This reminds me of this this slashdot story from a few years back. Judging from the pictures and description it seems to be the same shuttle. I don't remember the original ebay posting well enough to confirm it. That is assuming its not a hoax of course.
Back around 1995 or so I worked for a hardware distributor one of our vendors sold these so we bought some to test them out.
At the time they were ok for us, we kept multiple OSes on multiple drives, no bootloader, let us run NT, DOS, Linux, Novell without much hassle. They were most useful for file storage. Since the Max HD size was much smaller in 95, we found times when it was useful for us to swap out entire HDs. Overall however the drives were sensitve to shock, and if you weren't careful you could damage the drives quite easily.
Later I was working at a small university who used these in one of their labs, I can't quite say I understand why. They thought it a good idea. Here is where we found the biggest problems. The locks are of the $1.95 Hardware Store variety, and they are mounted in plastic. They may to a reasonable job holding a metal desk droor shut but student regularly would rip them right out the machine.
Worse yet, they are not hot swappable. Which is fine if you remember never to yank them out while the machine is running. It is not fine the one time you yank one out while the machine is running.
Before you buy one of these devices think about rather you really need it and remember:
Bootloaders will allow you to boot most any operating system these days so it is unlikley this is really a good use of such a device.
HDD's are getting bigger all the time, is a 16.95 drive caddy really worth it when you can buy a new HDD for only a few dollars a gigabyte.
What OS do you run? How does it deal with drives and partitions? Sure bioses can autodetect different harddrive types, but will your OS like it? This isn't a problem ofcourse if its your boot drive.
From my experience with these I would say they are a mixed blessing. Certainly bad for a non-controlled or production enviroment. On a personal machine they will work just fine (if you use care.) But I can't see myself buying anything like this in future. As I said, HDDs are far to cheap to make them all that useful, I can usually buy my current HD size+twice whatever I think I might need for under $200.
Sometime in the early 90's I ordered this book from the local bookstore ounder the title "A Spoon to Short" then its title changed to Salmon of Doubt, eventually its ISBN number disappeared. Last I checked (about a year ago) The bookstore still had my order in processing. Perhaps they will actually recieve something for me one day. I gave up when the ISBN vansihed, figured they would to, but hey.
I'm curious to know what the book is about however because as a previous poster mentioned it has been both a Dirk Gently & Hitchhiker Novel.
The problem of course is that this book is not completed, or if it is, DNA was not satisfied with it. This doesn't mean it won't be a good read, it means he wouldn't have released it. Reading it may show us a little of his writing process, but no matter how good (or bad) it is, we'll have to remember it isn't what was suspoed to be published.
DNA once commented " I love deadlines, I love the sound they make as they fly by" I have a feeling he intened on letting this book never meet any deadline as he has done several projects since it (H2G2, Starship Titantic come to mind)
My property as well as that of many of my neighbors back up to railroad tracks.
There is without question fiber running under these tracks, it belongs to MCI, they put a big orange sign back there stating as much.
It is very unlikley that I could see anything coming out of this or similar lawsuits to my benefit because like most similar homes in the US the residential property lines were drawn up many years after the railroad was in plave.
This point is illustrated in the article when they state Under that settlement, the roughly 20,000 property owners whose land adjoined railroad tracks used to lay data cables will get about $6,000 in cash per mile, as well as 10 percent to 15 percent of any profits that T-Cubed gets from leasing its fiber-optic network to other companies.
20,000 homes is a very very small number compared to all of the miles of land on which tracks lay. I suspect that the railways in question are newer railways, of which there aren't so many, I also suspect that many of them are in fairly rural areas.
Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and drier.
--Douglas Adams, Life The Universe And Everything
My condolences to Jane, Polly and all of DNA's family, friends and fans.
Entertainment content complementary to a musical recording is delivered to a user's computer by means of a computer network link. The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded. The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording.
Wouldn't: downloading the complementary entertainment content prior to playing the CD or other device and using the local copy successfully circumvent this patent? The script stored on a remote computer would nolonger be syncronizing with the play of the musical recording.
I still have a cube sitting here, It gets infrequent use, but I wouldn't part with it.
As to your post, there was a product called NEXTSTEP/FIP back around 1993 which ran intel, I know that a release existed for atleast version.
This likley means there is also an OPENSTEP/FIP as for obtaining a copy you might want to try: www.blackholeinc.com they still have next hardware and may be able to give you a lead on the software.
Of course I think that an educational copy is still in the order of $400, a real pitty if you ask me.
On another note, I know that NEXTSTEP/FIP 3.2 is approaching the end of reasonable use for things like its video driver. (i.e.: Finding a video card it supports can be a challenge.
Actually as I was writing this I had the same thought. And I can't actually answer this either, I've never had any training nor seen any material on this that wasn't presented for a western-european audience.
I would imagine that you are correct and this motion is related more to our enviroment than our genetic makeup. But I can't state that as fact, I simply don't know.
I think making ieverythng user selected is tough to do period. Let alone well. But toughness shouldn't stop us.:)
There are two texts that should be read before considering much of what this article has to say and they are:
About Face and The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Both of these texts are written by a man named Alan Cooper, and go into details of how a good UI should work and why. This background is needed not only to truly understand the issues of UI design but also allows a good standpoint for defending and argueing the views of the author. Overall his article is very well written, and holds a much more open view than your typical Mac OS design piece. (Which usually sum up that: All GUIs are poor imitations of Mac) While I do not completely agree with the author there is little need to critcize it. I think some extra view points would be more benefical so here are some other view points.
One consideration I see overlooked time and time again in all GUI designs is object placement. The human eye normally moves from the upper left hand corner to the lower left hand corner. diagnally. This leaves the lower left and upper right hand corner mostly ignored. This makes them ideal for placement of say menu's because you tend to need to use a menu less frequently than applications and is defensable as why they were chosen in many enviroments as menu locations.
There are reasons to advocate the design of most interfaces but what would be more beneficial to all of us is a well researched and well implented UI. Much of this research has been done, and is discussed in Cooper's books. And envirments such as X give us the freedom to evaluate new ideas and concepts.
This is why enviroments like Entlightenment and Sawmill are so powerful. They provide the ablity to take a good easily and continously improve on the windowing provided by a GUI. And with KDE and Gnome moving along nicely the entire feel should soon allow for this concept to be putforth across entire enviroments.
So again if you are truly interested in all the aspects of UI design please read Cooper's books, they are some of the best references on the topic.
Oh, and don't let the fact that he works for M$ sway you, I'm fairly convinced no one listens to him there.:)
I don't quite follow. First I don't agree with the actions at all. But thats not what I'm adressing.
I can see why they felt a need to tak his PCs, they were most likley used to develop DeCSS and hence are evidence of some form or another to whatever this case will be in norway.
But his cell phone? Whats the point here? I know some phones are pretty amazing in what they can do, but I've yet to see one with a DVD option? Why would they ceize this device?
Did they take his VCR and microwave to?
I geuss I should just sum this up in one word. deh.
This appears to be a very customized beowulf cluster. It has an interconnection network that ties the machines together nicely, and it has a nice data storage unit to allow it to be more hot swappable than a more tradtional beowulf cluster. But both of these things can be done by someone constructiong their own system. Yes it would raise the price, but to $100K? I'm not sure.
Further it looks as if it is an 8 node cluster. That isn't a very large cluster. It would be nice to think that this would scale similarly to other super computers, but I can't see the performance of any network approaching the speed of something like a crossbar switch anytime soon.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but at $100k I think it would be safer to build your cluster, or purchase a tried machine in a similar price range. (such as the SGI origin)
It is nice they have some packaged software but is it better than what we can get at http://www.beowulf-underground.org/? Perhaps, perhaps not. I hope to see what people who have used this machine, other supercomputers AND beowulfs have to say about, perhaps than we can decide if this is a good value.
I don't suspose you know the state the case was in, the case name or anything like that.
Being able to say "Smith Vs ShaftCorp in 1996 ruled that you have to honor my warranty after I modified it given that I return it to its original form, which I have." would speed up calls to those pestersome people I talk to about RMA's
Back in July this was discussed on the freebsd-questiosn mailing list. To my knowledge no offical decisions were made or presented on this list, but a general feel of what FreeBSD people and Debian people were thinking could be seen.
Debian GNU/BSD or Debian GNU/FreeBSD seems to be the likley name of such a product.
There was alot of worry over FreeBSD branching, but overall there seemed to be a positive reaction.
A good number of people like the idea of the.deb package under FreeBSD. just as alot would like to see the FreeBSD ports tree in a Linux Distro
A quick search of the FreeBSD mailing lists on the topic reveals some.
I don't know if its still there, but a couple years back the Ace Hardware by my house had a Commodore PET being used in their paint color matching system. I doubt it acted as much more than a terminal, but they were still using it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most superconductors ceramic? And don't ceramics make rather good insulators or their own. (Provided they aren't super cooled.)
Of course the idea that we can have a piece of super conducting wire insulating itself is rather nifty.
The roman civilization had also become mostly a welfare state. Things like the coliseum were built to give the mostly unemployed citzenship something to do.
Of course we may not be as far from that as most would like to think.
I've been looking at this card for awhile, because it looks like a nice card. I've recently been told that the MIDI support on the card is substandard. (as in not as good as either the AWE32, or AWE64) Can anyone verify this?
The last time I spent more than $50 on a soundcard it was a SBpro, and I really don't want to repeat that mistake.:)
DNA is suspose to be launching The Digital Village's "fantastic new internet project" tonight on the BBC1 show Tommorow's World Tonight. You can read the press release. From what I've read at various places it is a follow up to the original Infocom game, but multi-player and online. They have something going on at fordprefect.h2g2.com as well.
For some reason everytime I read somehting by this guy it annoys me. Just last monday he was praising linux.
Though this time atleast he knows he's going to annoy me.
What I'm wondering did the fact ther MS does not make the source code for its software available to us slip his mind?
Perhaps if we COULD spend our time improving microsoft products, some of us would. Perhaps if this possibility was open to us those products would be more stable. Perhaps if MS's code was available we wouldn't have to "reinvent the wheel."
speaking of venting. I'll stop now. But I do have a few questions.
He quotes linux runs on "Maybe 7 Million" machines. Is close to accurate? I don't even know.
He also quotes that Linux is at most 2.5 million lines of code. How many lines of code is windows? And if we are going to compare on lines of code between windows and Linux shouldn't we also include the number of lines of code in X, KDE, and Gnome?
And if we went through all that trouble. What value would it be?
I actually make more mistakes in the linux tool, but thats probably because I a more familar with FreeBSD.
A tool for FreeBSD does not exist to my knowledge, but I've often thought about writing one. The only problem is, I'm more proficent at default FreeBSD way.
As does the W32/SKA virus, it doesn't send out quite so many quite so quickly. But it does send email out as you along with an executable that contains the virus as an attachment.
People don't seem to be getting that upset about W32/SKA, even though it does modify some system files. But yet mellissa is a beg deal cause it reads your address book and mails a bunch of people.
I've received over 20 copies of W32/SKA (happy99.exe for those who don't know) but I can't recall getting any word docs in the mail in recent months.
I think mellissa is more of an annoyance and this fellow will be prosecuted based on the fear of the populace and not any existing law.
I would imagine a well written paper on the spread of internet worms might turn this from crime to research.
--snip-- those consumers who continue to access the internet by dialing a seven-digit number will not incur long distance charges when they do so --snip--
It's a good thing that these charges will actually apply to the ISP not the end user. In the Chicagoland area people will soon have to dial the full ten-digit number to call the nieghbors.
Of course the ISPs will probably raise rates if this ends up costing them money. If the rates get to high.
More reason to get DSL or Cable. DSL is getting cheap out here anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
...and best of luck to both of you
This reminds me of this this slashdot story from a few years back. Judging from the pictures and description it seems to be the same shuttle. I don't remember the original ebay posting well enough to confirm it. That is assuming its not a hoax of course.
At the time they were ok for us, we kept multiple OSes on multiple drives, no bootloader, let us run NT, DOS, Linux, Novell without much hassle. They were most useful for file storage. Since the Max HD size was much smaller in 95, we found times when it was useful for us to swap out entire HDs. Overall however the drives were sensitve to shock, and if you weren't careful you could damage the drives quite easily.
Later I was working at a small university who used these in one of their labs, I can't quite say I understand why. They thought it a good idea. Here is where we found the biggest problems. The locks are of the $1.95 Hardware Store variety, and they are mounted in plastic. They may to a reasonable job holding a metal desk droor shut but student regularly would rip them right out the machine.
Worse yet, they are not hot swappable. Which is fine if you remember never to yank them out while the machine is running. It is not fine the one time you yank one out while the machine is running.
Before you buy one of these devices think about rather you really need it and remember:
Bootloaders will allow you to boot most any operating system these days so it is unlikley this is really a good use of such a device.
HDD's are getting bigger all the time, is a 16.95 drive caddy really worth it when you can buy a new HDD for only a few dollars a gigabyte.
What OS do you run? How does it deal with drives and partitions? Sure bioses can autodetect different harddrive types, but will your OS like it? This isn't a problem ofcourse if its your boot drive.
From my experience with these I would say they are a mixed blessing. Certainly bad for a non-controlled or production enviroment. On a personal machine they will work just fine (if you use care.) But I can't see myself buying anything like this in future. As I said, HDDs are far to cheap to make them all that useful, I can usually buy my current HD size+twice whatever I think I might need for under $200.
Just my $0.02
I'm curious to know what the book is about however because as a previous poster mentioned it has been both a Dirk Gently & Hitchhiker Novel.
The problem of course is that this book is not completed, or if it is, DNA was not satisfied with it. This doesn't mean it won't be a good read, it means he wouldn't have released it. Reading it may show us a little of his writing process, but no matter how good (or bad) it is, we'll have to remember it isn't what was suspoed to be published.
DNA once commented " I love deadlines, I love the sound they make as they fly by" I have a feeling he intened on letting this book never meet any deadline as he has done several projects since it (H2G2, Starship Titantic come to mind)
My property as well as that of many of my neighbors back up to railroad tracks.
There is without question fiber running under these tracks, it belongs to MCI, they put a big orange sign back there stating as much.
It is very unlikley that I could see anything coming out of this or similar lawsuits to my benefit because like most similar homes in the US the residential property lines were drawn up many years after the railroad was in plave.
This point is illustrated in the article when they state Under that settlement, the roughly 20,000 property owners whose land adjoined railroad tracks used to lay data cables will get about $6,000 in cash per mile, as well as 10 percent to 15 percent of any profits that T-Cubed gets from leasing its fiber-optic network to other companies.
20,000 homes is a very very small number compared to all of the miles of land on which tracks lay. I suspect that the railways in question are newer railways, of which there aren't so many, I also suspect that many of them are in fairly rural areas.
My condolences to Jane, Polly and all of DNA's family, friends and fans.
Entertainment content complementary to a musical recording is delivered to a user's computer by means of a computer network link. The user employs a browser to access the computer network. A plug-in for the browser is able to control an audio CD or other device for playing the musical recording. A script stored on the remote computer accessed over the network is downloaded. The script synchronizes the delivery of the complementary entertainment content with the play of the musical recording.
Wouldn't: downloading the complementary entertainment content prior to playing the CD or other device and using the local copy successfully circumvent this patent? The script stored on a remote computer would nolonger be syncronizing with the play of the musical recording.
I still have a cube sitting here, It gets infrequent use, but I wouldn't part with it.
As to your post, there was a product called NEXTSTEP/FIP back around 1993 which ran intel, I know that a release existed for atleast version.
This likley means there is also an OPENSTEP/FIP as for obtaining a copy you might want to try: www.blackholeinc.com they still have next hardware and may be able to give you a lead on the software.
Of course I think that an educational copy is still in the order of $400, a real pitty if you ask me.
On another note, I know that NEXTSTEP/FIP 3.2 is approaching the end of reasonable use for things like its video driver. (i.e.: Finding a video card it supports can be a challenge.
Actually as I was writing this I had the same thought. And I can't actually answer this either, I've never had any training nor seen any material on this that wasn't presented for a western-european audience.
:)
I would imagine that you are correct and this motion is related more to our enviroment than our genetic makeup. But I can't state that as fact, I simply don't know.
I think making ieverythng user selected is tough to do period. Let alone well. But toughness shouldn't stop us.
About Face and
The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Both of these texts are written by a man named Alan Cooper, and go into details of how a good UI should work and why. This background is needed not only to truly understand the issues of UI design but also allows a good standpoint for defending and argueing the views of the author. Overall his article is very well written, and holds a much more open view than your typical Mac OS design piece. (Which usually sum up that: All GUIs are poor imitations of Mac) While I do not completely agree with the author there is little need to critcize it. I think some extra view points would be more benefical so here are some other view points.
One consideration I see overlooked time and time again in all GUI designs is object placement. The human eye normally moves from the upper left hand corner to the lower left hand corner. diagnally. This leaves the lower left and upper right hand corner mostly ignored. This makes them ideal for placement of say menu's because you tend to need to use a menu less frequently than applications and is defensable as why they were chosen in many enviroments as menu locations.
There are reasons to advocate the design of most interfaces but what would be more beneficial to all of us is a well researched and well implented UI. Much of this research has been done, and is discussed in Cooper's books. And envirments such as X give us the freedom to evaluate new ideas and concepts.
This is why enviroments like Entlightenment and Sawmill are so powerful. They provide the ablity to take a good easily and continously improve on the windowing provided by a GUI. And with KDE and Gnome moving along nicely the entire feel should soon allow for this concept to be putforth across entire enviroments.
So again if you are truly interested in all the aspects of UI design please read Cooper's books, they are some of the best references on the topic.
Oh, and don't let the fact that he works for M$ sway you, I'm fairly convinced no one listens to him there.
I don't quite follow. First I don't agree with the actions at all. But thats not what I'm adressing.
I can see why they felt a need to tak his PCs, they were most likley used to develop DeCSS and hence are evidence of some form or another to whatever this case will be in norway.
But his cell phone? Whats the point here? I know some phones are pretty amazing in what they can do, but I've yet to see one with a DVD option? Why would they ceize this device?
Did they take his VCR and microwave to?
I geuss I should just sum this up in one word. deh.
But both of these things can be done by someone constructiong their own system. Yes it would raise the price, but to $100K? I'm not sure.
Further it looks as if it is an 8 node cluster. That isn't a very large cluster. It would be nice to think that this would scale similarly to other super computers, but I can't see the performance of any network approaching the speed of something like a crossbar switch anytime soon.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but at $100k I think it would be safer to build your cluster, or purchase a tried machine in a similar price range. (such as the SGI origin)
It is nice they have some packaged software but is it better than what we can get at http://www.beowulf-underground.org/?
Perhaps, perhaps not. I hope to see what people who have used this machine, other supercomputers AND beowulfs have to say about, perhaps than we can decide if this is a good value.
Doesn't http://www.paralline.com/ sell similar machines anyway?
For now I just don't see the value in it.
But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I don't suspose you know the state the case was in, the case name or anything like that.
Being able to say "Smith Vs ShaftCorp in 1996 ruled that you have to honor my warranty after I modified it given that I return it to its original form, which I have." would speed up calls to those pestersome people I talk to about RMA's
Debian GNU/BSD or Debian GNU/FreeBSD seems to be the likley name of such a product.
There was alot of worry over FreeBSD branching, but overall there seemed to be a positive reaction.
A good number of people like the idea of the .deb package under FreeBSD. just as alot would like to see the FreeBSD ports tree in a Linux Distro
A quick search of the FreeBSD mailing lists on the topic reveals some .
A few choice articles can bee seen below.
The seemng start of discusion: FreeLinux
A nice answer: RE: FreeLinux (Debian/GNU BSD)
I don't know if its still there, but a couple years back the Ace Hardware by my house had a Commodore PET being used in their paint color matching system. I doubt it acted as much more than a terminal, but they were still using it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most superconductors ceramic? And don't ceramics make rather good insulators or their own. (Provided they aren't super cooled.)
Of course the idea that we can have a piece of super conducting wire insulating itself is rather nifty.
The roman civilization had also become mostly a welfare state. Things like the coliseum were built to give the mostly unemployed citzenship something to do.
Of course we may not be as far from that as most would like to think.
I've been looking at this card for awhile, because it looks like a nice card. I've recently been told that the MIDI support on the card is substandard. (as in not as good as either the AWE32, or AWE64) Can anyone verify this?
:)
The last time I spent more than $50 on a soundcard it was a SBpro, and I really don't want to repeat that mistake.
DNA is suspose to be launching The Digital Village's "fantastic new internet project" tonight on the BBC1 show Tommorow's World Tonight. You can read the press release. From what I've read at various places it is a follow up to the original Infocom game, but multi-player and online. They have something going on at fordprefect.h2g2.com as well.
For some reason everytime I read somehting by this guy it annoys me. Just last monday he was praising linux.
Though this time atleast he knows he's going to annoy me.
What I'm wondering did the fact ther MS does not make the source code for its software available to us slip his mind?
Perhaps if we COULD spend our time improving microsoft products, some of us would. Perhaps if this possibility was open to us those products would be more stable. Perhaps if MS's code was available we wouldn't have to "reinvent the wheel."
speaking of venting. I'll stop now. But I do have a few questions.
He quotes linux runs on "Maybe 7 Million" machines. Is close to accurate? I don't even know.
He also quotes that Linux is at most 2.5 million lines of code. How many lines of code is windows? And if we are going to compare on lines of code between windows and Linux shouldn't we also include the number of lines of code in X, KDE, and Gnome?
And if we went through all that trouble. What value would it be?
I actually make more mistakes in the linux tool, but thats probably because I a more familar with FreeBSD.
A tool for FreeBSD does not exist to my knowledge, but I've often thought about writing one. The only problem is, I'm more proficent at default FreeBSD way.
Maybe I'll add that back to my list of projects.
natd.
If your only using ppp and are lazy ppp -alais works great too.
The UNIX clock on 32bit systems dies sometime in 2038.
:)
The Mayan calendar is divided into four or fixe epochs all of which end in MOST life on our planet dieing out. (Think the great flood)
The last epoch, the epoch of the sun/fire ENDS on December 23rd 2012 when we all meet our firey doom.
There is no epoch after this. This is the end.
I'm glad I could make your day brighter.
As does the W32/SKA virus, it doesn't send out quite so many quite so quickly. But it does send email out as you along with an executable that contains the virus as an attachment.
People don't seem to be getting that upset about W32/SKA, even though it does modify some system files. But yet mellissa is a beg deal cause it reads your address book and mails a bunch of people.
I've received over 20 copies of W32/SKA (happy99.exe for those who don't know) but I can't recall getting any word docs in the mail in recent months.
I think mellissa is more of an annoyance and this fellow will be prosecuted based on the fear of the populace and not any existing law.
I would imagine a well written paper on the spread of internet worms might turn this from crime to research.
--snip--
those consumers who continue to access the internet by dialing a seven-digit number will not incur long distance charges when they do so
--snip--
It's a good thing that these charges will actually apply to the ISP not the end user. In the Chicagoland area people will soon have to dial the full ten-digit number to call the nieghbors.
Of course the ISPs will probably raise rates if this ends up costing them money. If the rates get to high.
More reason to get DSL or Cable. DSL is getting cheap out here anyway.