Good point. Actually, our perception that tone quality should be pure is mostly based on western music. In an ethnomusicology class I took, they noted that the African perception of sound quality is different because they put pieces of metal that rattle or clink together when they play, so the sound should have more of a gritty quality to it to sound "correct".
This is probably no different than older people who prefer the sound of a phonograph over modern high quality digital recorded mediums like the CD. Warmness of sound on phonographs may be the equivilent to the mp3 sizzle that he talks about. People are used to hearing music over lower quality mediums like FM radio, streaming internet connections and real player. Its good that he is doing this research though because its time dependent and you won't be able to do it later.
Not Invented Here slows down a lot more progress then it helps.
Maybe in the short term, but in the long term when you are talking about a whole society inventing things. The USSR, having different needs and different mindsets, may have come up with unique technologies that where not tried here. For instance, what if they would have gone the trinary route instead of binary, or if they had made their first computers more like the ideas behind the thinking machine from MIT. I think then you wouldn't be saying that it was a waste of time because their technology would show more of what is possible.
Actually, ex-soviet computer scientists apparently where not happy with the former governments choice to use non-soviet produced computers and protocols. They felt that it dampened the ability for them to make their own technologies.
Check out the history of Soviet computer technology on wikipedia sometime, its interesting. Most of it cuts off in the 60s and 70s and then they just started using IBMs and stuff.
I know exactly how you feel. I've been using "lite" ergo keyboards that you can buy in the store since 1997 when I started programming. There have been a number of disturbing trends. The most annoying being:
*The general decline of ergo keyboards available *The plus sign arrow keys *The 3x2 arrangement of the ins/del/home/end *Strange splits of the keys in the middle. *Split spacebar. *Trying to fit a touchpad or trackball onto the keyboard. *Keys that are larger than they should be. *Pipe key in some strange place.
The 4000 comes pretty darn close to fixing a lot of those things and it looks cool (except for the Microsoft logo which I mark out) and feels nice. I actually own 4 of these and stockpile any that I can that people get rid of just in case there is another bad trend in keyboards.
As for your complaint about the caps lock or multimedia keys. I turned my caps lock key into an Esc key because I use vim and I turn several of my multimedia keys into doing other things like starting up a terminal or opening gedit.
For mice, I love the Logitech MX518 gaming grade mouse.
This is such a bad idea. I think any company who buys these will be shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, in the 90s companies generally hated putting http:/// in advertising. Then they dropped the www part and just made it company.com. Now they are having their ultimate dream. To drop the.com part too. But with that comes a major problem. How are average people going to distinguish what is a internet address from something else?
Imagine this, Ford says in its advertising: "Go to ford.com". Its obvious here what to do. Now imagine they get just the TLD 'ford'. So what do you say. "Go to ford"? What the hell does that mean. Now they'll start having to say things like "Type ford into your web browser's address bar" Yeah, that's a whole lot easier to say than ford.com. Idiots.
I hope this totally backfires on all the marketing and sales people in the world so that they learn their lesson.
A good, solid UPS is very reliable as long as you keep it maintained. The major issue is keeping the batteries good, not continually exposing them to deep discharges, etc.
Actually, the UPS in question had just recently had its battery pack replaced. And this was an APC 1400VA rack mount UPS, nothing cheap. I know another sysadmin that said he had the same problem once as well. So apparently something else very critical can fail inside UPSes besides the battery.
For more information, this is in a data center with diesel generator that kicks in after 30 seconds, so the UPSes generally only see 30 seconds of action maybe once a month.
And before you think that all your PSUs are failing because you bought them on the cheap, you should also check your UPS. I had 13 PSUs die at Suso and thought it was just horrible luck with power supplies, until I realized that the 5 year old UPS that those servers were on was having issues. Since I replaced it, haven't had any problems since. *knock* *knock*
Its also amazing how many people who use RAID think that RAID-0 is a good idea. Your chances of a array failure are 2^n times greater than with 1 disk where n is the number of disks in the array.
If they are worried about the USA Patriot Act, then why Cananda?
I recently returned from Mexico to the US and there was some policy they stated saying if you are a US or Canadian citizen, you don't have to fill out an I-94. Ok, I didn't know they were the same country?
Obviously this question hasn't been answered for the general public because this is like the 4th year in a row that this question has been asked on Slashdot.
Yes I agree and have the same odd feeling. The first time I read an article where I think Los Alamos was ordering a supercomputer with 8192 Pentium Pro processors in it, I was like WTF?
I missed the days when super computers looked like alien technology or Raiders of the Lost Ark.
and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel.
Call me old fashioned or whatever the cute term is now. But fuck that! If I ever see programs like cp become bloated with X library calls because some news reporter needs to see a GUI progress bar, I'm going to be very angry.
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Good point. Actually, our perception that tone quality should be pure is mostly based on western music. In an ethnomusicology class I took, they noted that the African perception of sound quality is different because they put pieces of metal that rattle or clink together when they play, so the sound should have more of a gritty quality to it to sound "correct".
This is probably no different than older people who prefer the sound of a phonograph over modern high quality digital recorded mediums like the CD. Warmness of sound on phonographs may be the equivilent to the mp3 sizzle that he talks about. People are used to hearing music over lower quality mediums like FM radio, streaming internet connections and real player. Its good that he is doing this research though because its time dependent and you won't be able to do it later.
I'll hvae to go to the dotcor, I msut be dyslxeic.
I'm interested in preventing privacy too.
I wonder, can you use your shuba off one of those things?
Since the beginning of Suso in 1997, I've been using the first names of great composers and musicians.
Antonio, Franz, Gustav, Arvo, Camille, etc.
It has worked quite well as there are a lot of unique yet pronounceable names.
Not Invented Here slows down a lot more progress then it helps.
Maybe in the short term, but in the long term when you are talking about a whole society inventing things. The USSR, having different needs and different mindsets, may have come up with unique technologies that where not tried here. For instance, what if they would have gone the trinary route instead of binary, or if they had made their first computers more like the ideas behind the thinking machine from MIT. I think then you wouldn't be saying that it was a waste of time because their technology would show more of what is possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_communist_countries
What I mean by cut off is that they mostly just started using processors from the free world instead of making their own.
Actually, ex-soviet computer scientists apparently where not happy with the former governments choice to use non-soviet produced computers and protocols. They felt that it dampened the ability for them to make their own technologies.
Check out the history of Soviet computer technology on wikipedia sometime, its interesting. Most of it cuts off in the 60s and 70s and then they just started using IBMs and stuff.
I already work 80 hours.
Oh wait, 9 days. Ok, I see what you mean now. I thought you meant 5.
I know exactly how you feel. I've been using "lite" ergo keyboards that you can buy in the store since 1997 when I started programming. There have been a number of disturbing trends. The most annoying being:
*The general decline of ergo keyboards available
*The plus sign arrow keys
*The 3x2 arrangement of the ins/del/home/end
*Strange splits of the keys in the middle.
*Split spacebar.
*Trying to fit a touchpad or trackball onto the keyboard.
*Keys that are larger than they should be.
*Pipe key in some strange place.
The 4000 comes pretty darn close to fixing a lot of those things and it looks cool (except for the Microsoft logo which I mark out) and feels nice. I actually own 4 of these and stockpile any that I can that people get rid of just in case there is another bad trend in keyboards.
As for your complaint about the caps lock or multimedia keys. I turned my caps lock key into an Esc key because I use vim and I turn several of my multimedia keys into doing other things like starting up a terminal or opening gedit.
For mice, I love the Logitech MX518 gaming grade mouse.
This is such a bad idea. I think any company who buys these will be shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, in the 90s companies generally hated putting http:/// in advertising. Then they dropped the www part and just made it company.com. Now they are having their ultimate dream. To drop the .com part too. But with that comes a major problem. How are average people going to distinguish what is a internet address from something else?
Imagine this, Ford says in its advertising: "Go to ford.com". Its obvious here what to do. Now imagine they get just the TLD 'ford'. So what do you say. "Go to ford"? What the hell does that mean. Now they'll start having to say things like "Type ford into your web browser's address bar" Yeah, that's a whole lot easier to say than ford.com. Idiots.
I hope this totally backfires on all the marketing and sales people in the world so that they learn their lesson.
A good, solid UPS is very reliable as long as you keep it maintained. The major issue is keeping the batteries good, not continually exposing them to deep discharges, etc.
Actually, the UPS in question had just recently had its battery pack replaced. And this was an APC 1400VA rack mount UPS, nothing cheap. I know another sysadmin that said he had the same problem once as well. So apparently something else very critical can fail inside UPSes besides the battery.
For more information, this is in a data center with diesel generator that kicks in after 30 seconds, so the UPSes generally only see 30 seconds of action maybe once a month.
And before you think that all your PSUs are failing because you bought them on the cheap, you should also check your UPS. I had 13 PSUs die at Suso and thought it was just horrible luck with power supplies, until I realized that the 5 year old UPS that those servers were on was having issues. Since I replaced it, haven't had any problems since. *knock* *knock*
Obviously the author is a python programmer because they think that Python is perfect and unrestrictive. Pft!
Besides, I thought that mod_rewrite was voodoo, not perl.
Its also amazing how many people who use RAID think that RAID-0 is a good idea. Your chances of a array failure are 2^n times greater than with 1 disk where n is the number of disks in the array.
Since when did Dungeons and Dragons have nuclear missles? Is that a 4th edition thing?
If they are worried about the USA Patriot Act, then why Cananda?
I recently returned from Mexico to the US and there was some policy they stated saying if you are a US or Canadian citizen, you don't have to fill out an I-94. Ok, I didn't know they were the same country?
Obviously this question hasn't been answered for the general public because this is like the 4th year in a row that this question has been asked on Slashdot.
That is really cool. Like some kind of galactic diff.
Yes I agree and have the same odd feeling. The first time I read an article where I think Los Alamos was ordering a supercomputer with 8192 Pentium Pro processors in it, I was like WTF?
I missed the days when super computers looked like alien technology or Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Sounds like its time for supercomputers to go their own way again. I'd love to see some new technologies.
I'm not sure what you mean. Does Ctrl-Alt-F8, Ctrl-Alt-F9 not work for you?
and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel.
Call me old fashioned or whatever the cute term is now. But fuck that! If I ever see programs like cp become bloated with X library calls because some news reporter needs to see a GUI progress bar, I'm going to be very angry.
Never heard of 9 inch floppies, is that a mistake and they meant 8 inch? I can't find anything about 9 inch floppy in a quick search on Google.