"only place in the galaxy where you wouldn't pick up noise from us earthlings"
Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first high-powered television broadcast, This should read: "the only place within 65 light years where you wouldn't pick up noise from us earthlings."
An interesting experiment; it seems to highlight that the chatbot programs don't track the conversation. It would seem that each response was solely based on the previous comment. I hope the program winning the award in the main thread was cleverer at following a train of thought than these two.
I have ATT cable in Colorado and as long as you don't use their flaky email service, it's great. Sure, in the evenings it slows down a little, but never so much that I'd complain it was slow.
It's 10AM local time on a weekday, where's a pair of concurrent downloads during what is probably "fast time" for home cable and "slow time" for business DSL...
Over ATT cable: ftp> mget patch-2.4.11.gz local: patch-2.4.11.gz remote: patch-2.4.11.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for patch-2.4.11.gz (941101 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 941101 bytes received in 2.21 secs (4.2e+02 Kbytes/sec) ftp>
And at the same time on another machine (at another business) connected to the best local DSL provider on a 512/512 connection (ain't ssh from work great?!): ftp> mget patch-2.4.11.gz local: patch-2.4.11.gz remote: patch-2.4.11.gz 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for patch-2.4.11.gz (941101 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. 941101 bytes received in 23 secs (40 Kbytes/sec) ftp>
I can re-run these tonight around 7pm local time and post the evening cable "busy time" results. Not completely scientific, but it should be revealing.
It's not cheap to someone, but since my local university's open-to-the-public library subscribes, it CAN be cheap to individuals. Check your local library, especially an on-campus one, and I'll bet it's there for your free use, too.
If you've got a regular CRT monitor for your computer, an amazing amount of space will free up if you get an LCD and hang it on the wall. This assumes you like LCD screens, and your work does not need a super high definition CRT. OK, is also assumes you have 850+$US to buy a nice LCD...
Amusing idea but it doesn't hold up. Your flashlight would have to be non-attached to the Earth to make this work. Don't forget: you're standing on the Earth while holding the flashlight, so its pressure on you offsets the pressure on the pedestal pushing on the Earth.
"Hackers: The Story of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy (technology editor for Newsweek). Covers computers, computer companies, engineers, and programmers from early 1950s through ~1980. The best book (IMHO) on the history of modern computing.
This Norman Matloff fellow is not interested in programmers. Put his name into Google and find an array of anti-immigration articles and sites. It seems that this person is just a hard core protectionist worried about them dang forners takin' jobs from honest 'muricans.
...was that it makes little (if any) sense to the people who don't already know the story. I felt the same way when I was a kid and went to see 'Dune' in the theatre with my dad, who is a huge Dune fan. I asked, 'What the heck were all those unresolved subplots about?' and he replied, 'This, and this, and this, but you have to read the other four novels to find out about that.'
Akira is the exact same way. Very confusing with no explaination, and not just that you have to sit through the whole thing to get it explained at the end. The *entire* thing is pretty much left unresolved; not just the various subplots. It makes a very poor introduction to anime in general, unless you just get hooked on the very well done art and the entire idea of animation for serious adult consumption.
To prevent anyone from thinking I'm totally bashing it, let me say that I'm not. It's just that IMHO it was made for a specific audience, ie: the people who knew the story already, just like Dune. Now that I've thought about it, Akira was like the dark version of Blue Seed, a series that did explain itself as the story progressed.
The article only says users 'will be able to connect their laptops' and that implies it is cabled. Is this not completely nuts? I give it 6 hours before the socket is jammed with chewing gum.
Meanwhile, there are such things as metal park benches. Use one as an antenna and let anyone in the whole park connect with 802.11b. No fighting over the jack before it gets gummed, no chewing gum to clean out...
How do you figure this? I can buy a small ream of newsprint for less than the cost of a single copy of the Wall Street Journal. Does the extra price come because it is cut and folded into pages? Maybe for you, but most would pay more for newsprint with the WSJ than the blank because the WSJ version has information printed on it.
The argument about manufacturing costs works for, rather than against, the case for information pricing. There is a cost to generating accurate information.
Let us take the example of the WSJ. Last I heard, DJI charges for the online version. Because the articles have already been researched for the print version, should the online version be free? The illusion here is that the research is a sunken cost because it has already happened and cannot be recovered. However, research into informed news is an operating expense, NOT a sunken cost, and is directly offset by operating income which can only come in the form of *all* sales of the resulting information.
Otherwise, the production of the Ferrari should also be a sunken cost that should be ignored and if you can convince my nearest Ferrari dealer of that, I'd appreciate it.
One thing that is certain: Distribution costs are significantly lower for the electronic version of the WSJ and so the price should also be lower, which it is. Low enough? Well, that's a question for market forces. If it's too high then not enough buyers will purchase it. Simple enough.
Modify the original just a little and we see that proper pricing has absolutely nothing to do with the problem:
"Let's say Joe finds a piece of LETTUCE on the GROCERY STORE and he's willing to pay $10 for it, Jack finds that same piece of LETTUCE but only thinks it is worth $2, and Jill finds the LETTUCE not useful at all. Now if the GROCERY STORE sets the value of that piece of LETTUCE at $5, he's lost 2 customers, not one."
Market forces can determine the price. How do you set that? Set price low and slowly edge it up, or set it a little high and try various discounting schemes to see if lower prices increase sales. I'm sure plenty of us have seen manufacturer's coupons for use at the grocery store, not to mention the chain 'club cards' that offer discounts. Determining market price is fairly easy.
Those/.ers who are not from that part of the country may not realize it, but the language in that news article was completely loaded to make the people running SETI@Home look like dangerous wierdos rather than people who just didn't read the employee handbook closely. That's the scariest part of that article; the insight into local culture and thinking. I bet that if it were one of the distributed cancer research programs, it wouldn't have made the news (although that would have been also shut down per TVA policy). As it is, searching for signs of alien life is tabloid fodder there.
Ouch, sounds like you have a more obnoxious gas station than mine. While I was pumping the price jumped 10 cents per gallon last week. The clerk charged me the pre-change price (on her own initiative) on the theory that I had agreed to the previous price by picking up the nozzle and not to the new price.
Whoa there! What's this about 'pay' according to ability?! You tryin' to oppress the proletariat with your bourgeois monetarist system?
Wouldn't Marx argue that each computer user gets a computer according to his need for a computer and that computer makers should create computers according to their ability to design and manufacture them?
A laptop with a dead LCD need not be trash. It can be permanently installed in one of your company's conference rooms to run the projector for slide shows. Small and out of the way when not needed and that's ideal since most conference rooms are lacking for storage space.
Have you considered hard-drive-less machines? Even if you need heavy CPU power, you can still get a P3/Athlon with plenty of RAM and save a spinning disk. Speaking of RAM, skip the RDRAM as it is very power hungry.
That would save a LOT of power in a hurry. Of course, it requires a better investment in networking; managed switches rather than hubs, a nice fast server, and someone competent to set it all up.
This solution is heavily dependent on the way you intend to use these machines, but should be considered.
If decent, but not killer, CPU power is needed, consider these: http://www.national.com/appinfo/thinclient/. Shameless plug alert: these are what the company I work for makes.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics were the first high-powered television broadcast, This should read: "the only place within 65 light years where you wouldn't pick up noise from us earthlings."
An interesting experiment; it seems to highlight that the chatbot programs don't track the conversation. It would seem that each response was solely based on the previous comment. I hope the program winning the award in the main thread was cleverer at following a train of thought than these two.
People are going on about how big the thing is, but there's no scale. That keyboard could be Sinclair size for all we know.
It's 10AM local time on a weekday, where's a pair of concurrent downloads during what is probably "fast time" for home cable and "slow time" for business DSL...
Over ATT cable:
ftp> mget patch-2.4.11.gz
local: patch-2.4.11.gz remote: patch-2.4.11.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for patch-2.4.11.gz (941101 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
941101 bytes received in 2.21 secs (4.2e+02 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>
And at the same time on another machine (at another business) connected to the best local DSL provider on a 512/512 connection (ain't ssh from work great?!):
ftp> mget patch-2.4.11.gz
local: patch-2.4.11.gz remote: patch-2.4.11.gz
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for patch-2.4.11.gz (941101 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
941101 bytes received in 23 secs (40 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>
I can re-run these tonight around 7pm local time and post the evening cable "busy time" results. Not completely scientific, but it should be revealing.
It's not cheap to someone, but since my local university's open-to-the-public library subscribes, it CAN be cheap to individuals. Check your local library, especially an on-campus one, and I'll bet it's there for your free use, too.
If you've got a regular CRT monitor for your computer, an amazing amount of space will free up if you get an LCD and hang it on the wall. This assumes you like LCD screens, and your work does not need a super high definition CRT. OK, is also assumes you have 850+$US to buy a nice LCD...
Amusing idea but it doesn't hold up. Your flashlight would have to be non-attached to the Earth to make this work. Don't forget: you're standing on the Earth while holding the flashlight, so its pressure on you offsets the pressure on the pedestal pushing on the Earth.
Oops, the latest revision is retitled "Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution" and is dated January 2001. Amazon has it here.
"Hackers: The Story of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy (technology editor for Newsweek). Covers computers, computer companies, engineers, and programmers from early 1950s through ~1980. The best book (IMHO) on the history of modern computing.
This Norman Matloff fellow is not interested in programmers. Put his name into Google and find an array of anti-immigration articles and sites. It seems that this person is just a hard core protectionist worried about them dang forners takin' jobs from honest 'muricans.
Pie aren't square; Pie are round.
Akira is the exact same way. Very confusing with no explaination, and not just that you have to sit through the whole thing to get it explained at the end. The *entire* thing is pretty much left unresolved; not just the various subplots. It makes a very poor introduction to anime in general, unless you just get hooked on the very well done art and the entire idea of animation for serious adult consumption.
To prevent anyone from thinking I'm totally bashing it, let me say that I'm not. It's just that IMHO it was made for a specific audience, ie: the people who knew the story already, just like Dune. Now that I've thought about it, Akira was like the dark version of Blue Seed, a series that did explain itself as the story progressed.
Meanwhile, there are such things as metal park benches. Use one as an antenna and let anyone in the whole park connect with 802.11b. No fighting over the jack before it gets gummed, no chewing gum to clean out...
How do you figure this? I can buy a small ream of newsprint for less than the cost of a single copy of the Wall Street Journal. Does the extra price come because it is cut and folded into pages? Maybe for you, but most would pay more for newsprint with the WSJ than the blank because the WSJ version has information printed on it.
The argument about manufacturing costs works for, rather than against, the case for information pricing. There is a cost to generating accurate information.
Let us take the example of the WSJ. Last I heard, DJI charges for the online version. Because the articles have already been researched for the print version, should the online version be free? The illusion here is that the research is a sunken cost because it has already happened and cannot be recovered. However, research into informed news is an operating expense, NOT a sunken cost, and is directly offset by operating income which can only come in the form of *all* sales of the resulting information.
Otherwise, the production of the Ferrari should also be a sunken cost that should be ignored and if you can convince my nearest Ferrari dealer of that, I'd appreciate it.
One thing that is certain: Distribution costs are significantly lower for the electronic version of the WSJ and so the price should also be lower, which it is. Low enough? Well, that's a question for market forces. If it's too high then not enough buyers will purchase it. Simple enough.
"Let's say Joe finds a piece of LETTUCE on the GROCERY STORE and he's willing to pay $10 for it, Jack finds that same piece of LETTUCE but only thinks it is worth $2, and Jill finds the LETTUCE not useful at all. Now if the GROCERY STORE sets the value of that piece of LETTUCE at $5, he's lost 2 customers, not one."
Market forces can determine the price. How do you set that? Set price low and slowly edge it up, or set it a little high and try various discounting schemes to see if lower prices increase sales. I'm sure plenty of us have seen manufacturer's coupons for use at the grocery store, not to mention the chain 'club cards' that offer discounts. Determining market price is fairly easy.
Those /.ers who are not from that part of the country may not realize it, but the language in that news article was completely loaded to make the people running SETI@Home look like dangerous wierdos rather than people who just didn't read the employee handbook closely. That's the scariest part of that article; the insight into local culture and thinking. I bet that if it were one of the distributed cancer research programs, it wouldn't have made the news (although that would have been also shut down per TVA policy). As it is, searching for signs of alien life is tabloid fodder there.
A 21 year old selling an immortality device? Wouldn't he sell more if he claimed to be 2,100?
Ouch, sounds like you have a more obnoxious gas station than mine. While I was pumping the price jumped 10 cents per gallon last week. The clerk charged me the pre-change price (on her own initiative) on the theory that I had agreed to the previous price by picking up the nozzle and not to the new price.
Wouldn't Marx argue that each computer user gets a computer according to his need for a computer and that computer makers should create computers according to their ability to design and manufacture them?
Waypoint 1: Up
Final destination: Back down
Aren't #2 and #11 being violated constantly by the official Chinese news website concerning the survaillance plane fiasco?
My friend went through basic not too long ago and he mentioned nothing about the lunar assault training!
Where do I sign up??
A laptop with a dead LCD need not be trash. It can be permanently installed in one of your company's conference rooms to run the projector for slide shows. Small and out of the way when not needed and that's ideal since most conference rooms are lacking for storage space.
That would save a LOT of power in a hurry. Of course, it requires a better investment in networking; managed switches rather than hubs, a nice fast server, and someone competent to set it all up.
This solution is heavily dependent on the way you intend to use these machines, but should be considered.
If decent, but not killer, CPU power is needed, consider these: http://www.national.com/appinfo/thinclient/. Shameless plug alert: these are what the company I work for makes.
PS - If I put the word 'fact' on individual lines will it lend more credibility to my statements as well? Hah...