Using anything other than the most very basic console will be painful on a machine that old. Someone suggested using older software, but that won't be very fun, since the web will be practically useless on an old browser.
i have a Toshiba from that era that I have used as a dumb terminal on and off over the years. At one point I had gui-less version of linux, with a frame buffer version of vnc and used it to connect to my main machine. It was fast and served well as a bed side web browser for years. At another pointI had a LTSP server set up, and used an LTSP network boot floppy to use it as a dumb terminal. That was pretty cool too. Probably the most useful was using XDCMP and just having it login in to the remote X session on another linux box. A basic X setup with XDM and connection to a remote server. XDMCP worked quite nicely.
Any of those well proven technologies will make that little old machine useful again, provided you have working network and video drivers.
I've always suspected that the military has an active and advanced manned space program. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I do have a soft spot for dreaming about all the cool stuff the military could create in 40 years with trillions of dollars and little oversight.
Why would we spend so much money in the 50's, 60's and 70's then essentially abandon space for short trips orbiting the planet, and relatively cheap robotic missions elsewhere. At the same time having military spend 100 times as much as NASA on totally secret "black" projects for national security. I personally think the shuttle has always been a distraction, something to keep the people pre-occupied while working on establishing a preemptive advantage in space.
Considering Hollywood has been predicting a Chinese dominance in space for decades, it seems reasonable that the Military foresaw that possibility much earlier and took steps to prevent it from happening.
Anyway, the bottom line though is that cooperation between the two, can only lead to the tax payers actually getting some value out of that tremendous investment we paid for but know nothing about.
Open Source is not about giving things away for free, its about giving people the opporuntity to see the code, and use the code how you want. Free "as in beer" is simply an by-product of the core freedom.
This guy clearly does not understand that concept. Developers are often paid for OS projects, while many many others are compensated in other ways.
Money certainly motivates a lot of people, but so does other things like boredom, fame, compassion, jeolousy, generosity, whatever... Different strokes for differnet folks. My point is that money is rarely a motivator even in the worse of times.
My gut tells me that OS development will thrive in this time as out-of-work developers have free time to work on pet projects or work on improvements that can be added to a resume. Struggling small business (and some large ones) will be more open to trying OS software. And through companies like ASUS even consumers are going to be motivated to try low cost OS based alternatives to "main stream" computers.
That is a very interesting concept. I read a in a scifi novel a while back about the idea that candidates would themselves be drafted from a pool of qualified individuals, much like a jury. One thing that automatically disqualified a candidate who was draft was campaigning. There are too many obvious problems with a system like that, but any way to remove "politics" from the political process will be a step in the right direction.
Most people I meet are so indoctrinated as either republicans or democrats that they merely parrot back the party line. There is no attempt to think for themselves whatsoever.
Lemmings should not have the right to vote, but unfortunately in our country they are encouraged to. The truth is politicians are afraid of an educated constituency, as their job would be tougher.
This is just another sign of the sorry state our society is in.
I think it is dangerous in a lot more serious way.
Basically the thing can read a brain scan, what if they develop the technology to stimulate the brain to produce a predefined brain scan. I.e. implant a thought pattern.
Something I don't see a lot of talk about is the deployment environment. "The Web" is pretty general, during the day I write applications for an internal corporate network. Those apps live in a closed environment, and are not exposed to the world. We are also under constant pressure to provide "quick-n-dirty" features and updates that happen with out a lot of planning. Our job often is to get people access to information or add a new field as quickly as possible.
PHP gives us the flexibility to deliver, while being "lazy", since doing it the "right way" would be overkill, and over costly for the intended purpose / environemnt.
On the other hand at night I still do a great deal of side work. You better believe that the code going on the Internet isin a lot better state than most of my regular work.
Is it better code? No, it is different with a differnet purpose. PHP gives me the ability to choose.
You don't necessarily have to be on the phone while driving, you could be a passenger. You could check it before leaving for work/home you could check it while at the gas station en-route.
Yes people will likely abuse it, like they abuse other tools. Complaining about useful tools. that could be abused is irritating and pointless.
Maybe they should shutdown their search engine too, I heard you can search for porno, bomb making materials, drug recipes, and lots of other naughty stuff. Heck maybe they should shut down the whole Internet because you KNOW people use it to steal credit card numbers, send spam and exploit children.
Short sighted, close minded people who shun new technology really drive me crazy, mainly because this knee jerk mentality is most often associated with the politicians, and lobbyists.
Oh well... My little comment and opinion won't change anything, but at least I got it off my chest.
BtW... The mobile maps application seems pretty slick in the few minutes I played with it (sitting at the safety of my desk). I am looking forward to some real word trials.
I noticed that the under the related links section here it has a link to the book for $40 bucks if you are a B&N member, which I am not so i tried Amazon. I found it was $29.96 there with free shipping.
My Favorite became a classic at the WMU help desk where I worked at the time. There was a particularly technically inept professor, who constantly called the help desk with very mundane support requests (like how do I find my cricket scores using gopher -or- where are the cricket usenet groups, how to I clean out my email account, etc). We spent a lot of time dealing with the guy, so we all dreaded getting him on the other end of the phone.
When the University started changing over desktops from DOS to Win95 there was a huge learning curve, and there was a constant flow of support requests coming from the faculty. We were absolutely dreading the day when the upgrades got around to this particular professor's department.
Anyway that day finally came and your truely was on the other end of the phone when he called. The call was about 2 hours just to establish the difference between the virtual "Start" button and a key on the keyboard. Ho did not get the concept of "button" on the screen, and didn't really understand that he needed to "press" them with a mouse... But anyway, we eventually got through the very basics. I was relieved to *finally* get the guy off the phone.
My co-workers were giving me a hard time, thanking their lucky stars that they did not get him...Then the phone rang again... I picked it up, since my stats were going to be low that day I wanted to get another couple of easy calls... Guess whose voice I heard...
His first words were "How do I get these BLOODY QUASARS off my screen!!!", Apparently during his long conversation with me, he did not touch anything for a while and the screen saver came on and freaked him out. He thought I screwed something up on his machine.
Fortunately he was as tired of talking to me as I was of him, and after a simple move of the mouse to turn off the screen saver he was back in business.
To this day, after 12 years of supporting users, I still have not come across another equally silly support call.
Just like democrats don't care about poverty stricken people, they just say they do to get more votes.
The real point is you can be a self center jack ass jerk no matter your race, religion, creed, political affiliation, penis / boob size, hair color, nationality, etc...
If people would concentrate on what we have in common, and what we can all do that is good for each other the world would be a much better place.
That being said, cameras on our borders is a fine idea, because we do need to protect what we have.
I wonder if those opposed to border patrols believe anti-spyware should be illegal too? Why not open your computer up to unseen visitors. I am sure they just want to make a better life for themselves by sending out a few emails... While you're at it why not leave your door unlocked, since its ok to sneak into places, might as well let people sneek into your home, raid your fridge, sleep in your bed. Goldie-locks, must be your favorite fairy tale.
We can be charitable, but people have to play by the rules. The rules are there to make sure things do not get out of hand. I am sure most illegal immigrants are hard working, good people, who want something better for themselves and families. But it is their home country that should provide the opportunity for that -or- if they choose to try a new country and come here they should follow the rules, and be properly accounted for otherwise they are taking away from you and I.
Everybody deserves a chance, but it needs to be a level playing field, the illegal immigrants are not only taking away from natural born citizens, but the legal immigrants who followed the proper channels to get here, and are contributing and making our country better.
Basically they are being selfish, and irresponsible, much like the little blonde girl we know so well from childhood.
If you can get invited to analytics it really rocks. Awstats is good, and I have always been fond of webalizer. I run a small hosting company, and I have found that awstats and webalizer can be a bit processor intensive under certain conditions. The nice thing about analytics is that the processing takes place off site. Analytics also has a lot more information geared toward marketing, and the metrics that can help make marketing decisions. Awstats and webalizer and especially webalizer are more about presenting data from the logs.
1. The layout (template) 2. The content 3. The code
The code is obviously the dynamic portions of a site, consisting of PHP and seperated into either.php or include files.
The content is pure html, and is stored as html formatted include files, or as database entries in a CMS.
The layout (or template) is a hybrid, but primarly HTML. I use a php script to load the code and the content, then finally the layout. The "hybrid" mixes a little PHP so that things like randomized images, banner ads, date, personalized messages, etc can be easily inserted into the template.
I use output buffering on all the code and run it all through a cetral script. That way if after the fact I need to make dynamic changes I can. This central script is what ties the three pieces together. This also allows me to alter any portion of the site on the fly for quick and dirty fixes.
I personally don't buy into the pure CSS stuff, because it is a pain-in-the-ass, but I try to get the code as clean and maintainable as possible. For the most part it has worked well over the last several years that I have used this methodology. I have easily updated sites I worked on 5+ years ago.
I saw this during the "subscriber preview", it looks to be slashdotted now, so I will inform people DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME on this link. It just goes to a blog which basically pointed to a game "War Incorporated". The "confirmation" was a supported devices list on the game page that included the 700p. The blog had a screenshot of the list, not the device, by the time I viewed the actual game page the 700p had been removed from the devices list.
There was no information on the 700p, no photos of the 700p, nothing really at all about the 700p other than a reference to it in a devices list, big whoop. A very misleading slashdot story... Since it really is nothing we have not seen in regards to the 700p many times before...
I just got a Tivo, and the one thing I notcied is I actually pay MORE attention to the commercials as I fast forward through them, than when I watch live TV.
Like now I am totally ignoring the tv during a commercial as I post to slashdot. However, when I use the TIVO I have to concentrate on the tv, and thus the commercial to effectively skip it and resume my show.
I glean more than enough information in the 3-5 seconds of commercials than I care to. This is obvisously because all commercials are the same, and offer so little information that the essense of every commercial can be conveyed in just a couple of seconds. Much like we can make a snap decision about web sites before they finish loadinging.
Media companies need to wake up, and learn how to deal with new technology. There is a way to take advantage of people's short attention, they just need to figure it out, and stop trying to force people to "do it the old way". There is a way to make advertising a win-win for everyone.
For example the "Google Text Ad" it might not be perfect, but it is *relatively* unobtrusive and can be useful in some situations. Those ads are not perfect, but I MUCH prefer them to the shitty flash ads. I don't need friggin' multimedia ads on a web page, I just want inforamtion delivered as efficiently as possible. Flashy ads waste my time an d space on the page, that could be filled with real information. The text ads waste less spaces, and are much easier to ignore, and therefore they are better.
In Star Treks case the future is never really known. Since the writers are always using cop-outs to write themselves out of a corner. Kirk and Spock will probably be killed off several times only to have a clone / transporter created copy / supremely powerful being (i.e. Q) / alternative universe copy, etc... Show up to replace the "real" Kirk after they "kill" him off.
They could not even stand to kill of Data in the last movie. I kinda liked it until that part (and the part where they drove a dune buggy around the surface (i mean WTF? why would a star ship need a dune buggy, especially an unarmored, open - non force field version susceptible to fire pwer from non-warp locals...? They at least could have given us a lame excuse like, we'll beam down with a dune buggy to better blend in, in the event we are discover by the non-warp locals... But no... they take a shuttle, and down in day light...) And don't give me atomospericic interference with the transporters, every time there is an emergeny they jury-rig the transporters to work through just about anything. Anytime theres a cloudy day on a routine away mission the damn transporters won't work. (Maybe they should upgrade to cable - I am seeing a comcast commercial now...)
Ok, I'll shut up before my wife finds out just how big a geek I really am....
I don't htink StarGate is diluted by having too shows, I think it is dilutted by getting unfocused. There are about a zillion enemies now, and I can only by then defeating one major threat at a time. and that it HARD to do. For example we have seen the replicators pretty much wiped out unceremoniously.
I would have liked to see an extended war with them, and the human replicators (no a crappy Sam clone). But I honestly think they were pressured to kill of the replicators because they were too much like another Sci-fi series... BSG.
Atlantis would also be better if they didn't keep intorducing villian of the week. A la ST: Voyager / ST: Enterprise. In my opinion the best ST series was DS9, and that usually focussed on one bad guy at a time, allowing us to learn more about each villian, that growth is important so we can have emotions about the villian, we can see strengths and weaknesses, learn compassion, etc.
Lately StarGate and the recent star trek series, have all broken from that model, jumping around to a multitude of diferent threats, never allowing the audience to identify and build any emotion toward the bad guys.
BSG has successed because they focus on one enemy / problem, and all the story is focused on either learning more about how we deal with the enemy, or about the personalities of the main characters. We are not uncovering weird space aliens every episode, nor are we picking fights with unknowns aliens every step of the way, running errands for some star fleet command, etc. What we see is people, by and large average people, trying to deal with extraordinary circumstances. We can relate to those people and that is why BSG is so compelling.
If the new series can capture that same focus it will succeed too. Though, it seems to me like it will be hard to focus on an enemy that does not exist yet. Which means we'll likely see the two families as rivals, with motives along the lines of profit margins, and ethics, etc that will allow the cylons to rapidly evolve.
It will be a fine line, as it seems to me the technology be even less important in the new series than it is on BSG. On BSG it really takes a back seat since about the only things they seem to have that is far advanced from us is big space ships (with FTL drive and artificial gravity), and of course the cylons.
Oh well, even the Sci-fi sucks for not picking up Firefly, and for killing Farscape, BSG absolutely rocks, and if the spin off is 1/4 as good it will be entertaining and something I would be interested in watching.
This discussion reminds me of the last long delayed overly hyped OS - Windows 98. (the windows XP and WIndows 200 didn't seem like the same level of hype that Windows 95 had at the time, and that Vista is getting now...)
At the time OS2 was light years ahead of windows (and propably still is in a few ways). OS2 was really a pretty slick piece of software, and I remember fondly the days spent using it. But when the world when to 32bit windows applications OS2, I had to abandon it.
I have been running Linux since about 1999, but have been intrigued by OSX and am really just looking for an excuse to give it a try. If there is a way to simultaneously use Linux apps (i.e. open source tools - specifically KDE), simultaneously with OSX and Windows, with out the over head of virtual mahcines I will be in heaven....
to convince a majority of consumers to boycott products advertised using these forceful methods.
I don't mind product placement, though it can sometimes be over the top, it is never as bad as stupid commercials. The only time I even watch commercials anymore is the Super Bowl.
The point is, any device I pay money for to bring into my home needs to be under my control. I watch DVDs on Linux so I can more easily skip the increasing sh*t they pack on those.
Most of the time I skip commercials because they are too racy in my opinion for my young children who I like to encourage to watch sports with me. It seems that every commercial is for beer or impotence drug...
I skip when watching their shows because I don't want a headache because they whine about wanting yet another piece of garbage manufactured in China backed by umpteen marketing dollars spent just to put the lipstick on the proverbial pig.
One thing is for certain IMHO fascist marketing has to go, and the only way to do that is actively speak out against companies that employ that tactic.
It is not just a factor of available memory. You also have to have enough bandwidth to get all that video information to the monitors in a timely fashion. So if your card does not have a fat/fast enough pipe to the monitors it either won't work or will work very poorly.
Yeah, and you can now buy a portable DVD player (with a larger screen) for under $100 bucks, that plays regular DVDs that can be bought, easily rented (at both ends of a trip and even at the airport).
I personally would rather bring 2 gadgets, along with my existing movies, rather than *BUY* expensive movies for essentially for a single trip.
That is a great idea, definitely sounds fair. Protects the interests of people working on a real invention, but keeps technology moving forward, rather than getting locked in closests.
It actually sounds much like how "trade marks" lose out if they are not actively enforced. Patents should most definitely be the same.
Use it or lose it. Big patent squatting should result in the life being sucked out of the shitty "holding" companies.
I Hope the judge sets damages at $1 and then RIM. It would be even better if the a$$ hole holding company has to pay for RIMs legal fees. Hopefully it would be enough to bankrupt them and send them packing the greed SOBs. I would love to be served at McD's by one of those f$cking ba$tards. There is a special place in hell for those guys.
I'm late to the party with this comment, but... Is it just me or have nearly all the "cool bundled apps" and visual eye-cady already been done quite well by KDE and OSX?
How can those factors be "reasons to upgrade"? There really is only ONE reason to use VISTA. That is most people are afraid of change. So if they are going to be forced to change, then they are going the "safest" route and staying with MS. OSX will always have better eye candy, and frankly the screen shots I have seen only look impressive if your used to the ugly interfaces MS generally provides.
I am sure this launch will be a big splash to most of the ignorant IT world and home computing world. But I'll be perfectly happy splitting time using KDE and OSX. What I am really worried about is VMWARE, with the huge system requirements a virtual machine may have some trouble with this latest incarnation of super bloatware.
Palm is losing the PDA market not because of MS, more because of the convergence of the phones and the traditional PDA.
I don't know about the TREO 700w, but the 600/650 are a lot better than any brick phone that previously ran windows. Obviously if the 700w takes off that could change; however, to say that MS killed Palm is incorrect. MS contributed to the decline of PALM, but there where a lot of factors involved in PALMS downward spiral.
Slashdot Mirror
Using anything other than the most very basic console will be painful on a machine that old. Someone suggested using older software, but that won't be very fun, since the web will be practically useless on an old browser.
i have a Toshiba from that era that I have used as a dumb terminal on and off over the years. At one point I had gui-less version of linux, with a frame buffer version of vnc and used it to connect to my main machine. It was fast and served well as a bed side web browser for years. At another pointI had a LTSP server set up, and used an LTSP network boot floppy to use it as a dumb terminal. That was pretty cool too. Probably the most useful was using XDCMP and just having it login in to the remote X session on another linux box. A basic X setup with XDM and connection to a remote server. XDMCP worked quite nicely.
Any of those well proven technologies will make that little old machine useful again, provided you have working network and video drivers.
I've always suspected that the military has an active and advanced manned space program. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I do have a soft spot for dreaming about all the cool stuff the military could create in 40 years with trillions of dollars and little oversight.
Why would we spend so much money in the 50's, 60's and 70's then essentially abandon space for short trips orbiting the planet, and relatively cheap robotic missions elsewhere. At the same time having military spend 100 times as much as NASA on totally secret "black" projects for national security. I personally think the shuttle has always been a distraction, something to keep the people pre-occupied while working on establishing a preemptive advantage in space.
Considering Hollywood has been predicting a Chinese dominance in space for decades, it seems reasonable that the Military foresaw that possibility much earlier and took steps to prevent it from happening.
Anyway, the bottom line though is that cooperation between the two, can only lead to the tax payers actually getting some value out of that tremendous investment we paid for but know nothing about.
Open Source is not about giving things away for free, its about giving people the opporuntity to see the code, and use the code how you want. Free "as in beer" is simply an by-product of the core freedom.
This guy clearly does not understand that concept. Developers are often paid for OS projects, while many many others are compensated in other ways.
Money certainly motivates a lot of people, but so does other things like boredom, fame, compassion, jeolousy, generosity, whatever... Different strokes for differnet folks. My point is that money is rarely a motivator even in the worse of times.
My gut tells me that OS development will thrive in this time as out-of-work developers have free time to work on pet projects or work on improvements that can be added to a resume. Struggling small business (and some large ones) will be more open to trying OS software. And through companies like ASUS even consumers are going to be motivated to try low cost OS based alternatives to "main stream" computers.
That is a very interesting concept. I read a in a scifi novel a while back about the idea that candidates would themselves be drafted from a pool of qualified individuals, much like a jury. One thing that automatically disqualified a candidate who was draft was campaigning. There are too many obvious problems with a system like that, but any way to remove "politics" from the political process will be a step in the right direction.
Most people I meet are so indoctrinated as either republicans or democrats that they merely parrot back the party line. There is no attempt to think for themselves whatsoever.
Lemmings should not have the right to vote, but unfortunately in our country they are encouraged to. The truth is politicians are afraid of an educated constituency, as their job would be tougher.
This is just another sign of the sorry state our society is in.
I think it is dangerous in a lot more serious way.
Basically the thing can read a brain scan, what if they develop the technology to stimulate the brain to produce a predefined brain scan. I.e. implant a thought pattern.
Something I don't see a lot of talk about is the deployment environment. "The Web" is pretty general, during the day I write applications for an internal corporate network. Those apps live in a closed environment, and are not exposed to the world. We are also under constant pressure to provide "quick-n-dirty" features and updates that happen with out a lot of planning. Our job often is to get people access to information or add a new field as quickly as possible.
PHP gives us the flexibility to deliver, while being "lazy", since doing it the "right way" would be overkill, and over costly for the intended purpose / environemnt.
On the other hand at night I still do a great deal of side work. You better believe that the code going on the Internet isin a lot better state than most of my regular work.
Is it better code? No, it is different with a differnet purpose. PHP gives me the ability to choose.
You don't necessarily have to be on the phone while driving, you could be a passenger. You could check it before leaving for work/home you could check it while at the gas station en-route.
Yes people will likely abuse it, like they abuse other tools. Complaining about useful tools. that could be abused is irritating and pointless.
Maybe they should shutdown their search engine too, I heard you can search for porno, bomb making materials, drug recipes, and lots of other naughty stuff. Heck maybe they should shut down the whole Internet because you KNOW people use it to steal credit card numbers, send spam and exploit children.
Short sighted, close minded people who shun new technology really drive me crazy, mainly because this knee jerk mentality is most often associated with the politicians, and lobbyists.
Oh well... My little comment and opinion won't change anything, but at least I got it off my chest.
BtW... The mobile maps application seems pretty slick in the few minutes I played with it (sitting at the safety of my desk). I am looking forward to some real word trials.
-MS2K
I noticed that the under the related links section here it has a link to the book for $40 bucks if you are a B&N member, which I am not so i tried Amazon. I found it was $29.96 there with free shipping.
-MS2k
My Favorite became a classic at the WMU help desk where I worked at the time. There was a particularly technically inept professor, who constantly called the help desk with very mundane support requests (like how do I find my cricket scores using gopher -or- where are the cricket usenet groups, how to I clean out my email account, etc). We spent a lot of time dealing with the guy, so we all dreaded getting him on the other end of the phone.
When the University started changing over desktops from DOS to Win95 there was a huge learning curve, and there was a constant flow of support requests coming from the faculty. We were absolutely dreading the day when the upgrades got around to this particular professor's department.
Anyway that day finally came and your truely was on the other end of the phone when he called. The call was about 2 hours just to establish the difference between the virtual "Start" button and a key on the keyboard. Ho did not get the concept of "button" on the screen, and didn't really understand that he needed to "press" them with a mouse... But anyway, we eventually got through the very basics. I was relieved to *finally* get the guy off the phone.
My co-workers were giving me a hard time, thanking their lucky stars that they did not get him...Then the phone rang again... I picked it up, since my stats were going to be low that day I wanted to get another couple of easy calls... Guess whose voice I heard...
His first words were "How do I get these BLOODY QUASARS off my screen!!!", Apparently during his long conversation with me, he did not touch anything for a while and the screen saver came on and freaked him out. He thought I screwed something up on his machine.
Fortunately he was as tired of talking to me as I was of him, and after a simple move of the mouse to turn off the screen saver he was back in business.
To this day, after 12 years of supporting users, I still have not come across another equally silly support call.
-MS2k
Just like democrats don't care about poverty stricken people, they just say they do to get more votes.
The real point is you can be a self center jack ass jerk no matter your race, religion, creed, political affiliation, penis / boob size, hair color, nationality, etc...
If people would concentrate on what we have in common, and what we can all do that is good for each other the world would be a much better place.
That being said, cameras on our borders is a fine idea, because we do need to protect what we have.
I wonder if those opposed to border patrols believe anti-spyware should be illegal too? Why not open your computer up to unseen visitors. I am sure they just want to make a better life for themselves by sending out a few emails... While you're at it why not leave your door unlocked, since its ok to sneak into places, might as well let people sneek into your home, raid your fridge, sleep in your bed. Goldie-locks, must be your favorite fairy tale.
We can be charitable, but people have to play by the rules. The rules are there to make sure things do not get out of hand. I am sure most illegal immigrants are hard working, good people, who want something better for themselves and families. But it is their home country that should provide the opportunity for that -or- if they choose to try a new country and come here they should follow the rules, and be properly accounted for otherwise they are taking away from you and I.
Everybody deserves a chance, but it needs to be a level playing field, the illegal immigrants are not only taking away from natural born citizens, but the legal immigrants who followed the proper channels to get here, and are contributing and making our country better.
Basically they are being selfish, and irresponsible, much like the little blonde girl we know so well from childhood.
-MS2k
If you can get invited to analytics it really rocks. Awstats is good, and I have always been fond of webalizer. I run a small hosting company, and I have found that awstats and webalizer can be a bit processor intensive under certain conditions. The nice thing about analytics is that the processing takes place off site. Analytics also has a lot more information geared toward marketing, and the metrics that can help make marketing decisions. Awstats and webalizer and especially webalizer are more about presenting data from the logs.
-MS2k
I use three levels of coding:
.php or include files.
1. The layout (template)
2. The content
3. The code
The code is obviously the dynamic portions of a site, consisting of PHP and seperated into either
The content is pure html, and is stored as html formatted include files, or as database entries in a CMS.
The layout (or template) is a hybrid, but primarly HTML. I use a php script to load the code and the content, then finally the layout. The "hybrid" mixes a little PHP so that things like randomized images, banner ads, date, personalized messages, etc can be easily inserted into the template.
I use output buffering on all the code and run it all through a cetral script. That way if after the fact I need to make dynamic changes I can. This central script is what ties the three pieces together. This also allows me to alter any portion of the site on the fly for quick and dirty fixes.
I personally don't buy into the pure CSS stuff, because it is a pain-in-the-ass, but I try to get the code as clean and maintainable as possible. For the most part it has worked well over the last several years that I have used this methodology. I have easily updated sites I worked on 5+ years ago.
-MS2k
I saw this during the "subscriber preview", it looks to be slashdotted now, so I will inform people DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME on this link. It just goes to a blog which basically pointed to a game "War Incorporated". The "confirmation" was a supported devices list on the game page that included the 700p. The blog had a screenshot of the list, not the device, by the time I viewed the actual game page the 700p had been removed from the devices list.
There was no information on the 700p, no photos of the 700p, nothing really at all about the 700p other than a reference to it in a devices list, big whoop. A very misleading slashdot story... Since it really is nothing we have not seen in regards to the 700p many times before...
This was a waste of a slashdot story....
-MS2K
I just got a Tivo, and the one thing I notcied is I actually pay MORE attention to the commercials as I fast forward through them, than when I watch live TV.
Like now I am totally ignoring the tv during a commercial as I post to slashdot. However, when I use the TIVO I have to concentrate on the tv, and thus the commercial to effectively skip it and resume my show.
I glean more than enough information in the 3-5 seconds of commercials than I care to. This is obvisously because all commercials are the same, and offer so little information that the essense of every commercial can be conveyed in just a couple of seconds. Much like we can make a snap decision about web sites before they finish loadinging.
Media companies need to wake up, and learn how to deal with new technology. There is a way to take advantage of people's short attention, they just need to figure it out, and stop trying to force people to "do it the old way". There is a way to make advertising a win-win for everyone.
For example the "Google Text Ad" it might not be perfect, but it is *relatively* unobtrusive and can be useful in some situations. Those ads are not perfect, but I MUCH prefer them to the shitty flash ads. I don't need friggin' multimedia ads on a web page, I just want inforamtion delivered as efficiently as possible. Flashy ads waste my time an d space on the page, that could be filled with real information. The text ads waste less spaces, and are much easier to ignore, and therefore they are better.
-MS2k
I have all my smut in encrypted folders, on my laptop (for portability) posters are not high tech enough for me :)
fortunately she has not figured out my password yet...
-MS2k
In Star Treks case the future is never really known. Since the writers are always using cop-outs to write themselves out of a corner. Kirk and Spock will probably be killed off several times only to have a clone / transporter created copy / supremely powerful being (i.e. Q) / alternative universe copy, etc... Show up to replace the "real" Kirk after they "kill" him off.
They could not even stand to kill of Data in the last movie. I kinda liked it until that part (and the part where they drove a dune buggy around the surface (i mean WTF? why would a star ship need a dune buggy, especially an unarmored, open - non force field version susceptible to fire pwer from non-warp locals...? They at least could have given us a lame excuse like, we'll beam down with a dune buggy to better blend in, in the event we are discover by the non-warp locals... But no... they take a shuttle, and down in day light...) And don't give me atomospericic interference with the transporters, every time there is an emergeny they jury-rig the transporters to work through just about anything. Anytime theres a cloudy day on a routine away mission the damn transporters won't work. (Maybe they should upgrade to cable - I am seeing a comcast commercial now...)
Ok, I'll shut up before my wife finds out just how big a geek I really am....
-MS2k
I don't htink StarGate is diluted by having too shows, I think it is dilutted by getting unfocused. There are about a zillion enemies now, and I can only by then defeating one major threat at a time. and that it HARD to do. For example we have seen the replicators pretty much wiped out unceremoniously.
I would have liked to see an extended war with them, and the human replicators (no a crappy Sam clone). But I honestly think they were pressured to kill of the replicators because they were too much like another Sci-fi series... BSG.
Atlantis would also be better if they didn't keep intorducing villian of the week. A la ST: Voyager / ST: Enterprise. In my opinion the best ST series was DS9, and that usually focussed on one bad guy at a time, allowing us to learn more about each villian, that growth is important so we can have emotions about the villian, we can see strengths and weaknesses, learn compassion, etc.
Lately StarGate and the recent star trek series, have all broken from that model, jumping around to a multitude of diferent threats, never allowing the audience to identify and build any emotion toward the bad guys.
BSG has successed because they focus on one enemy / problem, and all the story is focused on either learning more about how we deal with the enemy, or about the personalities of the main characters. We are not uncovering weird space aliens every episode, nor are we picking fights with unknowns aliens every step of the way, running errands for some star fleet command, etc. What we see is people, by and large average people, trying to deal with extraordinary circumstances. We can relate to those people and that is why BSG is so compelling.
If the new series can capture that same focus it will succeed too. Though, it seems to me like it will be hard to focus on an enemy that does not exist yet. Which means we'll likely see the two families as rivals, with motives along the lines of profit margins, and ethics, etc that will allow the cylons to rapidly evolve.
It will be a fine line, as it seems to me the technology be even less important in the new series than it is on BSG. On BSG it really takes a back seat since about the only things they seem to have that is far advanced from us is big space ships (with FTL drive and artificial gravity), and of course the cylons.
Oh well, even the Sci-fi sucks for not picking up Firefly, and for killing Farscape, BSG absolutely rocks, and if the spin off is 1/4 as good it will be entertaining and something I would be interested in watching.
-MS2k
This discussion reminds me of the last long delayed overly hyped OS - Windows 98. (the windows XP and WIndows 200 didn't seem like the same level of hype that Windows 95 had at the time, and that Vista is getting now...)
At the time OS2 was light years ahead of windows (and propably still is in a few ways). OS2 was really a pretty slick piece of software, and I remember fondly the days spent using it. But when the world when to 32bit windows applications OS2, I had to abandon it.
I have been running Linux since about 1999, but have been intrigued by OSX and am really just looking for an excuse to give it a try. If there is a way to simultaneously use Linux apps (i.e. open source tools - specifically KDE), simultaneously with OSX and Windows, with out the over head of virtual mahcines I will be in heaven....
-MS2K
to convince a majority of consumers to boycott products advertised using these forceful methods.
I don't mind product placement, though it can sometimes be over the top, it is never as bad as stupid commercials. The only time I even watch commercials anymore is the Super Bowl.
The point is, any device I pay money for to bring into my home needs to be under my control. I watch DVDs on Linux so I can more easily skip the increasing sh*t they pack on those.
Most of the time I skip commercials because they are too racy in my opinion for my young children who I like to encourage to watch sports with me. It seems that every commercial is for beer or impotence drug...
I skip when watching their shows because I don't want a headache because they whine about wanting yet another piece of garbage manufactured in China backed by umpteen marketing dollars spent just to put the lipstick on the proverbial pig.
One thing is for certain IMHO fascist marketing has to go, and the only way to do that is actively speak out against companies that employ that tactic.
-MS2k
It is not just a factor of available memory. You also have to have enough bandwidth to get all that video information to the monitors in a timely fashion. So if your card does not have a fat/fast enough pipe to the monitors it either won't work or will work very poorly.
-MS2k
Yeah, and you can now buy a portable DVD player (with a larger screen) for under $100 bucks, that plays regular DVDs that can be bought, easily rented (at both ends of a trip and even at the airport).
I personally would rather bring 2 gadgets, along with my existing movies, rather than *BUY* expensive movies for essentially for a single trip.
-MS2k
That is a great idea, definitely sounds fair. Protects the interests of people working on a real invention, but keeps technology moving forward, rather than getting locked in closests.
It actually sounds much like how "trade marks" lose out if they are not actively enforced. Patents should most definitely be the same.
Use it or lose it. Big patent squatting should result in the life being sucked out of the shitty "holding" companies.
I Hope the judge sets damages at $1 and then RIM. It would be even better if the a$$ hole holding company has to pay for RIMs legal fees. Hopefully it would be enough to bankrupt them and send them packing the greed SOBs. I would love to be served at McD's by one of those f$cking ba$tards. There is a special place in hell for those guys.
BTW I am a blackberry owner.
-MS2k
I'm late to the party with this comment, but...
Is it just me or have nearly all the "cool bundled apps" and visual eye-cady already been done quite well by KDE and OSX?
How can those factors be "reasons to upgrade"? There really is only ONE reason to use VISTA. That is most people are afraid of change. So if they are going to be forced to change, then they are going the "safest" route and staying with MS. OSX will always have better eye candy, and frankly the screen shots I have seen only look impressive if your used to the ugly interfaces MS generally provides.
I am sure this launch will be a big splash to most of the ignorant IT world and home computing world. But I'll be perfectly happy splitting time using KDE and OSX. What I am really worried about is VMWARE, with the huge system requirements a virtual machine may have some trouble with this latest incarnation of super bloatware.
-MS2k
Palm is losing the PDA market not because of MS, more because of the convergence of the phones and the traditional PDA.
I don't know about the TREO 700w, but the 600/650 are a lot better than any brick phone that previously ran windows. Obviously if the 700w takes off that could change; however, to say that MS killed Palm is incorrect. MS contributed to the decline of PALM, but there where a lot of factors involved in PALMS downward spiral.
-MS2k