We've been keeping historic records of climactic changes for a really, really, really short period of time compared to what might be termed "geologically significant". For every scientist or organization that's saying "the sky is falling" there are just as many, if not more, who will admit that over the long term, these temperature changes might be nominal. That is to say, we don't know for sure what "normal" is. I believe in not polluting the environment to any extreme degree, but this global warming nonsense is hysterical hype IMO. We simply don't know.
... analysts were proclaiming it to be the "new television" of entertainment.
Now take your little ads and your little pop-up banners and get the hell out of here. That goes for internet advertisers and AOL, too. If only SPAM would go away so easily.
Re:HP48 supports BOTH rpn and infix notation !
on
William Hewlett Dead
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· Score: 1
Most excellent observation! Way back around 1974 I drooled over the HP calculator ads I saw in my high school's library's Scientific American magazines. Oh how cool that "gold" key looked. When they became available - pretty expensive - my grandmother, God rest her soul, gave me one for a birthday present. It was too awesome!
I fondly remembering looking down my nose at other kids using those inferior TI calculators.
I went through a few HP models over the years. I currently use an HP-10C. Maybe it's an 11C, I really don't remember, and here's why. Years ago it slipped out of my coat pocket one day while I was getting out of my car in the driveway. There were several inches of fresh snow on the ground and I didn't notice it had fallen out. The next day I was looking for it and couldn't find it and was sure that I had lost it for good. I went outside to get in the car and saw the case sticking out of the snow. It had been in the snow for a good 24 hours and had clearly been run over by the car at least once. The LCD display, however, wasn't cracked and while the metal plate at the top was dented in several spots and the name plate had come off the damn thing still worked. I never found the name plate but the thing still works fine to this day and I love my RPN calculator still. I still think of my grandmother every once in a while when I press that "gold" key. The "blue" key is like an extra bonus from the earlier models. Some of my most vivid memories of high school are of reading those HP ads in Scientific American and learning all I could about Reverse Polish Notation months before I actually held one in my hands. How's that for a nerdy kind of story?
I still get a kick out of people who borrow it and stare blankly at it for a while and then hand it back. Here's a nice link to the Museum of HP Calculators. Mine's and 11C - thanks Mr. Hewlett for all your great contributions. Rest In Peace.
This is not new, but that's what you get when your source is CNN. This ABL story - complete with the exact same details and drawings - was printed in Aviation Week OVER 3 YEARS AGO. This project is maybe a little closer to flying than it was 3 years ago, but nevertheless this is only news to someone who was born yesterday.
Next thing you know/. will have a "new" story about how the U.S. military wants a ballistic missile defense system. Betcha' didn't know about that!
FYI according to the latest 2000 Census data recently released, the U.S. poulation as of last year is right around 280,000,000. I used to use the number 250,000,000 but was told it was significantly higher than that a while back. Now I know the up-to-date figure!
"Quantum Computers: How they work and How they will effect us"
Although quantum mechanics leads to very strange and wonderful things I doubt anything they do will effect us. They might affect us. Next story, please! I don't read items that so blatantly butcher the language.
Some say Clinton played into the hands of Hollywood and that Gore would have done the same. NEWSFLASH: If you think Bush is going to come down on the right side of this, THINK AGAIN
His advisors - and Jack Valenti - will have him believeing that this is GOOD for consumers and, in fact, most of them WANT it. Bend Over.
Yikes! This is totally unacceptable. Sorry, I won't be voting for it because it's been over a year now since I've wanted anything to do with Mozilla, an unabashed failure. I do follow news about it casually from time to time, but I do not EVER expect there will be a version/build of Mozilla that I will want to use. I had no idea about the "NO PRINTING" feature, but I'll tell ya, there's no way in hell I'd use a browser if I couldn't print from it.
Some people don't like to surf or browse the web and when you stumble upon a golden nugget of information that you simply MUST share with others there's no other option but printing. BR
Ah, that completes the year for me as far as Mozilla goes. Altogether I spent, oh, maybe an hour TOPS on keeping up with Mozilla this year. Most of that hour was wasted IMHO. And please note for whatever it's worth: I won't use IE. The thing I can't stand the most about IE is if something is downloading and you hit STOP it just never stops. It keeps going and going and going...
Here's an actual excerpt from Hasbro Interactive's EULA for Rollercoaster Tycoon:
If you or anyone in your family has an epileptic condition or has experienced symptoms like an epileptic condition (e.g. seizure or loss of awareness), immediately consult your physician before using this Software.
All the other usual crap is in there as well. This very popular game has been through its original release and two expansion packs in the last 21 months. In addition there have been several patches released for each incarnation to "fix bugs". Until 3 months ago, there was a bug that would result in the player losing all progress through the levels twice a year at the change to and from Daylight Savings Time. Hasbro was pestered with complaints about this bug for over a year before they did anything about it.
That did not stop them from introducing anti-cheating code into the game after the original release. Someone wrote a "trainer" program that allowed the user to "cheat" at certain aspects of gameplay. The first add-on expansion pack detected the use of a trainer and disabled any saved game that appeared to have been tampered with. The error message said "Corrupt or Inaccessible Data File" which was a load of crap, outside of the fact that the original EULA sought to prohibit reverse engineering of the code. These evil game manufaturers should be boiled in oil. I say "To Hell with their EULA".
Look, I know there are bad guys and criminals and terrorists. That doesn't mean the government should have the power - I was going to say "right" but governments don't have rights, only the people do - to tap into any stream of information they feel like. Historically, there were no telephones or telegraphs, let alone computers or the internet, earlier than something like 100 years ago. But there was snail mail. Even worse than snails was the Pony Express, for instance.
I suppose the gov had the power to open mail back then with proper court orders (can anyone confirm this?). That was fairly simple. Then telegraphs and telephones came along. The gov decided that it would be a simple matter to eavesdrop on calls at the central exchange - properly authorized, of course. Now we have the internet and all these packets floating around. The gov, naturally, wants to extend their powers of communications interception to all these bits of information. The problem, as I see it, is one of practicality.
It's simply not as easy to tap into the flow of modern widespread networking. You can't simply set up shop downtown at one location and steam open TCP/IP envelopes. You can't enter a central office and clip your tape recorder to two screws and get access to every TCP/IP conversation someone is party to. The government would have us believe otherwise. Sure, it can be done but it's massively expensive. I guess the NSA is already doing it to some degree, but look at their budget (LOL). Domestic law enforcement would have us and the Congress believe it's their inalienable right to access this information, since it's just an extension of the powers they already have to do this. I say bullshit.
When it was easy to lawfully intercept communications, like paper envelopes or two-wire telephone circuits, they had and made a good case for having that power. We're way beyond that now. It's no longer easy to do. They argue for huge budget increases in order to preserve what they see as their divine right. Again I say bullshit. It's not something they ought or need to be getting involved in.
There are plenty of ways to catch criminals and terrorists without having to resort to these Big Brother tactics that are fraught with potential for abuse. National security is one thing, but the needs of domestic law enforcement just don't meet the standard, in my eyes, of needing draconian measures to "enforce" the law. It's time to turn the tables and JUST SAY NO to Big Brother.
I hope whoever was making money at mp3.com has already extracted it from the morass. This biz is going nowhere. Talk about a business model that's DOA! The RIAA definitely wanted this to happen. They will sit back and laugh with glee. Not only will they have put mp3.com out of business, they will have gotten paid a settlement/licensing fee to boot! LOL!
Their biz model is not as bad as most of the dotcoms, but that's not to say it's exactly a healthy one for the long term, IMO. While one might be tempted to subscribe to its Linux update service, I can't see too many people scrambling to sign up for their nebulous "services".
We have seen this scenario before.
Talking head Melissa London says "This is not a material event" and an unnamed staffer quickly replies "They're closing a whole office. That seems material to me".
Stock price dives from $151 to $6 - that's a drop of over 90%.
One of the things that IS similar to your average dotcom that once attracted investors is their cash reserve. Their most recent burn rate is apparently $1.9 million per quarter. At that rate, their reserves will last perhaps 20 years. If their management is to blame, as opposed to a faulty business model, look for them to start bailing out. Quickly. The downturn in the U.S. economy couldn't have come at a worse time for Red Hat. I wouldn't go near these guys with a 10-foot pole.
If the government thinks it's a good idea then that's reason enough to run as fast as possible in the other direction.
Good ol' Dick Cheney seems like just the sort of guy to make sure national ID smart-cards with certification are put into place and the sooner the better. You'll need one to vote. He and his boss won't want to go through another election like THIS again, so in the future they will want to nip any recount talk in the bud. I believe Gore would think that's not a bad idea, either, but he and Lieberman probably wouldn't push the plan.
And for those who say the voting process rests with each state, that's true, but they'll just set a national "best practices" standard and should a state not comply then they'll just withhold Federal highway funds. They like that trick. The US government will become the ultimate CA. Think about it. What do you want Uncle Sam to do for you? Let you vote? The government needs to know who you are. Need Medicare assistance? They need to know who you are. Want a small business loan? ID checks are mandatory. Decide you'd like to have some of your social security "investment" back when you're 65? They DEFINITELY want to know who you are then. Want to perform banking transactions? Banks are required to tell the government about all large transactions. How large, you ask? Consider that the biggest denomination of US currency is $100 and why.
Yeah, but look, when the ISA personal computer bus became outdated - and it wasn't all that old either - how many typical home lusers would even have the faintest idea what ISA was? If you mentioned ISA to them they'd stare just as blankly. Ideas and implementations don't become outdated solely by their age.
Mozilla should have been dead a year ago. What a joke. It's now almost at the point that nobody who ever contributed to it will even want to mention it on their resumes. "Real Soon Now" doesn't cut it anymore.
I read some of the postings on Usenet from NASA. They base the size calculation on how bright the object is. They basically have a model that says assuming the object's brightness is X then judging from the amount of light it's giving off it's corresponding size is Y. The range of sizes they give for it tops out at around 75 meters (210+ feet) assuming the same reflectivity that has been observed and confirmed on other objects.
If it is manmade - a leftover Apollo/Saturn booster stage for example - then it's reflectivity is going to be MUCH higher than a rock. If you again correlate to how much light it's giving off, a smaller manmade object will give off more in a smaller size. In other words, if it is manmade then its size is considerably smaller.
Several Saturn V third stage booster segments were sent into orbit around the sun between 1968 and 1971. I've seen reference to 5 in particular that this object might be. The third stage of the Saturn V is roughly cylindrical; 6.6 meters in diameter and 17.8 meters long. With absolutely no firsthand knowledge or proof, I'd bet that's what it is. Can't the HST get a picture of the thing?
The guy says this is an example of what can be achieved when the idle processing power of networked computers is brought to bear on "complex" problems. Calculating the digits of Pi is hardly a complex problem.
ZapMe would have us believe their failure was due to harsh critics and bad press. While the idea to pump ads into schools is in itself a bad one, it's equally likely that their business model is flawed from the whold idea of Internet advertising in general. Pop-up ads, banner ads, click-through ads, etc. are DESPISED by most people. The bigger picture is that ALL Internet advertising schemes are going down the tubes. They just don't work.
The U.S. political will to build ISS is tenuous at best. Each year there are battles and skirmishes in Washington to keep its funding on track. Once the thing is fully built it will be hard to shut it down considering the investment.
However, it's not realistic to think there will *always* now be one or more humans in orbit (or elsewhere in outer space). Maybe for the life of ISS (which may be 100 years with upgrades, etc.) but there is just no clear mandate from the public to explore space. I think it is a good thing and there are many valid reasons for doing so. I have noticed there are a *lot* of people who do not share my enthusiasm for space exploration.
If we are able to develop inexpensive launch capability to orbit before ISS' days are over then there might be some hope that man's presence in space is now permanent. Before the first flight of Columbia there was a 6-year period where no Americans had been in orbit. I know the USSR had people going up all the time, but their political situation has changed a bit since then and the resources they are able to devote to space exploration aren't what they used to be. During that 6 year drought the only people who even thought it mattered were those working on the upcoming Space Shuttle program, NASA employees or space enthusiasts. There weren't many.
I have 3 Zip drives. An external SCSI drive I've had for 4 years, an external Parallel Port drive for 2 years, and an internal ATAPI drive that I've also had for about 2 years. Never had a problem with any of them until about 3 months ago when the internal ATAPI Zip drive started making strange noises and acting erratically. After some searching I found out about the "Click of Death" here.
It is a real phenomenon.
When my system began to exhibit the symptoms I called my vendor's support line since it was still within the warranty period and they dispatched a tech to replace the drive within a couple of days. The tech confirmed for me that Zip drives are a major headache for them. They tend to fail on a regular basis.
Do you work for Iomega? You are spreading untrue claims in your message. The problem is NOT with the early models of the Zip drive. The problem is more likely to occur in NEWER models of the drive. Iomega has serious quality control problems and the problem started happening when they started to cut corners in manufatcturing. While it is true that you can damage a drive by dropping it, that is simply NOT the major cause of the problem although Iomega would have you believe otherwise. Do you think I dropped my internal ATAPI drive?
I urge everyone who has a similar problem to check out the Click of Death site for more information. Busted up disks CAN spread the problem between drives, but this is not really the underlying cause of most of the problems.
There have been class action lawsuits filed against Iomega regarding their Zip drive product. Their senior executives were finally forced to admit they had a serious problem. Sending people to their web site without pointing out the alternative explanation is a disservice.
I am really amused about how this company claims to offer "security" in their products. LOL. Not that anyone worth their salt actually gives any credence to their claims; we know their stuff is shit. On the one hand they offer a public facade of competence in the arena of "security" and then on the other hand they cannot say it enough how they have called in the FBI to investigate. Does this strike anybody else as absurd? If they're so good why can't they figure it out by themselves? The answer is clearly obvious even to the most casual observer.
In another vein, what's to prevent either (a) MS claiming their proprietary stolen code was used in ANY product they see that they don't like or (b) other people, for whatever reason, sprinkling their code with BS comments to make it "look like" it came from the purloined source code even if it didn't? Me, I'm immediately hamming up all my comment headers in my code to say "This Code Stolen From Microsoft".
The little guy is once again going to get the shaft when all this plays out in one way or another. Watch and see. You'll have to prove you didn't get your source code from MS the same way you have to prove you're not a drug abuser by pissing in a cup, even though there's no reason to suspect otherwise.
The major television networks, in light of the latest bad news regarding declining viewership, have announced that beginning in the Second Quarter of 2001 they will be offering FREE 51-inch HDTV sets to their loyal viewers.
Jack Mehoff, president of the Broadcast Television Association, says "The just-completed World Series had the worst ratings ever. Since FOX has the rights to the World Series for the next umpteen years, they have naturally signed on for this promotion."
(Ratings for last Spring's NCAA Basketball Tournament, the NBA Finals, the Sydney Olympics and even the NFL have been dropping as well for several years now. -- ed.)
Mehoff explained further that "NBC needs to ensure the audience base for ER does not erode any further. ABC will offer a customized unit that features the synthesized voice of Regis Philbin and CBS knows its core demographic is too old to notice any change." He continues, "We feel the average American television viewer will gladly trade their choice of channels for the aesthetic HDTV experience. And there won't be any complicated 'clicker' to futz around with. We feel this is adding real value to our product. By giving consumers fewer things to worry about, such as that pesky channel-surfing thing, we hope to increase brand loyalty."
A spokesperson for the FCC indicated that the plan would probably not be in violation of the "No Channel Surfing" legislation now pending before Congress. The bill would make changing the channel on your television set more than twice every 5 minutes illegal. The spokesman added that "we feel the free HDTV initiative will help educate consumers as to what the new law says regarding this problem."
A very interesting read. We see two ends of the spectrum here. On one end we have ridiculous business models that realistically were never going to make any money. They were fueled by venture capital guys that were greedy (serves them right). Their whole deal was to make millions from suckers after an IPO. Unfortunately, once the emporor's clothes were examined there was nothing there.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the more traditional business models. Or maybe it's 'model' singular. The pervasive belief that the Internet would grow to be nothing more than an alternate form of television or newspapers. Thus, you could make a ton of money by advertising. NOBODY likes internet advertising except for companies doing it like DoubleClick, the ever-clue-phucked AOL users (who have no idea what the real Internet is capable of) and site operators who actually depend on advertising revenues to stay afloat (nice knowing you - see you around - if you thought that was sustainable you should be flipping burgers somewhere). The latter are probably going to be the next sites to fold up their tents and go home. It has been said that the Internet treats censorship as a fault and tends to route around it. The same is true for advertising. There are a ton of programs available that let users bypass those annoying banner ads. That model was never going to work, either. I hope DoubleClick gets their asses handed to them on a silver platter and that apparently is about to happen. The sooner the better, IMO. Their earnings problem will send their stock dropping faster than Wile E. Coyote off the edge of a cliff holding onto a ten-ton boulder. In fact, aren't there now reports floating around that web-based advertising is an across-the-board failure?
The upshot of all this is the Internet is neither television, nor radio, nor print media The true value of the Internet has yet to be realized. The really innovative and workable business models have not been invented yet. They lie somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum, with the truly far-fetched no-effort bullshit sucker IPO mentality on one end and the traditional advertising revenue stream models on the other. With all that being said, however, this phase we're now nearing the end of was inevitable. A necessary part of evolution and ultimately survival of the fittest. At long last we're seeing the unequivocally "good" result that these flawed models are being flushed out of the system once they're shown to be total garbage. My only regret is that I never cashed in on my idea for the Internet pooper-scooper. I probably could have sold that concept to some clueless VC guys 2 or 3 years ago and then I would be sitting pretty.
Slashdot Mirror
We've been keeping historic records of climactic changes for a really, really, really short period of time compared to what might be termed "geologically significant". For every scientist or organization that's saying "the sky is falling" there are just as many, if not more, who will admit that over the long term, these temperature changes might be nominal. That is to say, we don't know for sure what "normal" is. I believe in not polluting the environment to any extreme degree, but this global warming nonsense is hysterical hype IMO. We simply don't know.
Most excellent observation! Way back around 1974 I drooled over the HP calculator ads I saw in my high school's library's Scientific American magazines. Oh how cool that "gold" key looked. When they became available - pretty expensive - my grandmother, God rest her soul, gave me one for a birthday present. It was too awesome!
I fondly remembering looking down my nose at other kids using those inferior TI calculators.
I went through a few HP models over the years. I currently use an HP-10C. Maybe it's an 11C, I really don't remember, and here's why. Years ago it slipped out of my coat pocket one day while I was getting out of my car in the driveway. There were several inches of fresh snow on the ground and I didn't notice it had fallen out. The next day I was looking for it and couldn't find it and was sure that I had lost it for good. I went outside to get in the car and saw the case sticking out of the snow. It had been in the snow for a good 24 hours and had clearly been run over by the car at least once. The LCD display, however, wasn't cracked and while the metal plate at the top was dented in several spots and the name plate had come off the damn thing still worked. I never found the name plate but the thing still works fine to this day and I love my RPN calculator still. I still think of my grandmother every once in a while when I press that "gold" key. The "blue" key is like an extra bonus from the earlier models. Some of my most vivid memories of high school are of reading those HP ads in Scientific American and learning all I could about Reverse Polish Notation months before I actually held one in my hands. How's that for a nerdy kind of story?
I still get a kick out of people who borrow it and stare blankly at it for a while and then hand it back. Here's a nice link to the Museum of HP Calculators . Mine's and 11C - thanks Mr. Hewlett for all your great contributions. Rest In Peace.
This is not new, but that's what you get when your source is CNN. This ABL story - complete with the exact same details and drawings - was printed in Aviation Week OVER 3 YEARS AGO. This project is maybe a little closer to flying than it was 3 years ago, but nevertheless this is only news to someone who was born yesterday.
/. will have a "new" story about how the U.S. military wants a ballistic missile defense system. Betcha' didn't know about that!
Next thing you know
FYI according to the latest 2000 Census data recently released, the U.S. poulation as of last year is right around 280,000,000. I used to use the number 250,000,000 but was told it was significantly higher than that a while back. Now I know the up-to-date figure!
"Quantum Computers: How they work and How they will effect us"
Although quantum mechanics leads to very strange and wonderful things I doubt anything they do will effect us. They might affect us. Next story, please! I don't read items that so blatantly butcher the language.
Mac World. Not again.
Some say Clinton played into the hands of Hollywood and that Gore would have done the same. NEWSFLASH: If you think Bush is going to come down on the right side of this, THINK AGAIN
His advisors - and Jack Valenti - will have him believeing that this is GOOD for consumers and, in fact, most of them WANT it. Bend Over.
Yikes! This is totally unacceptable. Sorry, I won't be voting for it because it's been over a year now since I've wanted anything to do with Mozilla, an unabashed failure. I do follow news about it casually from time to time, but I do not EVER expect there will be a version/build of Mozilla that I will want to use. I had no idea about the "NO PRINTING" feature, but I'll tell ya, there's no way in hell I'd use a browser if I couldn't print from it.
Some people don't like to surf or browse the web and when you stumble upon a golden nugget of information that you simply MUST share with others there's no other option but printing.
BR Ah, that completes the year for me as far as Mozilla goes. Altogether I spent, oh, maybe an hour TOPS on keeping up with Mozilla this year. Most of that hour was wasted IMHO. And please note for whatever it's worth: I won't use IE. The thing I can't stand the most about IE is if something is downloading and you hit STOP it just never stops. It keeps going and going and going...
That did not stop them from introducing anti-cheating code into the game after the original release. Someone wrote a "trainer" program that allowed the user to "cheat" at certain aspects of gameplay. The first add-on expansion pack detected the use of a trainer and disabled any saved game that appeared to have been tampered with. The error message said "Corrupt or Inaccessible Data File" which was a load of crap, outside of the fact that the original EULA sought to prohibit reverse engineering of the code. These evil game manufaturers should be boiled in oil. I say "To Hell with their EULA".
Look, I know there are bad guys and criminals and terrorists. That doesn't mean the government should have the power - I was going to say "right" but governments don't have rights, only the people do - to tap into any stream of information they feel like. Historically, there were no telephones or telegraphs, let alone computers or the internet, earlier than something like 100 years ago. But there was snail mail. Even worse than snails was the Pony Express, for instance.
I suppose the gov had the power to open mail back then with proper court orders (can anyone confirm this?). That was fairly simple. Then telegraphs and telephones came along. The gov decided that it would be a simple matter to eavesdrop on calls at the central exchange - properly authorized, of course. Now we have the internet and all these packets floating around. The gov, naturally, wants to extend their powers of communications interception to all these bits of information. The problem, as I see it, is one of practicality.
It's simply not as easy to tap into the flow of modern widespread networking. You can't simply set up shop downtown at one location and steam open TCP/IP envelopes. You can't enter a central office and clip your tape recorder to two screws and get access to every TCP/IP conversation someone is party to. The government would have us believe otherwise. Sure, it can be done but it's massively expensive. I guess the NSA is already doing it to some degree, but look at their budget (LOL). Domestic law enforcement would have us and the Congress believe it's their inalienable right to access this information, since it's just an extension of the powers they already have to do this. I say bullshit.
When it was easy to lawfully intercept communications, like paper envelopes or two-wire telephone circuits, they had and made a good case for having that power. We're way beyond that now. It's no longer easy to do. They argue for huge budget increases in order to preserve what they see as their divine right. Again I say bullshit. It's not something they ought or need to be getting involved in.
There are plenty of ways to catch criminals and terrorists without having to resort to these Big Brother tactics that are fraught with potential for abuse. National security is one thing, but the needs of domestic law enforcement just don't meet the standard, in my eyes, of needing draconian measures to "enforce" the law. It's time to turn the tables and JUST SAY NO to Big Brother.
I hope whoever was making money at mp3.com has already extracted it from the morass. This biz is going nowhere. Talk about a business model that's DOA! The RIAA definitely wanted this to happen. They will sit back and laugh with glee. Not only will they have put mp3.com out of business, they will have gotten paid a settlement/licensing fee to boot! LOL!
We have seen this scenario before.
One of the things that IS similar to your average dotcom that once attracted investors is their cash reserve. Their most recent burn rate is apparently $1.9 million per quarter. At that rate, their reserves will last perhaps 20 years. If their management is to blame, as opposed to a faulty business model, look for them to start bailing out. Quickly. The downturn in the U.S. economy couldn't have come at a worse time for Red Hat. I wouldn't go near these guys with a 10-foot pole.
If the government thinks it's a good idea then that's reason enough to run as fast as possible in the other direction.
Good ol' Dick Cheney seems like just the sort of guy to make sure national ID smart-cards with certification are put into place and the sooner the better. You'll need one to vote. He and his boss won't want to go through another election like THIS again, so in the future they will want to nip any recount talk in the bud. I believe Gore would think that's not a bad idea, either, but he and Lieberman probably wouldn't push the plan.
And for those who say the voting process rests with each state, that's true, but they'll just set a national "best practices" standard and should a state not comply then they'll just withhold Federal highway funds. They like that trick. The US government will become the ultimate CA. Think about it. What do you want Uncle Sam to do for you? Let you vote? The government needs to know who you are. Need Medicare assistance? They need to know who you are. Want a small business loan? ID checks are mandatory. Decide you'd like to have some of your social security "investment" back when you're 65? They DEFINITELY want to know who you are then. Want to perform banking transactions? Banks are required to tell the government about all large transactions. How large, you ask? Consider that the biggest denomination of US currency is $100 and why.
Yeah, but look, when the ISA personal computer bus became outdated - and it wasn't all that old either - how many typical home lusers would even have the faintest idea what ISA was? If you mentioned ISA to them they'd stare just as blankly. Ideas and implementations don't become outdated solely by their age.
Mozilla should have been dead a year ago. What a joke. It's now almost at the point that nobody who ever contributed to it will even want to mention it on their resumes. "Real Soon Now" doesn't cut it anymore.
Netscape RIP.
We hardly knew ye.
I read some of the postings on Usenet from NASA. They base the size calculation on how bright the object is. They basically have a model that says assuming the object's brightness is X then judging from the amount of light it's giving off it's corresponding size is Y. The range of sizes they give for it tops out at around 75 meters (210+ feet) assuming the same reflectivity that has been observed and confirmed on other objects.
If it is manmade - a leftover Apollo/Saturn booster stage for example - then it's reflectivity is going to be MUCH higher than a rock. If you again correlate to how much light it's giving off, a smaller manmade object will give off more in a smaller size. In other words, if it is manmade then its size is considerably smaller.
Several Saturn V third stage booster segments were sent into orbit around the sun between 1968 and 1971. I've seen reference to 5 in particular that this object might be. The third stage of the Saturn V is roughly cylindrical; 6.6 meters in diameter and 17.8 meters long. With absolutely no firsthand knowledge or proof, I'd bet that's what it is. Can't the HST get a picture of the thing?
The guy says this is an example of what can be achieved when the idle processing power of networked computers is brought to bear on "complex" problems. Calculating the digits of Pi is hardly a complex problem.
ZapMe would have us believe their failure was due to harsh critics and bad press. While the idea to pump ads into schools is in itself a bad one, it's equally likely that their business model is flawed from the whold idea of Internet advertising in general. Pop-up ads, banner ads, click-through ads, etc. are DESPISED by most people. The bigger picture is that ALL Internet advertising schemes are going down the tubes. They just don't work.
The U.S. political will to build ISS is tenuous at best. Each year there are battles and skirmishes in Washington to keep its funding on track. Once the thing is fully built it will be hard to shut it down considering the investment.
However, it's not realistic to think there will *always* now be one or more humans in orbit (or elsewhere in outer space). Maybe for the life of ISS (which may be 100 years with upgrades, etc.) but there is just no clear mandate from the public to explore space. I think it is a good thing and there are many valid reasons for doing so. I have noticed there are a *lot* of people who do not share my enthusiasm for space exploration.
If we are able to develop inexpensive launch capability to orbit before ISS' days are over then there might be some hope that man's presence in space is now permanent. Before the first flight of Columbia there was a 6-year period where no Americans had been in orbit. I know the USSR had people going up all the time, but their political situation has changed a bit since then and the resources they are able to devote to space exploration aren't what they used to be. During that 6 year drought the only people who even thought it mattered were those working on the upcoming Space Shuttle program, NASA employees or space enthusiasts. There weren't many.
I have 3 Zip drives. An external SCSI drive I've had for 4 years, an external Parallel Port drive for 2 years, and an internal ATAPI drive that I've also had for about 2 years. Never had a problem with any of them until about 3 months ago when the internal ATAPI Zip drive started making strange noises and acting erratically. After some searching I found out about the "Click of Death" here .
It is a real phenomenon.
When my system began to exhibit the symptoms I called my vendor's support line since it was still within the warranty period and they dispatched a tech to replace the drive within a couple of days. The tech confirmed for me that Zip drives are a major headache for them. They tend to fail on a regular basis.
Do you work for Iomega? You are spreading untrue claims in your message. The problem is NOT with the early models of the Zip drive. The problem is more likely to occur in NEWER models of the drive. Iomega has serious quality control problems and the problem started happening when they started to cut corners in manufatcturing. While it is true that you can damage a drive by dropping it, that is simply NOT the major cause of the problem although Iomega would have you believe otherwise. Do you think I dropped my internal ATAPI drive?
I urge everyone who has a similar problem to check out the Click of Death site for more information. Busted up disks CAN spread the problem between drives, but this is not really the underlying cause of most of the problems.
There have been class action lawsuits filed against Iomega regarding their Zip drive product. Their senior executives were finally forced to admit they had a serious problem. Sending people to their web site without pointing out the alternative explanation is a disservice.
I am really amused about how this company claims to offer "security" in their products. LOL. Not that anyone worth their salt actually gives any credence to their claims; we know their stuff is shit. On the one hand they offer a public facade of competence in the arena of "security" and then on the other hand they cannot say it enough how they have called in the FBI to investigate. Does this strike anybody else as absurd? If they're so good why can't they figure it out by themselves? The answer is clearly obvious even to the most casual observer.
In another vein, what's to prevent either (a) MS claiming their proprietary stolen code was used in ANY product they see that they don't like or (b) other people, for whatever reason, sprinkling their code with BS comments to make it "look like" it came from the purloined source code even if it didn't? Me, I'm immediately hamming up all my comment headers in my code to say "This Code Stolen From Microsoft".
The little guy is once again going to get the shaft when all this plays out in one way or another. Watch and see. You'll have to prove you didn't get your source code from MS the same way you have to prove you're not a drug abuser by pissing in a cup, even though there's no reason to suspect otherwise.
The major television networks, in light of the latest bad news regarding declining viewership, have announced that beginning in the Second Quarter of 2001 they will be offering FREE 51-inch HDTV sets to their loyal viewers.
Jack Mehoff, president of the Broadcast Television Association, says "The just-completed World Series had the worst ratings ever. Since FOX has the rights to the World Series for the next umpteen years, they have naturally signed on for this promotion."
(Ratings for last Spring's NCAA Basketball Tournament, the NBA Finals, the Sydney Olympics and even the NFL have been dropping as well for several years now. -- ed.)
Mehoff explained further that "NBC needs to ensure the audience base for ER does not erode any further. ABC will offer a customized unit that features the synthesized voice of Regis Philbin and CBS knows its core demographic is too old to notice any change." He continues, "We feel the average American television viewer will gladly trade their choice of channels for the aesthetic HDTV experience. And there won't be any complicated 'clicker' to futz around with. We feel this is adding real value to our product. By giving consumers fewer things to worry about, such as that pesky channel-surfing thing, we hope to increase brand loyalty."
A spokesperson for the FCC indicated that the plan would probably not be in violation of the "No Channel Surfing" legislation now pending before Congress. The bill would make changing the channel on your television set more than twice every 5 minutes illegal. The spokesman added that "we feel the free HDTV initiative will help educate consumers as to what the new law says regarding this problem."
The point is that an AOL luser isn't capable of even realizing that that's an option.
A very interesting read. We see two ends of the spectrum here. On one end we have ridiculous business models that realistically were never going to make any money. They were fueled by venture capital guys that were greedy (serves them right). Their whole deal was to make millions from suckers after an IPO. Unfortunately, once the emporor's clothes were examined there was nothing there.
On the other end of the spectrum we have the more traditional business models. Or maybe it's 'model' singular. The pervasive belief that the Internet would grow to be nothing more than an alternate form of television or newspapers. Thus, you could make a ton of money by advertising. NOBODY likes internet advertising except for companies doing it like DoubleClick, the ever-clue-phucked AOL users (who have no idea what the real Internet is capable of) and site operators who actually depend on advertising revenues to stay afloat (nice knowing you - see you around - if you thought that was sustainable you should be flipping burgers somewhere). The latter are probably going to be the next sites to fold up their tents and go home. It has been said that the Internet treats censorship as a fault and tends to route around it. The same is true for advertising. There are a ton of programs available that let users bypass those annoying banner ads. That model was never going to work, either. I hope DoubleClick gets their asses handed to them on a silver platter and that apparently is about to happen. The sooner the better, IMO. Their earnings problem will send their stock dropping faster than Wile E. Coyote off the edge of a cliff holding onto a ten-ton boulder. In fact, aren't there now reports floating around that web-based advertising is an across-the-board failure?
The upshot of all this is the Internet is neither television, nor radio, nor print media The true value of the Internet has yet to be realized. The really innovative and workable business models have not been invented yet. They lie somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum, with the truly far-fetched no-effort bullshit sucker IPO mentality on one end and the traditional advertising revenue stream models on the other. With all that being said, however, this phase we're now nearing the end of was inevitable. A necessary part of evolution and ultimately survival of the fittest. At long last we're seeing the unequivocally "good" result that these flawed models are being flushed out of the system once they're shown to be total garbage. My only regret is that I never cashed in on my idea for the Internet pooper-scooper. I probably could have sold that concept to some clueless VC guys 2 or 3 years ago and then I would be sitting pretty.