In leiu of the visible light laser you could stick on an IR focused lamp that shows up REALLY nicely in all but the shittiest CCDs. Your night-vision goggles are going to pick up the lamp pretty well and gives you an advantage in a situation where you're better prepared than said opponent.
From that compromise you get things like the MPPC 7400 which is a normal scalar processor with a vector unit attached to it (albeit a very watered down version of a vector processor holding a max of four scalars). You get the operational flexibility of a scalar processor but then you get to bring out heavy hitting processing power by firing up your vector unit.
Game consoles do not sell hardare at a real loss. Besides which they have an impressively effective licensing system which garantees they will make money on all games produced for said system. That Playstation logo you see when the game starts up, it costs about 5$ per game produced by the game publisher. Say a million copies of the game are made and sold, thats 5 million easy dollars Sony just made. Netpliance was not that clever. Don't think you're so fucking smart. I never went out and bought an iOpener, I didn't need yet another underpowered piece of computer hardware to further add you my electricity bill. Fuck Netpliance for not being clever enough to stay in business.
The problem with hiring someone to do work over the summer is that it costs money, monewy I know many school districs can't afford. At my old high school we had a programming lab filled with older Macs that had Codewarrior (IIRC) on them. The computers were slow as can be and could barely perform the tasks you wanted to get done but the school simply could not afford new computer hardware. Besides the price aspect you also have to remember that sometimes districs don't allow schools to bring in outside consultants because of different types of liability. You have to get someone hired by the districs that can come back in six months or a year when you need something else or need some problem solving. Idealy schools ought to have masses of computers implimented well in all the classrooms but the sad fact is that costs way too much money even for schools to impliment on a ten year basis (which by default render the hardware and software obsolete which makes your whole venture a waste of time and money).
Just learn C well (or whatever other language you want). If you can write it in one environment then you can easily, with the help of a book or two, migrate that code. Most of the time your really basic code is going to port with few or no changed to it at all. Only when you get into using APIs will you find yourself in a boggle as most APIs are not ported between different OSes.
Do you understand the economics of what you're talking about? There is a concept called total cost of ownership, and this states that the initial cost of a computer system is not the TOTAL cost of said computer. You have to figure in the cost (time-wise) for a new system to be set up and the cost (time-wise) for people to learn how to use it. If you already have a Windows environment set up and running it is going to cost you alot of money to migrate that environment to another operating system. Yes maybe Linux is more stable than Windows but that doesn't make it any better. Most people don't give a shit about the OS they are using, they just want to get their work done and turn the fucking thing off. This apathy means they are not going to take a deep and meaningful interest in the specifics of computer science. When they get out of school they are going to be exposed mostly to MS based systems as that is the majority of consumer OSes out there. Why ought they be force fed CS when what they really need is a technology training course. You're also missing the fact that software companies (yes even M$) offer large educational discounts to schools, Advanced Server is something students really need to know how to interact with unless they plan to run their own IT department which most don't.
I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model and only works in a limited number of circumstances (mail order catalogs cost alot to print and mail but for every quarter they lose they make a few bucks from handling fees on orders). Selling non-commodity items at a loss is just generally a bad idea, maybe companies will learn to stay away from this model. PeoplePC and Gateway have the right idea though. You lease-to-own a box from the company for a few tens of dollars a month and bundled with that box is internet access (which is sub-leased from existing ISPs and repackaged at quite a saving to said company). The leases are termed contracts so the company is garanteed to get the full cost of the system and the user gets internet access and something to access it with. If Netpliance had tried this route instead of selling SELLING! their hardware at a loss they would be in a much different position now. I think this will temper (hopefully) these stupid and ill-conceived.com business plans. Tip: you need to make more money than you spend in order to not go bankrupt.
Save your lunch money and buy a clue. A very large portion of applications (especially on Windows) are written with professionals in mind. People that can be reasonably assumed to understand basic computer interface concepts. They are afterall being paid to know how to write email and type in a word processor. Since the business market for those sorts of programs has been traditionally (until the past 5 years or so) much larger than the home market developers have stuck to the idea that the people running their software know what they are doing. With the boom in home computer users this view of the market has changed much. More and more programs are being designed to be easy to use. AOL and MSN Explorer are really pointed examples of such software. Developers of internet appliances don't have years of corporate software development that pervades their programming and interface styles. They are just following the example of AOL which makes it nearly impossible to really fuck up in doing a task. Lots of companies now are also following AOL's lead and buidling software which is really friendly. Don't insult developers saying they have no skill and don't know what they are doing. They developed for the market that made them the most money, now they've begun to do the same thing again.
Ah, once again the/. community has proven themselves to be a bunch of whiney sissies. I hate the fucking complaining about M$'s new software product..NET wants to do the same sort of thing everyone else wants to do, make programs you can use from anywhere and that can communicate with everything. As long as you conform to the.NET specs you can write an ap in any language you want. The runtime fills in the machine-specific blanks that are only referenced to in the app. This means few to no hardcoded apps that don't migrate well. Theoretically the runtime can be written for any platform you want, practically you'll probably see it show up for Nx, NT and CE based systems. Offices in 2002 could be running a bunch of thin clients running a CE kernel and.NET runtimes that cost a few bucks that do as much as 2000$ machines in offices do now. That is the promise of Java that has even yet still to materialize. The only production software I've ever seen use this concept is/was Applix with their ApplixWARE which was their office suite written in Java. Only recently has Java seemed to have matured where this is a really viable concept. For the anti-capitalism RMS clones out there, GNOME has always been really forward with their ideas to make GNOME fully CORBA compliant. So I can make my little l33t picture in Gimp and run a filter that exists on a server then have it fly magically into the word processor program I've got running. All this happening without me having to worry about complex commands or configurations. I think Sun's biggest neener neener is that Microsoft will probably try to lock.NET stuff into M$-based server products while JSP and servlets can be run by just about anything. This seems logical given M$'s history but they also have to worry about getting the whole.NET thing accepted and made profitable. They ought to document the shit out of the whole project and let people add.NET functions to anything they want. That way houses with high powered Unix servers but a bunch of M$ clients will get included into potential customers. Oh well.
So when are we going to see DVD players that play Dreamcast games (since Sega is officially licensing the technology). This is a shitty situation for people who already own older DVD players and payed more than 200$ for them yet see newer better faster ones come out all the time. Why should we buy this shit anymore? I got a DVD for the express purpose of being able to watch the Star Wars quadtology in widescreen with full DTS sound. Then I learned that this isn't going to happen until 2372 because George Lucas in a cry baby. Should I ditch my current DVD player and get a PS2 so I can play games whilst waiting for SW on DVD? The hardware is in my living room, where the fuck is my fucking content?
FlexNet IIRC is only available in Hawai'i and besides which, you do not own your boardband pipe, you're simply paying for access though it. You can't operate a heavy usage email or webserver if your provider says no. You own jack and shit that you're using, you can't dictate terms on something like that. I'd like it if the cable or DSL provider gave me a router/modem that way I don't need to spend any extra money on anything. Having a router at each end is also going ot make things simpler because then everyone can use internal IP's that won't get routed and set up effective firewalls without really complex inclusions and exclusions.
This article is not about trying to stick Linux on a microcontroller that runs a heart monitor. This is about using Open Source for the information systems in hospitals. Lots of institutions are paying a premium for their IS systems because they are forced to go with proprietary vendors who charge as much as they can and hold the reins with their licenses. I think though that dispite using an open (read free) OS they would still use commercial applications as to have a source of support were something to go wrong or they merely need help doing something.
Why the fuck would a pacemaker need an OS in the first place? It has extremely primitive functions and doesn't need any messages or calls passed between one set of hardware to another. At the VERY VERY VERY most you might need a microcontroller to regulate the pulse output. In which case you would only need a BASIC stamp or something even smaller. You don't need TCP/IP on a pacemaker.
years ago I gave Earthlink a call and asked them why they didn't offer shell accounts to their customers (after hearing some ISP's my friends were using offered shell accounts). He asked if I was a hacker. Confounded I asked the customer service dude why in the hell he'd ask me that question and he told me that I didn't need a shell account if I wasn't a hacker. I think this is a pretty popular belief amoung large ISP's though. They see shell accounts and REALLY secure email as a big sign on their backs that says kick me. For every one of us that only uses said shell to check email or something basic there is one guy who's going to think he's l33t and abuse the privilage. That one guy is the one the large ISP's are worried about because they become liable since their machine is the offender.
When Skeletor finally kicked He-Man's ass he bestowed upon man broadband. There were those that said of this thing nothing good shall come. These nay-sayers tried to convince people that they were in danger of everything. Broadband won't hurt you. Why don't broadband companies invest a few more dollars (offer to thier customers at a discount) good cable or DSL modems that have built-in routers with a bit of security. And completely besides the point, where the fuck are my internet active toys? Why can't I plug my microwave into my router and surf the net on its one line monochrome screen? I need to check my fucking email!
Can someone point out Malin's explaination (serious not sarcastically) of how Mars had liquid CO2. We played with CO2 in my chemistry lab once and in the course of said playing we got it to enter the liquid phase. This only happens at 3.something atm and last time I checked Mars didn't have even 1 atm worth of troposphere. It would be literal jets that shot out of the ground but to me it seems unlikely that those jets would have the longevity to make some of the longer canals.
Packet switching is incredibly slow compaired to circuit switching for data transfer. Sure a circuit takes a millisecond or so to switch while ackets can be switched thousands of times per millisecond. The power of circuit switches is you only need to make the switch once. If I send you something on a packet switched network every single packet needs to be switched and routed which not only increases the lag of the signal (so much time per hop) but you also face the chance of packets taking a slow path or never reaching their destination. Packet switching has incredible overhead. With circuit switching after the connection is made you've got a steady strait line to your destination. Instead of driving blindly on side streets you're cruising on your own personal freeway. Part of the speed from the Internet 2 (the exclusive realm of a couple corporations colleges and research labs) is that it is mostly circuit switched optical networks. Packet switching is more amorphous and came about due to the lack of reliable connections between early networked computers. Circuit switching can be designed to be as amorphous and is a bit more reliable for long information hauls.
Why don't you read through those pieces of paper affectionately known as an EULA. It states specifically that you are in the wrong if you try to repackage their software. Who dicates how much cars cost or how much a can of peas costs? How dare Del Monte charge more than the brown label store brands! Preposterous! By pirating software you actually are stealing from them, thats why it is called piracy and not something else.
How can anyone here say what the "average" user needs inside their computer? Saying no one needs a 500mhz or higher speed processor is asanine, if average users don't need it how come power users need it? Blender will render a 3D scene on a 300mhz P2, why do you need anything faster? Intel is in the business of making money, yes thats right, they sell a product, not try to survive on ad revenues or VC. There would be little to no point in producing chips if they couldn't produce them in bulk. For every chip produced thats a little cheaper each cheap is. You might have room to complain if they increased the clock speed by 1 or 2 mhz per chip version instead of 50. Last year I bought a P3 500 for almost 300 dollars now the same chip can be found for under 200. With each stepping of a processor released all the older versions get that much cheaper. I don't give a shit about the newest processor. I am interested in the one thats fast enough for my needs.
The reason 2038 is a problem for Unix machines is that Unix time turns into a 9999...(I forget how many 9's) which in most systems in how you denote the end of a file. So imagine having an internal system date which corresponds to the EOF marker, you have a large problem on your hands. Remember Unix time has been counting since 1969.
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In leiu of the visible light laser you could stick on an IR focused lamp that shows up REALLY nicely in all but the shittiest CCDs. Your night-vision goggles are going to pick up the lamp pretty well and gives you an advantage in a situation where you're better prepared than said opponent.
From that compromise you get things like the MPPC 7400 which is a normal scalar processor with a vector unit attached to it (albeit a very watered down version of a vector processor holding a max of four scalars). You get the operational flexibility of a scalar processor but then you get to bring out heavy hitting processing power by firing up your vector unit.
Game consoles do not sell hardare at a real loss. Besides which they have an impressively effective licensing system which garantees they will make money on all games produced for said system. That Playstation logo you see when the game starts up, it costs about 5$ per game produced by the game publisher. Say a million copies of the game are made and sold, thats 5 million easy dollars Sony just made. Netpliance was not that clever. Don't think you're so fucking smart. I never went out and bought an iOpener, I didn't need yet another underpowered piece of computer hardware to further add you my electricity bill. Fuck Netpliance for not being clever enough to stay in business.
The problem with hiring someone to do work over the summer is that it costs money, monewy I know many school districs can't afford. At my old high school we had a programming lab filled with older Macs that had Codewarrior (IIRC) on them. The computers were slow as can be and could barely perform the tasks you wanted to get done but the school simply could not afford new computer hardware. Besides the price aspect you also have to remember that sometimes districs don't allow schools to bring in outside consultants because of different types of liability. You have to get someone hired by the districs that can come back in six months or a year when you need something else or need some problem solving. Idealy schools ought to have masses of computers implimented well in all the classrooms but the sad fact is that costs way too much money even for schools to impliment on a ten year basis (which by default render the hardware and software obsolete which makes your whole venture a waste of time and money).
Just learn C well (or whatever other language you want). If you can write it in one environment then you can easily, with the help of a book or two, migrate that code. Most of the time your really basic code is going to port with few or no changed to it at all. Only when you get into using APIs will you find yourself in a boggle as most APIs are not ported between different OSes.
Do you understand the economics of what you're talking about? There is a concept called total cost of ownership, and this states that the initial cost of a computer system is not the TOTAL cost of said computer. You have to figure in the cost (time-wise) for a new system to be set up and the cost (time-wise) for people to learn how to use it. If you already have a Windows environment set up and running it is going to cost you alot of money to migrate that environment to another operating system. Yes maybe Linux is more stable than Windows but that doesn't make it any better. Most people don't give a shit about the OS they are using, they just want to get their work done and turn the fucking thing off. This apathy means they are not going to take a deep and meaningful interest in the specifics of computer science. When they get out of school they are going to be exposed mostly to MS based systems as that is the majority of consumer OSes out there. Why ought they be force fed CS when what they really need is a technology training course. You're also missing the fact that software companies (yes even M$) offer large educational discounts to schools, Advanced Server is something students really need to know how to interact with unless they plan to run their own IT department which most don't.
I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model and only works in a limited number of circumstances (mail order catalogs cost alot to print and mail but for every quarter they lose they make a few bucks from handling fees on orders). Selling non-commodity items at a loss is just generally a bad idea, maybe companies will learn to stay away from this model. PeoplePC and Gateway have the right idea though. You lease-to-own a box from the company for a few tens of dollars a month and bundled with that box is internet access (which is sub-leased from existing ISPs and repackaged at quite a saving to said company). The leases are termed contracts so the company is garanteed to get the full cost of the system and the user gets internet access and something to access it with. If Netpliance had tried this route instead of selling SELLING! their hardware at a loss they would be in a much different position now. I think this will temper (hopefully) these stupid and ill-conceived .com business plans. Tip: you need to make more money than you spend in order to not go bankrupt.
Save your lunch money and buy a clue. A very large portion of applications (especially on Windows) are written with professionals in mind. People that can be reasonably assumed to understand basic computer interface concepts. They are afterall being paid to know how to write email and type in a word processor. Since the business market for those sorts of programs has been traditionally (until the past 5 years or so) much larger than the home market developers have stuck to the idea that the people running their software know what they are doing. With the boom in home computer users this view of the market has changed much. More and more programs are being designed to be easy to use. AOL and MSN Explorer are really pointed examples of such software. Developers of internet appliances don't have years of corporate software development that pervades their programming and interface styles. They are just following the example of AOL which makes it nearly impossible to really fuck up in doing a task. Lots of companies now are also following AOL's lead and buidling software which is really friendly. Don't insult developers saying they have no skill and don't know what they are doing. They developed for the market that made them the most money, now they've begun to do the same thing again.
Ah, once again the /. community has proven themselves to be a bunch of whiney sissies. I hate the fucking complaining about M$'s new software product. .NET wants to do the same sort of thing everyone else wants to do, make programs you can use from anywhere and that can communicate with everything. As long as you conform to the .NET specs you can write an ap in any language you want. The runtime fills in the machine-specific blanks that are only referenced to in the app. This means few to no hardcoded apps that don't migrate well. Theoretically the runtime can be written for any platform you want, practically you'll probably see it show up for Nx, NT and CE based systems. Offices in 2002 could be running a bunch of thin clients running a CE kernel and .NET runtimes that cost a few bucks that do as much as 2000$ machines in offices do now. That is the promise of Java that has even yet still to materialize. The only production software I've ever seen use this concept is/was Applix with their ApplixWARE which was their office suite written in Java. Only recently has Java seemed to have matured where this is a really viable concept. For the anti-capitalism RMS clones out there, GNOME has always been really forward with their ideas to make GNOME fully CORBA compliant. So I can make my little l33t picture in Gimp and run a filter that exists on a server then have it fly magically into the word processor program I've got running. All this happening without me having to worry about complex commands or configurations. I think Sun's biggest neener neener is that Microsoft will probably try to lock .NET stuff into M$-based server products while JSP and servlets can be run by just about anything. This seems logical given M$'s history but they also have to worry about getting the whole .NET thing accepted and made profitable. They ought to document the shit out of the whole project and let people add .NET functions to anything they want. That way houses with high powered Unix servers but a bunch of M$ clients will get included into potential customers. Oh well.
So when are we going to see DVD players that play Dreamcast games (since Sega is officially licensing the technology). This is a shitty situation for people who already own older DVD players and payed more than 200$ for them yet see newer better faster ones come out all the time. Why should we buy this shit anymore? I got a DVD for the express purpose of being able to watch the Star Wars quadtology in widescreen with full DTS sound. Then I learned that this isn't going to happen until 2372 because George Lucas in a cry baby. Should I ditch my current DVD player and get a PS2 so I can play games whilst waiting for SW on DVD? The hardware is in my living room, where the fuck is my fucking content?
FlexNet IIRC is only available in Hawai'i and besides which, you do not own your boardband pipe, you're simply paying for access though it. You can't operate a heavy usage email or webserver if your provider says no. You own jack and shit that you're using, you can't dictate terms on something like that. I'd like it if the cable or DSL provider gave me a router/modem that way I don't need to spend any extra money on anything. Having a router at each end is also going ot make things simpler because then everyone can use internal IP's that won't get routed and set up effective firewalls without really complex inclusions and exclusions.
This article is not about trying to stick Linux on a microcontroller that runs a heart monitor. This is about using Open Source for the information systems in hospitals. Lots of institutions are paying a premium for their IS systems because they are forced to go with proprietary vendors who charge as much as they can and hold the reins with their licenses. I think though that dispite using an open (read free) OS they would still use commercial applications as to have a source of support were something to go wrong or they merely need help doing something.
Why the fuck would a pacemaker need an OS in the first place? It has extremely primitive functions and doesn't need any messages or calls passed between one set of hardware to another. At the VERY VERY VERY most you might need a microcontroller to regulate the pulse output. In which case you would only need a BASIC stamp or something even smaller. You don't need TCP/IP on a pacemaker.
This is a Tacocracy, not democracy.
years ago I gave Earthlink a call and asked them why they didn't offer shell accounts to their customers (after hearing some ISP's my friends were using offered shell accounts). He asked if I was a hacker. Confounded I asked the customer service dude why in the hell he'd ask me that question and he told me that I didn't need a shell account if I wasn't a hacker. I think this is a pretty popular belief amoung large ISP's though. They see shell accounts and REALLY secure email as a big sign on their backs that says kick me. For every one of us that only uses said shell to check email or something basic there is one guy who's going to think he's l33t and abuse the privilage. That one guy is the one the large ISP's are worried about because they become liable since their machine is the offender.
When Skeletor finally kicked He-Man's ass he bestowed upon man broadband. There were those that said of this thing nothing good shall come. These nay-sayers tried to convince people that they were in danger of everything. Broadband won't hurt you. Why don't broadband companies invest a few more dollars (offer to thier customers at a discount) good cable or DSL modems that have built-in routers with a bit of security. And completely besides the point, where the fuck are my internet active toys? Why can't I plug my microwave into my router and surf the net on its one line monochrome screen? I need to check my fucking email!
I'm going to shoot you out of the sky with my over and under you fucking hippie.
Can someone point out Malin's explaination (serious not sarcastically) of how Mars had liquid CO2. We played with CO2 in my chemistry lab once and in the course of said playing we got it to enter the liquid phase. This only happens at 3.something atm and last time I checked Mars didn't have even 1 atm worth of troposphere. It would be literal jets that shot out of the ground but to me it seems unlikely that those jets would have the longevity to make some of the longer canals.
Packet switching is incredibly slow compaired to circuit switching for data transfer. Sure a circuit takes a millisecond or so to switch while ackets can be switched thousands of times per millisecond. The power of circuit switches is you only need to make the switch once. If I send you something on a packet switched network every single packet needs to be switched and routed which not only increases the lag of the signal (so much time per hop) but you also face the chance of packets taking a slow path or never reaching their destination. Packet switching has incredible overhead. With circuit switching after the connection is made you've got a steady strait line to your destination. Instead of driving blindly on side streets you're cruising on your own personal freeway. Part of the speed from the Internet 2 (the exclusive realm of a couple corporations colleges and research labs) is that it is mostly circuit switched optical networks. Packet switching is more amorphous and came about due to the lack of reliable connections between early networked computers. Circuit switching can be designed to be as amorphous and is a bit more reliable for long information hauls.
Hello, wake up from fantasy time.
It seems to me that Windows NT 4 ran on MIPS, Alpha, PPPC and SPARC as well as x86. Geez i must be hallucinating again.
Why don't you read through those pieces of paper affectionately known as an EULA. It states specifically that you are in the wrong if you try to repackage their software. Who dicates how much cars cost or how much a can of peas costs? How dare Del Monte charge more than the brown label store brands! Preposterous! By pirating software you actually are stealing from them, thats why it is called piracy and not something else.
How can anyone here say what the "average" user needs inside their computer? Saying no one needs a 500mhz or higher speed processor is asanine, if average users don't need it how come power users need it? Blender will render a 3D scene on a 300mhz P2, why do you need anything faster? Intel is in the business of making money, yes thats right, they sell a product, not try to survive on ad revenues or VC. There would be little to no point in producing chips if they couldn't produce them in bulk. For every chip produced thats a little cheaper each cheap is. You might have room to complain if they increased the clock speed by 1 or 2 mhz per chip version instead of 50. Last year I bought a P3 500 for almost 300 dollars now the same chip can be found for under 200. With each stepping of a processor released all the older versions get that much cheaper. I don't give a shit about the newest processor. I am interested in the one thats fast enough for my needs.
The reason 2038 is a problem for Unix machines is that Unix time turns into a 9999...(I forget how many 9's) which in most systems in how you denote the end of a file. So imagine having an internal system date which corresponds to the EOF marker, you have a large problem on your hands. Remember Unix time has been counting since 1969.
No.