My first computer. Of course, mine was gotten in 1987, when the 386 was common and the 486 was t3h 1337 b0xx. Castoff from my uncle's CPA practice. One hell of a little machine.
...where have I seen that before? Where the true Root account is hidden and you have to go through a painstaking procedure to enable it? Where the "admin" account is actually a standard user that has to sudo to do Root-y stuff? Oh yeah, Mac OS X. And Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, which was influenced by Mac OS X to do the same thing.
It's been a sweet little printer...never gave me trouble unless I used a leaky refilled cartridge. It doesn't draw as much current as the others in Gen 4 and is surprisingly light. Got it off eBay for $25 and cartridges on eBay run about the same. I think there is an LaserWriter that is identical to it except for the Appletalk interface. It's not a tank, it's a mini-tank. An SUV of a printer, if you will.
I suspect there is already a skunk works project uniting aspects of Vista with some sort of BSD kernel/userland as we speak. FreeBSD? NetBSD? OpenBSD? Who knows. However, the BSD licence would allow them to completely "Borg" their chosen version of BSD and keep everything closed up tight.
BSD is a venerable OS at this point, proven stable and secure. Vista is in very scary shape right now if TFA is to be believed. If Microsoft released a "Windows" with BSD under the hood, they could in one stroke get rid of the earned perception that Windows is an insecure OS with stability issues.
They could do worse. As in maintain the status quo.
Berman and Braga had BETTER NOT be involved with this.
Also, someone needs to create a character for Wil Wheaton. I would have liked to see Wil as a young Kirk but I guess Matt Damon has better box office draw.
However, J.J. Abrams' involvement in this is promising. Maybe they'll be able to atone for the absolutely horrible botch that was "Enterprise." And for the less horrible botch that was "Voyager."
I agree that maybe this new one should be kind of tongue-in-cheek.
There is also the not-so-small matter of "Blood diamonds" or "Conflict diamonds," where diamonds mined in areas of Africa suffering civil wars are used to finance conflicts. Do you really know where that diamond came from? If you don't, you might be fueling rape and murder in war-torn countries.
I'd rather have a techie toy than a diamond. When I got married, I dissuaded my spouse-to-be from buying me a diamond because at that time most diamonds were either coming out of South Africa or brokered by the South African DeBeers cartel and South Africa was still under Apartheid. I got a Claddagh ring, with no stone, instead. No way in HELL did I want to support the Apartheid South African regime. South Africa managed to shrug off Apartheid without major bloodshed, thankfully. However, if I was to do it all over again I would do the same because of the issue of Blood diamonds/Conflict diamonds.
My aunt gave me the first-gen iBook she took quite literally around the world. The handle has cracks, but that's the only thing that happened to it after almost 7 years of use. It was in great shape otherwise and after a major upgrade (30GB hard drive, a 512MB SO-DIMM bringing the RAM up to 544MB) it still is quite useful after all these years. I run Panther with all the upgrades. I could run Tiger but it would require using X Post Facto because of the lack of FireWire.
And people still look at it as if it is the kewlest little lappie ever made. "Aww...it's so CUTE!"
I mentioned this once before but I'll do it again because 1.) I'm a glutton for punishment, and 2.) I think I'm right.
The big winner in this will be San Diego Comic-Con. Already, many of the game publishers are exhibiting there, and one of the "big three" console makers as well. (Nintendo) I strongly believe that Comic-Con will attract more as e3 becomes smaller and smaller.
...has been having more and more gaming content as time goes on. With E3 "retooling" Comic-Con may get more and more important for consumer-directed news about games. Unfortunately this year Nintendo focused on DS and DS Lite and didn't bring the Wii kit. I predict this will change.
I'm reading this from my original-recipe blueberry iBook. Yes, still useful after all these years. It might not be the fastest computer on the block, it might not run Tiger, but it runs Panther and it still does everything I need it to do. And does it in so much style people still stop and stare at me when I bring the thing to my local coffeehouse. Not because they think I'm nuts because I'm running on an antique. It's because it still looks bitchen. Snoogans, biotch!
Ex-Fry's worker over here. I doubt Fry's owns ECS. They're too cheap to do something like buy out a supplier.
ECS stuff is CRAP though. Absolute fsckn crap. As well as ECS, "Great Quality" and PC Chips, stay away from anything labeled Amptron. Same company. Same "Great Quality" meaning none.
Actually if you go to Archive.Org the entire collection of the Edison National Historic Site is available for guilt-free 100% free download. When the Cartoon Geeks Podcast was looking for theme music, I went there and found the song that we're now using, Sensation Jazz by the Jazz All Stars. It was recorded in 1919 for Edison, and features the xylophonist who later would go on to play on Disney's first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, and the later Disney classic The Skeleton Dance.
Also, when I had clearance problems for a song I wanted to use for a video I put up on You Tube, I replaced it with another piece from the Edison collection, a version of "Ride of the Valkyries" done by the Edison Symphony Orchestra. Again, found on Archive.Org.
It is ironic these recordings are now in the public domain, because Hollywood was founded on an intellectual property dispute. The dispute was between Thomas Edison and the Motion Picture Patents Trust and people like Carl Laemmle and Cecil B. DeMille who didn't want to pay the toll Edison wanted to extract on his invention. Edison probably would have loved the current IP climate, and would probably be a big supporter of the MPAA and RIAA.
I think Paul Verhoeven and JMS both have to give propers to David Cronenburg, who came up with the idea of very interactive TV in the '80s with Videodrome.
It didn't help J.D. Rockefeller clean up his soiled image to become a philanthropist. Everyone still associates him with being a Robber Baron and a bastard. The halo effect he got towards the end of his life for giving away half his fortune didn't "fix" his eventual historical legacy.
The truth does come out, eventually. No matter what Bill Gates does to fix things, people will still remember that he made his way to the top by committingscrewjobs on those who really did the innovating.
There are some fairly basic things Google Spreadsheets can't do. For example, you cannot add decorative formatting to cells, which means that creating a "schedule" kind of document in Google Spreadsheets is impossible. It also tends to mangle Excel spreadsheets you send up to it.
I would never put real financial information on it. But for simple figuring, keeping track of the expenses you might incur on a trip, etc. etc. it's pretty neat. I won't abandon OpenOffice.Org anytime soon, but it's nice to have this kind of mathematical "scratch pad" available at any computer with FireFox or SeaMonkey.
The proof in the pudding is that when I'm at a coffeehouse people still stop and look at my blueberry clamshell iBook, vintage 1999. People don't give a crap about everyone else's generic black lappie. "Wow, that's so cool!" "That still works for you?" "It's so cute!" "Those Macs still rock." It has its limitations: 300MHz proc, 800 x 600 screen. However, boosting the HD space to 30GB and the RAM to its capacity 544MB means that Panther is quite happy on it, as are many Mac OS X apps. Sometimes I don't run the most 100% up to date version of a given app...I have Office for Mac:X on it instead of Office For Mac 2004. But still and all it's been good for me. It's nice to be able to go on a public WiFi network and not have to worry about getting 0wnz0r3d in spite of running a software firewall and spyware removers and anti-virus proggies etc. etc. etc.
Dreamcast: Keyboard and Mouse peripherals available at release, along with a rudimentary browser. Later taken advantage of by the wicked cool typing game "The Typing Of The Dead." Dreamcast will boot Linux, NetBSD, and Kallisti!OS as well as the official operating systems used, NAOMI and Windows CE. All v.1 units can boot burned CDs, v.2 units cannot...the capability was taken out of the BIOS to prevent "piracy."
Indeed. There is history of colon cancer in my family, and I'd rather have Mr. Wormbot crawling aroung my guts than a firehose being pushed through them.
I wonder if another iteration of the Wormbot could have a payload of a laser to zap polyps before they become cancerous. Yes, I'm talking about robot worms with frickin' lasers on their heads.
Slashdot Mirror
My first computer. Of course, mine was gotten in 1987, when the 386 was common and the 486 was t3h 1337 b0xx. Castoff from my uncle's CPA practice. One hell of a little machine.
...where have I seen that before? Where the true Root account is hidden and you have to go through a painstaking procedure to enable it? Where the "admin" account is actually a standard user that has to sudo to do Root-y stuff? Oh yeah, Mac OS X. And Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, which was influenced by Mac OS X to do the same thing.
...that quality has gone WAY DOWN on the Lenovo-designed ThinkPads.
It's been a sweet little printer...never gave me trouble unless I used a leaky refilled cartridge. It doesn't draw as much current as the others in Gen 4 and is surprisingly light. Got it off eBay for $25 and cartridges on eBay run about the same. I think there is an LaserWriter that is identical to it except for the Appletalk interface. It's not a tank, it's a mini-tank. An SUV of a printer, if you will.
...BSD.
I suspect there is already a skunk works project uniting aspects of Vista with some sort of BSD kernel/userland as we speak. FreeBSD? NetBSD? OpenBSD? Who knows. However, the BSD licence would allow them to completely "Borg" their chosen version of BSD and keep everything closed up tight.
BSD is a venerable OS at this point, proven stable and secure. Vista is in very scary shape right now if TFA is to be believed. If Microsoft released a "Windows" with BSD under the hood, they could in one stroke get rid of the earned perception that Windows is an insecure OS with stability issues.
They could do worse. As in maintain the status quo.
Berman and Braga had BETTER NOT be involved with this.
Also, someone needs to create a character for Wil Wheaton. I would have liked to see Wil as a young Kirk but I guess Matt Damon has better box office draw.
However, J.J. Abrams' involvement in this is promising. Maybe they'll be able to atone for the absolutely horrible botch that was "Enterprise." And for the less horrible botch that was "Voyager."
I agree that maybe this new one should be kind of tongue-in-cheek.
There is also the not-so-small matter of "Blood diamonds" or "Conflict diamonds," where diamonds mined in areas of Africa suffering civil wars are used to finance conflicts. Do you really know where that diamond came from? If you don't, you might be fueling rape and murder in war-torn countries.
I'd rather have a techie toy than a diamond. When I got married, I dissuaded my spouse-to-be from buying me a diamond because at that time most diamonds were either coming out of South Africa or brokered by the South African DeBeers cartel and South Africa was still under Apartheid. I got a Claddagh ring, with no stone, instead. No way in HELL did I want to support the Apartheid South African regime. South Africa managed to shrug off Apartheid without major bloodshed, thankfully. However, if I was to do it all over again I would do the same because of the issue of Blood diamonds/Conflict diamonds.
More on Blood diamonds/Conflict diamonds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamonds
http://www.think.com.my/article.cfm?art_ID=30
My aunt gave me the first-gen iBook she took quite literally around the world. The handle has cracks, but that's the only thing that happened to it after almost 7 years of use. It was in great shape otherwise and after a major upgrade (30GB hard drive, a 512MB SO-DIMM bringing the RAM up to 544MB) it still is quite useful after all these years. I run Panther with all the upgrades. I could run Tiger but it would require using X Post Facto because of the lack of FireWire.
And people still look at it as if it is the kewlest little lappie ever made. "Aww...it's so CUTE!"
I mentioned this once before but I'll do it again because 1.) I'm a glutton for punishment, and 2.) I think I'm right.
The big winner in this will be San Diego Comic-Con. Already, many of the game publishers are exhibiting there, and one of the "big three" console makers as well. (Nintendo) I strongly believe that Comic-Con will attract more as e3 becomes smaller and smaller.
...has been having more and more gaming content as time goes on. With E3 "retooling" Comic-Con may get more and more important for consumer-directed news about games. Unfortunately this year Nintendo focused on DS and DS Lite and didn't bring the Wii kit. I predict this will change.
Actually the last MS demo flame out of this magnitude came when the beta of Windows 98 was being demoed. They wanted to show a scanner "just working" with Windows 98 and USB. W98 hit the blue screen of death when the USB scanner was plugged in.
There, I found it. The file is an old QuickTime movie. I'm going to put this up on YouTube. There, that's done. Have at it.
I'm reading this from my original-recipe blueberry iBook. Yes, still useful after all these years. It might not be the fastest computer on the block, it might not run Tiger, but it runs Panther and it still does everything I need it to do. And does it in so much style people still stop and stare at me when I bring the thing to my local coffeehouse. Not because they think I'm nuts because I'm running on an antique. It's because it still looks bitchen. Snoogans, biotch!
It's not just cute...it's kawaii. And it's not just kawaii...it runs LINUX! And it can be a plastic pal to your Barbies and old-school GI Joes!
I can't wait for the "hacked by Chinese" knockoff toys.
A dirty DVD that really *can* give you VD!
Ex-Fry's worker over here. I doubt Fry's owns ECS. They're too cheap to do something like buy out a supplier.
ECS stuff is CRAP though. Absolute fsckn crap. As well as ECS, "Great Quality" and PC Chips, stay away from anything labeled Amptron. Same company. Same "Great Quality" meaning none.
Actually if you go to Archive.Org the entire collection of the Edison National Historic Site is available for guilt-free 100% free download. When the Cartoon Geeks Podcast was looking for theme music, I went there and found the song that we're now using, Sensation Jazz by the Jazz All Stars. It was recorded in 1919 for Edison, and features the xylophonist who later would go on to play on Disney's first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, and the later Disney classic The Skeleton Dance.
Also, when I had clearance problems for a song I wanted to use for a video I put up on You Tube, I replaced it with another piece from the Edison collection, a version of "Ride of the Valkyries" done by the Edison Symphony Orchestra. Again, found on Archive.Org.
It is ironic these recordings are now in the public domain, because Hollywood was founded on an intellectual property dispute. The dispute was between Thomas Edison and the Motion Picture Patents Trust and people like Carl Laemmle and Cecil B. DeMille who didn't want to pay the toll Edison wanted to extract on his invention. Edison probably would have loved the current IP climate, and would probably be a big supporter of the MPAA and RIAA.
Archive.Org is an amazing place.
Some of my best real-life friends were people I initially met on the Internet, or before that, on BBSes. Seriously.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Today is a good day.
I think Paul Verhoeven and JMS both have to give propers to David Cronenburg, who came up with the idea of very interactive TV in the '80s with Videodrome.
It didn't help J.D. Rockefeller clean up his soiled image to become a philanthropist. Everyone still associates him with being a Robber Baron and a bastard. The halo effect he got towards the end of his life for giving away half his fortune didn't "fix" his eventual historical legacy.
The truth does come out, eventually. No matter what Bill Gates does to fix things, people will still remember that he made his way to the top by committing screw jobs on those who really did the innovating.
There are some fairly basic things Google Spreadsheets can't do. For example, you cannot add decorative formatting to cells, which means that creating a "schedule" kind of document in Google Spreadsheets is impossible. It also tends to mangle Excel spreadsheets you send up to it.
I would never put real financial information on it. But for simple figuring, keeping track of the expenses you might incur on a trip, etc. etc. it's pretty neat. I won't abandon OpenOffice.Org anytime soon, but it's nice to have this kind of mathematical "scratch pad" available at any computer with FireFox or SeaMonkey.
The proof in the pudding is that when I'm at a coffeehouse people still stop and look at my blueberry clamshell iBook, vintage 1999. People don't give a crap about everyone else's generic black lappie. "Wow, that's so cool!" "That still works for you?" "It's so cute!" "Those Macs still rock." It has its limitations: 300MHz proc, 800 x 600 screen. However, boosting the HD space to 30GB and the RAM to its capacity 544MB means that Panther is quite happy on it, as are many Mac OS X apps. Sometimes I don't run the most 100% up to date version of a given app...I have Office for Mac:X on it instead of Office For Mac 2004. But still and all it's been good for me. It's nice to be able to go on a public WiFi network and not have to worry about getting 0wnz0r3d in spite of running a software firewall and spyware removers and anti-virus proggies etc. etc. etc.
If it wasn't slashdotted I would. Besides, the man GETS NO SPAM! That's pretty awesome. ^_~
You forgot:
Dreamcast: Keyboard and Mouse peripherals available at release, along with a rudimentary browser. Later taken advantage of by the wicked cool typing game "The Typing Of The Dead." Dreamcast will boot Linux, NetBSD, and Kallisti!OS as well as the official operating systems used, NAOMI and Windows CE. All v.1 units can boot burned CDs, v.2 units cannot...the capability was taken out of the BIOS to prevent "piracy."
Indeed. There is history of colon cancer in my family, and I'd rather have Mr. Wormbot crawling aroung my guts than a firehose being pushed through them.
I wonder if another iteration of the Wormbot could have a payload of a laser to zap polyps before they become cancerous. Yes, I'm talking about robot worms with frickin' lasers on their heads.