I picked up a Unisys Aquanta CP at a show last weekend for $44. It's really tiny (about the size of the Yellow Pages of a decent size city), has a Pentium 166MMX, 32MB RAM, 2 PCI/1 ISA, Trio64V+ video, Ethernet, COM1, 2 USB, floppy, 2 IDE connectors. All I need is a PCI sound card, plus some Linux distro and software to tie it all together into an MP3 box. If I don't find anything, I'll just roll my own.
My "expertise" is mainly derived from a couple of specials on CNN and CBC on the Soviet occupation, so apply a grain of salt.
Their idea going in was to get rid of the prime minister (who was pro-communist but wanted an unrealistically fast pace of societal reform and thus alienated the conservative Muslim population) and install some more moderate people, which they did. But once they had control of the urban areas, the pesky rebels started taking potshots at the cities from the hills, making life very awkward.
At first the Soviets just wanted to train and advise the Afghan fighting forces, without actually taking part in hostilities themselves. But as the rebels grew peskier with their hit-and-run attacks and started inflicting casualties on Soviet troops and equipment, they let themselves be dragged into the conflict. The rest is history.
As you can see, your idea of forming a new government and helping it "get the rest of the country under control" is exactly what the Soviets tried and failed to accomplish. Securing only urban areas allows rebels to nip at your perimeter from the hills. Trying to prevent that invariably leads to mountain warfare, which is exactly what the rebels want.
Besides, the real problem is the divided nature of Afghanistan itself. It would be hard if not impossible to install a government that most people would be happy with. Till now the Taliban were about the most cohesive government they've had in a long time. The problem is that the values of urban and rural people are so different. While urbanites might chafe under the religious despotism of the Taliban, that kind of lifestyle is very much along the lines of many rural communities. There is a huge civilizational and values gap between the two groups. Until they can reach a stable compromise, Afghanistan will remain highly unstable, regardless of what outside forces try to do. Change can only come from within, as the cliche goes.
In some respects Afghanistan is a classic example of trying to accelerate social evolution. Western civilization has taken many centuries of war to arrive at a fairly stable and relatively homogeneous and tolerant world view (still quite easily upset as the two world wars have shown). Now that we think we're past our growing pains, we look around and start wanting to mold everyone else in our image, as it were. Impart the benefits of our experience without the pains of acquiring it--just what every good parent tries. Except that--as every good parent eventually gets to realize--that doesn't work.
Firstly, we're no other civilization's parent or guardian. Secondly, they all have to achieve progress through experiencing their own struggles. We can hand them our experiences nicely bound in a set of volumes, but we can't force them to apply them. Those are our experiences and lessons learned, not theirs. They have to form their own if they are to be meaningful.
You're right about the US support of the rebels during the Soviet occupation, but you're wrong about the Soviet goals. They were mainly worried about the rogue prime minister of Afghanistan, and wanted to do a quick switch with a more moderate pro-Soviet administration. Their expectations initially were of a week-long operation or so, in and out. The Soviets had no trouble with modern warfare--they captured the urban areas and infrastructure within weeks. Their troubles began when they started overextending themselves into the mountains and caves, a type of warfare they hadn't trained and were not equipped for.
We might be enamoured with our high-tech silicon-driven equipment, but there's no evidence yet that we would fare any better than the Soviets in them thar hills. Push-button death is one thing, hand-to-hand combat something entirely different. We have little definitive evidence of our vast superiority given no force multipliers or superiority in numbers.
> When will these types of screens be available in standard laptops???
Dell has been selling their Inspiron 8000 with 1400x1050 and 1600x1200 screens for quite some time. I have the 1400x1050 display, and it's very nice indeed. Not to mention the Dolby Digital sound, TV out, dual monitor capability (LCD + external), or 1394 port.
Sure. Read my lips: not GPRS in the US yet. We're too busy developing the disposable cellphone to lower the costs of changing carriers. The upshot? Once we DO have wireless broadband, it will be on paper phones that you cut out from the back of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
So how exactly is the company going to ask you for your consent to send you spam? Isn't that also going to be an unsolicited email, i.e. spam? Are you going to have two categories of spam--spam, and spam requesting the permission to send further spam? Just checking.
Seems to be just HTML though, with potentially constantly changing formatting, throwing any parsers off. This would seem to be an ideal application of web services: provide a web service that takes region/provider/date range input and returns standarised listing data, maybe using some generic XML TV listing markup language or a standard database table format.
> In all, the Ethernet on the TiVo is great for toys like a web server, or doing stuff from the
> shell prompt.
How about pulling shows down to you PC and burning them onto VCD or even DVD? Not compelling enough for ya? Once on VCD, they're a heck of a lot easier to share with friends than transferring mammoth video files over slow internet connections. How many of your friends have DVD players versus TiVos/ReplayTVs and T1 lines?
... most of them will also be happy with rips from decent analog sources. Companies can invest entire GNPs into research on how to prevent it, but analog ripping will be an option for a long, long time.
This whole anti-piracy push seems to be a sign of companies that have reached the apex of their business plan, where growth has stagnated. So they're trying to squeeze a few more growth percent fractions out of stolen music, but what after that? How are they going to maintain growth after achieving zero piracy? I guess the next big thing will be perishable media, forcing you to re-buy the same things again and again. Circuit City was the pioneer there with DIVX, may they all share its fate.
The fact still remains that a USB B socket is rather fattish for a slender PDA. And so far it doesn't seem that a smaller B connector analogous to the 4-wire 1394 connector is emerging for USB, although that might be a GOOD THING in the long run. Many device manufacturers can't let go of the desire to also make some side money with proprietary cables.
They either could be up to something, or be performing their traditional organizational shuffle. Palm is the quintessential example of a company that saw a good thing and tried to run with it--but stood still just long enough for their feet to be firmly implanted in drying concrete. The Be acquisition could either be a sign of great things to come, or of aimless buying. I guess time will tell.
True, but three out of the four you quoted share one trait: they're heavily regulated and access-controlled, precisely because of the damage they're capable of doing. Any force multiplier in the domain of potentially lethal tools should be equally regulated. The hammer, bottle, door etc. that you go on listing later on, don't significantly magnify the killing power of a single individual. But a gun--especially an automatic weapon--can give one individual the killing power of many more. I'm not anti-gun, but I'm for gun regulation, access control, and accountability.
as W keeps claiming again and again, when will we turn the other cheek? In these days of heightened emotions, the only Bible passages invoked seem to be the ones involving swords. Very little mention of the sermon on the mount, or of Jesus re-attaching the ear that Peter lopped off, or of turning the other cheek, or of giving the shirt off the back. Jesus went on again and again how his kingdom is not of this earth, yet here in the US we very much enjoy our kingdom of this earth.
We pick and choose which parts of the Bible suit us. I have nothing against self defence or preservation of power/peace/etc, but let's drop the bullshit and stop pretending that we're doing it in the name of the Lord.
> Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans
Presumably he's talking about the Marshall Plan. According to the Marshall Foundation figures, the greatest beneficiary by far were the UK, contrary to what this guy claims. This does not take into consideration the Lend Lease program, which funnelled many more material resources into the UK, much of which never made its way back to the US. Many economists and historians will tell you that is was more Germany's economic recovery than anything else that drove European recovery during the decades after the war. Of course, admitting that loudly and publicly would create somewhat of a moral dilemma, since Germany's image as the eternal bad guy would be tarnished.
> None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its Remaining debts to the United States.
Again, not entirely true. At least Germany had fully repaid its debts during the '50s. For an interesting assessment of the Marshall Plan, read this article. Also, lest you think the Marshall Plan was a purely altruistic gesture, check this tidbit over at the Library Of Congress.
> Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed
> Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? [...]
> Why do all the International lines Except Russia fly American Planes?
?? Ok, this is obvious trolling, but what the heck. I guess he hasn't heard of Airbus, which has recently had higher sales than Boeing. He might also want to check with some British and French aircraft manufacturers and see how they felt about being essentially strong-armed out of the market by the US during the decades following the war.
And regarding Boeing's constant whining about the EU's cash subsidies to Airbus, they might want to pause and consider where they'd be without the mega-juicy military contracts of WWII. For well over a decade after the war, Boeing civilian aircraft were mere permutations of their warplane parts bins.
> You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy,
> and you find men on the moon
Uh, he might want to visit the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, AL, and read some of the last names on the exhibits. Trivial details, I know.
> When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down Through age, it was the
> Americans who rebuilt them.
Must have been some wet dream he had, no other explanation.
> I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of Other people in trouble. Can
> you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?
Well, that might have something to do with the metaphorical smirk on the US' face if offered "help": "Thanks, but you better keep it. You might need it more than us."
These are mere corrections of this guy's "facts" and in no way meant to denigrate the USA's contributions to the world. There is no denying that the world would be a lesser place without their democratic strength and stability over the last century.
There are a few good points in there, but for the rest of the article he's just a rambling moron. The UK received a heck of a lot more of the Marshall money than Germany, for example. Since he "was there", he should know better. I won't bother with a point-by-point rebuttal, since he doesn't seem worth it.
> I feel we should move to a new "If you claim responsibility, you are dead.
Hmm, that's pretty much been Israel's policy for a long time, look how well it served them. The fact is that while anger and the desire for revenge are natural human responses to violence, they only beget more violence. People who feel slightet, commit violence, and are punished, never pause to consider that they deserved the punishment. Look at the Middle East, look at Ireland, etc.
Unless you're prepared for real, no-holds-barred genocide to completely remove the source of new terrorist recruits, that approach will fail. And even then, chances are some outsiders will symathise with the genocide and pick up their cause.
If ever there was any serious consideration of your approach, it was after WWII when some proposed razing Germany to the ground and dispersing its population. It didn't find much favor then, and it won't now.
Isn't the Panasonic analog though? The Gigaset is FHSS, though with probably fewer (and wider) channels. I haven't really read up on DECT that much, but I think it's pretty similar to 802.11 technology, so the two would be expected to interfere with each other like hell.
Thanks for your input, though. I might just get some 802.11 cards anyway and simply return them if they don't work out.
> Have you actually tried to use WLAN stuff and it didn't work [...] ?
Yes, though it's been pre-802.11b stuff. As soon as I turn the phone base station on (don't even have to be talking on the phone), my packet loss on the WLAN shoots up. I've also read about bad experiences from others with 802.11, so I've held off. My phone is a Siemens Gigaset. If you have experiences to the contrary, let me know.
I've had the laptop in the LR with both wireless and wired NICs for many years now. It works, but it's not exactly ideal. You always have at least the power cord to drag around. Since wireless doesn't work for me (clashes with my 2.4 GHz DECT phone which there's no way I'm getting rid of), I also have to drag the damn CAT5 cable around. Plus the L-form factor of the laptop, which isn't exactly ergonomic.
What I'd like is a letter-size webpad with a touchscreen, a whopping battery (maybe the whole back a 1/2 inch Zinc-air battery) and 802.11a networking. The screen could be color, but I'd put up with a reflective monochrome job if it seriously extended battery life and was readable enough. The form factor and weight should be such that I can use it heads-up while lying on the couch. I'd really like the whole thing to work like my Pilot: pick it up, turn it on, and it's on instantly where you last left off. Oh, and please leave out any frills (multimedia and crap like that), make it $200 to $300, so I can have several.
Slashdot Mirror
I picked up a Unisys Aquanta CP at a show last weekend for $44. It's really tiny (about the size of the Yellow Pages of a decent size city), has a Pentium 166MMX, 32MB RAM, 2 PCI/1 ISA, Trio64V+ video, Ethernet, COM1, 2 USB, floppy, 2 IDE connectors. All I need is a PCI sound card, plus some Linux distro and software to tie it all together into an MP3 box. If I don't find anything, I'll just roll my own.
My "expertise" is mainly derived from a couple of specials on CNN and CBC on the Soviet occupation, so apply a grain of salt.
Their idea going in was to get rid of the prime minister (who was pro-communist but wanted an unrealistically fast pace of societal reform and thus alienated the conservative Muslim population) and install some more moderate people, which they did. But once they had control of the urban areas, the pesky rebels started taking potshots at the cities from the hills, making life very awkward.
At first the Soviets just wanted to train and advise the Afghan fighting forces, without actually taking part in hostilities themselves. But as the rebels grew peskier with their hit-and-run attacks and started inflicting casualties on Soviet troops and equipment, they let themselves be dragged into the conflict. The rest is history.
As you can see, your idea of forming a new government and helping it "get the rest of the country under control" is exactly what the Soviets tried and failed to accomplish. Securing only urban areas allows rebels to nip at your perimeter from the hills. Trying to prevent that invariably leads to mountain warfare, which is exactly what the rebels want.
Besides, the real problem is the divided nature of Afghanistan itself. It would be hard if not impossible to install a government that most people would be happy with. Till now the Taliban were about the most cohesive government they've had in a long time. The problem is that the values of urban and rural people are so different. While urbanites might chafe under the religious despotism of the Taliban, that kind of lifestyle is very much along the lines of many rural communities. There is a huge civilizational and values gap between the two groups. Until they can reach a stable compromise, Afghanistan will remain highly unstable, regardless of what outside forces try to do. Change can only come from within, as the cliche goes.
In some respects Afghanistan is a classic example of trying to accelerate social evolution. Western civilization has taken many centuries of war to arrive at a fairly stable and relatively homogeneous and tolerant world view (still quite easily upset as the two world wars have shown). Now that we think we're past our growing pains, we look around and start wanting to mold everyone else in our image, as it were. Impart the benefits of our experience without the pains of acquiring it--just what every good parent tries. Except that--as every good parent eventually gets to realize--that doesn't work.
Firstly, we're no other civilization's parent or guardian. Secondly, they all have to achieve progress through experiencing their own struggles. We can hand them our experiences nicely bound in a set of volumes, but we can't force them to apply them. Those are our experiences and lessons learned, not theirs. They have to form their own if they are to be meaningful.
You're right about the US support of the rebels during the Soviet occupation, but you're wrong about the Soviet goals. They were mainly worried about the rogue prime minister of Afghanistan, and wanted to do a quick switch with a more moderate pro-Soviet administration. Their expectations initially were of a week-long operation or so, in and out. The Soviets had no trouble with modern warfare--they captured the urban areas and infrastructure within weeks. Their troubles began when they started overextending themselves into the mountains and caves, a type of warfare they hadn't trained and were not equipped for.
We might be enamoured with our high-tech silicon-driven equipment, but there's no evidence yet that we would fare any better than the Soviets in them thar hills. Push-button death is one thing, hand-to-hand combat something entirely different. We have little definitive evidence of our vast superiority given no force multipliers or superiority in numbers.
> When will these types of screens be available in standard laptops???
Dell has been selling their Inspiron 8000 with 1400x1050 and 1600x1200 screens for quite some time. I have the 1400x1050 display, and it's very nice indeed. Not to mention the Dolby Digital sound, TV out, dual monitor capability (LCD + external), or 1394 port.
Not to mention that if you develop better technology, we have the technology to destroy it.
> Any Americans care to enlighten us?
Sure. Read my lips: not GPRS in the US yet. We're too busy developing the disposable cellphone to lower the costs of changing carriers. The upshot? Once we DO have wireless broadband, it will be on paper phones that you cut out from the back of Kellogg's Corn Flakes.
So how exactly is the company going to ask you for your consent to send you spam? Isn't that also going to be an unsolicited email, i.e. spam? Are you going to have two categories of spam--spam, and spam requesting the permission to send further spam? Just checking.
Seems to be just HTML though, with potentially constantly changing formatting, throwing any parsers off. This would seem to be an ideal application of web services: provide a web service that takes region/provider/date range input and returns standarised listing data, maybe using some generic XML TV listing markup language or a standard database table format.
> In all, the Ethernet on the TiVo is great for toys like a web server, or doing stuff from the
> shell prompt.
How about pulling shows down to you PC and burning them onto VCD or even DVD? Not compelling enough for ya? Once on VCD, they're a heck of a lot easier to share with friends than transferring mammoth video files over slow internet connections. How many of your friends have DVD players versus TiVos/ReplayTVs and T1 lines?
... most of them will also be happy with rips from decent analog sources. Companies can invest entire GNPs into research on how to prevent it, but analog ripping will be an option for a long, long time.
This whole anti-piracy push seems to be a sign of companies that have reached the apex of their business plan, where growth has stagnated. So they're trying to squeeze a few more growth percent fractions out of stolen music, but what after that? How are they going to maintain growth after achieving zero piracy? I guess the next big thing will be perishable media, forcing you to re-buy the same things again and again. Circuit City was the pioneer there with DIVX, may they all share its fate.
The fact still remains that a USB B socket is rather fattish for a slender PDA. And so far it doesn't seem that a smaller B connector analogous to the 4-wire 1394 connector is emerging for USB, although that might be a GOOD THING in the long run. Many device manufacturers can't let go of the desire to also make some side money with proprietary cables.
They either could be up to something, or be performing their traditional organizational shuffle. Palm is the quintessential example of a company that saw a good thing and tried to run with it--but stood still just long enough for their feet to be firmly implanted in drying concrete. The Be acquisition could either be a sign of great things to come, or of aimless buying. I guess time will tell.
posting ranting flames as AC.
True, but three out of the four you quoted share one trait: they're heavily regulated and access-controlled, precisely because of the damage they're capable of doing. Any force multiplier in the domain of potentially lethal tools should be equally regulated. The hammer, bottle, door etc. that you go on listing later on, don't significantly magnify the killing power of a single individual. But a gun--especially an automatic weapon--can give one individual the killing power of many more. I'm not anti-gun, but I'm for gun regulation, access control, and accountability.
LOL, that's a good one. I hadn't seen that statue yet.
as W keeps claiming again and again, when will we turn the other cheek? In these days of heightened emotions, the only Bible passages invoked seem to be the ones involving swords. Very little mention of the sermon on the mount, or of Jesus re-attaching the ear that Peter lopped off, or of turning the other cheek, or of giving the shirt off the back. Jesus went on again and again how his kingdom is not of this earth, yet here in the US we very much enjoy our kingdom of this earth.
We pick and choose which parts of the Bible suit us. I have nothing against self defence or preservation of power/peace/etc, but let's drop the bullshit and stop pretending that we're doing it in the name of the Lord.
I do like the conveyor belt and the murals depicting mediterranean scenes, though.
> the radio editorial by Gordon Sinclair was given early in the 1970's.
Fair enough, except that the poster shouldn't have submitted it as some sort of imminently relevant article in that case.
Social security official: If only we could reduce the number of recipients, the system might just work.
Engineer: How about putting rotating blades right into the buildings where they live and work?
> Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans
Presumably he's talking about the Marshall Plan. According to the Marshall Foundation figures, the greatest beneficiary by far were the UK, contrary to what this guy claims. This does not take into consideration the Lend Lease program, which funnelled many more material resources into the UK, much of which never made its way back to the US. Many economists and historians will tell you that is was more Germany's economic recovery than anything else that drove European recovery during the decades after the war. Of course, admitting that loudly and publicly would create somewhat of a moral dilemma, since Germany's image as the eternal bad guy would be tarnished.
> None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its Remaining debts to the United States.
Again, not entirely true. At least Germany had fully repaid its debts during the '50s. For an interesting assessment of the Marshall Plan, read this article. Also, lest you think the Marshall Plan was a purely altruistic gesture, check this tidbit over at the Library Of Congress.
> Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed
> Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? [...]
> Why do all the International lines Except Russia fly American Planes?
?? Ok, this is obvious trolling, but what the heck. I guess he hasn't heard of Airbus, which has recently had higher sales than Boeing. He might also want to check with some British and French aircraft manufacturers and see how they felt about being essentially strong-armed out of the market by the US during the decades following the war.
And regarding Boeing's constant whining about the EU's cash subsidies to Airbus, they might want to pause and consider where they'd be without the mega-juicy military contracts of WWII. For well over a decade after the war, Boeing civilian aircraft were mere permutations of their warplane parts bins.
> You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy,
> and you find men on the moon
Uh, he might want to visit the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, AL, and read some of the last names on the exhibits. Trivial details, I know.
> When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down Through age, it was the
> Americans who rebuilt them.
Must have been some wet dream he had, no other explanation.
> I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of Other people in trouble. Can
> you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?
Well, that might have something to do with the metaphorical smirk on the US' face if offered "help": "Thanks, but you better keep it. You might need it more than us."
These are mere corrections of this guy's "facts" and in no way meant to denigrate the USA's contributions to the world. There is no denying that the world would be a lesser place without their democratic strength and stability over the last century.
There are a few good points in there, but for the rest of the article he's just a rambling moron. The UK received a heck of a lot more of the Marshall money than Germany, for example. Since he "was there", he should know better. I won't bother with a point-by-point rebuttal, since he doesn't seem worth it.
> I feel we should move to a new "If you claim responsibility, you are dead.
Hmm, that's pretty much been Israel's policy for a long time, look how well it served them. The fact is that while anger and the desire for revenge are natural human responses to violence, they only beget more violence. People who feel slightet, commit violence, and are punished, never pause to consider that they deserved the punishment. Look at the Middle East, look at Ireland, etc.
Unless you're prepared for real, no-holds-barred genocide to completely remove the source of new terrorist recruits, that approach will fail. And even then, chances are some outsiders will symathise with the genocide and pick up their cause.
If ever there was any serious consideration of your approach, it was after WWII when some proposed razing Germany to the ground and dispersing its population. It didn't find much favor then, and it won't now.
Isn't the Panasonic analog though? The Gigaset is FHSS, though with probably fewer (and wider) channels. I haven't really read up on DECT that much, but I think it's pretty similar to 802.11 technology, so the two would be expected to interfere with each other like hell.
Thanks for your input, though. I might just get some 802.11 cards anyway and simply return them if they don't work out.
> Have you actually tried to use WLAN stuff and it didn't work [...] ?
Yes, though it's been pre-802.11b stuff. As soon as I turn the phone base station on (don't even have to be talking on the phone), my packet loss on the WLAN shoots up. I've also read about bad experiences from others with 802.11, so I've held off. My phone is a Siemens Gigaset. If you have experiences to the contrary, let me know.
I've had the laptop in the LR with both wireless and wired NICs for many years now. It works, but it's not exactly ideal. You always have at least the power cord to drag around. Since wireless doesn't work for me (clashes with my 2.4 GHz DECT phone which there's no way I'm getting rid of), I also have to drag the damn CAT5 cable around. Plus the L-form factor of the laptop, which isn't exactly ergonomic.
What I'd like is a letter-size webpad with a touchscreen, a whopping battery (maybe the whole back a 1/2 inch Zinc-air battery) and 802.11a networking. The screen could be color, but I'd put up with a reflective monochrome job if it seriously extended battery life and was readable enough. The form factor and weight should be such that I can use it heads-up while lying on the couch. I'd really like the whole thing to work like my Pilot: pick it up, turn it on, and it's on instantly where you last left off. Oh, and please leave out any frills (multimedia and crap like that), make it $200 to $300, so I can have several.