"The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street, refuses to let go on the other side."
-Theodore Forstmann
Do not expect to get back anything that is given up, regardless of the intention. Expect that what was intended will seldom resemble the result. People aren't thinking, they're just reacting and willing to do whatever it takes to feel "safe." This in itself is unobtainable. You can never be safe from fanatics willing to die for their cause, no matter how many of your liberties you willingly give up.
...for quite some time. Still, as others have pointed out it's still not the cheap solution. But if you need fast access to data, it is really neat.
I have no affiliation with SolidData but I worked for a company that had their equipment. Well thought out design. The units had their own UPS and a regular hard drive inside the case. In the event of a power failure the entire contents of the RAM disk was copied to the hard drive before the unit shut down. Likewise, when it would power up it had to copy the contents of the hard disk back to RAM before it was available. Other than that, as far as the OS was concerned, it acted just like another hard disk.
Well you can come over to my place and watch it over Dish Network. =) Better yet, I get the UPN "super station" out of boston. I'll get to see it 2 hours before the rest of the Rocky Mountain region. =P
NO CONTRACT SHOULD EVER LIMIT FUNDEMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS.
Hello? Are we living on the same planet? We're talking about a virus that aggressivly scans the net and attempts to replicate itself. This virus sucks up bandwidth which is not, despite one/.er statement to the contrary, plentiful. Those who aren't yet infected are at risk of infection, or at the very minimum a DoS attack from those who are infected. To equate running an infected server to Freedom of Speech is ludicrous.
To extend your analogy, by allowing infected customers to soak up bandwidth and DoS attack other customers (even if it is unknowingly), you are actively denying the rights of the uninfected customers. Now you have a decision to make; cut off those who are aiding the attacks, or cut off those who are not. Why should my system be removed from the net if it isn't doing anything harmful? If your system is spamming mine at such a ferocious rate that I can't serve legitimate traffic then you are denying me the service I have paid for. At this point your right to service ends, even if you are paying for your own connection.
In the US we have freedom of speech, but that dosen't mean we can spread outright lies about others. We have the right to keep and bear arms, but that doesn't give us the right to shoot others indescriminately. Your rights end where others rights begin.
And finally, access to the net is not a right. It is not garenteed in the Constitution. It's a service and a privilege that we pay to use. Can it facilitate free speech? Sure. Is it the sole medium for free speech? No. Like any other service if you abuse it you can, and should, be denied access. In the same manor in which you can have your drivers license revoked for abusing the privilage of driving.
While I'm here, I'd like to make the observation that bashing Microsoft has now become trendy.
Actually, it's been going on for quite some time. Anyone who has been an advocate for any OS beside MS' can tell you this. If/. were an "I love MS!" site I certainly would not waste my time here, and I suspect it would not get near the traffic that it does.
The question I want to know is, "Have the number of MS advocates on/. actually increased?" Nah, more likely that in this day and age of political correctness they feel obliged to come out of the closet. =)
When was the last time Motorola delivered on Mhz claims? May I remind everyone that the PPC architecture was supposed to be over 1 Ghz a long time ago. Take everything Motorola claims with a salt lick till products are actually shipping.
Don't get me wrong, I like the PPC. I like Apple and OS X. I even spend my days with AIX and like it. But this isn't the first time that speed has been over-promised and under-delivered by the folks at Motorola.
While the armchair commandos and flight-simulator captains blow smoke about how anyone could do this, veteran pilots and intelligence and terrorism experts keep telling us it was a highly sophisticated and intricately planned attack.
Think about this carefully. While there had to have been a good deal of planing involved in the attack, especially to coordinate several planes at once, it is very easy for this to happen. All it requires is that people get over the mindset that criminals require guns and explosives to do bad things. Appart from coordination, which could have been setup months ago outside the US before the terrorists even got here, and a little bit of pilot training, this attack did not require extraordinary resources. Only extraordinary individuals willing to sacrifice their lives.
Getting plastic or ceramic blades past security would be a piece of cake. Often times I myself travel with two steel blades. One on the Swiss army knife I carry on my keychain, which security sees as I hand it to them with my keys, and a Leatherman I keep in my briefcase which is exrayed. I have never once been stopped or questioned about them, even on international flights. Any blade made of non-metallic substances would not even have to be disclosed at the security points. You just walk right through with it.
As to flying the planes, another Slashdotter (sorry don't remember who) pointed out that take off and landing constitue 99% of the difficulty in flying a jet. While that might be exagerating a little, it's only a little. Once that plane is in the air it is very easy to fly. Point the nose where you want to go essentially. Am I 'arm chair quarterbacking?' Sure. But I've also had the fortune to fly in one of Uniteds simulators at their training facility in Denver a number of years ago. They let me sit in the pilots seat, take off, fly, and land a simulated 737. At that point I had never even flown a simulator on a PC, let alone a big, honkin' full motion simulator. The only time I sweat was durring landing. Everything else was a breeze. You have to consider that the terrorists had no intention of landing, or even surviving. All they had to do was line up with the buildings, that's it. Ask some real pilots how hard it is to fly if you don't have to take off or land. It's even easier if you don't plan to survive.
Everyone needs to keep in mind that everything you see and hear about this disaster is going to be tainted with an agenda of some kind. The media will play it up, they already have. They reported that the attack in Kabul may have been American before they had any kind of proof for or against. The Polititians are going to play it up for their own agenda's, namely not getting blamed for allowing this to happen. What we as citizens of the US need to do is keep our heads on straight, and don't let this be used as an excuse to relieve us of any more liberties.
Was this really a sophisticated attack? No. It was unsophisticated to the degree that our reliance on spy technology failed to see it comming. If 12 men willing to give their lives, sit down in a house, plan an attack and then go their seperate ways till the designated time, there is very little you can do about it unless one of them talks and you happen to overhear it. Am I saying that this was the result of 12 angry men with no ties to any organization? No. Although it's possible, it's not probable. The attack was simply well planned, brutal, and effective.
There will never be peace as long as people hate each other enough to kill.
Correction: at least 20 000 of you *are not still here.* They died in the attack.
Thanks to the attack the surviving 200 some million Americans are now willing to let the government use whatever force is necessary.
Violence may not be the answer but America was given a statement, not a question. Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.
So most of what I'm seeing here is complaints about screen radiation and how monitors don't fit well in bed. Granted they don't, and the ideal ebook reader doesn't really exist although some companies are trying. You can read ebooks on your Palm, PocketPC, Newton (for those of us who still use them), or "insert name of device here."
Sure, a real book is nice. It sits nicely on the shelf and you can impress your friends with it. But with an ebook I could carry my entire library on a small book-sized reader. For me this would be just about perfect for all of the references that I use in my day to day job. Even better if I could scribble notes and diagrams in the "margins" just like I do with my real books. It's a new paradigm folks, give it a chance. And no one here seems to grasp what ebooks really mean.
What they really mean is that anyone who has a decent story to tell, whether it's fiction or fact, can do so with an ebook. They can make it available to the public when print publishers wouldn't even give it a second look. Does this mean they're writting crap? I know a lot of you will think so, but answer this first: Is open source software crap because it's not published and distributed like commercial software?
Ebooks give everyone a chance to be heard. Take a look at Free e-Press. They're trying to set up a place where authors can show their works. You get to down load the whole story and read it before you decide to pay for it, and you can pay what you think it's worth. They utilize Pay Pal and the payments go stright to the authors. Sure most everyone with books available there are no-name authors, but if you think the major publishing companies publish everything worth reading you're insane. They're business folks, motivated by what they think they can sell a lot of.
I have to admit, I have an interest in Free e-Press. I have one short story there and when I finnish the novel I'm working on I'll make it available there as well. The medium is not perfect yet (and like most things might never be perfect for everyone), but it gives authors a chance to be read.
Give it a chance, maybe you'll discover other works of art that can tickle your imaginations and color your dreams. Maybe your O'Reilly library will accompany you on your palm when you're making $100/hr as a consultant. =) It could happen!
Technically the newer versions of AIX (I believe starting with 4.3.3) do no require swap space. As long as you have the physical RAM available. I've seen S80's (one of IBM's bigger AIX boxes) humming along quite happily with no swap space at all.
Alright, I haven't read all the posts and I hope they all aren't Mac vs Windows crap. Here's something I sincerely hope all user interfaces pick up in the near future: The disappearing mouse cursor. Don't get me wrong, I like mice. All kinds. Single button (got one of them), multibutton (have several of them), field mice (they eat the candy in my desk at work). But what I'm talking about is a feature I've enjoyed in the MacOS for years that dosen't seem to exist in Windows, CDE, KDE, GNOME, or anything else I've tried. To put it simply when I start typing the mouse cursor disappears. Sure it's seems insignificant, but right now as I type this from a windows box the mouse cursor stays right there, in the way of my typing. It's just annoying, especially when I think I've misspelled a word which happens to fall right behind the mouse cursor, so I have to take my hands off the keyboard and move the damn thing. That's one of the little things that I think makes a UI elegant.
I went to a private school and they only had a T1 connection which they recieved an "education" discount on from the phone company. Back before the web exploded that was enough, but today if just half the student body is running a server of any type full time, it dosen't take long to soak up that connection. Yes you pay for your education, but convince the administration that running Quake, Unreal, Napster, etc. is part of your education. Convince them that paying for high bandwidth access is more important then paying for good academic staff. Money is a limited resource, if they have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase bandwidth or restrict the use of their current bandwidth, the choice is pretty obvious. Universities are connected for academic purposes first, is it really suprising that they are trying to preserve that purpose? Banning network games, mp3 and IP telephony is not censorship folks. Calling it such is like saying the government censors your right to ride a tricycle down the middle of a free way. You can ride your tricycle, but not on the freeway.
The screen size is a factor, but if they would get rid of the the silk-screened interface area, that whole space could be used for writing entire words. True, people who write large letters would find it cramped, but it would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately the industry doesn't move by the power of my whims alone. A shame really.
That's the only thing keeping me from replacing my Newton 2100. It's the last one Apple made and the only one that was worth buying. If there was a Palm device that did it as well as my Newton I'd buy in an instant. I don't want to learn another language just to get info into my PDA, and don't give me a stupid chicklette keyboard. If I can't type with all 10 of my fingers, what's the point? Yes I do know people who write novels on their Palms, but I'm a believer in the computer adjusting to the way I want to use it, not the other way around.
Slashdot Mirror
"The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street, refuses to let go on the other side." -Theodore Forstmann Do not expect to get back anything that is given up, regardless of the intention. Expect that what was intended will seldom resemble the result. People aren't thinking, they're just reacting and willing to do whatever it takes to feel "safe." This in itself is unobtainable. You can never be safe from fanatics willing to die for their cause, no matter how many of your liberties you willingly give up.
...for quite some time. Still, as others have pointed out it's still not the cheap solution. But if you need fast access to data, it is really neat. I have no affiliation with SolidData but I worked for a company that had their equipment. Well thought out design. The units had their own UPS and a regular hard drive inside the case. In the event of a power failure the entire contents of the RAM disk was copied to the hard drive before the unit shut down. Likewise, when it would power up it had to copy the contents of the hard disk back to RAM before it was available. Other than that, as far as the OS was concerned, it acted just like another hard disk.
Well you can come over to my place and watch it over Dish Network. =) Better yet, I get the UPN "super station" out of boston. I'll get to see it 2 hours before the rest of the Rocky Mountain region. =P
NO CONTRACT SHOULD EVER LIMIT FUNDEMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS. Hello? Are we living on the same planet? We're talking about a virus that aggressivly scans the net and attempts to replicate itself. This virus sucks up bandwidth which is not, despite one /.er statement to the contrary, plentiful. Those who aren't yet infected are at risk of infection, or at the very minimum a DoS attack from those who are infected. To equate running an infected server to Freedom of Speech is ludicrous.
To extend your analogy, by allowing infected customers to soak up bandwidth and DoS attack other customers (even if it is unknowingly), you are actively denying the rights of the uninfected customers. Now you have a decision to make; cut off those who are aiding the attacks, or cut off those who are not. Why should my system be removed from the net if it isn't doing anything harmful? If your system is spamming mine at such a ferocious rate that I can't serve legitimate traffic then you are denying me the service I have paid for. At this point your right to service ends, even if you are paying for your own connection.
In the US we have freedom of speech, but that dosen't mean we can spread outright lies about others. We have the right to keep and bear arms, but that doesn't give us the right to shoot others indescriminately. Your rights end where others rights begin.
And finally, access to the net is not a right. It is not garenteed in the Constitution. It's a service and a privilege that we pay to use. Can it facilitate free speech? Sure. Is it the sole medium for free speech? No. Like any other service if you abuse it you can, and should, be denied access. In the same manor in which you can have your drivers license revoked for abusing the privilage of driving.
While I'm here, I'd like to make the observation that bashing Microsoft has now become trendy. Actually, it's been going on for quite some time. Anyone who has been an advocate for any OS beside MS' can tell you this. If /. were an "I love MS!" site I certainly would not waste my time here, and I suspect it would not get near the traffic that it does.
The question I want to know is, "Have the number of MS advocates on /. actually increased?" Nah, more likely that in this day and age of political correctness they feel obliged to come out of the closet. =)
When was the last time Motorola delivered on Mhz claims? May I remind everyone that the PPC architecture was supposed to be over 1 Ghz a long time ago. Take everything Motorola claims with a salt lick till products are actually shipping. Don't get me wrong, I like the PPC. I like Apple and OS X. I even spend my days with AIX and like it. But this isn't the first time that speed has been over-promised and under-delivered by the folks at Motorola.
While the armchair commandos and flight-simulator captains blow smoke about how anyone could do this, veteran pilots and intelligence and terrorism experts keep telling us it was a highly sophisticated and intricately planned attack. Think about this carefully. While there had to have been a good deal of planing involved in the attack, especially to coordinate several planes at once, it is very easy for this to happen. All it requires is that people get over the mindset that criminals require guns and explosives to do bad things. Appart from coordination, which could have been setup months ago outside the US before the terrorists even got here, and a little bit of pilot training, this attack did not require extraordinary resources. Only extraordinary individuals willing to sacrifice their lives. Getting plastic or ceramic blades past security would be a piece of cake. Often times I myself travel with two steel blades. One on the Swiss army knife I carry on my keychain, which security sees as I hand it to them with my keys, and a Leatherman I keep in my briefcase which is exrayed. I have never once been stopped or questioned about them, even on international flights. Any blade made of non-metallic substances would not even have to be disclosed at the security points. You just walk right through with it. As to flying the planes, another Slashdotter (sorry don't remember who) pointed out that take off and landing constitue 99% of the difficulty in flying a jet. While that might be exagerating a little, it's only a little. Once that plane is in the air it is very easy to fly. Point the nose where you want to go essentially. Am I 'arm chair quarterbacking?' Sure. But I've also had the fortune to fly in one of Uniteds simulators at their training facility in Denver a number of years ago. They let me sit in the pilots seat, take off, fly, and land a simulated 737. At that point I had never even flown a simulator on a PC, let alone a big, honkin' full motion simulator. The only time I sweat was durring landing. Everything else was a breeze. You have to consider that the terrorists had no intention of landing, or even surviving. All they had to do was line up with the buildings, that's it. Ask some real pilots how hard it is to fly if you don't have to take off or land. It's even easier if you don't plan to survive. Everyone needs to keep in mind that everything you see and hear about this disaster is going to be tainted with an agenda of some kind. The media will play it up, they already have. They reported that the attack in Kabul may have been American before they had any kind of proof for or against. The Polititians are going to play it up for their own agenda's, namely not getting blamed for allowing this to happen. What we as citizens of the US need to do is keep our heads on straight, and don't let this be used as an excuse to relieve us of any more liberties. Was this really a sophisticated attack? No. It was unsophisticated to the degree that our reliance on spy technology failed to see it comming. If 12 men willing to give their lives, sit down in a house, plan an attack and then go their seperate ways till the designated time, there is very little you can do about it unless one of them talks and you happen to overhear it. Am I saying that this was the result of 12 angry men with no ties to any organization? No. Although it's possible, it's not probable. The attack was simply well planned, brutal, and effective. There will never be peace as long as people hate each other enough to kill.
Correction: at least 20 000 of you *are not still here.* They died in the attack. Thanks to the attack the surviving 200 some million Americans are now willing to let the government use whatever force is necessary. Violence may not be the answer but America was given a statement, not a question. Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.
So most of what I'm seeing here is complaints about screen radiation and how monitors don't fit well in bed. Granted they don't, and the ideal ebook reader doesn't really exist although some companies are trying. You can read ebooks on your Palm, PocketPC, Newton (for those of us who still use them), or "insert name of device here." Sure, a real book is nice. It sits nicely on the shelf and you can impress your friends with it. But with an ebook I could carry my entire library on a small book-sized reader. For me this would be just about perfect for all of the references that I use in my day to day job. Even better if I could scribble notes and diagrams in the "margins" just like I do with my real books. It's a new paradigm folks, give it a chance. And no one here seems to grasp what ebooks really mean. What they really mean is that anyone who has a decent story to tell, whether it's fiction or fact, can do so with an ebook. They can make it available to the public when print publishers wouldn't even give it a second look. Does this mean they're writting crap? I know a lot of you will think so, but answer this first: Is open source software crap because it's not published and distributed like commercial software? Ebooks give everyone a chance to be heard. Take a look at Free e-Press. They're trying to set up a place where authors can show their works. You get to down load the whole story and read it before you decide to pay for it, and you can pay what you think it's worth. They utilize Pay Pal and the payments go stright to the authors. Sure most everyone with books available there are no-name authors, but if you think the major publishing companies publish everything worth reading you're insane. They're business folks, motivated by what they think they can sell a lot of. I have to admit, I have an interest in Free e-Press. I have one short story there and when I finnish the novel I'm working on I'll make it available there as well. The medium is not perfect yet (and like most things might never be perfect for everyone), but it gives authors a chance to be read. Give it a chance, maybe you'll discover other works of art that can tickle your imaginations and color your dreams. Maybe your O'Reilly library will accompany you on your palm when you're making $100/hr as a consultant. =) It could happen!
Technically the newer versions of AIX (I believe starting with 4.3.3) do no require swap space. As long as you have the physical RAM available. I've seen S80's (one of IBM's bigger AIX boxes) humming along quite happily with no swap space at all.
Alright, I haven't read all the posts and I hope they all aren't Mac vs Windows crap. Here's something I sincerely hope all user interfaces pick up in the near future: The disappearing mouse cursor. Don't get me wrong, I like mice. All kinds. Single button (got one of them), multibutton (have several of them), field mice (they eat the candy in my desk at work). But what I'm talking about is a feature I've enjoyed in the MacOS for years that dosen't seem to exist in Windows, CDE, KDE, GNOME, or anything else I've tried. To put it simply when I start typing the mouse cursor disappears. Sure it's seems insignificant, but right now as I type this from a windows box the mouse cursor stays right there, in the way of my typing. It's just annoying, especially when I think I've misspelled a word which happens to fall right behind the mouse cursor, so I have to take my hands off the keyboard and move the damn thing. That's one of the little things that I think makes a UI elegant.
I went to a private school and they only had a T1 connection which they recieved an "education" discount on from the phone company. Back before the web exploded that was enough, but today if just half the student body is running a server of any type full time, it dosen't take long to soak up that connection. Yes you pay for your education, but convince the administration that running Quake, Unreal, Napster, etc. is part of your education. Convince them that paying for high bandwidth access is more important then paying for good academic staff. Money is a limited resource, if they have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase bandwidth or restrict the use of their current bandwidth, the choice is pretty obvious. Universities are connected for academic purposes first, is it really suprising that they are trying to preserve that purpose? Banning network games, mp3 and IP telephony is not censorship folks. Calling it such is like saying the government censors your right to ride a tricycle down the middle of a free way. You can ride your tricycle, but not on the freeway.
The screen size is a factor, but if they would get rid of the the silk-screened interface area, that whole space could be used for writing entire words. True, people who write large letters would find it cramped, but it would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately the industry doesn't move by the power of my whims alone. A shame really.
That's the only thing keeping me from replacing my Newton 2100. It's the last one Apple made and the only one that was worth buying. If there was a Palm device that did it as well as my Newton I'd buy in an instant. I don't want to learn another language just to get info into my PDA, and don't give me a stupid chicklette keyboard. If I can't type with all 10 of my fingers, what's the point? Yes I do know people who write novels on their Palms, but I'm a believer in the computer adjusting to the way I want to use it, not the other way around.
There are a lot of new things on the horizon and a lot of rumors of new things. What do you see as the most exciting developement comming up?