I've heard the excuse that the radio frequency is controlled by software, so open source drivers could be modified to make the chip transmit on unlicensed frequencies. Seems like a weak excuse to me.
Older radar guns are analog. There's no "code" to audit except for maybe circuit schematics. All they could do was give the speed of the strongest radar return, the vehicle that's larger and/or closer. The newer ones have DSPs that can track multiple returns. They have displays for strongest and fastest signal. There's definitely some code there.
It's weaving through traffic. Europeans strictly enforce the slower traffic keep right rule on the highways (or left in the UK). They also know how to merge and pass (one word "accelerate"). They don't drive side by side exactly the same speed or pass at 1 mph faster.
"No thanks, MS. I'll use 2000 for compatibility as long as it works, and then I'll go to linux 100%. Or maybe I'll get a Mac? Never thought I'd even consider it, but who knows."
That's for sure. Quicken runs on the Mac (I should give Gnucash a try, but Quicken is what works for me now). Game consoles will match PC gaming pretty soon except for a few niche genres (just give us a trackball please; FPS's suck with a gamepad). What other reason is there to keep Windows? A few must-have PC-only games?
Anothing thing to remember is, if you already have a decently fast PC, the video card is the only *additional* cost needed to upgrade it to a gaming PC. Although consoles will probably pick up features like web surfing, email, and media players, the non-gaming features of a PC are still more useful, enough to justify its purchase alone.
Well the 2.4GHz range used by WiFi is already unlicensed. Cordless phones, 802.11 networks, and many other devices have to share the spectrum nicely. One easy hack that could really make WiFi-casting scale up is IP multicasting. That way instead of one 128Kb/s stream for each listener fighting for maybe 5Mb/s of bandwidth (assume real world conditions and weaker signal at longer ranges), you could have one stream for all listeners.
Well, that's going to get pretty distracting to the drivers if they're browsing through song lists and making requests. If you only set up streams, the listeners can just cycle through the streams which isn't more distracting than changing a radio station. If you wanted to download instead of stream, you could do it unattended with software agents, i.e. download all mp3s matching this search query that I don't already have. The *AA would hate that even more.
Maybe you mean the Tom's Hardware test of the P-III Coppermine 1.13GHz? GCC would error out with signal 11 when compiling the Linux kernel. That's a sure sign of an overclocked CPU pushed past its limits of stability. Intel cancelled the 1.13GHz Coppermine after that.
That's mighty ambitious when 1.6 billion people, a quarter of the earth's population don't even have electricity. We barely have more than a billion TV sets in the world. Either they're counting on a population explosion or they're using funny math, like counting anybody with a friend or FOAF who owns an Xbox360.
There's nothing wrong with treating computers like appliances. For novices (yes the majority of users), it's better that way, but most/.ers and Free Software people are enthusiasts, hobbyists and hackers. Openness of the hardware is definitely an issue with them.
Putting aside that issue, even if you assume computers are appliances, there's the question what kind of appliance is a computer. Is it a cheap, simple appliance like a toaster or an expensive complex appliance that will need repairs and maintenance over its life like a car? The auto industry has already gone over this issue and we have the Magnusson Moss Act. Car manufacturers can't require owners to get their cars serviced at dealers and they can't void warranties for using aftermarket spare parts (unless that part was directly to blame for the failure). I'm not saying computers are one or the other, but you can't just dismiss the issue by saying it's an appliance, doesn't matter that it's a locked black box.
Well that's just called "cognitive dissonance", having two conflicting worldviews in your head.:) I think Apple makes cool products too, but don't kid yourself that they're free. Sure, the Darwin kernel is Free, but the crown jewels of OS X are not. I can load Cygwin on Windows and run Free software too. Still, my complaint with Apple isn't so much about the software. Apple's iron first control over hardware bothers me more. I know killing the licensed clones was a business decision to save the company. I know the $499 Mac Mini makes this less of an issue. I just prefer more freedom and choice on the hardware side.
The French and Brits call 1,000,000,000 a "milliard". 1,000,000,000,000 is a "billion". But then what does it matter to us Yanks? Most of us don't even have a passport to travel outside the country.
Apple fans are a different breed than/.'ers. They just love Macs so much they'll overlook Apple's monopoly and higher prices because Apple needs a fair profit to stay in business and make more cool products. Not saying it's good or bad, just a different attitude from Free Software people.
I ain't no grandpa, but I've used ml_iPod since I bought my iPod last summer. The only thing new is the 1.2 release and Wired picking up the story. Pretty much anything that's not iTunes will let you pull songs off the iPod. Ephpod (free beer) and Anapod Explorer (shareware) both let you do it. Thanks to Ephpod, Winamp + ml_iPod, and Quicktime Alternative, I can say no thanks to iTunes.
The full size folding keyboards for the Palm were as good as a laptop keyboard for touch typing. The only downside is having to set it down on a table. For handheld use I like the thumb keyboards better. It's only a little slower than the big keyboard.
Human skills are overrated. The response time of human reflexes is about 0.2s. That's just reflex. If a decision needs to be made, it'll be longer. There's no time to learn new skills on final approach. Whether you're on manual or autopilot, the only thing to do is have pre-planned procedures for every emergency, whether it's have enough reserve engine power to abort or knowing when to eject. For anything as critical as an autoland system, you'd have two or three flight computers each checking the outputs of the others.
Microsoft has a monopoly on desktop OSs but not server OSs, and the server licenses are more profitable for them. You can easily beat them down by threatening to use Novell, Samba, Notes or just plain POP/IMAP. You can say no to desktop OSs by just using the preinstalled OEM Windows on your desktop computers, although that's inconvenient for most large companies because you may not have rights to install from a master ghost image. Remember, the volume licensing programs like Enterprse Agreement and Select sold to businesses are not full licenses. They're upgrades. Your computers still need a licensed ORM or retail copy of Windows to be legal.
The Win9x series isn't that vulnerable compared to NT. Once you turn off file and printer sharing there's practically no network services to exploit remotely. The network worms like Blaster did nothing to Win9x. Just run antivirus and avoid IE, you're pretty much set. Now stability and OS corruption are another issue. Keep a good image ghosted and you'll be fine.
As tongue-in-cheek as this sounds, you are right to some degree. If a certain browser has significant market share, web designers will test it for compatibility with their sites, and won't bother for browsers with too few users. The only exception to this rule is if the browser developers deliberately have bug-for-bug compatibility (vs. standards compliance) as one of its goals.
This isn't exactly rocket science. Fuel injection and electronic ignition have run on computers for at least 30 years now. They're the most mature electronic controls on cars. These systems use a whole lot of sensors to optimize fuel mixture and ignition timing, but if a sensor fails the computer is smart enough to go into a limp home mode, e.g. if a sensor is stuck on a min or max value it'll assume it failed and plug an average value instead of the min/max value into it's fuel or ignition map. Even here, cars will have bugs. The Mercedes C-class some friends owned had lots of problems with random stalling at traffic lights. One of them had to return it as a lemon and got a brand new one.
Fuel injection, electronic ignition, and ABS are good. Keep the other computers away from my car.
This scenario is virtually impossible. The brakes on any car are many times more powerful than the engine. They can easily stop a car even with the throttle stuck wide open. If the power boost on the brakes fail, then it wouldn't be powerful enough, but I have yet to see a plausible explanation for how power brakes can fail temporarily and have nothing wrong with them when examined later. Nothing personal, but the most likely explanation for these crashes is confusing the brake and gas pedals. The driver keeps pressing harder on the pedal thinking it's the brake. The rate of these accidents are correlated with the distance between the gas and brake pedals (can't remember the study right now, but I'll dig around if anyone cares).
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I've heard the excuse that the radio frequency is controlled by software, so open source drivers could be modified to make the chip transmit on unlicensed frequencies. Seems like a weak excuse to me.
Older radar guns are analog. There's no "code" to audit except for maybe circuit schematics. All they could do was give the speed of the strongest radar return, the vehicle that's larger and/or closer. The newer ones have DSPs that can track multiple returns. They have displays for strongest and fastest signal. There's definitely some code there.
It's weaving through traffic. Europeans strictly enforce the slower traffic keep right rule on the highways (or left in the UK). They also know how to merge and pass (one word "accelerate"). They don't drive side by side exactly the same speed or pass at 1 mph faster.
"No thanks, MS. I'll use 2000 for compatibility as long as it works, and then I'll go to linux 100%. Or maybe I'll get a Mac? Never thought I'd even consider it, but who knows."
That's for sure. Quicken runs on the Mac (I should give Gnucash a try, but Quicken is what works for me now). Game consoles will match PC gaming pretty soon except for a few niche genres (just give us a trackball please; FPS's suck with a gamepad). What other reason is there to keep Windows? A few must-have PC-only games?
Anothing thing to remember is, if you already have a decently fast PC, the video card is the only *additional* cost needed to upgrade it to a gaming PC. Although consoles will probably pick up features like web surfing, email, and media players, the non-gaming features of a PC are still more useful, enough to justify its purchase alone.
Well the 2.4GHz range used by WiFi is already unlicensed. Cordless phones, 802.11 networks, and many other devices have to share the spectrum nicely. One easy hack that could really make WiFi-casting scale up is IP multicasting. That way instead of one 128Kb/s stream for each listener fighting for maybe 5Mb/s of bandwidth (assume real world conditions and weaker signal at longer ranges), you could have one stream for all listeners.
Well, that's going to get pretty distracting to the drivers if they're browsing through song lists and making requests. If you only set up streams, the listeners can just cycle through the streams which isn't more distracting than changing a radio station. If you wanted to download instead of stream, you could do it unattended with software agents, i.e. download all mp3s matching this search query that I don't already have. The *AA would hate that even more.
Maybe you mean the Tom's Hardware test of the P-III Coppermine 1.13GHz? GCC would error out with signal 11 when compiling the Linux kernel. That's a sure sign of an overclocked CPU pushed past its limits of stability. Intel cancelled the 1.13GHz Coppermine after that.
Right, because that schoolbus wasn't going to be making the trip anyway on petroleum diesel.
That's mighty ambitious when 1.6 billion people, a quarter of the earth's population don't even have electricity. We barely have more than a billion TV sets in the world. Either they're counting on a population explosion or they're using funny math, like counting anybody with a friend or FOAF who owns an Xbox360.
There's nothing wrong with treating computers like appliances. For novices (yes the majority of users), it's better that way, but most /.ers and Free Software people are enthusiasts, hobbyists and hackers. Openness of the hardware is definitely an issue with them.
Putting aside that issue, even if you assume computers are appliances, there's the question what kind of appliance is a computer. Is it a cheap, simple appliance like a toaster or an expensive complex appliance that will need repairs and maintenance over its life like a car? The auto industry has already gone over this issue and we have the Magnusson Moss Act. Car manufacturers can't require owners to get their cars serviced at dealers and they can't void warranties for using aftermarket spare parts (unless that part was directly to blame for the failure). I'm not saying computers are one or the other, but you can't just dismiss the issue by saying it's an appliance, doesn't matter that it's a locked black box.
Well that's just called "cognitive dissonance", having two conflicting worldviews in your head. :) I think Apple makes cool products too, but don't kid yourself that they're free. Sure, the Darwin kernel is Free, but the crown jewels of OS X are not. I can load Cygwin on Windows and run Free software too.
Still, my complaint with Apple isn't so much about the software. Apple's iron first control over hardware bothers me more. I know killing the licensed clones was a business decision to save the company. I know the $499 Mac Mini makes this less of an issue. I just prefer more freedom and choice on the hardware side.
The French and Brits call 1,000,000,000 a "milliard". 1,000,000,000,000 is a "billion". But then what does it matter to us Yanks? Most of us don't even have a passport to travel outside the country.
Apple fans are a different breed than /.'ers. They just love Macs so much they'll overlook Apple's monopoly and higher prices because Apple needs a fair profit to stay in business and make more cool products. Not saying it's good or bad, just a different attitude from Free Software people.
I ain't no grandpa, but I've used ml_iPod since I bought my iPod last summer. The only thing new is the 1.2 release and Wired picking up the story. Pretty much anything that's not iTunes will let you pull songs off the iPod. Ephpod (free beer) and Anapod Explorer (shareware) both let you do it. Thanks to Ephpod, Winamp + ml_iPod, and Quicktime Alternative, I can say no thanks to iTunes.
The full size folding keyboards for the Palm were as good as a laptop keyboard for touch typing. The only downside is having to set it down on a table. For handheld use I like the thumb keyboards better. It's only a little slower than the big keyboard.
Human skills are overrated. The response time of human reflexes is about 0.2s. That's just reflex. If a decision needs to be made, it'll be longer. There's no time to learn new skills on final approach. Whether you're on manual or autopilot, the only thing to do is have pre-planned procedures for every emergency, whether it's have enough reserve engine power to abort or knowing when to eject. For anything as critical as an autoland system, you'd have two or three flight computers each checking the outputs of the others.
Microsoft has a monopoly on desktop OSs but not server OSs, and the server licenses are more profitable for them. You can easily beat them down by threatening to use Novell, Samba, Notes or just plain POP/IMAP. You can say no to desktop OSs by just using the preinstalled OEM Windows on your desktop computers, although that's inconvenient for most large companies because you may not have rights to install from a master ghost image. Remember, the volume licensing programs like Enterprse Agreement and Select sold to businesses are not full licenses. They're upgrades. Your computers still need a licensed ORM or retail copy of Windows to be legal.
Bad for what? Bad for the coating of CD-R's? Not that I know of. Now bad to breathe? Yes, that's what caps are for.
The Win9x series isn't that vulnerable compared to NT. Once you turn off file and printer sharing there's practically no network services to exploit remotely. The network worms like Blaster did nothing to Win9x. Just run antivirus and avoid IE, you're pretty much set.
Now stability and OS corruption are another issue. Keep a good image ghosted and you'll be fine.
As tongue-in-cheek as this sounds, you are right to some degree. If a certain browser has significant market share, web designers will test it for compatibility with their sites, and won't bother for browsers with too few users. The only exception to this rule is if the browser developers deliberately have bug-for-bug compatibility (vs. standards compliance) as one of its goals.
OK, here's a good article about it. The bibliography lists the studies on this, but text for them isn't online.
This isn't exactly rocket science. Fuel injection and electronic ignition have run on computers for at least 30 years now. They're the most mature electronic controls on cars. These systems use a whole lot of sensors to optimize fuel mixture and ignition timing, but if a sensor fails the computer is smart enough to go into a limp home mode, e.g. if a sensor is stuck on a min or max value it'll assume it failed and plug an average value instead of the min/max value into it's fuel or ignition map. Even here, cars will have bugs. The Mercedes C-class some friends owned had lots of problems with random stalling at traffic lights. One of them had to return it as a lemon and got a brand new one.
Fuel injection, electronic ignition, and ABS are good. Keep the other computers away from my car.
This scenario is virtually impossible. The brakes on any car are many times more powerful than the engine. They can easily stop a car even with the throttle stuck wide open. If the power boost on the brakes fail, then it wouldn't be powerful enough, but I have yet to see a plausible explanation for how power brakes can fail temporarily and have nothing wrong with them when examined later. Nothing personal, but the most likely explanation for these crashes is confusing the brake and gas pedals. The driver keeps pressing harder on the pedal thinking it's the brake. The rate of these accidents are correlated with the distance between the gas and brake pedals (can't remember the study right now, but I'll dig around if anyone cares).
Pepsi has more sugar to gum up the keys.