Yeah, Hitachi builds one, it's called the MPEGcam. It uses a PCMCIA hard disk or memory card. It's just a bit larger than an electric shaver, its made to be handheld. I used one for a while, I even made a movie for spanish class my junior year of high school with it (97-98). Though they seem to like using flash cards with it now, I used it with the hard drive. I think it stored about 20 minutes of video. You can see it at http://www.mpegcam.com/a
I remember playing with an old CP/M machine a few years ago. It didn't have a battery-backed RTC, so you had to enter the date and time every time it booted (along with some PCs/XTs and TRS-80s and others). Because I didn't feel like entering the date every time, I'd just enter all ones.
Finally, one time when I was in DisplayWriter, I noticed that the date at the top of the screen was listed as "November 11, 2011"! So back in 1983, at least they had the foresight to put Y2K compatibilty in DisplayWriter. (I think it was DisplayWriter anyway -- or was that an IBM thing?).
Ah, the good old Atari 800XL. My elementary school was full of 'em. We had all sorts of education games, like "Word Balloons" and some of the lucky classrooms had *printers* and the Print Shop. They were a tiny machine too, probably smaller than the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. The used a giant disk drive though. It was horrendously loud. Reading disks sounded like it was grinding gears on a truck. They all sounded that way. We also used a program called "translator" to run certain software. I never figured out what that one did.
They were useful machines, plenty for educational games. And they didn't crash. Neither did our PS/2's when we got them. We had to wait for Windows before we could experience crashing.
Yeah, I wish we still used gopher and telnet. Now it's all this icky graphical web crap that's incredibly slow. I don't think I'd mind a textual interface. Email takes forever if you use the Webmail interface. And registration is horrible too (though that's at least as much Peoplesoft's fault as anything else.) I'll just stick with Pine for now (even though I have to pay $10/semester for the privilege of just checking my school-related email on Pine).
For fast information access, I think text terminals still serve a lot of use. I wish I could go anywhere in the country and just quick check my mail on a text terminal rather than having to use Yahoo! mail or UofM webmail. And I'd even pay for the privilege (not Minitel rates though, but I'd pay $10/semester anyway).
N is the *same* in both positions. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but NANPA refers to it as 1-8NN too. (Where N is the same number in both digit positions, i.e. 888, 877, 866.).
What's the difference between a 10- and 7-digit number? Not much, unless you've got some embedded device that needs to dial a 7-digit call and can't easily be changed. What happens if you get stuck in an elevator, you hit the call button and hear "the number you have dialed must be dialed with the area code first. please hang up and try again."
But the big problem is that the FCC wants to make the option to have area codes that start with 0 or 1. See here for my explanation why this is bad.
And is it just me, or does it seem like the FCC is going into this without thinking about how the telephone system works at all? It seems like this would be better handled by a group that does this full time, the North American Numbering Plan Administration.
Read the article.:) The problem isn't that we'd all have to dial 10 digits, it's that the FCC wants to change the fundamental meaning of the 'sacred' 0 and 1 in a phone number
FCC officials contend that 10-digit dialing would create tens of millions of new local phone numbers beginning with the digit "1" or "0."
1 signifies dialing a long-distance call, a toll call in all cases except 1-800, 1-500, 1-888, 1-8NN. 0 signifies an operator-assisted call. If the FCC would change this so that you could be dialing crosstown into a different area code and dial a 1 or 0 but not be making a long-distance or operator assisted call. Then, what happens if you hit an extra digit? Look:
Local cross-area call: 162-523-3445
But then add an extra digit, either through a slip of a key, or dialing one of those 777-MONEY numbers or something.
Your local call changes to:
1-625-233-4450, a long distance call. That's what the problem is really about.
For dialing nationally, to a different area code, everyone already must dial 1-NPA-EXC-xxxx where NPA is the area code, and EXC is the exchange number (now an outdated idea in some areas) plus the 4-digit local number. For calls within the same NPA (area code), one could just dial EXC-xxxx. Calls outside the area code are dialed NPA-EXC-xxxx for a local (toll free) call or 1-NPA-EXC-xxxx for a toll call.
Here in Minnesota, I can dial xxx-xxxx for a number in central Minneapolis, 651-xxx-xxxx for St. Paul, 763-xxx-xxx for the northwest suburbs, 952-xxx-xxx for the southwst suburbs all as a local call. For a long-distance call, like to my parents in the northwest part of the state, I dial a 1-218-xxx-xxxx.
If we had area codes starting with 1 (which could only be done with 10 digits) it would look something like 151-xxx-xxxx which would start with a 1, like a long distance call, but would be local. Which is where the confusion (understandably) comes up.
Oh, and North American phone numbers are of fixed-length, so we can't simply make numbers longer without a fundamental change in the system. (Like other countries which may have numbers that are area code + either 7 or 8 digits long) Which would be just as difficult as changing systems to allow area codes that start with a 1 or 0.
Phillippines Telecom (or whatever their name is - PLDT?) likes being a dinosaur. They have enough of a stranglehold on the government, that they can stay antiquated and still make money. No doubt they had something to do with initiating this legislation. They can sit back and do nothing and still earn money.
I did actually know that, but I didn't know that it was actually *useful*, just that it was possible. I thought must real-world use of Linux on these machines was under OS/390. As for the number of processors, I misread this line: As with the S/390, the z900 machines can be clustered into a Sysplex with a grand total of up to 640 processors. 512 are available for user tasks and the rest are used for supervisory purposes.
From what I understand, Linux just runs on top of the core OS. It doesn't actually run the entire system (I don't think that Red Hat Linux would be all that good at 640-way SMP). It's not like IBM is dumping their current OS, they're just adding Linux as a very good thing to run on the system -- up to 16 copies running all at once.
This Enterprise Linux Today article has more info.
AT&T Corp. is considering a plan to charge Internet retailers a commission each time a customer buys something through the telecom's broadband network, an industry analyst said Monday.
Hold on! They haven't decided yet. And if enough people bitch and moan, they won't do it. So don't start thinking that they are going to do it, but it's probably a good idea to let 'em know your thoughts on the idea!
I agree with you there, that's a point I hadn't considered. Your total personal info is certainly worth more than the $25 savings on a domain registration, or the free cat-shaped UPC reader. People give up their personal info for that one instance, saying, "OK, this is worth $25" but it's really worth a *lot* more than that, especially if it leaks out or gets sold when a dotcom goes belly up.
You ever think of it that way? Privacy is like money, or rather the lack thereof. It's kind of like Tivo is raising their rates. Companies will give you money if you forsake some of your privacy (or if not money, maybe little plastic gadgets with PS/2 connectors). Privacy is money. Will companies start charging more if you don't want to share your personal info? I got a domain name free (afiler.com) by signing up to subject myself to spam. It's pretty clear to me that my personal info (and eyeballs!) are worth real money.
Is Tivo going to let you opt-out? If not, maybe they'll let you keep your privacy for a price. Although it looks like right now, the Tivo policy is "Anonymous Only". I'm still glad I've got the Dish Network box instead. I don't have to leave it plugged into my phone line, or plug it in at all. That's the only way I can be sure that it's really one way. I'd rather just have my personal recording bundled with my satellite service then have my TV tastes auctioned off.
New Scientist [slightly OT]
on
3D Printers
·
· Score: 1
Is it just me, or is New Scientist really good at blowing things out of proportion? They seemed to be pretty good with this article, but sometimes they take a tiny little concept and blow it out of proportion. (If you subscribe to the magazine, like me, you know what I mean.) At least, they're really good at attention-getting headlines. How respectable of a magazine is this? It seems to be sort of the TIME of science magazines. I enjoy reading it, but sometimes it's like they've taken the tiniest bit of evidence or new research and blown it in to a screaming magazine cover. Just a thought.
Check out net.jokes. There are some good ones in there, as well as some debate about ethnic jokes in there. I found this one from (I think) Brad Templeton, founder of clari.net and former moderator for rec.humor.funny:
Awatmath.1335
net.jokes,net.news
utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton
Fri Dec 18 22:02:24 1981
The censorship debate
OK : here goes.
*Flame on*
The debate on this topic is astounding. I was a little surprised to
see my own site contributing so much of the net.jokes.q material, but I
see other sites have made up for their slack. I have a (perhaps mistaken)
impression that the people reading this come from a group far more educated
than the general public. We are not the general public - we're UNIX
programmers, users and students working in high-tech environments. For
this reason I am under the impression that ideas like censorship would not
be brought up. Censorship, as I see it, is based on a few tenets. One,
somebody decides that certain material might tend to deprave or corrupt.
That some people might take something under the heading of jokes seriously
indicates they are the ones who should get their heads examined.
Secondly, censors (in a broader sense) snip because of possible libel.
Again, a joke is rarely considered in such terms. Some censors want to snip
because material 'offends' them. It's difficult to argue with such people,
(not because they have a point, it's just difficult to argue with them)
although many have tried. A typical example occured recently at Universities
all over Canada
Recently feminists of all sorts tried to close down Engineering
society newspapers on campuses. At this university, the society arranged
it so they would distribute their paper, Enginews, only to students who
came into the society office and showed a valid student card! Despite this,
some people claimed they found the material offensive, even though they
had to work subversively to get it. (I might add, the paper still publishes)
The netnews is in some forms a 'press', but it is a unique new
type. With this system, I can have the computer screen out the smut
I don't want to see for me. This gives the censors even less of a leg
to stand on because it is now clearer that only those who have asked to
read net.jokes.q are reading it.
Ah well, enough tirade. I just hope that this new form of news
and discussion distribution does not fall prey to vultures. Those of us
on the ARPAnet and usenet are pioneers, in a way, of what may become the
main method of news distribution. Let's do it right.
Another note: Somebody suggested signing names. CCA-UNIX has a rather
nice and simple mod to their mail which puts the name from/etc/passwd
(entered vi chfn) into a mail message every time. Perhaps something
for this in news might be nice.
I'd rather not have a job in Europe than work in the US on a shitty job at McDonald, not even earning enough money to buy myself an health insurance.
Funny that, in the Twin Cities, Papa John's pizza delivery drivers make $15/hr plus health insurance, and they even get stock options. Plus tips. For a foodservice job, I don't think $15/hr is bad.
My local (independent) phone company just sent out the new 2001 phone book. I noticed it was quite a bit thicker than the old one. I found it why -- it includes a new grey section, which lists *EVERY TELEPHONE NUMBER IN ORDER* and *WHO IT BELONGS TO*.
It's awful handy, since they give away free caller ID, but name delivery isn't available. I can just look almost anyone up instead!
80mph! Sometimes, but on sunday coming back into the twin cities on 94, for example, I was doing 85mph (in my 1988 Ford Bronco II w/ 222k mi) and getting passed by half the cars on the road. Damn sunday drivers!:)
Not anymore. Manufacturers used to use the LPX standard (instead of AT) for motherboards, with a proprietary riser card and backplate. The standards have changed. The new standards are NLX and ATX. Only a few companies use NLX, and NLX boards are found in slimline desktop PCs. (The IBM 300GL for example). But machines from Compaq, Gateway, Dell, etc. are almost always ATX or mini-ATX format, which is the same motherboard standard that pieced-together PCs use. Even my proprietary-looking Compaq iPAQ's use the mini-ATX motherboard format.
Comparatively, though, I think English is a pretty efficient language. Maybe change some words, like "though" to "tho", and things like that, but it's really not that bad. Try writing in Spanish and then go back to English. Wow. You don't have to worry about putting ends on all the words, you don't have to concatenate things together with "de", and words just generally seem to be shorter.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that there could be far less efficient languages to be the Lingua Franca of the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, Hitachi builds one, it's called the MPEGcam. It uses a PCMCIA hard disk or memory card. It's just a bit larger than an electric shaver, its made to be handheld. I used one for a while, I even made a movie for spanish class my junior year of high school with it (97-98). Though they seem to like using flash cards with it now, I used it with the hard drive. I think it stored about 20 minutes of video. You can see it at http://www.mpegcam.com/a
I remember playing with an old CP/M machine a few years ago. It didn't have a battery-backed RTC, so you had to enter the date and time every time it booted (along with some PCs/XTs and TRS-80s and others). Because I didn't feel like entering the date every time, I'd just enter all ones.
Finally, one time when I was in DisplayWriter, I noticed that the date at the top of the screen was listed as "November 11, 2011"! So back in 1983, at least they had the foresight to put Y2K compatibilty in DisplayWriter. (I think it was DisplayWriter anyway -- or was that an IBM thing?).
Ah, the good old Atari 800XL. My elementary school was full of 'em. We had all sorts of education games, like "Word Balloons" and some of the lucky classrooms had *printers* and the Print Shop. They were a tiny machine too, probably smaller than the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. The used a giant disk drive though. It was horrendously loud. Reading disks sounded like it was grinding gears on a truck. They all sounded that way. We also used a program called "translator" to run certain software. I never figured out what that one did.
They were useful machines, plenty for educational games. And they didn't crash. Neither did our PS/2's when we got them. We had to wait for Windows before we could experience crashing.
Yeah, I wish we still used gopher and telnet. Now it's all this icky graphical web crap that's incredibly slow. I don't think I'd mind a textual interface. Email takes forever if you use the Webmail interface. And registration is horrible too (though that's at least as much Peoplesoft's fault as anything else.) I'll just stick with Pine for now (even though I have to pay $10/semester for the privilege of just checking my school-related email on Pine).
For fast information access, I think text terminals still serve a lot of use. I wish I could go anywhere in the country and just quick check my mail on a text terminal rather than having to use Yahoo! mail or UofM webmail. And I'd even pay for the privilege (not Minitel rates though, but I'd pay $10/semester anyway).
N is the *same* in both positions. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but NANPA refers to it as 1-8NN too. (Where N is the same number in both digit positions, i.e. 888, 877, 866.).
But the big problem is that the FCC wants to make the option to have area codes that start with 0 or 1. See here for my explanation why this is bad.
And is it just me, or does it seem like the FCC is going into this without thinking about how the telephone system works at all? It seems like this would be better handled by a group that does this full time, the North American Numbering Plan Administration.
FCC officials contend that 10-digit dialing would create tens of millions of new local phone numbers beginning with the digit "1" or "0."
1 signifies dialing a long-distance call, a toll call in all cases except 1-800, 1-500, 1-888, 1-8NN. 0 signifies an operator-assisted call. If the FCC would change this so that you could be dialing crosstown into a different area code and dial a 1 or 0 but not be making a long-distance or operator assisted call. Then, what happens if you hit an extra digit? Look:
Local cross-area call: 162-523-3445
But then add an extra digit, either through a slip of a key, or dialing one of those 777-MONEY numbers or something.
Your local call changes to: 1-625-233-4450, a long distance call. That's what the problem is really about.
For dialing nationally, to a different area code, everyone already must dial 1-NPA-EXC-xxxx where NPA is the area code, and EXC is the exchange number (now an outdated idea in some areas) plus the 4-digit local number. For calls within the same NPA (area code), one could just dial EXC-xxxx. Calls outside the area code are dialed NPA-EXC-xxxx for a local (toll free) call or 1-NPA-EXC-xxxx for a toll call.
Here in Minnesota, I can dial xxx-xxxx for a number in central Minneapolis, 651-xxx-xxxx for St. Paul, 763-xxx-xxx for the northwest suburbs, 952-xxx-xxx for the southwst suburbs all as a local call. For a long-distance call, like to my parents in the northwest part of the state, I dial a 1-218-xxx-xxxx.
If we had area codes starting with 1 (which could only be done with 10 digits) it would look something like 151-xxx-xxxx which would start with a 1, like a long distance call, but would be local. Which is where the confusion (understandably) comes up.
Oh, and North American phone numbers are of fixed-length, so we can't simply make numbers longer without a fundamental change in the system. (Like other countries which may have numbers that are area code + either 7 or 8 digits long) Which would be just as difficult as changing systems to allow area codes that start with a 1 or 0.
Phillippines Telecom (or whatever their name is - PLDT?) likes being a dinosaur. They have enough of a stranglehold on the government, that they can stay antiquated and still make money. No doubt they had something to do with initiating this legislation. They can sit back and do nothing and still earn money.
I did actually know that, but I didn't know that it was actually *useful*, just that it was possible. I thought must real-world use of Linux on these machines was under OS/390. As for the number of processors, I misread this line: As with the S/390, the z900 machines can be clustered into a Sysplex with a grand total of up to 640 processors. 512 are available for user tasks and the rest are used for supervisory purposes.
From what I understand, Linux just runs on top of the core OS. It doesn't actually run the entire system (I don't think that Red Hat Linux would be all that good at 640-way SMP). It's not like IBM is dumping their current OS, they're just adding Linux as a very good thing to run on the system -- up to 16 copies running all at once. This Enterprise Linux Today article has more info.
Hold on! They haven't decided yet. And if enough people bitch and moan, they won't do it. So don't start thinking that they are going to do it, but it's probably a good idea to let 'em know your thoughts on the idea!
Write to AT&T and tell em what you think!
I agree with you there, that's a point I hadn't considered. Your total personal info is certainly worth more than the $25 savings on a domain registration, or the free cat-shaped UPC reader. People give up their personal info for that one instance, saying, "OK, this is worth $25" but it's really worth a *lot* more than that, especially if it leaks out or gets sold when a dotcom goes belly up.
Great insight.
Is Tivo going to let you opt-out? If not, maybe they'll let you keep your privacy for a price. Although it looks like right now, the Tivo policy is "Anonymous Only". I'm still glad I've got the Dish Network box instead. I don't have to leave it plugged into my phone line, or plug it in at all. That's the only way I can be sure that it's really one way. I'd rather just have my personal recording bundled with my satellite service then have my TV tastes auctioned off.
Is it just me, or is New Scientist really good at blowing things out of proportion? They seemed to be pretty good with this article, but sometimes they take a tiny little concept and blow it out of proportion. (If you subscribe to the magazine, like me, you know what I mean.) At least, they're really good at attention-getting headlines. How respectable of a magazine is this? It seems to be sort of the TIME of science magazines. I enjoy reading it, but sometimes it's like they've taken the tiniest bit of evidence or new research and blown it in to a screaming magazine cover. Just a thought.
Awatmath.1335
net.jokes,net.news
utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton
Fri Dec 18 22:02:24 1981 The censorship debate
OK : here goes.
*Flame on*
The debate on this topic is astounding. I was a little surprised to see my own site contributing so much of the net.jokes.q material, but I see other sites have made up for their slack. I have a (perhaps mistaken) impression that the people reading this come from a group far more educated than the general public. We are not the general public - we're UNIX programmers, users and students working in high-tech environments. For this reason I am under the impression that ideas like censorship would not be brought up. Censorship, as I see it, is based on a few tenets. One, somebody decides that certain material might tend to deprave or corrupt. That some people might take something under the heading of jokes seriously indicates they are the ones who should get their heads examined. Secondly, censors (in a broader sense) snip because of possible libel. Again, a joke is rarely considered in such terms. Some censors want to snip because material 'offends' them. It's difficult to argue with such people, (not because they have a point, it's just difficult to argue with them) although many have tried. A typical example occured recently at Universities all over Canada
Recently feminists of all sorts tried to close down Engineering society newspapers on campuses. At this university, the society arranged it so they would distribute their paper, Enginews, only to students who came into the society office and showed a valid student card! Despite this, some people claimed they found the material offensive, even though they had to work subversively to get it. (I might add, the paper still publishes)
The netnews is in some forms a 'press', but it is a unique new type. With this system, I can have the computer screen out the smut I don't want to see for me. This gives the censors even less of a leg to stand on because it is now clearer that only those who have asked to read net.jokes.q are reading it.
Ah well, enough tirade. I just hope that this new form of news and discussion distribution does not fall prey to vultures. Those of us on the ARPAnet and usenet are pioneers, in a way, of what may become the main method of news distribution. Let's do it right.
Another note: Somebody suggested signing names. CCA-UNIX has a rather nice and simple mod to their mail which puts the name from /etc/passwd
(entered vi chfn) into a mail message every time. Perhaps something
for this in news might be nice.
Funny that, in the Twin Cities, Papa John's pizza delivery drivers make $15/hr plus health insurance, and they even get stock options. Plus tips. For a foodservice job, I don't think $15/hr is bad.
My local (independent) phone company just sent out the new 2001 phone book. I noticed it was quite a bit thicker than the old one. I found it why -- it includes a new grey section, which lists *EVERY TELEPHONE NUMBER IN ORDER* and *WHO IT BELONGS TO*.
It's awful handy, since they give away free caller ID, but name delivery isn't available. I can just look almost anyone up instead!
80mph! Sometimes, but on sunday coming back into the twin cities on 94, for example, I was doing 85mph (in my 1988 Ford Bronco II w/ 222k mi) and getting passed by half the cars on the road. Damn sunday drivers! :)
Not anymore. Manufacturers used to use the LPX standard (instead of AT) for motherboards, with a proprietary riser card and backplate. The standards have changed. The new standards are NLX and ATX. Only a few companies use NLX, and NLX boards are found in slimline desktop PCs. (The IBM 300GL for example). But machines from Compaq, Gateway, Dell, etc. are almost always ATX or mini-ATX format, which is the same motherboard standard that pieced-together PCs use. Even my proprietary-looking Compaq iPAQ's use the mini-ATX motherboard format.
Intel made the announcement at a UPnP summit at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.
:)
Hahahhahaha. Enough said.
But your second line
Has too many syllables
I made a new one:
New ad serve method
My privacy disappears
into bad patents.
Four times? I found it *nine* times:
...drawing on each other's features and innovations...
...Windows can incorporate innovations that can then be further leveraged...
...sharing its innovative work among...
...benefits of innovative, user-friendly technologies...
...further drove innovation across the industry...
...great efficiency of innovation in platform software...
...such innovations might never have...
...Provisions like these would kill innovation in the OS...
...developers who depend on constant innovation in the OS...
Comparatively, though, I think English is a pretty efficient language. Maybe change some words, like "though" to "tho", and things like that, but it's really not that bad. Try writing in Spanish and then go back to English. Wow. You don't have to worry about putting ends on all the words, you don't have to concatenate things together with "de", and words just generally seem to be shorter.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that there could be far less efficient languages to be the Lingua Franca of the Internet.
Well, I guess it's good they used the Latin word durare (the Dur- part), rather than the English word, hard.
(Hardon?)