Your ADSL provider sucks. My provider not only allows WiFi sharing, but even encourages it.
OK - let's assume that your ISP is "cool" and doesn't "suck".
Take your 1.5/384 connection, and use some point-to-point microwave links and numerous wireless APs so that you provide free service to a few hundred free "community" users.
In case you hadn't read the PDF on the page you linked to, your "cool" ISP wants cash from your neighbors when you share your connection!
You get to share your Internet connection with neighbors to eventually get your higher prices reduced down to what I'm paying to begin with.
Your post is an excellent example of what's wrong with VOIP at current.
To use a telephone, you go to the local thrift store, spend $5 on a phone, and plug it into the wall to get reliable telephone service.
To use VOIP, you have networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate two 6-plug power strips so that you end up with something that must be tweaked to operate smoothly at all, in order to get something with the range of a cordless telephone. (Wifi uses the exact same frequencies as a cordless telephone - it's essentially a fancy cordless telephone modem)
In order to be truly successful, the technology needs to GET OUT OF THE WAY for the common user. Bridges are technology that are so reliable we never think about using one. So are telephones. VOIP will have "arrived" when it's use is automatic and reliable.
Wifi is easy to set up. ($50 at the local electronics mega-mart gives you a decent AP)
The big problem isn't the "wifi" part - it's the other half - the "Intarweb" half. See, the real expense is the Internet connection.
If I share my ADSL 1.5/384 connection with my neighbors, I'm violating terms of service, and could lose my (very important to me) Internet connection.
T1 or T3 lines, which wouldn't have the above contract restrictions, cost at least $750/month around here.
So, who provides the bandwidth? Also, assume that somebody uses YOUR wifi AP to email bomb threats to King George, WITH YOUR RETURN ADDRESS.
Now, who's in HOT WATER?
I personally think that sooner, rather than later, Internet Access will be more of a public service, provided by your Municipality. In many areas, this already happens.
I'd like to see a vote on how many guys here have encountered that double-standard. I get in trouble if I look bored when hearing about something boring, but I get a bored look if I try to talk about my latest Genossian Lab raid in SWG.
Not here. Not w/my wife. (Man, she's awesome!)
We both have needs for time alone. We both get it by acknowledging this need.
I'm *required* to pay attention to her when she's talking to me about "relevant" (kids, money, etc) things, and she's *required* to listen to me when I want to talk about 'relevant' things (software, client conversations and contracts, etc)
Everything else is fair game for the axe. As in - "I'm sorry, but I'm really not interested in this right now" or "Do you mind if I (X/Y/Z) right now?".
Your choices extend beyond Games/GF.
How about telling her your concerns? Rather than say "Jesus, chick, you b0r3z me!", try "A conversation is a 2-say activity, and I find it difficult to engage in this conversation because I don't feel you are interested in what I have to say".
Interestingly enough, I find that I DO find my wife's interests far more interesting when I feel she's interested in mine. You may find that she really IS interested, and that you are just assuming she isn't!
Other than that, another good piece of advice is to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER allow for insults. Just don't do it. Never "bitch! / asshole!". Rather, say "I feel the urge to call you a bitch because NNNNN"
This leads to a solution, rather than exacerbating the miscommunication. Sounds crazy and "shrink-ish" but in my case, these attempts at more direct and meaningful communication have worked amazingly well.
It does take time - lots of it, and for me, it's well worth it!
In the end, this incident just wasted some public servant's time. Same as the circuit board incident. Unless or until people get good at recognizing what a bomb detonator really looks like, things like this are bound to happen.
Since you are obviously expert in all things bomb-detonator, what does an "average" bomb detonator look like?
Oh... wait! I remember - I saw it in a movie! A "Bomb detonator" is that black box, about 9 inches long, 4 inches wide, and about 2 inches tall, with the big, red lettering on the top that says "Bomb Detonator" on the top of it, and has a few red and white snap wiring terminals on the side, right?
No?
Are you sure?
We live in a modern-day paranoia. We've been abusing the people of the Middle East selfishly for decades in order to satiate our wasteful addiction to crude oil, and now we pay the price of bad karma.
What really sucks is that there are real solutions to our energy needs. Linked is but one example with a total initial cost of about $169 billion, about as much as the $162 billion the most recent Iraq war cost to wage that would almost completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and dramatically reduce the Carbon Dioxide production of the United States.
I just hope and pray that someday, we find a leader that will actually lead us towards a better world, because we sure as hell don't have one today.
"Dammit, I'm too old for this shit", said the stern, muscular, middle-aged Marine commander, surveying with binoculars.
Dozens of miltary agents and officers stand in front of cars parked in the street. Lights are flashing, numerous troops stand around, guns drawn, facing a building.
Across the street, a badly shaven, greasy-looking middle-eastern (sterotype = terrorist, a la "True Lies") holding an automatic rifle in one hand, defenseless female in another screams threats from the large white house.
"Call in the sniper-detector" said the large, square-jawed Marine commander.
Up comes a small, wiry man in camoflauge, donning thick eye-distorting glasses. There's a weird electro-mechanical contraption vaguely resembling a satellite dish fixed to his military helmet.
"Sniper-detector Melvin reporting for duty, sir!" says the wiry gent.
"I need you to tell me if there are any explosives in that there building!" screams the military commander.
"Aye sir!" screams back the nerdly sniper-detector in a fearful tone.
Melvin promptly enters and briefly emerges from an unmarked, large, black moving truck parked nearby, holding a long, powerful-looking sniper rifle, on which is an enormous-looking scope.
"Here, I need you to shoot this into the building when I tell you to!", says Melvin to a nearby, muscular ground trooper. "Make sure not to hit anybody!" he adds with intent and feeling.
Melvin then disappears into the back of the large, black truck.
"OK!" comes the muffled scream from Melvin in the back of the truck.
With a barely perceptible nod, the trooper takes the gun, and with careful, confident smoothness, the trooper points the rifle at the building, and carefully takes aim at the building and carefully fires a single shot.
KABOOM!
Boards and shrapnel fly in all directions, the blast blowing back everybody standing against the ground. Windshields and car windows are shattered, a hubcap noisily rolls by, eventually coming to rest against a heavily damaged 2x4.
Officers and agents get up, dusting themselves off, one officer screaming in pain off in the distance. As officers and infantryman check each other to assess the damage, the back door of the truck flies open.
"Good news, sir!" says Melvin, suddenly pausing as he surveys the damage all around.
"What's that, dammit!" screams the commander.
"Well, sir, I was going to say that there was no sign of nuclear weapons, just some plastic explosives..."
"Features are the last priority, while reliability is tops."
There you go. You just said it. Don't bother with VOIP, yet - it's just not worth it.
I used Vonage for about 9 months before I finally decided it just wasn't worth it. After 2 weeks back on a landline, I won't be going back. I get unlimited long distance in the U.S. for $20/month. Ask around - it's not hard to find similar plans in most areas of the US.
Dropped calls, weird echos, customers complaining about me talking "through a tunnel" were the order of the day with Vonage.
I'm on a fixed-IP DSL 1.5/384 - well beyond the specs they specify, and it just wasn't there. Little issues - the Cisco router needed rebooting, etc.
So, I'm back to a landline, and using a $6 phone I dug up out of the junk drawer in the kitchen, loving it, and wondering why didn't I go back to landline a long time ago?.
Remember, nothing is more important than your connection to your customers. The savings of $20/month or so is false economy when it costs the satisfaction of your clientelle.
MS has, over the years, used their monopoly in Operating Systems to dominate software - they now either control or have a substantial offering in virtually every major software category.
Now, having put major competitors all out of business, would we really want a world where MS had a monopoly on the software AND the hardware for the entire computing industry?
Bye-bye Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM, etc...!?!?
Sorry, no. This is too much. I can't bear it any more. If Microsoft does this, they are turning on their best friends, the OEMs.
So, proven for 99.9999% theory of gravity is still a theory.
Except that the theory of gravity is not proven 99.9999%.
It's very well documented as being extremely accurate in circumstances we are likely to encounter. However, there are a number of places that the theory of gravity doesn't work well.
At the sub-atomic level, for example, all kinds of weirds happen, or there wouldn't be so many scientists playing with exotic theories like "string theory".
Also, what about beyond the event horizon in a black hole? What about at the intense compression, say, in the first 1/2 second of the life of the universe? What exactly is the effect of gravity for the as-of-yet unproven tachyons, which travel faster than the speed of light, and "slow down" by accelerating?
Gravity is as good as proven in circumstances that are usual for our own types experiences, but there are plenty of circumstances we have no clue about.
So here I am, coding away merrily, when I run into a *STICKY* problem.
I'm running applications as user X, and need to access data as user Y. I have all the routines and everything written (in PHP) to access the data, but I need to do this as user Y, while accessing the data as user X.
There's just no easy way to do this. You have to use some kind of glue (such as XML), along with parsers, socket connections, pipes, shared memory, and all that jazz just to be able to access data remotely.
Ouch.
What I'd like to see is the concept of a "remote object". Imagine standard OOP, except that a particular object doesn't have to exist in the same memory/process space as the parent.
For example, instantiate an object on a remote server, or as another user on the same server, or at least in a different memory space as the same user & server.
The biggest problem with XML is that it's heavy, very heavy, and requires specialized scripting in order to work.
If you have an class already written that does what you need, you should be able to simply instantiate that object in the context you need it to run in, and then begin using it, COM style.
Obviously, some calls (such as GLOBAL) would be affected or even disabled with such functionality - but can you imagine the benefits?
All it takes to succeed with something like this is to get the "cat out of the bag".
Diesel is already widely used - there's a pre-existing market for it. So, a company needs to exist that produces reasonable quantity and quality fuel at a price that allows it to make a profit.
That's all it takes, folks.
Turning 100 Sq miles of land in the desert into an algae swamp would have serious political issues if rammed down the throats of people by the Govt.
However, make it profitable to grow algae farms in the desert, and people will scratch, claw, and fight their way over to buy their own desert algae farmland, especially if they knew they could put a decent environmentalist spin on it.
Why would our company PAY to register our mail server WITH THEM?? Hey THEY owe us about a $1000.00 or so to put up with their customers.
By the sound of it, you misunderstood completely what my comment was about.
You are apparently NOT a Comcast customer.
Assume you are a Comcast customer. You want to run your own Comcast-based mail server? Register w/Comcast. Otherwise, your outbound port 25 gets blocked.
It'd be perfectly reasonable for Comcast to charge $20 or even $50 one-time for this registration to cover some of that 50 million dollars they'd lose in calls by doing this, and we'd all rejoice!
What if they had a *simple* process for registering your mail server with them? 5 minutes, maybe $20 and that's it?
People who run their own mail servers are control freaks and had better be technically minded enough to call the Admins at Comcast in order to register their mail server.
We're talking about laptops here, not workstations.
Why would you separate the two? Why would you have a laptop that's not also your "desktop" system?
It's amazingly nice, when you are out on the road, you find that you have to update XYZ source code or log into ABC server, and you already have all the documents and server keys in your hand!
The only downside that I can see is (perhaps) expandability and expense...
While these plants are all great in their own way (better to use the waste than just to let it rot), 500 b of oil per day is NOTHING. Worldwide consumption is like 20-22 MILLION b per day. The US is somewhere around 6? million....
Any trend towards erosion of the status quo, carried long enough, destroys the status quo.
Linux has already hit the "spiral point", where it has reached enough market and mind share to pass the threshold of long term survivability and relevance.
Now, so long as Linuux gains a little marketshare every year, the result is inevitable.
Driving to LA? Do you start complaining 5 minutes into the drive because it'll take hours or days to get there, or do you just keep driving, knowing full well that if you just keep going, you'll get there?
The march of technology of recent seems to be heading towards renewable and consumable resources, rather than continuing to favor squandering precious non-renewable resources.
While gassing up my diminutive Saturn SL2 (which gets ~ 35 miles to the gallon) I struck up a conversation with an SUV owner next to me, and was shocked to find that she got around 23 miles to the gallon. 23!!??!?
That's *alot* more than I would have guessed.
Technology is marching forward - the main concern isn't to "solve the world's problems tomorrow" but to solve more problems than you cause.
We all remember the Twilight Zone episodes about the Earth being dominated by cold, unthinking, uncaring machines that take over and establish an Orwellian rule, or the Terminator who speaks of "Skynet" becoming self-aware.
Machine intelligence will not replace human intelligence - like the cerebrum augmenting the "lizard brain" at the base of the brain, our extrasomatic information technologies and machinery augment, enhance, and extend the capabilities of our cerebrum.
What's interesting is that the evolution of machine intelligence has hit a point where it surpasses, or will soon surpass, the thinking performed in our collective cerebrums.
We are becoming the Borg of Star Trek tales, armed with our cell phones, Internet access terminals, (I write this from a Hotel 2 blocks from Disneyland, in Anaheim, CA with my Linux laptop - where are you?) telephones, pagers, walkie-talkies, and other inter-personal communication devices.
And I find no end of fascination in watching the birth of this machine intelligence, and watching it become so tightly integrated with our humanity.
I can now perform in minutes research that just a few decades ago would have taken hours or days. This is the result of machine intelligence, and it will get far better, not worse.
Sit back and enjoy the ride - it's going to be a fun one!
As we move inexorably towards increased space presence, we'll find more and more interesting replicating chemical reactions that warrant further study.
At what point does a chemical reaction pattern become defined as life?
If we were to find intelligent life on other planets, even capable of our more advanced technologies (telecommunications, computing, etc.) we would surely have no difficulty in classifying that as "life" - but most assuredly there would be no trace of DNA as we know it.
It's even unlikely that such life would be based on the carbon cycle we find here on Earth.
Samples of "life" such as these nanobacteria (or whatever they end up being called) are an excellent example of such a chemical process.
One of the things I find so fascinating about the Sciences is that there is no conclusion, no theory of operation, and no information set considered incontrovertible - everything is subject to revision and peer review, and only under these intense circumstances can truth truly be found... eventually.
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Greener != green
What about the lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries commonly used in these? How many one-armed, 3-eyed Chinese babies will be born as a result of pollution of these terribly toxic metals?
People operate according to their own experiences, and apply those experiences as mask to frame everything they see.
People who complain loudest about being cheated are generally those most likely to cheat you. Those who talk about "being screwed" are the ones you generally have to watch most.
And still customers HAVE THAT OPTION. No one is threatening them at gunpoint. They are voluntarily handing over their money, Bill Gates is not mugging them.
You had me going until this point. I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop. I bought this particular laptop because it had high marks for Linux compatability.
I could not get this laptop without some flavor of Windows XP. Nothing on the packaging indicated that I could return the O/S - the Windows XP product license sticker was even stuck to the bottom of the laptop when opening the box!
So, where's my option for Billy boy? I had no option - either I bought the system with the O/S, or I did not buy a system I needed.
This is where the antitrust trial had a case - a case they won and then botched badly.
As long as Bill Gates isn't using all of his money to buy all the slashdot virgins blowjobs from Carmen Electra, they can't do anything right.
One of the great things about firewire is that it can power devices.. I guess this is no longer the case.
Actually, read the spec. Firewireless can power your devices, too. You just have to buy the optional, 4 foot tall Tesla coil, and plug it into a 480 volt commercial power adapter.
I can say "read the spec" because I'm pretty sure you haven't... this is SLASHDOT!
And don't lie about not knowing who Ron Jeremy is. The guy is the #1 porn star in the entire globe. There is a movie about his life called "Porn Star [imdb.com]" released last year.
So, I presume that if I were to write "I don't know who Rom Jeremy is.", you'd think I was lying?
Well I don't know who Ron Jeremy is. I've never wanked to Tracy Lords, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Your ADSL provider sucks. My provider not only allows WiFi sharing, but even encourages it.
OK - let's assume that your ISP is "cool" and doesn't "suck".
Take your 1.5/384 connection, and use some point-to-point microwave links and numerous wireless APs so that you provide free service to a few hundred free "community" users.
In case you hadn't read the PDF on the page you linked to, your "cool" ISP wants cash from your neighbors when you share your connection!
You get to share your Internet connection with neighbors to eventually get your higher prices reduced down to what I'm paying to begin with.
I'm sorry pal, but to me, that sucks.
Your post is an excellent example of what's wrong with VOIP at current.
To use a telephone, you go to the local thrift store, spend $5 on a phone, and plug it into the wall to get reliable telephone service.
To use VOIP, you have networks, hubs, routers, wireless cards, firewalls, switches, and enough power bricks to saturate two 6-plug power strips so that you end up with something that must be tweaked to operate smoothly at all, in order to get something with the range of a cordless telephone. (Wifi uses the exact same frequencies as a cordless telephone - it's essentially a fancy cordless telephone modem)
Never mind what happens when any of those various boxes have a security vulnerability found...
In order to be truly successful, the technology needs to GET OUT OF THE WAY for the common user. Bridges are technology that are so reliable we never think about using one. So are telephones. VOIP will have "arrived" when it's use is automatic and reliable.
Wifi is easy to set up. ($50 at the local electronics mega-mart gives you a decent AP)
The big problem isn't the "wifi" part - it's the other half - the "Intarweb" half. See, the real expense is the Internet connection.
If I share my ADSL 1.5/384 connection with my neighbors, I'm violating terms of service, and could lose my (very important to me) Internet connection.
T1 or T3 lines, which wouldn't have the above contract restrictions, cost at least $750/month around here.
So, who provides the bandwidth? Also, assume that somebody uses YOUR wifi AP to email bomb threats to King George, WITH YOUR RETURN ADDRESS.
Now, who's in HOT WATER?
I personally think that sooner, rather than later, Internet Access will be more of a public service, provided by your Municipality. In many areas, this already happens.
I'd like to see a vote on how many guys here have encountered that double-standard. I get in trouble if I look bored when hearing about something boring, but I get a bored look if I try to talk about my latest Genossian Lab raid in SWG.
Not here. Not w/my wife. (Man, she's awesome!)
We both have needs for time alone. We both get it by acknowledging this need.
I'm *required* to pay attention to her when she's talking to me about "relevant" (kids, money, etc) things, and she's *required* to listen to me when I want to talk about 'relevant' things (software, client conversations and contracts, etc)
Everything else is fair game for the axe. As in - "I'm sorry, but I'm really not interested in this right now" or "Do you mind if I (X/Y/Z) right now?".
Your choices extend beyond Games/GF.
How about telling her your concerns? Rather than say "Jesus, chick, you b0r3z me!", try "A conversation is a 2-say activity, and I find it difficult to engage in this conversation because I don't feel you are interested in what I have to say".
Interestingly enough, I find that I DO find my wife's interests far more interesting when I feel she's interested in mine. You may find that she really IS interested, and that you are just assuming she isn't!
Other than that, another good piece of advice is to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER allow for insults. Just don't do it. Never "bitch! / asshole!". Rather, say "I feel the urge to call you a bitch because NNNNN"
This leads to a solution, rather than exacerbating the miscommunication. Sounds crazy and "shrink-ish" but in my case, these attempts at more direct and meaningful communication have worked amazingly well.
It does take time - lots of it, and for me, it's well worth it!
Nothing in your post alleges mis-treatment of Arabs. Perhaps there's an unspoken connection not well communicated - my apologies.
Here's the chain, IMHO:
1) US needs oil.
2) US mistreats Arabs to obtain cheap supplies of oil.
3) Arabs get mad at US.
4) Arabs hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings.
5) US goes paranoic to avoid planes intersecting with buildings.
6) US citizens must take bomb detenation awareness classes.
See the connection? The real solution to #6 is to alleviate #1, which the mentioned link could quite conceivably do.
In the end, this incident just wasted some public servant's time. Same as the circuit board incident. Unless or until people get good at recognizing what a bomb detonator really looks like, things like this are bound to happen.
Since you are obviously expert in all things bomb-detonator, what does an "average" bomb detonator look like?
Oh... wait! I remember - I saw it in a movie! A "Bomb detonator" is that black box, about 9 inches long, 4 inches wide, and about 2 inches tall, with the big, red lettering on the top that says "Bomb Detonator" on the top of it, and has a few red and white snap wiring terminals on the side, right?
No?
Are you sure?
We live in a modern-day paranoia. We've been abusing the people of the Middle East selfishly for decades in order to satiate our wasteful addiction to crude oil, and now we pay the price of bad karma.
What really sucks is that there are real solutions to our energy needs. Linked is but one example with a total initial cost of about $169 billion, about as much as the $162 billion the most recent Iraq war cost to wage that would almost completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and dramatically reduce the Carbon Dioxide production of the United States.
I just hope and pray that someday, we find a leader that will actually lead us towards a better world, because we sure as hell don't have one today.
"Dammit, I'm too old for this shit", said the stern, muscular, middle-aged Marine commander, surveying with binoculars.
Dozens of miltary agents and officers stand in front of cars parked in the street. Lights are flashing, numerous troops stand around, guns drawn, facing a building.
Across the street, a badly shaven, greasy-looking middle-eastern (sterotype = terrorist, a la "True Lies") holding an automatic rifle in one hand, defenseless female in another screams threats from the large white house.
"Call in the sniper-detector" said the large, square-jawed Marine commander.
Up comes a small, wiry man in camoflauge, donning thick eye-distorting glasses. There's a weird electro-mechanical contraption vaguely resembling a satellite dish fixed to his military helmet.
"Sniper-detector Melvin reporting for duty, sir!" says the wiry gent.
"I need you to tell me if there are any explosives in that there building!" screams the military commander.
"Aye sir!" screams back the nerdly sniper-detector in a fearful tone.
Melvin promptly enters and briefly emerges from an unmarked, large, black moving truck parked nearby, holding a long, powerful-looking sniper rifle, on which is an enormous-looking scope.
"Here, I need you to shoot this into the building when I tell you to!", says Melvin to a nearby, muscular ground trooper. "Make sure not to hit anybody!" he adds with intent and feeling.
Melvin then disappears into the back of the large, black truck.
"OK!" comes the muffled scream from Melvin in the back of the truck.
With a barely perceptible nod, the trooper takes the gun, and with careful, confident smoothness, the trooper points the rifle at the building, and carefully takes aim at the building and carefully fires a single shot.
KABOOM!
Boards and shrapnel fly in all directions, the blast blowing back everybody standing against the ground. Windshields and car windows are shattered, a hubcap noisily rolls by, eventually coming to rest against a heavily damaged 2x4.
Officers and agents get up, dusting themselves off, one officer screaming in pain off in the distance. As officers and infantryman check each other to assess the damage, the back door of the truck flies open.
"Good news, sir!" says Melvin, suddenly pausing as he surveys the damage all around.
"What's that, dammit!" screams the commander.
"Well, sir, I was going to say that there was no sign of nuclear weapons, just some plastic explosives..."
"Features are the last priority, while reliability is tops."
There you go. You just said it. Don't bother with VOIP, yet - it's just not worth it.
I used Vonage for about 9 months before I finally decided it just wasn't worth it. After 2 weeks back on a landline, I won't be going back. I get unlimited long distance in the U.S. for $20/month. Ask around - it's not hard to find similar plans in most areas of the US.
Dropped calls, weird echos, customers complaining about me talking "through a tunnel" were the order of the day with Vonage.
I'm on a fixed-IP DSL 1.5/384 - well beyond the specs they specify, and it just wasn't there. Little issues - the Cisco router needed rebooting, etc.
So, I'm back to a landline, and using a $6 phone I dug up out of the junk drawer in the kitchen, loving it, and wondering why didn't I go back to landline a long time ago?.
Remember, nothing is more important than your connection to your customers. The savings of $20/month or so is false economy when it costs the satisfaction of your clientelle.
An old name for the gas pedal in a car (US) is the "accelerator".
MS has, over the years, used their monopoly in Operating Systems to dominate software - they now either control or have a substantial offering in virtually every major software category.
Now, having put major competitors all out of business, would we really want a world where MS had a monopoly on the software AND the hardware for the entire computing industry?
Bye-bye Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM, etc...!?!?
Sorry, no. This is too much. I can't bear it any more. If Microsoft does this, they are turning on their best friends, the OEMs.
So, proven for 99.9999% theory of gravity is still a theory.
Except that the theory of gravity is not proven 99.9999%.
It's very well documented as being extremely accurate in circumstances we are likely to encounter. However, there are a number of places that the theory of gravity doesn't work well.
At the sub-atomic level, for example, all kinds of weirds happen, or there wouldn't be so many scientists playing with exotic theories like "string theory".
Also, what about beyond the event horizon in a black hole? What about at the intense compression, say, in the first 1/2 second of the life of the universe? What exactly is the effect of gravity for the as-of-yet unproven tachyons, which travel faster than the speed of light, and "slow down" by accelerating?
Gravity is as good as proven in circumstances that are usual for our own types experiences, but there are plenty of circumstances we have no clue about.
So here I am, coding away merrily, when I run into a *STICKY* problem.
I'm running applications as user X, and need to access data as user Y. I have all the routines and everything written (in PHP) to access the data, but I need to do this as user Y, while accessing the data as user X.
There's just no easy way to do this. You have to use some kind of glue (such as XML), along with parsers, socket connections, pipes, shared memory, and all that jazz just to be able to access data remotely.
Ouch.
What I'd like to see is the concept of a "remote object". Imagine standard OOP, except that a particular object doesn't have to exist in the same memory/process space as the parent.
For example, instantiate an object on a remote server, or as another user on the same server, or at least in a different memory space as the same user & server.
The biggest problem with XML is that it's heavy, very heavy, and requires specialized scripting in order to work.
If you have an class already written that does what you need, you should be able to simply instantiate that object in the context you need it to run in, and then begin using it, COM style.
Obviously, some calls (such as GLOBAL) would be affected or even disabled with such functionality - but can you imagine the benefits?
Ah well. That world doesn't exist, yet.
All it takes to succeed with something like this is to get the "cat out of the bag".
Diesel is already widely used - there's a pre-existing market for it. So, a company needs to exist that produces reasonable quantity and quality fuel at a price that allows it to make a profit.
That's all it takes, folks.
Turning 100 Sq miles of land in the desert into an algae swamp would have serious political issues if rammed down the throats of people by the Govt.
However, make it profitable to grow algae farms in the desert, and people will scratch, claw, and fight their way over to buy their own desert algae farmland, especially if they knew they could put a decent environmentalist spin on it.
This is the answer, folks!
Why would our company PAY to register our mail server WITH THEM?? Hey THEY owe us about a $1000.00 or so to put up with their customers.
By the sound of it, you misunderstood completely what my comment was about.
You are apparently NOT a Comcast customer.
Assume you are a Comcast customer. You want to run your own Comcast-based mail server? Register w/Comcast. Otherwise, your outbound port 25 gets blocked.
It'd be perfectly reasonable for Comcast to charge $20 or even $50 one-time for this registration to cover some of that 50 million dollars they'd lose in calls by doing this, and we'd all rejoice!
-Ben
What if they had a *simple* process for registering your mail server with them? 5 minutes, maybe $20 and that's it?
People who run their own mail servers are control freaks and had better be technically minded enough to call the Admins at Comcast in order to register their mail server.
Otherwise, who'd notice or care?
We're talking about laptops here, not workstations.
Why would you separate the two? Why would you have a laptop that's not also your "desktop" system?
It's amazingly nice, when you are out on the road, you find that you have to update XYZ source code or log into ABC server, and you already have all the documents and server keys in your hand!
The only downside that I can see is (perhaps) expandability and expense...
If you'd seen the *SIZE* of the hulking monster I was staring at, you'd be impressed.
Also, compare the size of your Renault
against my Saturn SL2.
While these plants are all great in their own way (better to use the waste than just to let it rot), 500 b of oil per day is NOTHING. Worldwide consumption is like 20-22 MILLION b per day. The US is somewhere around 6? million....
Any trend towards erosion of the status quo, carried long enough, destroys the status quo.
Linux has already hit the "spiral point", where it has reached enough market and mind share to pass the threshold of long term survivability and relevance.
Now, so long as Linuux gains a little marketshare every year, the result is inevitable.
Driving to LA? Do you start complaining 5 minutes into the drive because it'll take hours or days to get there, or do you just keep driving, knowing full well that if you just keep going, you'll get there?
The march of technology of recent seems to be heading towards renewable and consumable resources, rather than continuing to favor squandering precious non-renewable resources.
While gassing up my diminutive Saturn SL2 (which gets ~ 35 miles to the gallon) I struck up a conversation with an SUV owner next to me, and was shocked to find that she got around 23 miles to the gallon. 23!!??!?
That's *alot* more than I would have guessed.
Technology is marching forward - the main concern isn't to "solve the world's problems tomorrow" but to solve more problems than you cause.
We all remember the Twilight Zone episodes about the Earth being dominated by cold, unthinking, uncaring machines that take over and establish an Orwellian rule, or the Terminator who speaks of "Skynet" becoming self-aware.
Yet this is not how machine intelligence has been evolving. Think Google, think Visa's fraud detection system, think the learning DSPAM which simulates learning so effectively.
Machine intelligence will not replace human intelligence - like the cerebrum augmenting the "lizard brain" at the base of the brain, our extrasomatic information technologies and machinery augment, enhance, and extend the capabilities of our cerebrum.
What's interesting is that the evolution of machine intelligence has hit a point where it surpasses, or will soon surpass, the thinking performed in our collective cerebrums.
We are becoming the Borg of Star Trek tales, armed with our cell phones, Internet access terminals, (I write this from a Hotel 2 blocks from Disneyland, in Anaheim, CA with my Linux laptop - where are you?) telephones, pagers, walkie-talkies, and other inter-personal communication devices.
And I find no end of fascination in watching the birth of this machine intelligence, and watching it become so tightly integrated with our humanity.
I can now perform in minutes research that just a few decades ago would have taken hours or days. This is the result of machine intelligence, and it will get far better, not worse.
Sit back and enjoy the ride - it's going to be a fun one!
As we move inexorably towards increased space presence, we'll find more and more interesting replicating chemical reactions that warrant further study.
At what point does a chemical reaction pattern become defined as life?
If we were to find intelligent life on other planets, even capable of our more advanced technologies (telecommunications, computing, etc.) we would surely have no difficulty in classifying that as "life" - but most assuredly there would be no trace of DNA as we know it.
It's even unlikely that such life would be based on the carbon cycle we find here on Earth.
Samples of "life" such as these nanobacteria (or whatever they end up being called) are an excellent example of such a chemical process.
One of the things I find so fascinating about the Sciences is that there is no conclusion, no theory of operation, and no information set considered incontrovertible - everything is subject to revision and peer review, and only under these intense circumstances can truth truly be found... eventually.
Wow!
Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Greener != green
What about the lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries commonly used in these? How many one-armed, 3-eyed Chinese babies will be born as a result of pollution of these terribly toxic metals?
People who complain loudest about being cheated are generally those most likely to cheat you. Those who talk about "being screwed" are the ones you generally have to watch most.
I could not get this laptop without some flavor of Windows XP. Nothing on the packaging indicated that I could return the O/S - the Windows XP product license sticker was even stuck to the bottom of the laptop when opening the box!
So, where's my option for Billy boy? I had no option - either I bought the system with the O/S, or I did not buy a system I needed.
This is where the antitrust trial had a case - a case they won and then botched badly....and there went your credibility.
One of the great things about firewire is that it can power devices.. I guess this is no longer the case.
Actually, read the spec. Firewireless can power your devices, too. You just have to buy the optional, 4 foot tall Tesla coil, and plug it into a 480 volt commercial power adapter.
I can say "read the spec" because I'm pretty sure you haven't... this is SLASHDOT!
And don't lie about not knowing who Ron Jeremy is. The guy is the #1 porn star in the entire globe. There is a movie about his life called "Porn Star [imdb.com]" released last year.
So, I presume that if I were to write "I don't know who Rom Jeremy is.", you'd think I was lying?
Well I don't know who Ron Jeremy is. I've never wanked to Tracy Lords, either.
Sorry, pal.