I've never understood why people are unwilling to shell out money for a good keyboard, but will cheerfully plop down money for the hottest CPU or latest video card. I'm not saying the OP in specific is this type of person, it's just something that gets said a lot, 'no way am I paying more than $20 for my keyboard'.
Granted, I ain't paying $300 for a keyboard either, but I did pay about $100 for my buckling spring keyboard.
The keyboard is still the primary input device for a majority of computing tasks, to me logic would suggest spending as much on it as you can afford. They don't become obsolete, either. Get a good keyboard and it might even outlast you.;)
It's a CPU hog though. Have an aging ~700mhz laptop that I built mplayer on a month or so ago, installed it with aalib just as a curiosity.
Normal output (-vo x11) ran fine, but using aalib caused mplayer to constantly complain at me that my machine was too slow to play it.
Now I didn't assume that aalib would use zero cpu, there's some extra overhead in translating the image, it was just a bit surprising that it was that bad.
I think a large part of the justification for the comet bullet this time around is that no one knew what the physical construction of the comet would be like.
What if the area a probe landed on was a meter deep pile of dust? Oops, we just spent $300 million to make a snow angel. What if it was rock solid? Oops, $300 million to bounce a robot off a cosmic ping pong table.
A heavy projectile is immune to problems like that, giving the highest probability of useful information being collected.
Thank god someone finally explained what the acronym "CPU" meant, I've been wondering about that for years, quietly bobbing my head like I know what's going on anytime someone mentions it.
People on slashdot have wondered why they haven't put advertisements on Google News and some thought it was because they would get in trouble for making money off other people's content.
I would have figured it'd result in all kinds of unintentional jokes, you know, context sensitive stuff putting life insurance ads on a terri schiavo story.
Buy a classic auto while you still can.. before 1975 or so (depends on your state) so you can skirt around smog regulations as well. Especially if most of your daily driving is on local streets.
Simple and functional, and after a while you'll even look forward to spending a weekend maintaining it.
I drive a 40 year old vehicle, and wouldn't give it up for anything. As vehicles become more and more drive-by-wire, I only see it as validating my decision.;)
Unless of course you have the misfortune of travelling the speed of light in an atmosphere. The G forces may not rip any skin off, but I bet air would singe it pretty damn well.
> What mental process must go on in Lucas's head that he has to actually give himself permission to > be creative, and justify it by pointing to his past commercial successes?
I figure a couple decades or so of relenteless abuse from moviegoers brought it about. Even when we all loved Star Wars and episode 1 hadn't released yet, very few people attributed the success of the earlier films to Lucas.
He's probably one of the most successful failures in the world.;) Since it's likely hordes of people will line up to watch his "failures", why should he say anything else?
I've joked many times in the past that people would have lined up for days to watch Star Wars even if it had been nothing but 90 minutes of Lucas sitting naked on a stage, making lightsaber noises with his wang.
General idea is once you have a trademark in a given industry, it's yours and no one else's until you release control of it.
You could have a car named Tiger and a computer named Tiger and it would be okay, but a computer named Tiger and an operating system named Tiger probably wouldn't be unless the same company was producing both.
I did a transfer away from Network Solutions less than two months ago.
Either they cleaned up their act, or I got lucky. Opened a ticket to get the auth-id's, they sent them to me in less than a day. Inititated transfer from new registrar, netsol sent me an alert and said the transfer would happen in 5 days. 5 days later.. it went off without a hitch.
Not saying they're a great company, else I wouldn't have transferred to a new registrar. Just that they do seem to be improving. By tiny amounts.;)
Re:Why isn't more government stuff open source?
on
NASA Goes SourceForge
·
· Score: 1
> Why aren't more government software development projects open source? Why was it such a battle to > make this particular application open source?
A lot of it is.. it's just hard to find. Fermilab, for example, has many many projects that are freely downloadable and include source. I'd imagine that many other research labs have similar capabilities, just none of it really scratches an itch anyone has, so it never gets airtime.
The most successful government-funded project I know of is 'nedit'.
Given the sedentry lifestyles we live today, I'd think getting tired using a computer is good, both in the sense it burns a few more calories, and discourages extended periods of usage.
They'll have to betray our trust and/or confidence first.
That seems to be the dividing line for most anyways. Once it appears they're merely trying to squeeze extra pennies out of people or are apathetic towards customer opinion, that's when the pitchforks get brandished.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to mention the snappy upload speeds.. when you pay that $1000 a month, they'll upgrade from 124kbps to 384kbps at no additional charge. WOW!
I've never understood why people are unwilling to shell out money for a good keyboard, but will cheerfully plop down money for the hottest CPU or latest video card. I'm not saying the OP in specific is this type of person, it's just something that gets said a lot, 'no way am I paying more than $20 for my keyboard'.
;)
Granted, I ain't paying $300 for a keyboard either, but I did pay about $100 for my buckling spring keyboard.
The keyboard is still the primary input device for a majority of computing tasks, to me logic would suggest spending as much on it as you can afford. They don't become obsolete, either. Get a good keyboard and it might even outlast you.
It's a CPU hog though. Have an aging ~700mhz laptop that I built mplayer on a month or so ago, installed it with aalib just as a curiosity.
Normal output (-vo x11) ran fine, but using aalib caused mplayer to constantly complain at me that my machine was too slow to play it.
Now I didn't assume that aalib would use zero cpu, there's some extra overhead in translating the image, it was just a bit surprising that it was that bad.
I think a large part of the justification for the comet bullet this time around is that no one knew what the physical construction of the comet would be like.
What if the area a probe landed on was a meter deep pile of dust? Oops, we just spent $300 million to make a snow angel. What if it was rock solid? Oops, $300 million to bounce a robot off a cosmic ping pong table.
A heavy projectile is immune to problems like that, giving the highest probability of useful information being collected.
164 million out of 6.5 billion? That's 2.5%.
Especially interesting is the degree that many companies today assume users have access to broadband, games especially.
Big as this intarweb thing is, still got a long ways to go. Apparently.
The fans spin, wow! Sign me up for that, talk about art pushing innovation.
>So, even if you do see 200TB of disk as "peanuts", then 25TB of disk is a peanut shell fragment.
;)
Well, yes. I didn't state as much but my reply was a nitpick on the article as much as it was the parent posts.
25TB can be stuffed into a single machine these days, it's like bragging about how awesome a Voodoo3 card makes games look.
That they made it sound bigger by expressing it as megabytes was laughable.
And 200TB of disk isn't.
;)
In the theoretical research community, 200TB is peanuts anymore. I could walk into the server room at work and point out double that.
We're already talking about getting over 200TB this year alone in new hardware.. and we're just a single department.
Thank god someone finally explained what the acronym "CPU" meant, I've been wondering about that for years, quietly bobbing my head like I know what's going on anytime someone mentions it.
And I owe it all to Slashdot.
Only until the ISP sets up a mail account you can send complaints to, and they yank the page down without research in about 30 seconds.
;)
At which point it becomes a weapon to silence people who disagree with you.
People on slashdot have wondered why they haven't put advertisements on Google News and some thought it was because they would get in trouble for making money off other people's content.
I would have figured it'd result in all kinds of unintentional jokes, you know, context sensitive stuff putting life insurance ads on a terri schiavo story.
Dude, that's just surround sound for your eyes.
> Because it runs Linux, it must be worth the $2000. Welcome to /.!
;)
Right, because as we all know Windows doesn't edge in until the price tag exceeds $3000.
Buy a classic auto while you still can.. before 1975 or so (depends on your state) so you can skirt around smog regulations as well. Especially if most of your daily driving is on local streets.
;)
Simple and functional, and after a while you'll even look forward to spending a weekend maintaining it.
I drive a 40 year old vehicle, and wouldn't give it up for anything. As vehicles become more and more drive-by-wire, I only see it as validating my decision.
Unless of course you have the misfortune of travelling the speed of light in an atmosphere. The G forces may not rip any skin off, but I bet air would singe it pretty damn well.
> What mental process must go on in Lucas's head that he has to actually give himself permission to
;) Since it's likely hordes of people will line up to watch his "failures", why should he say anything else?
> be creative, and justify it by pointing to his past commercial successes?
I figure a couple decades or so of relenteless abuse from moviegoers brought it about. Even when we all loved Star Wars and episode 1 hadn't released yet, very few people attributed the success of the earlier films to Lucas.
He's probably one of the most successful failures in the world.
I've joked many times in the past that people would have lined up for days to watch Star Wars even if it had been nothing but 90 minutes of Lucas sitting naked on a stage, making lightsaber noises with his wang.
Looks like a good rule of thumb for developers.. when you can start spelling new words with your product titles, you have too many.
I'm a guy, and I must admit I'm kinda turned on.
rowr.
The race is on: Submit a patent for a faraday cage wallet.
Shielded wallets already exist I suppose, but they lack the punch of saying "faraday cage" to people. It just sounds better.
No, but they might have a trademark.
General idea is once you have a trademark in a given industry, it's yours and no one else's until you release control of it.
You could have a car named Tiger and a computer named Tiger and it would be okay, but a computer named Tiger and an operating system named Tiger probably wouldn't be unless the same company was producing both.
I did a transfer away from Network Solutions less than two months ago.
;)
Either they cleaned up their act, or I got lucky. Opened a ticket to get the auth-id's, they sent them to me in less than a day. Inititated transfer from new registrar, netsol sent me an alert and said the transfer would happen in 5 days. 5 days later.. it went off without a hitch.
Not saying they're a great company, else I wouldn't have transferred to a new registrar. Just that they do seem to be improving. By tiny amounts.
> Why aren't more government software development projects open source? Why was it such a battle to
> make this particular application open source?
A lot of it is.. it's just hard to find. Fermilab, for example, has many many projects that are freely downloadable and include source. I'd imagine that many other research labs have similar capabilities, just none of it really scratches an itch anyone has, so it never gets airtime.
The most successful government-funded project I know of is 'nedit'.
Sounds like a good way to improve the standard of living in underdeveloped countries if you ask me. ;)
SOE could completely dress this up as humanitarian aid, set up some "internet cafes" where none exist, siphoning money from the lazy rich countries.
It's already happening in China.
Given the sedentry lifestyles we live today, I'd think getting tired using a computer is good, both in the sense it burns a few more calories, and discourages extended periods of usage.
They'll have to betray our trust and/or confidence first.
That seems to be the dividing line for most anyways. Once it appears they're merely trying to squeeze extra pennies out of people or are apathetic towards customer opinion, that's when the pitchforks get brandished.