Older machines can boot from floppy, but not from CD.
Here's how I make use of my old machines -- I stack them in a pile in the basement.
We bought a new eMonster 600 (PIII 600, 64MB, 10GB, 8x DVD, TNT2, etc) for $480 last month at Staples -- when a decent new machine was ~$3K reusing an older clunker made some sense -- now they are essentially free -- assuming a 3 year life I'll spend more on electricity to run it than it cost!
Re:based on the NOVA episode
on
Longitude
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I think the book came first.
The book was also made into a movie
(for TBS, I think). Well worth catching
if (er, when TBS being how they are:)
it is on again.
Consider the self-inflicted plight of Broadcom CEO Nicholas, anexecutive who thrives on all work and little sleep. During a recent conversation, he described the fun of having an outdoor pavilion near the grotto pool, outfitted with four monitors.
"I can be watching four football games simultaneously while enjoying a beer and the view," Nicholas boasted.
"Have you ever done that?" I asked.
"No," he admitted with a laugh. "I have no spare time. But friends who've come over tell me it was great."
I don't buy it -- seems to me that the major reason machines crash is some lousy program(mer) has hosed the contents of memory -- so you boot back up to have the same hosed memory contents -- this does not seem like a win.
Of course, it would help for normal shutdown
or for sleepy laptops, but it is not the end-all/be-all of quick reboots.
...that software failures are "computer breakdowns" (at least in this context).
If I was to place a bet, I'd put a lot of the blame for actual hardware failures squarely on those horrid 'computer hutches' -- I'd say if you
put your computer into what amounts to a closed box, you deserve your lump of melted silicon.
You only need priorities when you no longer have the bandwith to serve everyone's needs.
It's like the freeway, you don't need the stoplights on the ramps unless there is insufficient capacity.
Of course, roads and networks suffer the same fate -- building more capacity only attracts more use -- and in general the end users are (unfortunately) buffered from the true costs (which leads to higher use -- how much gas would you buy at $15/gallon?).
The same goes with many networks -- we have students sending out 100 GB/day from their dorm rooms because they are buffered from the true costs (I paid my dorm bill - I deserve this!)
But in general, with networking it has been "cheap enough" to simply keep piling on the bandwidth -- perhaps someday Moore will give out and we'll have to work smarter not harder.
Which is why those of us who are not completely without a clue have to spend such an interminable time wading through this crap to get to talk to someone who knows more than the windows menu sequence by rote.
Please, Please, Please -- there has got to be some way to determine if the person calling you is not your avreage 'where is the "any" key' idiot and quickly get them talk to somebody who understands them -- I swear, when US West fubared our DSL I must have talked to a dozen different 'script followers' before getting to Mr. Clue who fixed the problem in a minute.
The question isn't so much "how to support an X-bit type" (where X is 64, 128, 256, whatever).
The *real* question is how to support ALL
of the X-bit types: 8,16,32,64,128,... at the same time -- either that or we'll just change all the network (etc) protocols such that there are no more 8 or 16 bit-sized fields.
Yes, there are ways to work around this, but they are all reasonably gross (IMO).
I'd expect Net-ready apartment complexes only to occur where there is a strong probability that you want to online-game, etc. with your neighbors and where they are competing with Net-Ready Dorms.
It's unlikely to offer much value over DSL, Cable-modems, etc. to Jo Average EbayAddict.
Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium
on
Floppy CDs And DVDs?
·
· Score: 1
That's okay. Soon we'll be able to glue them to bubblewrap and use them as insulation.
We may just need that this winter.
But it's a little hi-tech for this old house -- when we moved in, the wall betwen the garage and kitchen was covered with those little styrofoam meat trays -- presumably for insulation -- the previous owner's ``frugality'' was well known:)
In smaller animals (smaller eyes), this
effect is less pronounced (e.g. bees see UV).
I suppose it would be possible to see UV with
an artifical cornea/lens designed not to filter UV -- since the range of the blue cones extends will into the UV wavelengths -- but who knows what your brain would do with the info...
You also have to be a lawyer to give legal advice (at least as long as we are being US-centric anyway), but that didn't stop you from offering the 'legal opinion' that websites that presents medical information should have a page...
Boy, it sounds like hardly anyone would let the webpage's author try out any code on their boxes.
Especially odd to me was compaq because they are following in Digital's (RIP) practice of letting just about anybody test drive their boxes over the net, so they must be pretty confident that they have their security tight enough to prevent at least bulk mischief.
I'm surprised by your experience with spotty Verizon coverage in NYC.
We have Verizon's $35/mo, 150 min, no LD, no roaming charges plan and with our Tri-Band
StarTac we've gotten coverage almost[1] everywhere we've travelled -- even in BFE Utah, but we tend to go to points West of Iowa not East.
[1] Basically not between mountains in the Rockies.
Assume I work for an organization, say, a large midwestern university, where we want to deploy a public key infrastructure.
...if you have a PGP key you automatically have the right to sign someone elses key -- everyone can be a certificate authority
And how, exactly, is the fact that your buddy down the hall in the dorms has signed your key going to do anything useful, like, for example, give you access to the items on electronic reserve at the library that have been purchased for the use of only engineering students?
On the otherhand, a central authority has the information to issue certificates that the rest of the official organizational structure can make use of.
And so, you either:
download a customized browser with the campus certificate authority certificate pre-loaded, or
click a link to install the CA certificate,
and voila you are in business.
And your certificate based on this CA will, in all likelyhood accepted on campus, but this is probably a feature.
When wider use of user certificates comes,
and it will if the fedgov gets their disintermediation efforts off the ground,
then more widely accepted root CAs will
proliferate (I'm guessing credit card companies,
and all levels of government).
And that's where I think the problems will really start -- it'll be just like my meatspace wallet which has am absurd number of vertification tokens in it, and knowing which you can use where and when and just carrying them all around gets cumbersome.
What would be convenient, but which gives many of us the willies is a single national certificate which can have various endorsements added to it, so if I present it to a site, they can search it for the endorsement or endorsements they want to see, but I as a simple minded user (and that's the most common kind) just 'hand them my papers'.
Deliberately spoiling
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
I thought that deliberately spoiling a ballot was a recognized form of protest.
I've never heard of that, but
It seems a dumb-ass form of protest since the assumption seems to be that spoiled ballots are the result of idiots who shouldn't be allowed to ote anyway.
Under my scheme, you could protest by marking all the races as 'Abstain'.
I'm much more worried about my vote being counted properly than it being snooped by tempest!
I've been using this fall's elections as a civics lesson for our 7 yr old son, so he was in the voting booth with me asking questions.
As a result, pretty much everyone there who cared to listen knows how I voted anyway.
Re: What about write-ins
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
Below the named candidates are ovals and lines for you to do write-in's. When the machine's modem calls in the results to the auditor, the write-in's just appear as a single total.
And, as was the case this Sept in the School Board election in which I was in, if 'write-in' appears to have won a position then the write-in's need to be looked at by hand to determine who got exactly how many write-in votes -- and in fact, someone did win via write-in.
If our county can afford to do it right...
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 3
...the rest of the country can to, sheesh, compared to most county's favorite passtime
(road building) it's possitively cheap!
Here in Story County, Iowa we have what I would consider to be the minimum
standard for voting equipment.
You get a sheet of names (in large
print) with an oval right next to the name which you darken with a
marker. But more importantly, as I found out from the guy right
in front of me, if you mismark your ballot (say by marking 2
presidential slates) the machine will not accept the ballot. The
election official voided his ballot and gave him a new one.
I would add one additional feature by adding 'abstain' as an option
for each contest/question -- this would prevent people missing one
or more votes (for example, by forgetting to turn it over and mark
the back).
Here, you get a marker pen, and a very easy to read sheet with the names in large print right next to the oval you darken.
More importantly, the machine you put the completed ballot into will not allow an improperly marked ballot to be input.
The guy in line right in front of me kept having his spit back out at him because he had marked 3 instead of the 2 max for hospital trustee or some such minor office.
So the offical voided his ballot and made him go back and mark another.
And when the election is over, the machines have a modem which dials up the auditor and delivers the vote totals (the ballots are kept inside the machine in case there is a challenge or recount).
This fall when I ran for school board all the results were in to the auditor within just a few minutes of poll closing.
First, consider that about $10K is gone to taxes.
Plus you'll probably lose more of your income to taxes too by being in a higher bracket, say $2K.
Then, a car is going to cost you at least $3K/yr
even if it is a junker. I also think you are underestimating the cost of a women's clothing for any professional job, I'd put it at least at $1K/yr, more likely $2K. Then you're probably going to pay about $5k/yr for childcare.
Then throw in all the incidentals like going out to eat more because nobody wants to fix dinner or clean the house or what not, and you're pretty much down to zero-dollars net.
And I speak from experience, my wife was making about $25K before she left work, and we live at least as well now, probably better.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's how I make use of my old machines -- I stack them in a pile in the basement.
We bought a new eMonster 600 (PIII 600, 64MB, 10GB, 8x DVD, TNT2, etc) for $480 last month at Staples -- when a decent new machine was ~$3K reusing an older clunker made some sense -- now they are essentially free -- assuming a 3 year life I'll spend more on electricity to run it than it cost!
The book was also made into a movie (for TBS, I think). Well worth catching if (er, when TBS being how they are :)
it is on again.
"I can be watching four football games simultaneously while enjoying a beer and the view," Nicholas boasted.
"Have you ever done that?" I asked.
"No," he admitted with a laugh. "I have no spare time. But friends who've come over tell me it was great."
Of course, it would help for normal shutdown or for sleepy laptops, but it is not the end-all/be-all of quick reboots.
You can easily to fair-queuing without priorities.
But wait you say, I'm more important than that guy -- I don't want fair-queuing, I want me-first-damnit! (even if you don't need it)
Well, that's were you need priorities, but priorities without costs are useless because just about everybody thinks they are King of the World(tm).
If I was to place a bet, I'd put a lot of the blame for actual hardware failures squarely on those horrid 'computer hutches' -- I'd say if you put your computer into what amounts to a closed box, you deserve your lump of melted silicon.
It's like the freeway, you don't need the stoplights on the ramps unless there is insufficient capacity. Of course, roads and networks suffer the same fate -- building more capacity only attracts more use -- and in general the end users are (unfortunately) buffered from the true costs (which leads to higher use -- how much gas would you buy at $15/gallon?).
The same goes with many networks -- we have students sending out 100 GB/day from their dorm rooms because they are buffered from the true costs (I paid my dorm bill - I deserve this!)
But in general, with networking it has been "cheap enough" to simply keep piling on the bandwidth -- perhaps someday Moore will give out and we'll have to work smarter not harder.
Really? This is not the case on my cell phone, I dial local calls with 7 digits.
Which is why those of us who are not completely without a clue have to spend such an interminable time wading through this crap to get to talk to someone who knows more than the windows menu sequence by rote.
Please, Please, Please -- there has got to be some way to determine if the person calling you is not your avreage 'where is the "any" key' idiot and quickly get them talk to somebody who understands them -- I swear, when US West fubared our DSL I must have talked to a dozen different 'script followers' before getting to Mr. Clue who fixed the problem in a minute.
The question isn't so much "how to support an X-bit type" (where X is 64, 128, 256, whatever).
The *real* question is how to support ALL of the X-bit types: 8,16,32,64,128,... at the same time -- either that or we'll just change all the network (etc) protocols such that there are no more 8 or 16 bit-sized fields.
Yes, there are ways to work around this, but they are all reasonably gross (IMO).
And, yes, it was uphill both ways to school back then...
It's unlikely to offer much value over DSL, Cable-modems, etc. to Jo Average EbayAddict.
We may just need that this winter.
But it's a little hi-tech for this old house -- when we moved in, the wall betwen the garage and kitchen was covered with those little styrofoam meat trays -- presumably for insulation -- the previous owner's ``frugality'' was well known :)
UV is filtered by the cornea and lens.
In smaller animals (smaller eyes), this effect is less pronounced (e.g. bees see UV).
I suppose it would be possible to see UV with an artifical cornea/lens designed not to filter UV -- since the range of the blue cones extends will into the UV wavelengths -- but who knows what your brain would do with the info...
Especially odd to me was compaq because they are following in Digital's (RIP) practice of letting just about anybody test drive their boxes over the net, so they must be pretty confident that they have their security tight enough to prevent at least bulk mischief.
We have Verizon's $35/mo, 150 min, no LD, no roaming charges plan and with our Tri-Band StarTac we've gotten coverage almost[1] everywhere we've travelled -- even in BFE Utah, but we tend to go to points West of Iowa not East.
[1] Basically not between mountains in the Rockies.
And how, exactly, is the fact that your buddy down the hall in the dorms has signed your key going to do anything useful, like, for example, give you access to the items on electronic reserve at the library that have been purchased for the use of only engineering students?
On the otherhand, a central authority has the information to issue certificates that the rest of the official organizational structure can make use of.
And so, you either:
- download a customized browser with the campus certificate authority certificate pre-loaded, or
- click a link to install the CA certificate,
and voila you are in business.And your certificate based on this CA will, in all likelyhood accepted on campus, but this is probably a feature. When wider use of user certificates comes, and it will if the fedgov gets their disintermediation efforts off the ground, then more widely accepted root CAs will proliferate (I'm guessing credit card companies, and all levels of government).
And that's where I think the problems will really start -- it'll be just like my meatspace wallet which has am absurd number of vertification tokens in it, and knowing which you can use where and when and just carrying them all around gets cumbersome.
What would be convenient, but which gives many of us the willies is a single national certificate which can have various endorsements added to it, so if I present it to a site, they can search it for the endorsement or endorsements they want to see, but I as a simple minded user (and that's the most common kind) just 'hand them my papers'.
I've never heard of that, but
I've been using this fall's elections as a civics lesson for our 7 yr old son, so he was in the voting booth with me asking questions. As a result, pretty much everyone there who cared to listen knows how I voted anyway.
And, as was the case this Sept in the School Board election in which I was in, if 'write-in' appears to have won a position then the write-in's need to be looked at by hand to determine who got exactly how many write-in votes -- and in fact, someone did win via write-in.
Here in Story County, Iowa we have what I would consider to be the minimum standard for voting equipment.
You get a sheet of names (in large print) with an oval right next to the name which you darken with a marker. But more importantly, as I found out from the guy right in front of me, if you mismark your ballot (say by marking 2 presidential slates) the machine will not accept the ballot. The election official voided his ballot and gave him a new one.
I would add one additional feature by adding 'abstain' as an option for each contest/question -- this would prevent people missing one or more votes (for example, by forgetting to turn it over and mark the back).
More importantly, the machine you put the completed ballot into will not allow an improperly marked ballot to be input. The guy in line right in front of me kept having his spit back out at him because he had marked 3 instead of the 2 max for hospital trustee or some such minor office. So the offical voided his ballot and made him go back and mark another.
And when the election is over, the machines have a modem which dials up the auditor and delivers the vote totals (the ballots are kept inside the machine in case there is a challenge or recount). This fall when I ran for school board all the results were in to the auditor within just a few minutes of poll closing.
First, consider that about $10K is gone to taxes. Plus you'll probably lose more of your income to taxes too by being in a higher bracket, say $2K. Then, a car is going to cost you at least $3K/yr even if it is a junker. I also think you are underestimating the cost of a women's clothing for any professional job, I'd put it at least at $1K/yr, more likely $2K. Then you're probably going to pay about $5k/yr for childcare. Then throw in all the incidentals like going out to eat more because nobody wants to fix dinner or clean the house or what not, and you're pretty much down to zero-dollars net.
And I speak from experience, my wife was making about $25K before she left work, and we live at least as well now, probably better.