This may actually help free net growth by keeping leechers from flooding the community systems while they are still not strong enough to hold the weight. I'll certainly still offer and use free wireless access but may use the nation wide network when am traveling and just wanting normal net access.
Is this a standard Mini-ITX system? If so you could buy one of these and move it into a sexier case and have a great toaster sized system for elss than buying the parts alone would probably cost you and a left over case to slap a normal Micro-ATX mobo in.
I'm thinking of buying one of these to use as a video server. Drop in a couple 130 gigger drives (the biggest it can handle) and store ripped dvd's and cd's that can be played over the network or directly to the tv if this has the noraml tv-out port mini-ITX mobo's have. Trying to replace my vcr/dvd/cd players with a single small/cheap box.
Damn I have more than a terabyte of storage at home now and it's 99% full. Everytime I add space I soon fill it without effort. If I still had a highspeed Internet connection it'd be even worse. Still the space required and expense of hdd's is slim compared to all this stuff on the original cd's, dvd's, etc. This way I can access all my media and not hafta find shelve space for it all. It really gives me a good excuse to geek out with customized indexing tools too.
I predict by 2012 my home storage will exceed the capacity and indexing of what Google, at that time, has. I also predict that my server space will far exceed my living space at that point. Ahhhhh.. the sweet smell of data.
I like my tablet PC better than either a PDA or a laptop. It fits my needs. It also runs Linux.
As far as Linux stealing from M$ you're right in part.. but M$ steals from opensource dweebs too.. and other companies.. and then someone else steals the idea back. It's the way software evolves and is why software patents are bad. Also most Linux programs can be ported directly to Windows with ease, it's a lot more work to clone those Windows app to Linux because there is seldom source and when it does exist it's usually badly licensed and written so poorly as to be nearly worthless to port. Most Windows programmers just don't worry about portability the way opensource geeks do.
Does anyone else see The Sims as millions od adults playing Barbie? Now it'll be even better.. you can play your Barbie with your neighbors Barbie.
Nothing wrong with playing Barbie. It just strikes me as funny to see millions of grown people doing so. I'd guess the same psychology that makes kids act out situations with toys applies still to adults.
This is very useful for the Open Hardware community. It's one important step closer to having every piece of a working PC's hardware and software opened. With the hardware open sourced as well as the software users have some choice in what they use.. important considering the push for DRM and similar hardware crap being forced on us.
Well I've sold computers and most people can pick up on the Intel vrs AMD thing but any other CPU's offered and, with the exception of the few geeks out there, they are just overlooked. A lot of people want their computer to have names they've heard of attached as it gives them some comfort of the machines quality (as unfounded as that often is).
Something like Ghz comes into play but I find it is used more by sales people to convince the customer than as something the customer actually comes looking for. To some degree most people want the same CPU their brothers computer has but with the Ghz just a little bit higher.. giving them both comfort and bragging rights.
I wouldn't count AMD as being gone. The highend PC market is just hard to make a profit in during a recession. I imagine they'll keep selling CPU's and will return to highend CPU's when the market warms. In the meantime they save money on research and design allowing them to sell their current CPU's cheaper. Maybe instead of buying the newest geewhiz processor from AMD you can now build an AMD cluster.:)
Try asking those same people what company makes the parts in any of those car engines. Even something simple like what brand of sterio it comes with. 99% of the time I'm sure they'll assume it is all made by the car company itself or have no idea whatsoever.
Not really. The GPL keeps others from reclosing the source which is something the BSD license does not do. I really dislike granting companies the right to do so. It is a way to make money off free software projects though and it does help pay for development.
With Transmeta still trying to push into the PC CPU market I'd think AMD backing off a little would be good news for them. Two names is about all most customers can keep track of. This will let the Transmeta name have a chance at becoming known outside the geek society. If the recent news of Transmeta's new much faster and even more effecient CPU is true and that CPU is cheap and faster (and more energy/heat effecient) than a 1.8Ghz Intel CPU then they might grab some decent market share.
Just to make a wild prediction I'd say handheld wireless devices will be a big boom over the next decade or so.. faster CPU's probably will matter less than extending battery life. If they can make them cheap enough and so that they don't need massive cooling then they also should work well for parallel designs.. for the power users.
Re:I think we're forgetting something
on
Software For Ransom
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I usually go with a GPL license from the start and offer companies the option of an alternative license that'd allow them to distribute without releases of their own changes. I've considered the idea of switching to a 'ransom' model where customers get a tempory license allowing them to distribute without releasing code and after I got $xxxx.xx back to pay for the development costs dual license the code as GPL/BSD. So far I've resisted such a model though because I dislike the BSD license in general. I'd rather keep control over all exceptions to the GPL.
I was going to do ransom on per-version basis though. Each new release would have to be paid for again (just the costs of that release) if they wanted to be able to base their software off the newest code base.
Is a ProGear able to play back DVD-quality video? I work for a company that makes custom DVD's (of home movies etc) and would like a tablet that can play mpeg and divx video on the server over the wireless network or from it's own harddrive. I am considering buying a ProGear but am not sure how well one of them would handle video.
Might check out homepower.com. It's the website of a magzine that specializes in renewable energy. I believe the last issue (possibly still being sold?) had an article about Shell getting into big-wind. They doubtless have some numbers for you.
Also I believe they usually estimate that home wind/solar will pay for itself in something like 5-10 years while the life of the panels, windmills, etc is typically a lot longer.
For a project I once took a device that'd read brain wave patterns (like $20 for the gizmo.. sometimes Radio Shack has them) and display them on screen and wrangled the input into a speech recognition library and was able to train the system to let me control a mouse. It really wasn't all that hard because the speech library took waveforms as input which weren't to unlike the data provided by the device I had.
Am thinking of trying to find such a device again and write a Python program to play with the output. It could be fun to have the only Linux box able to read minds.:)
I'm okay with bandwidth caps IF there is an uncapped proxy server. I think that is a good incentive. That way hardcore bandwidth hogs like myself don't suck up unfair amounts of bandwidth but can still download just about anything without feeling capped.
I'm not sure I understand your comment about AOL free areas. AOL doesn't suck because of free areas. It sucks because the company is to big to really care about their users.
The pages themselves generally don't take much bandwidth.. static content like images and software do. Also a good majority of the web is static. So a proxy server can reduce bandwidth usage a lot. I've ran half a dozen machines/users over a 56K modem without feeling overly slow because all machines were forced through a proxy server.
Also generally a well configured proxy doesn't cache dynamic content so you never see a dynamic page meant for someone else.
I live in the middle of nowhere right now but will soon move back to a city.. when I figure out what city I want to move to.
I have several million images, documents, full-length movies, music files, etc as well as community portal software and the like that I've developed. I use a web-based interface to sort my collection so I'll probably allow it all to be accessible.
I run spiders that pull files off Usenet, the web, and P2P networks and also collect from my own cameras and rip my own music and movie collection (quite large). Don't really care to encourage others to copy from my collection but don't care about enforcing copyright laws either so if there is an interesting reason to let others at my files I'd likely through open the gates.;)
Overall though I think common services like proxy servers and community news/chat is more useful on a network.
Not at all. Just tell people you know and let them tell people they know and so forth. Unlike alternative power there isn't a lot of investment or skill needed to join a community network. Might take a while but eventually the trickle effect goes a long way.
In me experience coop utilities are still crappy and expensive. A shared grid where everyone has solar/wind power and shares their excess to the grid would be more useful really.
As far as telco/cable line monopolies I think as the lines run through public property the public has the right to share them out any way they want. It should be part of the contract the company gets when they are allowed to run their lines.
A large part of the problem is the misuse of the Internet big companies are trying to force. Rather than treating the network as peers they want to have a few centralized services under corporate control and lots of little users that just sit there and suck up products and canned media. Essentially trying to turn the Internet into television/newsprint. It just doesn't work well.
If ISP's would embrace people that want to run their own web servers, P2P, etc they could reduce a lot of their upstream bandwidth usage. How many people look for local news on a server half way across the country? How many check their email on servers sitting somewhere at Yahoo? How many download the newest game, movie, or music from a distant P2P peer? That is a lot of bandwidth they don't need to waste.
Smart ISP's would provide community sites within their own network (and encourage power users to make their own sites) and provide nice web-based mail. A local IM server would be nice. Offering good proxy servers for web-surfing and a local P2P server that users can connect through rather than using servers elsewhere on the Internet. All are good ways to reduce the ISP's bandwidth usage while keeping happy customers.
I've seen community ran wireless networks that offer all these things and do a very good job at it. If ISP's aren't careful with their limits eventually enough users will join such community network projects that a good deal of the ISP's business may suffer. Wireless networks now are pathworking their way into covering most major cities and even rural areas. At the same time advances are being made in long haul signals for wireless. Eventually this will be a threat to the ISP/telco business and they just accelerate the shift by driving away power users.
Because each label costs money and hassle and if they forget one somewhere they are open to lawsuits. It would be useless and make the products cost more.
GM foods are perfectly safe excepting the occassional plant that has been modified to have poison leaves and take over the planet (okay I admit watching Little Shop of Horrors to often). With all the things you live with that you know are dangerous what difference does that little extra risk really matter?
Any time I eat something I risk it could be bad and kill me. It could have came from a plant or animal with a disease, it could have came in contact with something along the way, the guy that handled the food could have got off masturbating in the bins. There are to many variables to be 100% safe.
I'd agree this is why they are using the income of Windows/Office the current cash cows to get into other markets. The OperatingSystem and the OfficeSuite are both things that OSS (lot's of O's and S's here) is strongly moving to compete with. They can use the profits to move out of the market that is being attacked into something else just as profitable. This is good business practice. On the other hand it can also create new monopolies as the old ones crumble but does it matter as long as they keep crumbling?
Please see SDL, OpenGL, and OpenAL. All roads lead to nirvana. If you want to get your hands dirty see Pygame.
Re:Jokes are OK, but don't tolerate the untolerabl
on
Science Askew
·
· Score: 2
No violence is needed. Just be really weird and people will fear you especially if you're a lot smarter than they are. I burned all my hair and facial hair off in an explosion early on in highschool and had ashes falling off my head for months afterwards.. That went a long way. Also would peel my own skin off and eat it in class. That really disturbed the teachers.
Also about 10th grade I suddenly grew a foot and a half (to be 6'6 and about 250lbs) and was suddenly gone from the smallest guy in highschool to the tallest. Made quite a few of those people that picked on me very nervous.;)
Slashdot Mirror
This may actually help free net growth by keeping leechers from flooding the community systems while they are still not strong enough to hold the weight. I'll certainly still offer and use free wireless access but may use the nation wide network when am traveling and just wanting normal net access.
Is this a standard Mini-ITX system? If so you could buy one of these and move it into a sexier case and have a great toaster sized system for elss than buying the parts alone would probably cost you and a left over case to slap a normal Micro-ATX mobo in.
I'm thinking of buying one of these to use as a video server. Drop in a couple 130 gigger drives (the biggest it can handle) and store ripped dvd's and cd's that can be played over the network or directly to the tv if this has the noraml tv-out port mini-ITX mobo's have. Trying to replace my vcr/dvd/cd players with a single small/cheap box.
Damn I have more than a terabyte of storage at home now and it's 99% full. Everytime I add space I soon fill it without effort. If I still had a highspeed Internet connection it'd be even worse. Still the space required and expense of hdd's is slim compared to all this stuff on the original cd's, dvd's, etc. This way I can access all my media and not hafta find shelve space for it all. It really gives me a good excuse to geek out with customized indexing tools too.
I predict by 2012 my home storage will exceed the capacity and indexing of what Google, at that time, has. I also predict that my server space will far exceed my living space at that point. Ahhhhh.. the sweet smell of data.
I like my tablet PC better than either a PDA or a laptop. It fits my needs. It also runs Linux.
As far as Linux stealing from M$ you're right in part.. but M$ steals from opensource dweebs too.. and other companies.. and then someone else steals the idea back. It's the way software evolves and is why software patents are bad. Also most Linux programs can be ported directly to Windows with ease, it's a lot more work to clone those Windows app to Linux because there is seldom source and when it does exist it's usually badly licensed and written so poorly as to be nearly worthless to port. Most Windows programmers just don't worry about portability the way opensource geeks do.
Does anyone else see The Sims as millions od adults playing Barbie? Now it'll be even better.. you can play your Barbie with your neighbors Barbie.
Nothing wrong with playing Barbie. It just strikes me as funny to see millions of grown people doing so. I'd guess the same psychology that makes kids act out situations with toys applies still to adults.
This is very useful for the Open Hardware community. It's one important step closer to having every piece of a working PC's hardware and software opened. With the hardware open sourced as well as the software users have some choice in what they use.. important considering the push for DRM and similar hardware crap being forced on us.
Well I've sold computers and most people can pick up on the Intel vrs AMD thing but any other CPU's offered and, with the exception of the few geeks out there, they are just overlooked. A lot of people want their computer to have names they've heard of attached as it gives them some comfort of the machines quality (as unfounded as that often is).
:)
Something like Ghz comes into play but I find it is used more by sales people to convince the customer than as something the customer actually comes looking for. To some degree most people want the same CPU their brothers computer has but with the Ghz just a little bit higher.. giving them both comfort and bragging rights.
I wouldn't count AMD as being gone. The highend PC market is just hard to make a profit in during a recession. I imagine they'll keep selling CPU's and will return to highend CPU's when the market warms. In the meantime they save money on research and design allowing them to sell their current CPU's cheaper. Maybe instead of buying the newest geewhiz processor from AMD you can now build an AMD cluster.
Try asking those same people what company makes the parts in any of those car engines. Even something simple like what brand of sterio it comes with. 99% of the time I'm sure they'll assume it is all made by the car company itself or have no idea whatsoever.
Not really. The GPL keeps others from reclosing the source which is something the BSD license does not do. I really dislike granting companies the right to do so. It is a way to make money off free software projects though and it does help pay for development.
With Transmeta still trying to push into the PC CPU market I'd think AMD backing off a little would be good news for them. Two names is about all most customers can keep track of. This will let the Transmeta name have a chance at becoming known outside the geek society. If the recent news of Transmeta's new much faster and even more effecient CPU is true and that CPU is cheap and faster (and more energy/heat effecient) than a 1.8Ghz Intel CPU then they might grab some decent market share.
Just to make a wild prediction I'd say handheld wireless devices will be a big boom over the next decade or so.. faster CPU's probably will matter less than extending battery life. If they can make them cheap enough and so that they don't need massive cooling then they also should work well for parallel designs.. for the power users.
I usually go with a GPL license from the start and offer companies the option of an alternative license that'd allow them to distribute without releases of their own changes. I've considered the idea of switching to a 'ransom' model where customers get a tempory license allowing them to distribute without releasing code and after I got $xxxx.xx back to pay for the development costs dual license the code as GPL/BSD. So far I've resisted such a model though because I dislike the BSD license in general. I'd rather keep control over all exceptions to the GPL.
I was going to do ransom on per-version basis though. Each new release would have to be paid for again (just the costs of that release) if they wanted to be able to base their software off the newest code base.
Is a ProGear able to play back DVD-quality video? I work for a company that makes custom DVD's (of home movies etc) and would like a tablet that can play mpeg and divx video on the server over the wireless network or from it's own harddrive. I am considering buying a ProGear but am not sure how well one of them would handle video.
Might check out homepower.com. It's the website of a magzine that specializes in renewable energy. I believe the last issue (possibly still being sold?) had an article about Shell getting into big-wind. They doubtless have some numbers for you.
Also I believe they usually estimate that home wind/solar will pay for itself in something like 5-10 years while the life of the panels, windmills, etc is typically a lot longer.
Also wind often needs no storage.
For a project I once took a device that'd read brain wave patterns (like $20 for the gizmo.. sometimes Radio Shack has them) and display them on screen and wrangled the input into a speech recognition library and was able to train the system to let me control a mouse. It really wasn't all that hard because the speech library took waveforms as input which weren't to unlike the data provided by the device I had.
:)
Am thinking of trying to find such a device again and write a Python program to play with the output. It could be fun to have the only Linux box able to read minds.
I'm okay with bandwidth caps IF there is an uncapped proxy server. I think that is a good incentive. That way hardcore bandwidth hogs like myself don't suck up unfair amounts of bandwidth but can still download just about anything without feeling capped.
I'm not sure I understand your comment about AOL free areas. AOL doesn't suck because of free areas. It sucks because the company is to big to really care about their users.
The pages themselves generally don't take much bandwidth.. static content like images and software do. Also a good majority of the web is static. So a proxy server can reduce bandwidth usage a lot. I've ran half a dozen machines/users over a 56K modem without feeling overly slow because all machines were forced through a proxy server.
Also generally a well configured proxy doesn't cache dynamic content so you never see a dynamic page meant for someone else.
I live in the middle of nowhere right now but will soon move back to a city.. when I figure out what city I want to move to.
;)
I have several million images, documents, full-length movies, music files, etc as well as community portal software and the like that I've developed. I use a web-based interface to sort my collection so I'll probably allow it all to be accessible.
I run spiders that pull files off Usenet, the web, and P2P networks and also collect from my own cameras and rip my own music and movie collection (quite large). Don't really care to encourage others to copy from my collection but don't care about enforcing copyright laws either so if there is an interesting reason to let others at my files I'd likely through open the gates.
Overall though I think common services like proxy servers and community news/chat is more useful on a network.
Not at all. Just tell people you know and let them tell people they know and so forth. Unlike alternative power there isn't a lot of investment or skill needed to join a community network. Might take a while but eventually the trickle effect goes a long way.
In me experience coop utilities are still crappy and expensive. A shared grid where everyone has solar/wind power and shares their excess to the grid would be more useful really.
As far as telco/cable line monopolies I think as the lines run through public property the public has the right to share them out any way they want. It should be part of the contract the company gets when they are allowed to run their lines.
A large part of the problem is the misuse of the Internet big companies are trying to force. Rather than treating the network as peers they want to have a few centralized services under corporate control and lots of little users that just sit there and suck up products and canned media. Essentially trying to turn the Internet into television/newsprint. It just doesn't work well.
If ISP's would embrace people that want to run their own web servers, P2P, etc they could reduce a lot of their upstream bandwidth usage. How many people look for local news on a server half way across the country? How many check their email on servers sitting somewhere at Yahoo? How many download the newest game, movie, or music from a distant P2P peer? That is a lot of bandwidth they don't need to waste.
Smart ISP's would provide community sites within their own network (and encourage power users to make their own sites) and provide nice web-based mail. A local IM server would be nice. Offering good proxy servers for web-surfing and a local P2P server that users can connect through rather than using servers elsewhere on the Internet. All are good ways to reduce the ISP's bandwidth usage while keeping happy customers.
I've seen community ran wireless networks that offer all these things and do a very good job at it. If ISP's aren't careful with their limits eventually enough users will join such community network projects that a good deal of the ISP's business may suffer. Wireless networks now are pathworking their way into covering most major cities and even rural areas. At the same time advances are being made in long haul signals for wireless. Eventually this will be a threat to the ISP/telco business and they just accelerate the shift by driving away power users.
Because each label costs money and hassle and if they forget one somewhere they are open to lawsuits. It would be useless and make the products cost more.
GM foods are perfectly safe excepting the occassional plant that has been modified to have poison leaves and take over the planet (okay I admit watching Little Shop of Horrors to often). With all the things you live with that you know are dangerous what difference does that little extra risk really matter?
Any time I eat something I risk it could be bad and kill me. It could have came from a plant or animal with a disease, it could have came in contact with something along the way, the guy that handled the food could have got off masturbating in the bins. There are to many variables to be 100% safe.
I'd agree this is why they are using the income of Windows/Office the current cash cows to get into other markets. The OperatingSystem and the OfficeSuite are both things that OSS (lot's of O's and S's here) is strongly moving to compete with. They can use the profits to move out of the market that is being attacked into something else just as profitable. This is good business practice. On the other hand it can also create new monopolies as the old ones crumble but does it matter as long as they keep crumbling?
Ever read The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker? Covers this sort of thing exactly though his ants were a lot harder to kill.
Please see SDL, OpenGL, and OpenAL. All roads lead to nirvana. If you want to get your hands dirty see Pygame.
No violence is needed. Just be really weird and people will fear you especially if you're a lot smarter than they are. I burned all my hair and facial hair off in an explosion early on in highschool and had ashes falling off my head for months afterwards.. That went a long way. Also would peel my own skin off and eat it in class. That really disturbed the teachers.
;)
Also about 10th grade I suddenly grew a foot and a half (to be 6'6 and about 250lbs) and was suddenly gone from the smallest guy in highschool to the tallest. Made quite a few of those people that picked on me very nervous.