS makes a p type FET on p silicon -- light n to make an n well, then you can dope your source and drain.)
Oh, and Research is being done all the time to replace CMOS.
"No replacement technology in sight". Bah. Maybe for consumers. I'll throw my professional weight behind this: "All CMOS replacements have their own strengths and weaknesses, just as CMOS does. Some of them are already better at what we have CMOS do."
Life isn't watching a TV set, and as good as graphics get, no game will ever equal that feeling as you blast in a shot from 20 yards, or nail a 3 pointer over your work mates.
I respect your opinion, MosesJones, but I disagree with the spirit of your statement. I'm a 26 year old engineer-- I'm not in the best of shape, but I work out three times a week. There's no way I can keep up with a true athlete, a few of which are my [co-workers|work mates]. "Blasting shots", "nailing 3 pointers", wouldn't mean much to me anyway. But when I can challenge my boss's boss to a game of Rush 2049 in Dave and Busters, and actually compete, that means a great deal to me. Electronics in this case even the field. He may be 39, but he runs for an hour every day and helps his 16 year old son practice football (American). With my current goals, I couldn't hope to compete athletically. But, I can keep up in a game, and we can have experiences that he'll talk about for months. What does it mean when your boss's boss happily talks about how you almost ran him off the road in a game 4 months after the fact? To me, that means we used the false reality to actually share a personal experience that ends up benefitting our professional relationship in the end.
And no game ever will beat the smile you get from your kid first thing in the morning.
I can't disagree with you there. Some day, God willing, I hope to be able to agree with you.
Comments are tight around IBM. General consensus is that some raises are being given this season, but not many. IBM culture dictates that raises are given annually, announced in April and effective May. Culture also dictates that salaries are closely guarded personal secrets, and raises are almost as private.
I'm not directly in IT, but in hardware engineering. My first few years, I got between 7 and 10%, and I'm now up to just below 70k with a Masters degree. This year, I will not receive a raise, and my "0%" was not written on pink paper, so I am grateful. I believe I tend to overestimate my contribution to the business, but that could be The Man beating me down. Arrogance, realism, what is difference? Back on topic, I guess the reason I actually want to say "nothing too eventful here" is because IBM has what, 350k people? The more information we have, the better off we are to deal with management. There's one datapoint. Anybody else?
Anybody else remember the Doom II Aliens total conversion?
A friend of mine had found it, played it through, and told a bunch of us to set aside our Saturday afternoon for it. He was the computer attendant in one of the school's least popular labs and he told us he'd lock all four of us in while we played this game undisturbed. We were to bring headphones.
With the lights off, and the headphones in our ears (no music), it was very easy to immerse ourselves in the Alien world we saw in the movies. We had precisely one rule: No respawning.
I didn't find it extremely replayable, most of the enjoyment was based on having absolutely no way of knowing what would happen next. I was a decent Doom II player, but I didn't have a good familiarity with the maps -- I was roasted on maps that everyone else knew. This time was different, none of us knew the maps. It was the first time I played a co-operative game and had it actually work. And work it did! Looking like the dorks you see in the movies, we physically jumped back when some of those creatures came at us.
I still tip my hat off to those copyright infringing guys. You are truly talented.
Yes, that's right, a Slashback featuring the title of "membership" says nothing about using a non-paypal method of subscribing to Slashdot.
Love it or leave it, subscribership seems to me to be a way of supporting the site to which so many of us devote our time.
Yet, they're not rushing to pacify their most zealous "PayPal Hating Credit Card Wielding" fans. Maybe it's difficult to set up a relationship with the local bank that allows a computer to accept a credit card number, spew out a hard copy receipt and then/dev/null the number. Or have one of the editors take some of his "Grammar Is Irrelevant" time and sit down with his e-mail reader of choice and one of those merchant credit card readers.
I don't expect Slashdot will ever favor the most vocal Slashdot minority, the "Tin Foil Wearing Small Unmarked Bills" wielding folk.
I don't understand. The posting starts off saying, "The best portable MP3-player has become better!" and then goes on to talk about the battery munching USB wielding Bigger Than A Discman Nomad.
Was there an editorial problem? Shouldn't we have heard about it when the story broke? "The best MP3 player on the planet just got even better." It's small, it's got battery life beyond what I thought possible and the transfer rate over [IEEE 1394|Firewire|iLink] is pretty good.
Of course, that announcement was like a month ago.
It would seem that the courier companies are in a good position to offer this kind of service. They already have the more difficult delivery infrastructure in place.
Mr A places order with Mrs B. Mrs B ships by Escrow Couriers, Mr A pays Escrow Couriers. When Mr A signs off the delivery Mrs B receives money. The fees for the service are just added to the delivery charge. Seems quite simple.
ObRant: I want my vi keys in Mozilla.
The most risky transaction I heard about, was one my father in law conducted about a year and a half ago. He purchased a Lego 1978 USS Constellation. Really hard to find. This one was pictured with instructions, all the pieces, the box and even the poster that came with it. The catch was that the model was in Germany (IIRC). He won the auction at a lower price than it was worth because, presumably, no Americans wanted to deal with the overseas risk.
He worked a plan out with the seller, and esentially sent the money order by Fedex, and when it was delivered, the Fedex guy also brought the box and shipping material. They packed the box together, as the story is told, and the MO was left at the seller's house and Fedex had the box with the model inside. The effective discount this model had on it was more than enough to pay for the extra TLC Fedex put into it.
For Christmas 2000, I got a USS Constellation from my father in law and my wife. Complain about Ebay, the commercialization of religous holidays and globalization all you want, but I'll be enjoying my boat. And defending Ebay as a place where some decent people remain. If you're out there, and sold such an item to a guy in Texas, I'm enjoying this thing more than you could possibly imagine.
That last one is a bit more flexible. Of course, I don't picture AMD competing in either market, but that could just be me. Personally, the web pads are here and make sitting on the couch much more interesting.
Re:Birthday presents...
on
Is MOXI Toast?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"The TiVo folks did celebrate it, though. We let go. In fact, almost nine months to the day after we shipped Blue Moon 5 babies were born to TiVo employees within 5 days of each other. (True!)"
Hmmmm.... nah.... I couldn't be....
Wait a minute!!!!!!! Dad's B-day - 5th of March. Mine - December 10th - ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHH
I was 22 before my then-girlfriend (now wife) pointed out that my Dad's birthday was July 7 and mine was April 7. I had gotten through that much growing up and never thought about it.
Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.
-1 (Malinformed)
Sure, it's easy to say how writing an API should take less than 7 years, and easy to say that the Wine Project is failing by missing that target, but it's a moving target. The API changes, and when reverse engineering an API, there are multiple right answers for the limited tests they have the resources to do.
Say a program uses APIs 1-50, but only 25% of them. In order to make that program work, you only need 50 APIs 25% done. Not too bad. And, maybe your solution doesn't collide with other variables too badly. Now, when you take that up to 50%, you might start to get some collisions, realize that, while a certain program functioned using an API before, it was based on two assumptions that were both wrong and happened to cancel each other out.
It's 7 years old (and being extended with every release). It's undocumented (at last check Microsoft denied there were undocumented API features, but the Wine project happened to be documenting them on the way through their implementation).
Imagine how many MIPS 4K cores you can fit in 300mm^2 in 4-5 years.
AAAAAAAH! This is my livlihood. 300mm^2 makes me scream. If you think the average consumer will be able to afford a game console that has a CPU that's 17mm on a side, I want your credit rating. Are you related to the guy whose name appears to be "Object of Envy"?
Half that size isn't bad. If you had mentioned about cramming CPUs into 150mm^2 or even 100mm^2 (I think the Game Cube processor is below 50mm^2), that would have been more realistic.
Re:they trademarked two words. nice.
on
Self-Heating Can
·
· Score: 2
"anytime, anywhere"
and they trademarked it. am i the only one who thinks that this is stupid?
Whore.
You toss in some comment about trademark laws being stupid, and you get the karma. Fscking Ingenius. [Sarcasm off]
For those not in the know, this trademark only applies to companies in the trade -- this will likely mean canned beverages (more generically, beverages packaged to be consumed away from preparation utilities) and coffee (protecting them from Starbucks using the same saying on their little paper or styrofoam cups.
Addressing the stupidity of the word choice itself, one must admit that the choice is very consise, and accurately describes the product. "Bad Coffee For Those On The Run But Addicted To Caffeine" will likely not set well with their focus groups. But hey, if you have better words, nobody will stop you from packaging a closed system exothermic reaction with some beverage and slogan of your choice.
I think the real market would be in endothermic closed system reactions packaged with the beverage of choice.
iii = High level function name. This is fairly arbitrary, but if you have JPD for Joe's Pizza Delivery, it's possible to have Jack's Pyrotechnic and Demolition, but unlikely. If you do collide, I'm sure you can come up with something anyway. You'll likely need a table lookup to be 100% sure that you're not giving info on one customer to
another, so don't worry about collisions.
j = machine type. H is HP, I is IBM, S is Sun, C is Compaq, D is Dell, you get the idea. If you decie to have Alpha and Apple, then Alpha became either Compaq = C, Dell = D, or Samsung = S. If you collide, come up with something. Work on this table now. If you have more than 36 vendors (0-9, A-Z), just skip this step and polish the resume.
xyz is a descriptor of your network location, and really only makes sense to your staff. You really do want to know when an entire segment goes down, so if you get lots of 3c servers (3c5, 3c2, 3c9) calls, you know that you've lost something in your infrastructure. Sure, you have to rename if you move, but you DO have lots of flexibility there. They can be virtual, by the way-- if you happen to have 3c 3d on the same router (hopefully at least different switches), your staff who cares will know that c and d are shared.
Whatever you do, think about any predictable reprocussions you're doing, and will have to live with them.
I was raised on DOS. Started with 1.1, and went from there. As far as I was concerned, 5.0 was the mecca. I went kicking and screaming into the "GUI revolution", stopping briefly by Win 3.1 on my way to OS/2 (2.0?) and quickly to OS/2 Warp.
Even then, everything beyond WYSIWYG was just eye candy, and my 486 dx2 66 (with 32 megs of RAM!) was a little slow. Not that it wasn't "pretty good" for the time, it was! I still preferred Word Perfect 5.1 for word processing, and the print preview button for WYSIWYG as a combination of efficiency and page accuracy.
Based on what I actually did, for a while I was labelling myself as a member of the "Operating System of the Semester", because that's about as often as I switched. Did I pay Microsoft for everything I used? No, but I actually had licenses (trading favors/work/things/trinkets) for unused licenses -- M$ got their money, and no copyrights were violated (I still don't buy the whole prohibition of transferring ownership). I just couldn't afford to do all that expirementation and learning! But my skills were growing quickly. Eventually, I went to NT 3.51 server and had enough spare parts to go to Linux 2.0 (Slackware '96 was my friend) on a different machine. I couldn't do everything I needed to for my classes with Linux, but I had NT there to do that for me (no games under 3.51, remember? kept my GPA from falling too far).
Then I realized that, in order to compete, I had to learn Win95, because potential employers were asking about that. I traded for WinNT4.0 workstation, and that gave me the GUI experience I needed for a job. I really resent having to do all that grey-market trading to get the experience I felt I needed, but at this point I feel I'm pretty well rounded. My workplace bought me a computer with Windows 2000 Professional (and I'm competant there), a workstation (with AIX on it, so I'm still good), and at home I have two computers, one with Linux (2.2.flavor-of-the-month) and one with OS/X, my current favorite.
Before I left, my school was replacing all the UNIX machines with Windows machines because of an Intel/M$ grant to do so. The CompSci classes were changing their curriculum to accomodate, but there was an underground movement to "upgrade" all those machines to Linux so CompSci wouldn't have to change their curriculum ("But it worked on GCC in my dorm!" was a realistic thing to hear when working against Visual C).
Will CS students switch from Microsoft? I hope so -- if only to learn what the alternatives are and their strengths/weaknesses. The ultimate question is, what will they do about it? Will they keep their non-Microsoft tendencies, or switch back?
I'm about ready to give back a Windows 2000 Professional license to my company, because I've recently learned that Wine can do everything I need to in order to do my job, and Linux is more what I prefer anyway. Sure, I'm just one engineer, middle management is making all the purchases, but I'm one more in a growing culture here. Our voices will be heard. I'm not saying that as some zealot trying to change the world, but as one engineer who thinks that there's a more efficient way of getting work done, and it happens to cost less in licensing fees. After all, money is what managers care about. If my manager can avoid one more license, and get increased efficiency out of me, what do you think he'll do?
Yeah, he'll probably blacklist one of my favorite news sites in the name of efficiency.
Re:Lifetime subs just got cheaper, though...
on
TiVo Service Cost Rising
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Holy cow! Do the math!
I just grabbed my TI-83 calculator, told it to assume the average TiVo customer was with them for 3 years (? I've had my VCR 5 years), told it that lifetime subscriptions (also 3 years -- they don't transfer to new units purchased last I checked) are going for $200, or that you can pay $12.95/month. What's the interest rate they need to have on that $200 to make the same amount of money?
73%. I'll take that any day.
Now, with the old system, which i think was $9.95/month or $250 for lifetime, that was only 27%. Reasonable for a legit company.
When lifetime rates go back up to $250, to equal that ROI they'd have to get 50%. Only.
Let's throw away the 3 year assumption. It's pretty rough on the company, possibly.
Say they get the credit card 9.99% that's flogging my mailbox now: the $250 and $12.99/month goes almost 21 months.
I realize that promotions that generate customers are hard to quantify in terms of ROI, but just looking at these numbers tells you what it's worth to them to get those lifers (if they think you'll have the same unit for over 2 years or so). If you really like TiVo, and aren't sure where to go, it's certainly worth your while to get the lifetime subscription (if you're looking at more than 21 months or so). TiVo apparently thinks it's worth theirs, too. If, on the other hand, you're sticking with them for less than 21 months (or will purchase a new unit between now and then), go monthly. Even if they raise their rates to $14.95/month tomorrow, that's still almost 18 months out to break even with $250 lifetime. Of course, if your only other debt is a home mortgage at 6.99% (lucky you!), the breakeven point for 250/$12.95 is 20 months out.
My parents have had the same Hitachi VCR since 1992. If they had gone lifetime then ($200 promotion) and avoided the $12.95 a month (ignoring the fact that TiVo wasn't around then), a TiVo like company would have to get a 83% return on them.
How long do you think they estimate the average customer sticks around? You're really handing them money if you give them $200 for a lifetime and it dies after the 1 year warranty. Even a 0% investment would pay the $200/$12.95 tradeoff in 15 months (12 months is actually a -51% interest rate!).
The line isn't as blurred as you like. Telecommuting with a residential account will get you residential class uptime, bandwidth and latency. You get what you pay for. You probably chose residential because it's cheaper, and you now know why it's cheaper. If you want accountability, uptime, gaurantees, get a business class line and pay for it.
Not to say that I don't think it sucks -- I do. Reliability above 95% is hard, and it costs someone.
I hate ads, and Slashdot is only one of three sites whose ads I don't block at this point (because I want to support Slashdot). Interested enough to use Paypal?
Certainly not.
Hopefully there will be a link on the front page with how to use my real credit card or send a money order before the really intrusive ads that I have to block show up.
You see, I'm not adverse to supporting a site I like -- but if Slashdot only offers a choice between using Paypal and being inundated with huge ads? Freeload I will. And if they start using Flash in their ads? I'll vindictively click reload just for spite.
Slashdot Mirror
My Win2k hard drive recently died in my Thinkpad. I don't know much about Windows, but I have to use it for work. I took it to my local support guy, explained the problem ("It gets halfway through the pretty 'windows 2000' screen and never finishes"). He tried it for himself, and got the same resutls. To get any data off of it, there were two steps -- he could put it in another machine, or try to install win2k over the old version and boot on its own. The other machine would freeze in the same place every time it tried to boot with my drive in, too. The win2k installer gave wacky messages (different every time), and never in 10 attempts did start to install. His diagnosis: A partition table too corrupt to permit any use.
I told him that I wouldn't give up, but I'd take it home and wack at it with Linux. After a very pessimistic look and explanations that my data was very likely deep in the bit bucket, I was permitted to do so. Once home, I snagged my Slackware 8.0 bootable live CD, booted it up and off we went. I loaded the NTFS module, the module for my net card, and FTPed all the files I wanted to my Mac OS X machine. Say what you want about Slackware's package manager, but it's a slick distro that gets the stuff done. Don't get me wrong, booting off the CD (and loading X, which I did for kicks alone -- worked right away) can be a slow process.
And my rules say they should consider themselves lucky if I fill in gender correctly even half the time.
Since this is ther internet, aren't we all 13 year-old little girls from San Diego?I'm not an audiophile.
The little lady and I were recently in the market for trying something new out with our tax refund. So, the option of satellite radio came up. We spend enough time commuting that it was going to be a respectable thing to do for entertainment. What do you do? Well, you go to a store, listen to the samples, and make the best decision you can.
So, we went to websites, read all the selections possible, restricions on buildings, costs, etc. Then, to Best Buy, Circuit City, all the brick and mortar places that would have a sample. Each and every one sounded like VBR MP3s at 96kbps. Sure, some of it was better than FM, but most of it was just different bad quality. I figured, despite any technical hurdles, the stores would have these things put together in the best possible configuration they could to show the gadgets off and drive some sales. Now, if none of their "demos" could get it right, my money is not going anywhere.
I realize, they were in a building, but this was their opportunity to shine! Stick the frickin antenna outside! Or did they? Salespeople didn't know the difference.
Know what you're buying. Make sure that you listen. Don't assume "CD quality" when it says "digital quality". You'd just be telling the digital cable and satellite people their marketting was right. Us Nerds/Geeks have to prove that someone understands.
And remember, you can't spell "geek" without double-e.
As an IBMer with a thinkpad, I'd like to ask a very straightforward, down to business question.
When will I have Linux running on my Thinkpad, supporting my internal IBM needs?
Seems to me that there will be some initial development cost, perhaps a bit of training, but in the end, a Linux machine would be more easily maintianed. Between exporting xterms, allowing support to telnet or ssh in and needing to be root to really screw stuff up, I think there's a great deal of leverage there. I've looked into the C4EB (Client for E-Business, for those not in IBM speak) stuff, but I can't find out how to run my Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro, Freelance, etc. (including secure tunneling aka working from home) without kludging it. Certainly, it's fit for some needs, but my job places me in a less flexible position.
My background: I'm a hardware engineer, been playing with Linux since Slackware 96 (in 1996) as a user and admin. I won't allow an unsupported distribution, like Debian or Slackware, to touch my machine, as so many IBM specific things make assumptions.
How about a CD (or 4) that I could boot to that could 1) shrink my Win2k partition 2) set aside my hibernate partition so hibernating will stop blowing away my Linux partition 3) install Linux, Gnome or KDE, Wine and integrate Lotus 1-2-3, Wordpro and Freelance. Sure, I could do this on my own, investing the weeks or months that I had when I was a student, but I'm married now and my management won't support a hardware engineer playing with software on that level.
I think it'd be sweet to be able to hit a shortcut that would export to a bot, signal a telnet or whatever, so an automated script could diagnose simple problems and queue for human review if necessary.
This application will be denied. They have to state when the idea was put into practical use, and when they say that it was over 12 months ago, the USPTO will deny the application. At least, that's what I was told when I filled out the applications for my three patents. An idea is not legally patentable, and will hence be denied, if the company decides to patent it over a year after its introduction. The laws in Japan are different -- you must submit the patent BEFORE the public sees it. I'm 100% positive that I've been subjected to popunders for longer than 12 months.
With the date for this moment set around 2012 and with no replacement technology in sight...
I've seen so many people say something like this, and each time I get really vocal. CMOS will die. Eventually. Big deal. We're counting oxide thickness in angstroms now ("how many atoms are in that?"), but get this -- gate tunneling leakage, source to drain leakage, they're making this a technology we wouldn't want to take further. That's right, DC current is becoming astronomical.
Replacements? The first one I think of is BiCMOS. That's our old standby. Current FET beta ratios are quoted at 100, but it's lower for each newer technology. Bipolar, on the other hand, is 300. That means that a bipolar transistor is 3 times as strong as a FET in terms of current it can source (or sink). Bipolars are big, and currently yield poorly. Throw the weight behind the technology and I bet we get some of that learned down. (For the curious, it yields poorly because to make a pnp transistor out of n silicon, you have to dope a big bowl of p, smaller bowl of n, but really hard to overcome the p you just did and finally a pretty small bowl of p, exceptionally hard to overcome the n you just did hard. Think about how CMOS makes a p type FET on p silicon -- light n to make an n well, then you can dope your source and drain.)
Oh, and Research is being done all the time to replace CMOS.
"No replacement technology in sight". Bah. Maybe for consumers. I'll throw my professional weight behind this: "All CMOS replacements have their own strengths and weaknesses, just as CMOS does. Some of them are already better at what we have CMOS do."
Life isn't watching a TV set, and as good as graphics get, no game will ever equal that feeling as you blast in a shot from 20 yards, or nail a 3 pointer over your work mates.
I respect your opinion, MosesJones, but I disagree with the spirit of your statement. I'm a 26 year old engineer-- I'm not in the best of shape, but I work out three times a week. There's no way I can keep up with a true athlete, a few of which are my [co-workers|work mates]. "Blasting shots", "nailing 3 pointers", wouldn't mean much to me anyway. But when I can challenge my boss's boss to a game of Rush 2049 in Dave and Busters, and actually compete, that means a great deal to me. Electronics in this case even the field. He may be 39, but he runs for an hour every day and helps his 16 year old son practice football (American). With my current goals, I couldn't hope to compete athletically. But, I can keep up in a game, and we can have experiences that he'll talk about for months. What does it mean when your boss's boss happily talks about how you almost ran him off the road in a game 4 months after the fact? To me, that means we used the false reality to actually share a personal experience that ends up benefitting our professional relationship in the end.And no game ever will beat the smile you get from your kid first thing in the morning.
I can't disagree with you there. Some day, God willing, I hope to be able to agree with you.Comments are tight around IBM. General consensus is that some raises are being given this season, but not many. IBM culture dictates that raises are given annually, announced in April and effective May. Culture also dictates that salaries are closely guarded personal secrets, and raises are almost as private.
I'm not directly in IT, but in hardware engineering. My first few years, I got between 7 and 10%, and I'm now up to just below 70k with a Masters degree. This year, I will not receive a raise, and my "0%" was not written on pink paper, so I am grateful. I believe I tend to overestimate my contribution to the business, but that could be The Man beating me down. Arrogance, realism, what is difference? Back on topic, I guess the reason I actually want to say "nothing too eventful here" is because IBM has what, 350k people? The more information we have, the better off we are to deal with management. There's one datapoint. Anybody else?
Anybody else remember the Doom II Aliens total conversion?
A friend of mine had found it, played it through, and told a bunch of us to set aside our Saturday afternoon for it. He was the computer attendant in one of the school's least popular labs and he told us he'd lock all four of us in while we played this game undisturbed. We were to bring headphones.
With the lights off, and the headphones in our ears (no music), it was very easy to immerse ourselves in the Alien world we saw in the movies. We had precisely one rule: No respawning.
I didn't find it extremely replayable, most of the enjoyment was based on having absolutely no way of knowing what would happen next. I was a decent Doom II player, but I didn't have a good familiarity with the maps -- I was roasted on maps that everyone else knew. This time was different, none of us knew the maps. It was the first time I played a co-operative game and had it actually work. And work it did! Looking like the dorks you see in the movies, we physically jumped back when some of those creatures came at us.
I still tip my hat off to those copyright infringing guys. You are truly talented.
Yes, that's right, a Slashback featuring the title of "membership" says nothing about using a non-paypal method of subscribing to Slashdot.
Love it or leave it, subscribership seems to me to be a way of supporting the site to which so many of us devote our time.
Yet, they're not rushing to pacify their most zealous "PayPal Hating Credit Card Wielding" fans. Maybe it's difficult to set up a relationship with the local bank that allows a computer to accept a credit card number, spew out a hard copy receipt and then /dev/null the number. Or have one of the editors take some of his "Grammar Is Irrelevant" time and sit down with his e-mail reader of choice and one of those merchant credit card readers.
I don't expect Slashdot will ever favor the most vocal Slashdot minority, the "Tin Foil Wearing Small Unmarked Bills" wielding folk.
I don't understand. The posting starts off saying, "The best portable MP3-player has become better!" and then goes on to talk about the battery munching USB wielding Bigger Than A Discman Nomad.
Was there an editorial problem? Shouldn't we have heard about it when the story broke? "The best MP3 player on the planet just got even better." It's small, it's got battery life beyond what I thought possible and the transfer rate over [IEEE 1394|Firewire|iLink] is pretty good.
Of course, that announcement was like a month ago.
It would seem that the courier companies are in a good position to offer this kind of service. They already have the more difficult delivery infrastructure in place.
Mr A places order with Mrs B. Mrs B ships by Escrow Couriers, Mr A pays Escrow Couriers. When Mr A signs off the delivery Mrs B receives money. The fees for the service are just added to the delivery charge. Seems quite simple.
ObRant: I want my vi keys in Mozilla.
The most risky transaction I heard about, was one my father in law conducted about a year and a half ago. He purchased a Lego 1978 USS Constellation. Really hard to find. This one was pictured with instructions, all the pieces, the box and even the poster that came with it. The catch was that the model was in Germany (IIRC). He won the auction at a lower price than it was worth because, presumably, no Americans wanted to deal with the overseas risk.
He worked a plan out with the seller, and esentially sent the money order by Fedex, and when it was delivered, the Fedex guy also brought the box and shipping material. They packed the box together, as the story is told, and the MO was left at the seller's house and Fedex had the box with the model inside. The effective discount this model had on it was more than enough to pay for the extra TLC Fedex put into it.
For Christmas 2000, I got a USS Constellation from my father in law and my wife. Complain about Ebay, the commercialization of religous holidays and globalization all you want, but I'll be enjoying my boat. And defending Ebay as a place where some decent people remain. If you're out there, and sold such an item to a guy in Texas, I'm enjoying this thing more than you could possibly imagine.
Does anybody have any idea when a mid cost wireless webpad will show up that actually makes this market worth targetting?
Depending on your definition, it may have already arrived. Does a Palm count? How about this, my favorite method?
That last one is a bit more flexible. Of course, I don't picture AMD competing in either market, but that could just be me. Personally, the web pads are here and make sitting on the couch much more interesting.
"The TiVo folks did celebrate it, though. We let go. In fact, almost nine months to the day after we shipped Blue Moon 5 babies were born to TiVo employees within 5 days of each other. (True!)"
Hmmmm.... nah.... I couldn't be.... Wait a minute!!!!!!! Dad's B-day - 5th of March. Mine - December 10th - ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHH
I was 22 before my then-girlfriend (now wife) pointed out that my Dad's birthday was July 7 and mine was April 7. I had gotten through that much growing up and never thought about it.
Yuck.
Here's what I can't figure out: Office 2000 will run on Win95. That means that to make Office 2000 (or damn near any other product out there that runs on the windows tree) all that needs to be done is support an API that is now almost 7 years old.
-1 (Malinformed)
Sure, it's easy to say how writing an API should take less than 7 years, and easy to say that the Wine Project is failing by missing that target, but it's a moving target. The API changes, and when reverse engineering an API, there are multiple right answers for the limited tests they have the resources to do.
Say a program uses APIs 1-50, but only 25% of them. In order to make that program work, you only need 50 APIs 25% done. Not too bad. And, maybe your solution doesn't collide with other variables too badly. Now, when you take that up to 50%, you might start to get some collisions, realize that, while a certain program functioned using an API before, it was based on two assumptions that were both wrong and happened to cancel each other out.
It's 7 years old (and being extended with every release). It's undocumented (at last check Microsoft denied there were undocumented API features, but the Wine project happened to be documenting them on the way through their implementation).
It's not easy to hit an invisible moving target.
Imagine how many MIPS 4K cores you can fit in 300mm^2 in 4-5 years.
AAAAAAAH! This is my livlihood. 300mm^2 makes me scream. If you think the average consumer will be able to afford a game console that has a CPU that's 17mm on a side, I want your credit rating. Are you related to the guy whose name appears to be "Object of Envy"?
Half that size isn't bad. If you had mentioned about cramming CPUs into 150mm^2 or even 100mm^2 (I think the Game Cube processor is below 50mm^2), that would have been more realistic.
"anytime, anywhere"
and they trademarked it. am i the only one who thinks that this is stupid?
Whore.
You toss in some comment about trademark laws being stupid, and you get the karma. Fscking Ingenius. [Sarcasm off]
For those not in the know, this trademark only applies to companies in the trade -- this will likely mean canned beverages (more generically, beverages packaged to be consumed away from preparation utilities) and coffee (protecting them from Starbucks using the same saying on their little paper or styrofoam cups.
Addressing the stupidity of the word choice itself, one must admit that the choice is very consise, and accurately describes the product. "Bad Coffee For Those On The Run But Addicted To Caffeine" will likely not set well with their focus groups. But hey, if you have better words, nobody will stop you from packaging a closed system exothermic reaction with some beverage and slogan of your choice.
I think the real market would be in endothermic closed system reactions packaged with the beverage of choice.
What we've used:
iiijxyz
iii = High level function name. This is fairly arbitrary, but if you have JPD for Joe's Pizza Delivery, it's possible to have Jack's Pyrotechnic and Demolition, but unlikely. If you do collide, I'm sure you can come up with something anyway. You'll likely need a table lookup to be 100% sure that you're not giving info on one customer to another, so don't worry about collisions.
j = machine type. H is HP, I is IBM, S is Sun, C is Compaq, D is Dell, you get the idea. If you decie to have Alpha and Apple, then Alpha became either Compaq = C, Dell = D, or Samsung = S. If you collide, come up with something. Work on this table now. If you have more than 36 vendors (0-9, A-Z), just skip this step and polish the resume.
xyz is a descriptor of your network location, and really only makes sense to your staff. You really do want to know when an entire segment goes down, so if you get lots of 3c servers (3c5, 3c2, 3c9) calls, you know that you've lost something in your infrastructure. Sure, you have to rename if you move, but you DO have lots of flexibility there. They can be virtual, by the way-- if you happen to have 3c 3d on the same router (hopefully at least different switches), your staff who cares will know that c and d are shared.
Whatever you do, think about any predictable reprocussions you're doing, and will have to live with them.
You think that's bad? Just the other day, my wife downloaded 5 gigs of songs in under a half hour! Talk about thinking you know someone!
$100000 gets you "better than Hemos"
$1000000 gets you "new owner of Slashdot"
$10000000 gets you "date with cowboyneal"
I was raised on DOS. Started with 1.1, and went from there. As far as I was concerned, 5.0 was the mecca. I went kicking and screaming into the "GUI revolution", stopping briefly by Win 3.1 on my way to OS/2 (2.0?) and quickly to OS/2 Warp.
Even then, everything beyond WYSIWYG was just eye candy, and my 486 dx2 66 (with 32 megs of RAM!) was a little slow. Not that it wasn't "pretty good" for the time, it was! I still preferred Word Perfect 5.1 for word processing, and the print preview button for WYSIWYG as a combination of efficiency and page accuracy.
Based on what I actually did, for a while I was labelling myself as a member of the "Operating System of the Semester", because that's about as often as I switched. Did I pay Microsoft for everything I used? No, but I actually had licenses (trading favors/work/things/trinkets) for unused licenses -- M$ got their money, and no copyrights were violated (I still don't buy the whole prohibition of transferring ownership). I just couldn't afford to do all that expirementation and learning! But my skills were growing quickly. Eventually, I went to NT 3.51 server and had enough spare parts to go to Linux 2.0 (Slackware '96 was my friend) on a different machine. I couldn't do everything I needed to for my classes with Linux, but I had NT there to do that for me (no games under 3.51, remember? kept my GPA from falling too far).
Then I realized that, in order to compete, I had to learn Win95, because potential employers were asking about that. I traded for WinNT4.0 workstation, and that gave me the GUI experience I needed for a job. I really resent having to do all that grey-market trading to get the experience I felt I needed, but at this point I feel I'm pretty well rounded. My workplace bought me a computer with Windows 2000 Professional (and I'm competant there), a workstation (with AIX on it, so I'm still good), and at home I have two computers, one with Linux (2.2.flavor-of-the-month) and one with OS/X, my current favorite.
Before I left, my school was replacing all the UNIX machines with Windows machines because of an Intel/M$ grant to do so. The CompSci classes were changing their curriculum to accomodate, but there was an underground movement to "upgrade" all those machines to Linux so CompSci wouldn't have to change their curriculum ("But it worked on GCC in my dorm!" was a realistic thing to hear when working against Visual C).
Will CS students switch from Microsoft? I hope so -- if only to learn what the alternatives are and their strengths/weaknesses. The ultimate question is, what will they do about it? Will they keep their non-Microsoft tendencies, or switch back?
I'm about ready to give back a Windows 2000 Professional license to my company, because I've recently learned that Wine can do everything I need to in order to do my job, and Linux is more what I prefer anyway. Sure, I'm just one engineer, middle management is making all the purchases, but I'm one more in a growing culture here. Our voices will be heard. I'm not saying that as some zealot trying to change the world, but as one engineer who thinks that there's a more efficient way of getting work done, and it happens to cost less in licensing fees. After all, money is what managers care about. If my manager can avoid one more license, and get increased efficiency out of me, what do you think he'll do?
Yeah, he'll probably blacklist one of my favorite news sites in the name of efficiency.
Holy cow! Do the math!
I just grabbed my TI-83 calculator, told it to assume the average TiVo customer was with them for 3 years (? I've had my VCR 5 years), told it that lifetime subscriptions (also 3 years -- they don't transfer to new units purchased last I checked) are going for $200, or that you can pay $12.95/month. What's the interest rate they need to have on that $200 to make the same amount of money?
73%. I'll take that any day.
Now, with the old system, which i think was $9.95/month or $250 for lifetime, that was only 27%. Reasonable for a legit company.
When lifetime rates go back up to $250, to equal that ROI they'd have to get 50%. Only.
Let's throw away the 3 year assumption. It's pretty rough on the company, possibly.
Say they get the credit card 9.99% that's flogging my mailbox now: the $250 and $12.99/month goes almost 21 months.
I realize that promotions that generate customers are hard to quantify in terms of ROI, but just looking at these numbers tells you what it's worth to them to get those lifers (if they think you'll have the same unit for over 2 years or so). If you really like TiVo, and aren't sure where to go, it's certainly worth your while to get the lifetime subscription (if you're looking at more than 21 months or so). TiVo apparently thinks it's worth theirs, too. If, on the other hand, you're sticking with them for less than 21 months (or will purchase a new unit between now and then), go monthly. Even if they raise their rates to $14.95/month tomorrow, that's still almost 18 months out to break even with $250 lifetime. Of course, if your only other debt is a home mortgage at 6.99% (lucky you!), the breakeven point for 250/$12.95 is 20 months out.
My parents have had the same Hitachi VCR since 1992. If they had gone lifetime then ($200 promotion) and avoided the $12.95 a month (ignoring the fact that TiVo wasn't around then), a TiVo like company would have to get a 83% return on them.
How long do you think they estimate the average customer sticks around? You're really handing them money if you give them $200 for a lifetime and it dies after the 1 year warranty. Even a 0% investment would pay the $200/$12.95 tradeoff in 15 months (12 months is actually a -51% interest rate!).
The line isn't as blurred as you like. Telecommuting with a residential account will get you residential class uptime, bandwidth and latency. You get what you pay for. You probably chose residential because it's cheaper, and you now know why it's cheaper. If you want accountability, uptime, gaurantees, get a business class line and pay for it. Not to say that I don't think it sucks -- I do. Reliability above 95% is hard, and it costs someone.
Am I interested? Sure as hell am.
I hate ads, and Slashdot is only one of three sites whose ads I don't block at this point (because I want to support Slashdot). Interested enough to use Pay pal?
Certainly not.
Hopefully there will be a link on the front page with how to use my real credit card or send a money order before the really intrusive ads that I have to block show up.
You see, I'm not adverse to supporting a site I like -- but if Slashdot only offers a choice between using Paypal and being inundated with huge ads? Freeload I will. And if they start using Flash in their ads? I'll vindictively click reload just for spite.
by Anonymous Coward
OK, that's it. I've been trying to quit /. for some time now... but being bored at work was too much, and I kept coming back.
This story, however, has done it for me. Posting this was the proverbial straw for me.
So, I'm out. See ya'll later.
Whelp, that does it. All those people who wanted to see Slashdot restricted to just registered users just won. AC just left. Not coming back. We won!