It's simple really. A blank CD costs roughly 1/15th (or less) what a Zip disk does, stores 6.5 times as much, and is stable and reliable compared to the Zip.
I have a couple Mac with built-in Zip drives. I stopped using Zip disks years ago for the reasons listed above.
It seems like no one, not even Sony, learned the lessons of the DIVX player -- no one wants to be spied on in their own home, making use of products that they own.
I don't know if I'll be keeping my Playstation 2 (with LAN adapter) or even buying a PS3 now. If I do, I'll certainly be tweaking the firewall a bit, because, frankly, it's none of Sony's business how I make use of my hardware.
If we were to compare consumer electronics to automobiles, it would be illegal for me to swap out the fuel injector chip in my car, to install a better air filter, or put a different brand of tires on it when the old ones needed replacing. Hell, it would require me to buy a whole new car when the tires went bald. Of course, laws like this might not be bad -- we'd get all those kids and their "race-ready" Civics and Tiburons off the fucking street. (I, for one, cringe at the sound of a 4-cylinder with a modified exhaust system. And those "carrying handle" spoilers ruining a perfectly nice-looking Mitsubishi Eclipse are just a fucking eyesore.)
Anyway, the point being, if Sony thinks they can ram this down people's throats, they're in for a rude shock. It's bad enough that a game costs $50 -- even a year after it's been released, but now they're demanding to know how often you play it? Gimme a break.
The social effect of this, I think is going to turn the neighborhood computer geek into the equivelent of the neighborhood car mechanic, circa 1930 -- the stuff's going to get so complicated that Joe Average isn't going to be able to make the modifications he wants, so he'll go to the neighborhood expert...and in exchange for some work, the expert gets some extra cash, food, beer, sex, or whatever.
You know what, Sony? Bring that shit on. There's a hot lesbian couple down the block that I'd love to get between. Heh.
I think it's worth noting that the quality of the trackpads on the iBooks and Powerbooks are much better than the quality of the typical Wintel notebook... In my experience, the typical Wintel touchpad is overly touchy and choppy.
The reason that trackballs stop being included in laptops is because they were more of a mechanical liability. They were magnets for dust, dirt, hair, etc. -- just like the ball on a mouse. Trackpads, by comparison, are a much lower liability.
"The story even mentions our favourite enemy - the Borgs."
You mean that weird Swedish couple that lives next door to me? I didn't realize that IKEA was an attempt to assimilate me until the article mentioned the nanotech, biotech, etc.
They'll have to track demographics related to commercials, too, and the perception of a commercial over time.
On the demographics front, what a 12-year old and a 24-year old think of as "good" are two different things. If they can target ads to me based on my age/gender demographic and interests, fine by me. But I don't want to sit there and watch lame commercial after lame commercial because the Generation Y skr1pt k1dd13z think it's cool.
Furthermore, my perceptions of commercials change rapidly over time. I don't know if anyone has followed the Tour de France day-by-day over the last few years -- both ESPN and OLN have done this, and gotten a small number of sponsors. Those sponsors have their ads played constantly, and what was, at first, a commercial that I'd give about a 5, quickly becomes a -5.
This might also force a whole new glut of commercials as people get sick of old ones.
OFFTOPIC: Things I'm sick of: that f--king Geico lizard, the Lincoln Navigator ad with the jazz quartet (see Tour de France coverage on OLN), ads for The Country Bears, and that stupid buy-drugs-fund-terrorists shit (which was lame the first time they aired it).
...how does this apply to guys like me that design fonts and other software that's supplemental to an operating system and not an executable? At the moment, most font formats have the equivelent of ID3 tags for putting information into, but I don't know of anything that allows for licensing, other than the good ol' README.TXT file.
So does this mean that those of us that build non-application software have less right to our work than those that do...?
Take all the best parts of the movie. String them together in one 2-minute epileptic-seizure-inducing orgasm of light and sound, preferably with some modern rock/psuedo-metal song in the background. Stick your title on the end in a grunge or techno font along with "This movie has not yet been rated," and a release date between 6 months and a year into the future.
I have a question: how practical is this, really? The article tells us that you get two four-second shots, spaced four seconds apart, and the laser then needs 30 seconds to cool down. This is hardly what I'd call a practical battlefield weapon, especially given the modern war methodology of one well-coordinated, completely overwhelming attack. Why use a laser with such poor fire times?
Think about it. You go in and you can drop, depending on the fighter between 6 and 24 500-pound bombs, in more or less one go, which is going to pulverize everything in the area... Or you can loiter around as a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire and pop off two four-second laser bursts every thirty seconds.
Now, the other thing, and IANALS (I Am Not A Laser Scientist), my understanding is that solid-state lasers are a bit fragile at the moment. How is this thing supposed to handle the G-loads experienced by a strike fighter?
Also, maybe I've been watching Real Genius a little too much, but I was always under the impression that a kilowatt laser wasn't that impressive.
There's no reason to adopt laser technology of the kind mentioned in the article, when bombs are safer for the pilots to use, have proven reliability, and are more combat-effective. This leads me to believe that this is either another money-pit for the Department of Defense, or the capabilities of this laser are grossly understated.
Isn't 2.4 GHz getting a little crowded? This is just what I need. It's bad enough that Bluetooth interferes with 802.11b, but now my PS2 is going to be messing shit up, too? Great.
So America should spend millions of dollars hunting for a RTB that may or may not be in the area and might -- just possibly -- produce an exposure level equal to what a radioactive materials handler is allowed to receive in a year. That's if the RTB is held against the skin for a WHOLE YEAR? Give me a break.
I don't know if there was any bitching and moaning re: Voyager 1 and 2, but I do know that the RTB (radiothermal battery) is largely the same in Galileo as it was in the Voyagers and Apollos. Hell, the Apollo 13 LEM is sitting at the bottom of the Pacific with a RTB in it, and it hasn't leaked yet. They're durable. I don't know why the environmentalists are so twitchy.
How is this news? This is the same party line as the Luddites have, only this guy has some history and a government position. So what? The Luddites have been proclaiming the end of the world because of technology for over a century. Has it happened? No. Will it happen? Maybe. Can we do anything about it if it does? No; so who the fuck cares?
This has already been done before -- see the section on "CHAOS, ORBITAL DYNAMICS, AND FUZZY BOUNDARIES" on this page. I know it was detailed in Scientific American back in the mid/late 90's.
From the tone of the submitter, I get the feeling that he thinks MIT is off-base on this one. When it gets down to brass tacks, MIT is right -- it's not technology that causes dictatorships, oppressive regimes, totalitarian states.
It's the contents to the human heart and mind, and how they apply technology that are at the root of the problem.
The Internet is obviously the technology being discussed, and it's obvious that it lets dissidents have an open, anonymous voice. Using the Internet as a backbone to ID and track your citizens and everything they do, buy, sell, eat, etc., is going to be put in place by governments and corporations.
There's a webpage here. He did it with a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder, an older Mac Powerbook (utilizing Airport for file transfer), and a lot of ingenuity. His page also goes into detail, instead of just photos.
(I'm thinking about trying the same thing with my 2001 XTerra.)
Where I went to school, there were two of the 3-digit prefixes (exchanges?) in town -- 389 and 388. I happened to have 389-1234 (not the real #) and the local Dodge dealership had 388-1234. As I was living on campus, there was no way to get my number changed, even though I was getting huge numbers of calls at all hours of the day.
Obviously, said dealership wasn't about to change its phone number and all related printed materials at the request of a poor college student, so I waged a war of disinformation and fun.
Caller: "Do you guys do auto detailing?" (Call at 10pm) Me: "Sure." (Knowing full well the dealership didn't.) Caller: "Great. When can I drop off my car?" Me: "Actually, we're open until 11 tonight. If you drop it off tonight, we can have it done for you in the morning." (Sure we are, and sure we can.) Caller: "I'll be right over." ---- Caller: "Can I speak to John Doe?" Me: "May I ask who's calling, please?" Caller: "This is Joe Blow." Me: "I'm sorry Joe, John says you're a fuckwit and he doesn't want to sell you a car." (Well, anyone who can't dial the number printed in the phonebook is a fuckwit.) ---- Caller: "Do you have any Neons in stock?" Me: "You don't wanna buy one of those deathtraps." (You just don't know it yet.) ---- Caller: "Do you have any vans in stock with wheelchair elevators?" Me: "No, we don't cater to cripples." ---- Repeat ad nausem for nine months until i finished for the summer and moved off campus. I don't know if the dealership ever figured out what was going on,
This article is from the local "alternative" paper (the CityPages), and includes some good photography.
Also, one of the individuals mentioned in the article has a fascinating website that details their quest for the big cave under the middle of the city. It's the Minneapolis Drain Archive.
I for one, made the transition to OS X last June. I've been a Mac-head for a long time...we've always had a Mac in the house (and PCs), and Mac was just more intuitive an OS for me. The geek in me wanted the power of a command-line interface and UNIX and I have it now...
However, there's the non-geek in me that wants a nice, easy GUI, and I have that, too, so bear in mind, it's not just the geek talking when I say this.
I seldom use OS 9 anymore. I haven't booted into it in probably 4-5 months, and the only Classic app I have left is Fontographer. GIMP filled the gap until Photoshop 7 came out. The transition has been smooth, pleasant, and altogether nice.
I demand a lot of my systems -- as much as any other MacOS 9 "power user" -- and the transition has been an open road. I love it. I'm learning a lot about *nix operating systems, and still able to crank out fonts, do web design, mix music, etc.
Guess what else? It's expanded my resume. I can now safely put MySQL, PHP, and Apache admin all on it. Access/ASP/IIS have all fallen by the wayside. The new version of my website is making the switch to all all-open source technologies format.
The only holdouts I see are people who are too stuck in their ways to adapt to change. OS X has been the future since it was announced...get with the times or become a dinosaur, those are your options. Personally, I prefer to evolve.
As for my Winblows machine -- I keep it around to play Roller Coaster Tycoon on. My next server? Probably an IBM rackmount running RedHat.
Evolving doesn't have to be painful. Hell, it isn't. It's fun, dammit. So, dust off your checkbook, go buy a new Mac that can run OS X and fucking play... You started using computers because they were fun and gave you a sense of discovery, right? Now, go. Shoo. Have fun.:-)
Well, Tom, to be truthful, this is the thing that pushed me over the edge. Type designers have to stick together, right? Right-o.
Anyway, I've finally broken down. As soon as I'm done with this posting, I'm going and joining the EFF. I've had it. Completely fed up. I'm just sad to say that it took something like this to make me do it -- I should have done this years ago. I've bitched and bitched and bitched about the restrictions being placed on cyberspace, and now I'm doing something about it. I'll be posting over at my site, too, both in support of you, and the EFF.
Glad to hear you're fighting the good fight. I hope that AGFA Monotype gets the idea and takes a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Henceforth, my company will not be purchasing fonts from AGFA Monotype. Your persecution of Tom Murphy over a type design tool (Embed) is patently absurd. Embed is a tool to help type designers, not a tool to facilitate the theft of fonts. The embed bit is NOT a copy-protection scheme, and Mr Murphy's program is not marketed as a "theft device". Therefore, I will be taking my business elsewhere (ITC is off the list, too, so don't feel too lonely).
Drop the lawsuit against Tom Murphy and publically apologize, and I'll reconsider.
All I need to do is find a doctor to prescribe Provigil to me, and an employer with flex hours. I'll work Tuesday and Wednesday straight, and take the rest of the week off.
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It's simple really. A blank CD costs roughly 1/15th (or less) what a Zip disk does, stores 6.5 times as much, and is stable and reliable compared to the Zip.
I have a couple Mac with built-in Zip drives. I stopped using Zip disks years ago for the reasons listed above.
It seems like no one, not even Sony, learned the lessons of the DIVX player -- no one wants to be spied on in their own home, making use of products that they own.
I don't know if I'll be keeping my Playstation 2 (with LAN adapter) or even buying a PS3 now. If I do, I'll certainly be tweaking the firewall a bit, because, frankly, it's none of Sony's business how I make use of my hardware.
If we were to compare consumer electronics to automobiles, it would be illegal for me to swap out the fuel injector chip in my car, to install a better air filter, or put a different brand of tires on it when the old ones needed replacing. Hell, it would require me to buy a whole new car when the tires went bald. Of course, laws like this might not be bad -- we'd get all those kids and their "race-ready" Civics and Tiburons off the fucking street. (I, for one, cringe at the sound of a 4-cylinder with a modified exhaust system. And those "carrying handle" spoilers ruining a perfectly nice-looking Mitsubishi Eclipse are just a fucking eyesore.)
Anyway, the point being, if Sony thinks they can ram this down people's throats, they're in for a rude shock. It's bad enough that a game costs $50 -- even a year after it's been released, but now they're demanding to know how often you play it? Gimme a break.
The social effect of this, I think is going to turn the neighborhood computer geek into the equivelent of the neighborhood car mechanic, circa 1930 -- the stuff's going to get so complicated that Joe Average isn't going to be able to make the modifications he wants, so he'll go to the neighborhood expert...and in exchange for some work, the expert gets some extra cash, food, beer, sex, or whatever.
You know what, Sony? Bring that shit on. There's a hot lesbian couple down the block that I'd love to get between. Heh.
I think it's worth noting that the quality of the trackpads on the iBooks and Powerbooks are much better than the quality of the typical Wintel notebook... In my experience, the typical Wintel touchpad is overly touchy and choppy.
The reason that trackballs stop being included in laptops is because they were more of a mechanical liability. They were magnets for dust, dirt, hair, etc. -- just like the ball on a mouse. Trackpads, by comparison, are a much lower liability.
"The story even mentions our favourite enemy - the Borgs."
You mean that weird Swedish couple that lives next door to me? I didn't realize that IKEA was an attempt to assimilate me until the article mentioned the nanotech, biotech, etc.
Anyone in the Minneapolis area need a roommate?
They'll have to track demographics related to commercials, too, and the perception of a commercial over time.
On the demographics front, what a 12-year old and a 24-year old think of as "good" are two different things. If they can target ads to me based on my age/gender demographic and interests, fine by me. But I don't want to sit there and watch lame commercial after lame commercial because the Generation Y skr1pt k1dd13z think it's cool.
Furthermore, my perceptions of commercials change rapidly over time. I don't know if anyone has followed the Tour de France day-by-day over the last few years -- both ESPN and OLN have done this, and gotten a small number of sponsors. Those sponsors have their ads played constantly, and what was, at first, a commercial that I'd give about a 5, quickly becomes a -5.
This might also force a whole new glut of commercials as people get sick of old ones.
OFFTOPIC: Things I'm sick of: that f--king Geico lizard, the Lincoln Navigator ad with the jazz quartet (see Tour de France coverage on OLN), ads for The Country Bears, and that stupid buy-drugs-fund-terrorists shit (which was lame the first time they aired it).
...how does this apply to guys like me that design fonts and other software that's supplemental to an operating system and not an executable? At the moment, most font formats have the equivelent of ID3 tags for putting information into, but I don't know of anything that allows for licensing, other than the good ol' README.TXT file.
So does this mean that those of us that build non-application software have less right to our work than those that do...?
Take all the best parts of the movie. String them together in one 2-minute epileptic-seizure-inducing orgasm of light and sound, preferably with some modern rock/psuedo-metal song in the background. Stick your title on the end in a grunge or techno font along with "This movie has not yet been rated," and a release date between 6 months and a year into the future.
I have a question: how practical is this, really? The article tells us that you get two four-second shots, spaced four seconds apart, and the laser then needs 30 seconds to cool down. This is hardly what I'd call a practical battlefield weapon, especially given the modern war methodology of one well-coordinated, completely overwhelming attack. Why use a laser with such poor fire times?
Think about it. You go in and you can drop, depending on the fighter between 6 and 24 500-pound bombs, in more or less one go, which is going to pulverize everything in the area... Or you can loiter around as a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire and pop off two four-second laser bursts every thirty seconds.
Now, the other thing, and IANALS (I Am Not A Laser Scientist), my understanding is that solid-state lasers are a bit fragile at the moment. How is this thing supposed to handle the G-loads experienced by a strike fighter?
Also, maybe I've been watching Real Genius a little too much, but I was always under the impression that a kilowatt laser wasn't that impressive.
There's no reason to adopt laser technology of the kind mentioned in the article, when bombs are safer for the pilots to use, have proven reliability, and are more combat-effective. This leads me to believe that this is either another money-pit for the Department of Defense, or the capabilities of this laser are grossly understated.
Isn't 2.4 GHz getting a little crowded? This is just what I need. It's bad enough that Bluetooth interferes with 802.11b, but now my PS2 is going to be messing shit up, too? Great.
So America should spend millions of dollars hunting for a RTB that may or may not be in the area and might -- just possibly -- produce an exposure level equal to what a radioactive materials handler is allowed to receive in a year. That's if the RTB is held against the skin for a WHOLE YEAR? Give me a break.
I don't know if there was any bitching and moaning re: Voyager 1 and 2, but I do know that the RTB (radiothermal battery) is largely the same in Galileo as it was in the Voyagers and Apollos. Hell, the Apollo 13 LEM is sitting at the bottom of the Pacific with a RTB in it, and it hasn't leaked yet. They're durable. I don't know why the environmentalists are so twitchy.
How is this news? This is the same party line as the Luddites have, only this guy has some history and a government position. So what? The Luddites have been proclaiming the end of the world because of technology for over a century. Has it happened? No. Will it happen? Maybe. Can we do anything about it if it does? No; so who the fuck cares?
This has already been done before -- see the section on "CHAOS, ORBITAL DYNAMICS, AND FUZZY BOUNDARIES" on this page. I know it was detailed in Scientific American back in the mid/late 90's.
From the tone of the submitter, I get the feeling that he thinks MIT is off-base on this one. When it gets down to brass tacks, MIT is right -- it's not technology that causes dictatorships, oppressive regimes, totalitarian states.
It's the contents to the human heart and mind, and how they apply technology that are at the root of the problem.
The Internet is obviously the technology being discussed, and it's obvious that it lets dissidents have an open, anonymous voice. Using the Internet as a backbone to ID and track your citizens and everything they do, buy, sell, eat, etc., is going to be put in place by governments and corporations.
It's called Move2Mac, and it's from Detto. They don't have any information up yet, except that it will be available in Q3, 2002.
There's a webpage here. He did it with a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder, an older Mac Powerbook (utilizing Airport for file transfer), and a lot of ingenuity. His page also goes into detail, instead of just photos.
(I'm thinking about trying the same thing with my 2001 XTerra.)
Where I went to school, there were two of the 3-digit prefixes (exchanges?) in town -- 389 and 388. I happened to have 389-1234 (not the real #) and the local Dodge dealership had 388-1234. As I was living on campus, there was no way to get my number changed, even though I was getting huge numbers of calls at all hours of the day.
Obviously, said dealership wasn't about to change its phone number and all related printed materials at the request of a poor college student, so I waged a war of disinformation and fun.
Caller: "Do you guys do auto detailing?" (Call at 10pm)
Me: "Sure." (Knowing full well the dealership didn't.)
Caller: "Great. When can I drop off my car?"
Me: "Actually, we're open until 11 tonight. If you drop it off tonight, we can have it done for you in the morning." (Sure we are, and sure we can.)
Caller: "I'll be right over."
----
Caller: "Can I speak to John Doe?"
Me: "May I ask who's calling, please?"
Caller: "This is Joe Blow."
Me: "I'm sorry Joe, John says you're a fuckwit and he doesn't want to sell you a car." (Well, anyone who can't dial the number printed in the phonebook is a fuckwit.)
----
Caller: "Do you have any Neons in stock?"
Me: "You don't wanna buy one of those deathtraps." (You just don't know it yet.)
----
Caller: "Do you have any vans in stock with wheelchair elevators?"
Me: "No, we don't cater to cripples."
----
Repeat ad nausem for nine months until i finished for the summer and moved off campus. I don't know if the dealership ever figured out what was going on,
...it's done here in Minneapolis.
This article is from the local "alternative" paper (the CityPages), and includes some good photography.
Also, one of the individuals mentioned in the article has a fascinating website that details their quest for the big cave under the middle of the city. It's the Minneapolis Drain Archive.
Only if this is what they're talking about doing.
From the trailers, i thought that the romantic part of the movie was gonna be super cheesy, but it's actually not as bad as i expected...
You've never been in love with someone, have you? I mean, jesus, nobody talks like that when they're in love with someone...
(The sand analogy was so fucking hokey I nearly geyser-vomited on the guy in front of me who smelled of weed and horseshit.)
...I'd be upset if the one second was a glimpse of Natalie Portman's bared breastses... but a headbutt? Nah...go ahead and cut it. :-)
I for one, made the transition to OS X last June. I've been a Mac-head for a long time...we've always had a Mac in the house (and PCs), and Mac was just more intuitive an OS for me. The geek in me wanted the power of a command-line interface and UNIX and I have it now...
:-)
However, there's the non-geek in me that wants a nice, easy GUI, and I have that, too, so bear in mind, it's not just the geek talking when I say this.
I seldom use OS 9 anymore. I haven't booted into it in probably 4-5 months, and the only Classic app I have left is Fontographer. GIMP filled the gap until Photoshop 7 came out. The transition has been smooth, pleasant, and altogether nice.
I demand a lot of my systems -- as much as any other MacOS 9 "power user" -- and the transition has been an open road. I love it. I'm learning a lot about *nix operating systems, and still able to crank out fonts, do web design, mix music, etc.
Guess what else? It's expanded my resume. I can now safely put MySQL, PHP, and Apache admin all on it. Access/ASP/IIS have all fallen by the wayside. The new version of my website is making the switch to all all-open source technologies format.
The only holdouts I see are people who are too stuck in their ways to adapt to change. OS X has been the future since it was announced...get with the times or become a dinosaur, those are your options. Personally, I prefer to evolve.
As for my Winblows machine -- I keep it around to play Roller Coaster Tycoon on. My next server? Probably an IBM rackmount running RedHat.
Evolving doesn't have to be painful. Hell, it isn't. It's fun, dammit. So, dust off your checkbook, go buy a new Mac that can run OS X and fucking play... You started using computers because they were fun and gave you a sense of discovery, right? Now, go. Shoo. Have fun.
Well, Tom, to be truthful, this is the thing that pushed me over the edge. Type designers have to stick together, right? Right-o.
Anyway, I've finally broken down. As soon as I'm done with this posting, I'm going and joining the EFF. I've had it. Completely fed up. I'm just sad to say that it took something like this to make me do it -- I should have done this years ago. I've bitched and bitched and bitched about the restrictions being placed on cyberspace, and now I'm doing something about it. I'll be posting over at my site, too, both in support of you, and the EFF.
Glad to hear you're fighting the good fight. I hope that AGFA Monotype gets the idea and takes a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
You da man!
Henceforth, my company will not be purchasing fonts from AGFA Monotype. Your persecution of Tom Murphy over a type design tool (Embed) is patently absurd. Embed is a tool to help type designers, not a tool to facilitate the theft of fonts. The embed bit is NOT a copy-protection scheme, and Mr Murphy's program is not marketed as a "theft device". Therefore, I will be taking my business elsewhere (ITC is off the list, too, so don't feel too lonely).
Drop the lawsuit against Tom Murphy and publically apologize, and I'll reconsider.
All I need to do is find a doctor to prescribe Provigil to me, and an employer with flex hours. I'll work Tuesday and Wednesday straight, and take the rest of the week off.
DAMMIT, WHERE WAS THIS STUFF IN 1999?????