A guy I work with gets calls a few times a week (usually at odd hours, so he gets voicemail.) The calls usually are along the lines of "Hey this is -firstname- from -companyname-, the state says it is ok to dig. Thanks, seeya." When he does answer, the people don't seem to want to talk and tell him who they were expecting to get.
We to this day don't know who the callers are trying to get, but there sure are a lot of callers, and whoever is supposed to get the calls sure digs a lot of big holes.
Someone probably has a document in their customers hands with the wrong cellphone number on it. Makes for a good laugh every now and then.
The largest advantage I see for something like this i a commercial setup is the install. With Verizon, Qwerst, and the other slow pokes, install time for business DSL make take up to a month.
With this, it's "we'll have a guy drop it off, we can FedEx it to ya, or you can stop on by and pick the puppy up." Plug it in at your place and you are on!
For some of the lines we have to provision at work, something like this could be a dream come true. Covad 2.0 may be about to be born...no ma' bell required. Forget the geek LAN option, this has loads of commercial possibilities too.
-Pete
The perpetual hahdheld platform
on
MP3 for Gameboy
·
· Score: 1
I am constantly amazed at a few thing about the GBA.
They are the last of the handheld game systems, and still going strong. They pack quite a punch into a unit at that low price. The quality of the screen, etc. is great at such a low price point. Remember all the similar units that used to be around? Gamegear, Lynx (that was nice!), etc. The only one left is the GameBoy line. I remember when the first gameboy I got was $100. Compare capabilities of the origional gamebay compared to the one today. How many other handheld devices have progressed as much, with a price drop no-less. Discmen would have spectrum analyzers on them if they had kept up this pace of advancement.
The MP3 module is just another thing added to the "wow, that's interesting" things keeping he GameBoy line going. The digital camera is another one.
Nintendo has come up with the handheld game system lineage that won't die, not that that's a bad thing.
His idea for a Dead Man's Switch license would be very interesting to see implemented. It would be nice to see something like that used in a lot of commercial software.
Think of all the software that might still be available if they had such a clause in their license. Hell, just the games!
That book came out about the beginning of the year, and recieved quite a bit of press and publicity a few months ago. It's an insiders view at CBS of what makes news become news, and what doesn't.
From the Publisher IN HIS NEARLY thirty years at CBS News, Emmy Award- winner Bernard Goldberg earned a reputation as one of the preeminent reporters in the television news business. When he looked at his own industry, however, he saw that the media far too often ignored their primary mission: objective, disinterested reporting...
Talks about what he believes to be "liberal bias", although I think Katz's description is better than the term Goldberg puts on it.
If you are interested in this topic, you may want to give the book a read.
I agree that storage size has vastly outpaced demand. We have a 2 terabyte chunk of platters attached to a server which will probably triple in the next year or so, but that is not the norm.
Our "large" database servers (10's of millions of records) have more storage than they know what to with. We are currently big on 18.X gig drives at 15k rpm just beacuse we want the spindles to speed up performance. I'd rather have a 12 or 14 drive cage full of fast 18 giger ebay specials than 73 or even 36 gig drives and have a rockin price/performance ratio.
I find myself formatting drives for application servers feeling guilty that I am making partitions so big I know will never be more than a quarter full. We have web servers with less than 4 gig of space used serving about a million hits a month. Why do would we be keeping the demand up for the large drives? This drives the demand, and therefore the price and margin of the high end drives down.
The drive sizes are just growing so fast most users don't need to upgrade. It is not helped by the fact that the upgrade cycle for PC's has slowed down so much. We are replacing PC's at customers sites because the contract says it is time to replace, even though the PC is already more than powerful enough for the job they perform. How many business users really need more than a 450Mhz box on their desk? We are putting 2ghz machines on these desks now. These people run terminal emulation software, browse the web, and type.
There are many factors contributing to this hard drive problem the article talks about, these are just some personal examples I have of the reason give for the slump.
With an Xbox at $199, a bewolf Linux cluster of a truckload of these could be a huge slap in the face to Microsoft. Forget the cluster, the XBox with custom software I am sure could make some rockin broadcast quality graphics for next to nothing.
This anonymous thing could just be a big ploy to get even more publicity when the generous person or company is revealed. I was posting earier this might be Larry Ellison, if it were not anonymous...it's his style, but I would expect the money to be more. It could be him, and want the more publicity angle.
It could also be to shield the person from legal attack until after the goose is already cooked, so to speak.
-Pete (above amazon link is an affiliate link...for full discloseure)
If it wasn't anonymous, I would say it was Larry Ellison. He's known for stunts like this, but usually he does everything he can to pull his name into it. Of course, if it wasn't anonymous, we'd know who it was anyway.
I bet's it's just some geek who got lucky and sold his stock before everything went bust.
Although, consider the option of someone looking to take advantage of MS's deep loss on each of these things and build a giant cluster at a fraction of the market price.
Amazon has 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide (affilate link, just so ya know) for a little over $30. Currently has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating, although not very many reviews. It is the top book which returns for 802.11, which means it is probably the most popular for that keyword...usually a good sign.
They have free shipping over $49 if anyone is looking for a cheap place to pick it up. 30% off, with 0 shipping cost if you get something else too (to hit the $49 threshold) is a good deal for a brand new tech book.
I go through about 4 (usually business related type) books on CD a month. At ~$20-$30 a pop, that adds up. I am trying to get my listening habbit to pay for itself. So far I don't break even. If I am going to recommend a product Amazon happens to sell (my printer for instance, which I really do own and love), you're damn right I'm going to put my affilate link in there.
You will see it's a +5 comment, so I'm not just "spamming", but actually providing some useful content.
Two music companies that joined forces to sell recordings of the opera stars known as the Three Tenors illegally fixed prices, an administrative law judge ruled.
This is not a huge loss for anyone involved. No real impact will come of it. It sounds to me like a small slap on the wrist for two companies selling the same product at the same price as part of an agreed upon deal. Albums like this deal probably account for less than 1% of what is available on store shelves.
Move along...nothing to see here, or at least not what you are hoping to see.
I thought it was bad recently when a "Critical" IE6 security path completetly broke the ability to view TIFF images in a browser without hacking the registry by hand. I maintain a web site that basically sells access to TIFF imaged documents. All of a sudden we had about a hundred pissed off customers (some not wanting to pay their bill) because _WE_ broke access to the information that runs their businesses. As each customer ran windows update, our website broke. Of course they all say they have not installed any new software, which makes it all the more difficult to troubleshoot until the problem was figured out.
MS is without a doubt throwing non-security things into "security patches", and I for one don't like the unadvertised "featues" one bit.
I have an Epson 785EXP, complete with internal compactflash reader and LCD screen. (not bad for $300!)
I prints photolab quality photos on Epson paper, with a advertised lifespan of 25 years. I have figured I can print digital photo's for much lower cost than at the local mall, although I don't know if it can compete with online printing.
I can print photo's directly from my compactflash cards, with previews of the photo on the LCD screen without intervention on a PC...pc doesn't even have to be hooked up. The LCD is a $99 addon. Amazon has the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX Inkjet Printer
for about $190. I have been absolutely astounded by the quality of the output.
I have recently seen a rise is "Distributed" online family albums. With things like Yahoo Groups, and whatever MSN's is (I refuse to get a passport account), families and friends are adding photo's to the same "virtual album" from all over the county. That is the "major revolution" I am seeing in the area.
What I find even more interesting is techies arn't always the ones setting them up and using them. A lot of people who can barely use a digital camera are getting in on the act.
Not sure if this helps or not, but places like Yahoo Groups work great for setting up albums with a short term storage outlook.
-Pete
Java UI doesn't have to be slow
on
Eclipse 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I know this is an eclipse thread, so this is slightly offtopic. Being a Java IDE topic, here are my responses to some posts I have seen.
Eclipse is faster than Netbeans because it doesn't use swing.
Hogwash. If you believe jave UI's (including swing) are slow, try giving IDEA a shot. Even if you don't like the IDE itself (many people swear by it), I consider the UI very fast, and much faster than Eclipse 1.0 on Linux, although I heard Eclipse was much faster on Win32.
A 21 day demo of IDEA is available for download. Try it in addition to Eclipse if you are in the market for a new Java IDE.
I don't work for them or anything, but am very satisfied user of their product, and am much more productive for server side things than on Netbeans. It doens't do everything, but it does what it does very well.
It looks like they have an official GTK (not motif) version available for Linux. If you previously had a horrible experience with Eclipse on Linux, I know I did, it may be worth trying again.
I use IDEA, it will be interesting to see how it compares. The Eclipse UI alone, last time I tried it, made me hate it.
Half the entertaining value of a Magic "gathering" is seeing the people who show up...some are quite interesting based on my memories from high school a few years ago.
Trial customers in the 80-square-kilometre area will receive movies, music videos and entertainment shows on-demand to their living room.
And just think, Verzion won't even roll out DSL in my area, unless it is to piggyback a more expensive service. (Verizon currently sells us a T1 which enters the building over a DSL line...won't sell us DSL, go figure.)
Communities have done things like this before, but never a phone company to my knowledge. That is where the news is with this.
Maybe the US telecom's could learn a lesson from the Brits.
Slashdot Mirror
A guy I work with gets calls a few times a week (usually at odd hours, so he gets voicemail.) The calls usually are along the lines of "Hey this is -firstname- from -companyname-, the state says it is ok to dig. Thanks, seeya." When he does answer, the people don't seem to want to talk and tell him who they were expecting to get.
We to this day don't know who the callers are trying to get, but there sure are a lot of callers, and whoever is supposed to get the calls sure digs a lot of big holes.
Someone probably has a document in their customers hands with the wrong cellphone number on it. Makes for a good laugh every now and then.
-Pete
Amazon has XML and Java(TM): Developing Web Applications (2nd Edition) for 30% off ($34.99), currently in stock as of the time I write this.
Free shipping on orders over $49.
-Pete
(Above is an affilate link)
The largest advantage I see for something like this i a commercial setup is the install. With Verizon, Qwerst, and the other slow pokes, install time for business DSL make take up to a month.
With this, it's "we'll have a guy drop it off, we can FedEx it to ya, or you can stop on by and pick the puppy up." Plug it in at your place and you are on!
For some of the lines we have to provision at work, something like this could be a dream come true. Covad 2.0 may be about to be born...no ma' bell required. Forget the geek LAN option, this has loads of commercial possibilities too.
-Pete
They are able to keep the price resonable, Less than $70 at Amazon. (affilate link)
They are the last of the handheld game systems, and still going strong.
They pack quite a punch into a unit at that low price. The quality of the screen, etc. is great at such a low price point. Remember all the similar units that used to be around? Gamegear, Lynx (that was nice!), etc. The only one left is the GameBoy line. I remember when the first gameboy I got was $100. Compare capabilities of the origional gamebay compared to the one today. How many other handheld devices have progressed as much, with a price drop no-less. Discmen would have spectrum analyzers on them if they had kept up this pace of advancement.
The MP3 module is just another thing added to the "wow, that's interesting" things keeping he GameBoy line going. The digital camera is another one.
Nintendo has come up with the handheld game system lineage that won't die, not that that's a bad thing.
-Pete
His idea for a Dead Man's Switch license would be very interesting to see implemented. It would be nice to see something like that used in a lot of commercial software.
Think of all the software that might still be available if they had such a clause in their license. Hell, just the games!
-Pete
Looks to me like Katz just got done reading "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News".
That book came out about the beginning of the year, and recieved quite a bit of press and publicity a few months ago. It's an insiders view at CBS of what makes news become news, and what doesn't.
From the Publisher
IN HIS NEARLY thirty years at CBS News, Emmy Award- winner Bernard Goldberg earned a reputation as one of the preeminent reporters in the television news business. When he looked at his own industry, however, he saw that the media far too often ignored their primary mission: objective, disinterested reporting...
Talks about what he believes to be "liberal bias", although I think Katz's description is better than the term Goldberg puts on it.
If you are interested in this topic, you may want to give the book a read.
-Pete
(affiliate link above...just so ya know.)
At Amazon: Managing and Using MySQL (2nd Edition), $27.97.
Currently only one review, which rated it a 2 out of 5 stars.
Free shipping on orders over $49.
-Pete
(above link is an affiliate link...)
Does anyone else find it interesting that in a way this is a portal of portals?
-Pete
I agree that storage size has vastly outpaced demand. We have a 2 terabyte chunk of platters attached to a server which will probably triple in the next year or so, but that is not the norm.
Our "large" database servers (10's of millions of records) have more storage than they know what to with. We are currently big on 18.X gig drives at 15k rpm just beacuse we want the spindles to speed up performance. I'd rather have a 12 or 14 drive cage full of fast 18 giger ebay specials than 73 or even 36 gig drives and have a rockin price/performance ratio.
I find myself formatting drives for application servers feeling guilty that I am making partitions so big I know will never be more than a quarter full. We have web servers with less than 4 gig of space used serving about a million hits a month. Why do would we be keeping the demand up for the large drives? This drives the demand, and therefore the price and margin of the high end drives down.
The drive sizes are just growing so fast most users don't need to upgrade. It is not helped by the fact that the upgrade cycle for PC's has slowed down so much. We are replacing PC's at customers sites because the contract says it is time to replace, even though the PC is already more than powerful enough for the job they perform. How many business users really need more than a 450Mhz box on their desk? We are putting 2ghz machines on these desks now. These people run terminal emulation software, browse the web, and type.
There are many factors contributing to this hard drive problem the article talks about, these are just some personal examples I have of the reason give for the slump.
-Pete
With an Xbox at $199, a bewolf Linux cluster of a truckload of these could be a huge slap in the face to Microsoft. Forget the cluster, the XBox with custom software I am sure could make some rockin broadcast quality graphics for next to nothing.
This anonymous thing could just be a big ploy to get even more publicity when the generous person or company is revealed. I was posting earier this might be Larry Ellison, if it were not anonymous...it's his style, but I would expect the money to be more. It could be him, and want the more publicity angle.
It could also be to shield the person from legal attack until after the goose is already cooked, so to speak.
-Pete
(above amazon link is an affiliate link...for full discloseure)
If it wasn't anonymous, I would say it was Larry Ellison. He's known for stunts like this, but usually he does everything he can to pull his name into it. Of course, if it wasn't anonymous, we'd know who it was anyway.
I bet's it's just some geek who got lucky and sold his stock before everything went bust.
Although, consider the option of someone looking to take advantage of MS's deep loss on each of these things and build a giant cluster at a fraction of the market price.
-Pete
Otherwise, yeah, good price.
Amazon has 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide (affilate link, just so ya know) for a little over $30. Currently has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating, although not very many reviews. It is the top book which returns for 802.11, which means it is probably the most popular for that keyword...usually a good sign.
They have free shipping over $49 if anyone is looking for a cheap place to pick it up. 30% off, with 0 shipping cost if you get something else too (to hit the $49 threshold) is a good deal for a brand new tech book.
-Pete
This isn't a question, but a plea to the slashdot editors.
;-)
Please perform this interview before his planned flight.
Thank You,
-Pete
Don't see the canvas...BE the canvas.
-Pete
I go through about 4 (usually business related type) books on CD a month. At ~$20-$30 a pop, that adds up. I am trying to get my listening habbit to pay for itself. So far I don't break even. If I am going to recommend a product Amazon happens to sell (my printer for instance, which I really do own and love), you're damn right I'm going to put my affilate link in there.
You will see it's a +5 comment, so I'm not just "spamming", but actually providing some useful content.
-Pete
Two music companies that joined forces to sell recordings of the opera stars known as the Three Tenors illegally fixed prices, an administrative law judge ruled.
This is not a huge loss for anyone involved. No real impact will come of it. It sounds to me like a small slap on the wrist for two companies selling the same product at the same price as part of an agreed upon deal. Albums like this deal probably account for less than 1% of what is available on store shelves.
Move along...nothing to see here, or at least not what you are hoping to see.
-Pete
I thought it was bad recently when a "Critical" IE6 security path completetly broke the ability to view TIFF images in a browser without hacking the registry by hand. I maintain a web site that basically sells access to TIFF imaged documents. All of a sudden we had about a hundred pissed off customers (some not wanting to pay their bill) because _WE_ broke access to the information that runs their businesses. As each customer ran windows update, our website broke. Of course they all say they have not installed any new software, which makes it all the more difficult to troubleshoot until the problem was figured out.
MS is without a doubt throwing non-security things into "security patches", and I for one don't like the unadvertised "featues" one bit.
-Pete
I have an Epson 785EXP, complete with internal compactflash reader and LCD screen. (not bad for $300!)
I prints photolab quality photos on Epson paper, with a advertised lifespan of 25 years. I have figured I can print digital photo's for much lower cost than at the local mall, although I don't know if it can compete with online printing.
I can print photo's directly from my compactflash cards, with previews of the photo on the LCD screen without intervention on a PC...pc doesn't even have to be hooked up. The LCD is a $99 addon. Amazon has the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX Inkjet Printer
for about $190. I have been absolutely astounded by the quality of the output.
May be worth looking into.
-Pete
I have recently seen a rise is "Distributed" online family albums. With things like Yahoo Groups, and whatever MSN's is (I refuse to get a passport account), families and friends are adding photo's to the same "virtual album" from all over the county. That is the "major revolution" I am seeing in the area.
What I find even more interesting is techies arn't always the ones setting them up and using them. A lot of people who can barely use a digital camera are getting in on the act.
Not sure if this helps or not, but places like Yahoo Groups work great for setting up albums with a short term storage outlook.
-Pete
I know this is an eclipse thread, so this is slightly offtopic. Being a Java IDE topic, here are my responses to some posts I have seen.
Eclipse is faster than Netbeans because it doesn't use swing.
Hogwash. If you believe jave UI's (including swing) are slow, try giving IDEA a shot. Even if you don't like the IDE itself (many people swear by it), I consider the UI very fast, and much faster than Eclipse 1.0 on Linux, although I heard Eclipse was much faster on Win32.
A 21 day demo of IDEA is available for download. Try it in addition to Eclipse if you are in the market for a new Java IDE.
I don't work for them or anything, but am very satisfied user of their product, and am much more productive for server side things than on Netbeans. It doens't do everything, but it does what it does very well.
-Pete
It looks like they have an official GTK (not motif) version available for Linux. If you previously had a horrible experience with Eclipse on Linux, I know I did, it may be worth trying again.
I use IDEA, it will be interesting to see how it compares. The Eclipse UI alone, last time I tried it, made me hate it.
-Pete
Half the entertaining value of a Magic "gathering" is seeing the people who show up...some are quite interesting based on my memories from high school a few years ago.
Online version just won't have that for a draw.
-Pete
Trial customers in the 80-square-kilometre area will receive movies, music videos and entertainment shows on-demand to their living room.
And just think, Verzion won't even roll out DSL in my area, unless it is to piggyback a more expensive service. (Verizon currently sells us a T1 which enters the building over a DSL line...won't sell us DSL, go figure.)
Communities have done things like this before, but never a phone company to my knowledge. That is where the news is with this.
Maybe the US telecom's could learn a lesson from the Brits.
-Pete
Did anyone else use to log onto their favorite BBS every day just to take their turn at L.O.R.D, Global Wars, etc?
That would be a killer network app on these things.
-Pete