No way! The old clicky IBM PS/2 keyboards are the best... I'm using one right now, and I wouldn't trade it for any of those new-fangled cheap silent keyboards. Bah!
Ah.. The only thing more relaxing than defragging drives and fan white noise, is a nice calm thunderstorm. That is, unless it takes out the power and the UPS's start beeping...
I've always wondered what we will do if/when we get solid state hard drives. I always depend on the clicking of the drive to know what's going on. If I run an application and I don't immediately hear any clicking, I become suspicious. Likewise if I haven't done anything on the machine in a while and it starts clicking like crazy. A quiet hard drive would be quite eerie.
Triangular distribution doesn't occur on aperture grille (Trinitron) monitors. However, even an aperture grille CRT will be highly unlikely to see the cleartype enhancements intended for LCDs.
1. Memory that is zero'ed out is no different from random memory, if there are no pointers to it. If the machine is rebooting or powering up, the chipset would most likely just reset the CPU's pointers and go through the normal bootup sequence. It doesn't need to zero out the memory.
2. The reset switch just triggers the same chipset function as I mentioned in #1.
A compiler couldn't do this ahead of time. Here's why:
Imagine you have a program that reads some files (this happens on occasion). Now you compile that code, and run a profiler on it with "Data Set A". You then feed that profiled data into your hypothetical compiler to optimize your executable.
Now you run that executable with a completely different set of data, "Data Set B". "Data Set B" doesn't take the program through the same paths of execution as "Data Set A", so now your program may actually run slower than if you did no profiled optimizations at all.
If doing this at run time, the interpreter will adapt for each execution, therefore the program will automatically be optimized no matter what the input.
I submitted this story last night, but added the comment that if Tama didn't respond to your voice, the manufacturer could just claim that it was behaving like a normal cat.
I saw a demo of this kind of technology at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center in Innoventions, at least 2 years ago (probably more like 3).
Hammacher Schlemmer had a booth there, and showed a 3D video of people kyaking down a river. You didn't need glasses, and you had to stand in just the right place to eliminate the moire-like interference effects caused by the way it did the 3D, but it did work.
It was cool, but I'd personally prefer to wear some lightweight 3D glasses rather than ensure I'm always in the exact position to get the full 3D effect. However, I don't know why we haven't seen at least a few of these for sale by now, as I imagine they would have their niche.
I live in Florida, and I remember a few years back (I suppose it could have been around 11 years), we experienced an aurora effect here in Florida. A specific part of the sky was glowing red, slowly shifting it's patterns. It was quite eerie, since it was unexpected this far south.
The next day the newspaper published an article about it being a once-every-fifty-years type of event. It may be a long shot, but it may be worth taking a look outside tonight even if you are in the southernmost third of the northern hemisphere.
Eros could have come from Earth/moon collision
on
Color Images of Eros
·
· Score: 1
Two quotes from the article: Collected by the Near Earth Rendezvous spacecraft, some of the images show signs of geological layering, which suggests that Eros was once part of a much larger celestial body, said Andrew Cheng, a NEAR project scientist.
The density of Eros is about the same as the Earth's crust.
I wonder if this asteriod could have potentially even been a fragment from a large planetoid collsion with Earth, which some scientists speculate created our moon.
Anyway, for the time being until we are all destroyed by a meteor or we nuke ourselves, people will always push limits (good or bad), especially when few or no limits are imposed. IRC is a place where limits are being pushed all of the time. If this guy wouldn't have done it, I know a few dozen others would have tried. If you can't understand this, then you've not spent any extended amount of time on IRC.
Besides, when you get down to it, it's really only just a bunch of ones and zeros.
A few bad broadband ISP's doesn't mean that all broadband access is of poor quality. I think the original poster was stating 1999 as the beginning of broadband access from home for some people. Certianly, it is not available for most people yet. But this is just the beginning of availability.
I have had good luck with my high-speed access so far. I just got Bellsouth ADSL a few days ago, and I have been able to get nearly full-speed transfers at about any time of day. I seem to notice that most of the delays that I do experience are from the smaller pipe on the side of my connection.
A web site that I noticed that has a good connection to test your bandwidth is www.mp3.com. I seem to always get full-speed downloads from there. I almost always get a transfer rate exceeding 1400 kbps when downloading files from their artists.
The beginning of an "age" is timed with the beginning of a change, and that change has already happened.
Jean-Louis Gass�e on Microsoft OEM rebates
on
Free Be
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if this was mentioned on/. before, but there's an interesting article by Jean-Louis Gassée talking about how Microsoft has made it quite difficult to get PC OEMs to install alternative OS's that are bootable out of the box. This article is available at http://www-classic.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/vol ume_III/Issue8.html#Gassee -- "In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson
Re:corporations and individuals
on
The Timekeeper
·
· Score: 1
xeno Wrote: [...] any attempt to change the nature of the corporate beast internally lands one either in endless mission statement and vision definition meetings [...], or labels the company as a hippie granola farm or religious cult.
One problem with people today is that we've allowed ourselves to become more and more polarized. We're always at an extreme, and never taking a compromizing middle ground. Unfortunately, we sometimes perpetuate this activity by trying to make news more interesting.
Also I have a correction for Katz's story: How very Disney. Verne even exclaims at one point of his trip, "So it's true. If it can be conceived, it can be built!"
Actually it's (from memory) "So it's true. If it can be conceived, it can be achieved!". Can you tell I've been to Disney World too many times?:)
Slashdot Mirror
That would be "Captian Cisco".
Usually it is bad to use the words "always" or "never". Also avoid phrases ending in "... should be enough for anybody".
Now if only I could find a silent PC keyboard.
No way! The old clicky IBM PS/2 keyboards are the best... I'm using one right now, and I wouldn't trade it for any of those new-fangled cheap silent keyboards. Bah!
Ah.. The only thing more relaxing than defragging drives and fan white noise, is a nice calm thunderstorm. That is, unless it takes out the power and the UPS's start beeping...
I've always wondered what we will do if/when we get solid state hard drives. I always depend on the clicking of the drive to know what's going on. If I run an application and I don't immediately hear any clicking, I become suspicious. Likewise if I haven't done anything on the machine in a while and it starts clicking like crazy. A quiet hard drive would be quite eerie.
Triangular distribution doesn't occur on aperture grille (Trinitron) monitors. However, even an aperture grille CRT will be highly unlikely to see the cleartype enhancements intended for LCDs.
He should have linked to Nautilus in the story.
Actually the DivX ;-) codec is just a hack of a hack (patch to an early implemenation).
The MPEG standards seem to be more complicated than most people are assuming. They aren't just about compression algorithms.
Take a look at MPEG.org and check out the FAQ there.
I like your first suggestion, but you should add an 's (apostrophe-s) to make it less awkward:
LAME's An MP3 Encoder
I found some info here.
One "zettabyte" = 1024 exabytes
One "yottabyte" = 1024 zettabytes
5 Exabytes = All words ever spoken by human beings
Followup comments about JonKatz expected.
I'm waiting for the FMD version to come out...
1. Memory that is zero'ed out is no different from random memory, if there are no pointers to it. If the machine is rebooting or powering up, the chipset would most likely just reset the CPU's pointers and go through the normal bootup sequence. It doesn't need to zero out the memory.
2. The reset switch just triggers the same chipset function as I mentioned in #1.
A compiler couldn't do this ahead of time. Here's why:
Imagine you have a program that reads some files (this happens on occasion). Now you compile that code, and run a profiler on it with "Data Set A". You then feed that profiled data into your hypothetical compiler to optimize your executable.
Now you run that executable with a completely different set of data, "Data Set B". "Data Set B" doesn't take the program through the same paths of execution as "Data Set A", so now your program may actually run slower than if you did no profiled optimizations at all.
If doing this at run time, the interpreter will adapt for each execution, therefore the program will automatically be optimized no matter what the input.
"never" is a very long time.
I submitted this story last night, but added the comment that if Tama didn't respond to your voice, the manufacturer could just claim that it was behaving like a normal cat.
Hammacher Schlemmer had a booth there, and showed a 3D video of people kyaking down a river. You didn't need glasses, and you had to stand in just the right place to eliminate the moire-like interference effects caused by the way it did the 3D, but it did work.
It was cool, but I'd personally prefer to wear some lightweight 3D glasses rather than ensure I'm always in the exact position to get the full 3D effect. However, I don't know why we haven't seen at least a few of these for sale by now, as I imagine they would have their niche.
The next day the newspaper published an article about it being a once-every-fifty-years type of event. It may be a long shot, but it may be worth taking a look outside tonight even if you are in the southernmost third of the northern hemisphere.
Collected by the Near Earth Rendezvous spacecraft, some of the images show signs of geological layering, which suggests that Eros was once part of a much larger celestial body, said Andrew Cheng, a NEAR project scientist.
The density of Eros is about the same as the Earth's crust.
I wonder if this asteriod could have potentially even been a fragment from a large planetoid collsion with Earth, which some scientists speculate created our moon.
Tell that to Clinton.
Anyway, for the time being until we are all destroyed by a meteor or we nuke ourselves, people will always push limits (good or bad), especially when few or no limits are imposed. IRC is a place where limits are being pushed all of the time. If this guy wouldn't have done it, I know a few dozen others would have tried. If you can't understand this, then you've not spent any extended amount of time on IRC.
Besides, when you get down to it, it's really only just a bunch of ones and zeros.
I have had good luck with my high-speed access so far. I just got Bellsouth ADSL a few days ago, and I have been able to get nearly full-speed transfers at about any time of day. I seem to notice that most of the delays that I do experience are from the smaller pipe on the side of my connection.
A web site that I noticed that has a good connection to test your bandwidth is www.mp3.com. I seem to always get full-speed downloads from there. I almost always get a transfer rate exceeding 1400 kbps when downloading files from their artists.
The beginning of an "age" is timed with the beginning of a change, and that change has already happened.
Actually, 1kb is 128 bytes. 1kB is 1024 bytes.
I don't know if this was mentioned on /. before, but there's an interesting article by Jean-Louis Gassée talking about how Microsoft has made it quite difficult to get PC OEMs to install alternative OS's that are bootable out of the box. This article is available at http://www-classic.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/vol ume_III/Issue8.html#Gassee
--
"In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!" -- Homer Simpson
What will happen to Century 21 (Real Estate) in 101 years?
I'm sure there are other companies with names that have expiration dates...
Amino QNX United Architectture
There's an interesting interview with much discussion about it at http://www.williams.demon.co.uk/seal/fleecyint2.ht ml.
[...] any attempt to change the nature of the corporate beast internally lands one either in endless mission statement and vision definition meetings [...], or labels the company as a hippie granola farm or religious cult.
One problem with people today is that we've allowed ourselves to become more and more polarized. We're always at an extreme, and never taking a compromizing middle ground. Unfortunately, we sometimes perpetuate this activity by trying to make news more interesting.
Also I have a correction for Katz's story:
How very Disney. Verne even exclaims at one point of his trip, "So it's true. If it can be conceived, it can be built!"
Actually it's (from memory) "So it's true. If it can be conceived, it can be achieved!". Can you tell I've been to Disney World too many times? :)