Gravity assist slingshotting has been around for years, and usually works very well. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission used it to rescue the astronauts, as there was no way that the rocket had enough onboard fuel to allow the capsule to return to earth. Since then, it's been used countless times, as it is much cheaper than using chemical means to send a rocket into deep space. The mars incident is a rare failure in a pretty useful and ingeneous technique.
You're close to the money as far as the basics, but still pretty far off as far as the heritage of housecats goes. Domestic felines and tigers are pretty far separated, genetically. The closest wild ancestor of the housecat lives in northern africa, IIRC, can't be arsed to look up which species exactly. They're about the same size as a current housecat though.
No need to breed an allergen free kitten. Just get one of the rex breeds of cats, like the cornish rex or devon rex. From what I've heard, they're supposed to be a very good cat for those with allergies. Though they do have very tight curly fur, and thus, aren't as good as a petting cat, imo, as a good domestic shorthair.
I disagree. I see allowing a few case makers building nice looking cases that don't look like apple's current line as being a good thing. I personally don't like the looks of apple's line -- they're over-flashy pieces of plastic crap. I want to see hardware design take a new direction, and part of that should include contracting out to boutique shops to allow them to make interesting case designs and seeing how they sell, incorporating features of successful designs into mainstream models. Of course, this seems run counter to Jobs' view of running the company, where it's his way or the highway.
Moves like this are why I absolutely will not buy any apple product at this time, period. I want an open hardware spec. I want to be able to price and buy my own components. I don't want to buy into a lifestyle, I just want to buy a fucking computer. Apple just doesn't let me do that, and I won't give my money to them until they change their ways.
It's simple really. Shared resources mean complete and seamless networking, beyond just sharing disks and printers. You can share a fast high quality scanner between a small workgroup and use each desktop's scanning suite. Or you can pool processors together, run in-depth analyses at night when no one's around, or even during the day, as most business desktops don't need anywhere near the processor speed they currently have. Security's really a non-issue. You tighen down your network just like you always do through firewalling and the like, making certain that the shared resource ports are completely and totally blocked at the firewall level.
It's probably not as useful on the home level as it is on the professional level, but that's not saying it's useful there, either. Imagine having one blazing fast application box hidden away somewhere, and small, moderately fast, inexpensive desktops in the living room, etc, so that you can upgrade one unit and have every family member's computing usage go faster.
Unfortunately, Taco et al have drank the Jobs Kool-Aide and have become little more than a drooling fanboy WRT Apple's hardware. Thus, they ignore apple's many shortcomings, including price, compatibility, their obnoxious hardware design, etc. As Apple is the last computer maker to head into the modern era with a 64 bit processor -- something other makers have had for months,ifnotyears -- they're trying to generate hype for themselves and other fanboys so they can keep saying to themselves that the money they spent on the crapware from cupertino was somehow worth it.
I guess I need to make my point more clear here. Said people need an SUV or similar vehicle. It's just that simple. The roads aren't plowed nearly enough, thus snow accumulates, meaning that high ground clearance is near mandatory. Or they live in a hilly area that'll eat the transmission in a regular car alive. I have family members who need an SUV because of where they live. They've tried using standard cars. It doesn't work; the transmissions on them give out entirely too soon, and they still need an SUV anyways for when the snow gets bad.
Do some people drive an SUV when they don't need one? Yes. But implying that no one needs an SUV is just plain silly.
Because different people need different vehicles. Yes, you may do just fine in a sedan, but the person down the street may need an SUV. Thus, it only makes sense to provide an efficient vehicle that can still provide a good amount of performance in an intelligent manner. If you just focus on small cars, you ignore those who live in rural areas and need a vehicle that has a large towing and hauling capacity. Trust me, when you are 30 miles from the nearest decent sized town, you want a vehicle that can provide power and towing capacity, so you don't have to make that trip any more than you really need to.
I disagree with the evolution evaluation. As others have said, evolution's too big, too dependent on library hell. I'd put my money on apple using part, or all of kroupware/kolab, at least as a backend, as it seems to offer the benefits of outlook, without the proprietary nature of said product, and is already pretty well polished.
As far as I can tell, your statement is simply not true. Apple's products are neither Unix 98, nor Unix 95 certified, and a search on google reveals no reports of a press release stating that Apple has met the UNIX certification requirements needed for certification. Surely if such an announcement ever existed, at least one Apple fanboy site would still be mirroring it.Apple is a member of the Open Group, but much of their work seems to be with other committees, such as the School Interoperability Framework committee.
Actually, they'd have to get Darwin specifically certified as a unix to stay out of trouble. OS X is an amalgamation of BSDs, with lots of NetBSD in the Kernel, a lot of FreeBSD in the userland, plus some NeXT/OpenSTEP in there too. Thus, getting FreeBSD certified would do little to nothing in the case at hand.
I've always wanted to get the camera gear to create a superhero parody -- AOL CD Guy -- who would be sort of a cross between Gambit, the Punnisher, and other superheroes. His weapon of choice would be an endless supply of AOL CDs, which he'd fling or fire, haven't decided which, at his foes. The big issue I had was if said guy was going to be a villain or not...I really should finish the script for that project.
I do pay taxes and I have to ask that if a FOSS solution is less expensive, even if it means hiring a bunch of developers to tweak the code, then why the fuck not? I want my tax dollars going to the most efficient method. And that means not only the most efficient now, but the most efficient ten, twenty years from now when the data format is obsolete, but the data is still needed. An open program usually means an open file format, thus making data retrieval at a later date easier.
I think you need to use your brain a bit here and realize that commercial software solutions aren't always the best way to go. And while you're at it, you need to fix that security hole in your website that's been there for months now.
You're ignoring a large part of the financial issue here in creating a school district's IT infrastructure -- the student computer labs. Yes, teachers and admins take up a large portion of the IT budget, but a good portion also goes towards creating an infrastructure for the students. By going with FOSS, districts can go with far cheaper, more innovative solutions by doing such things as having all the student computers be totally diskless, creating huge administrative cost settings due to the fact that you don't need to worry about reimaging computers when someone screws with the settings.
You also don't have to worry about tracking licensing costs, and if the terminal server system is built well enough, you should have far fewer worries about downtime. Yes, training is definitely an issue, but designed properly, a FOSS based system will be competitive, if not less expensive, than a proprietary system. You've just got to figure out exactly what's needed.
I disagree. All that's really needed is to either use TCP/IP and add a zeroconf type protocol, or as was mentioned before, use an auto-discovery protocol like IPX. As far as hardware support goes, there are already low power consumption chipsets for 802.11b, and creating an even lower powered chipset would more than likely be merely a matter of lowering the signal strength to just that that is needed.
Such a move makes sense in my opinion, because why should you need two chipsets and two standards to communicate through wireless? We don't have two cabling standards, so two wireless standards just seems silly in my opinion.
If it's a traditional beowulf cluster -- a 4x4 array of systems with dual NICs -- then I don't think it would be possible. Now if one were to replace a few, if not all, of the hubs with routers, then I suppose that it would be possible to create a beowulf of beowulfs.
Now a mixture of clustering technologies, say a beowulf of mosix clusters, and things begin to get intriguing;3.
As a tangental notice, I've always wondered why there wasn't some sort of equalization field in the ID3 specs, so that media players could automagically adjust their eqs to compensate for the compression differences of that particular song. Seems to me that it could help lessen some of the flaws of a particular encoder. At the very least, it'll give an embedded hint to the player as to how to set up the environment for good playing.
Yes, and you'd end up with something that's more expensive, more power hungry, and with not hardware support.
I disagree here. Yes, it would be more power hungry if you were to transmit at full power, but who says you need to have your headset transmit with every available milliwatt? Scale back the watts and you scale back the power consumption. Cost is also a non-issue. Ramp up production of single-chip 802.11 solutions and you can more than likely provide a solution thats cost effective with 802.11, plus provides greater bandwidth. Hardware support is very much a chicken and egg problem. There's got to be someone willing to provide the initial product to see if support is worthwhile. If it is, then it'll flourish. If not, it'll die on the vine. As 802.11 can provide higher bandwidth than bluetooth, IMO, its a better solution for a PAN as it can allow for better intergration of personal items such as PDAs, phones and digital cameras.
Fuck consumer-grade hardware. The vast majority of my hardware is workstation-grade hardware. It's better quality and is better able to keep running the current software longer than consumer-level hardware. Besides, I doubt you're going to see the G5 for any cheaper than the current price of the Opteron anyways.
Yeah, you've got to settle on having 64 bit support Real Soon Now. Meanwhile, I've got several 64 bit processors available right now to choose from: Opteron, which should provide a comparable bang for the buck as Apple's offering, the UltraSparc if I want insane scalability, the Alpha for if I want to run the insanely reliable VMS, the Itanium which looks to take over for the Alpha in the midrange datacenter department, or the MIPS line which is IMO one of the cleanest proc designs ever. All of which run unix today, and except for the MIPS, all of which run FreeBSD. I'd even run FreeBSD on the 970, seeing as how the mach-based core of OS X will hamper the performance of the 970 to a noticable degree. Microkernels are an interesting educational toy, but they just don't make sense in the real world.
Yeah, but OS X requires an ugly dongle built around a 32 bit processor when the modern computing world has access to 64 bit machines. Lemme know when OS X'll run on my UltraSparc, okay?
Besides, OS X is built around a BSD, but it sure as hell isn't FreeBSD. There are a hell of a lot of differences between the two systems. If anything, OS X is little more than OpenStep 5 with an overweight windowing system.
The issue here is, though the poster you replied to was being silly, there are places where a weather alert is vital. In Texas, Oklahoma, etc, they can have insane storm cells. Now, these cells will all create intense thunderstorms that'll drop hail the size of golf balls, and provide one of nature's light shows. Unfortunately, some of these cells can also spawn a tornado, and I think you know what a tornado can do to someone. Now, though both storms look pretty much the same to the casual observer, they look different to weather monitoring equipment, and thus, an alert can be issued to warn people that it may be a good idea to head into the storm shelter.
It probably would have also been useful for my place back in NM, so that I would have known the thunderstorm was coming, and thus, would have made sure to put the refridgerator into the moving truck before getting the tow dolly. Would have probably avoided a big dent in said fridge that way =<
Can my TV / VCR remotes be made more cheaply, effectively, and with some sort of standard device discovery mechanism? If so, sign me up.
More efficiently, maybe. Cheaper, nope. Remotes have been refined and tweaked to the point where they're damn cheap to make. There's not that much more to them than an IC and a handfull of discreet components. Once everything goes digital and gets a firewire port, however, I'd imagine that there will be talk of a standard control protocol for firewire entertainment devices, and once that happens, some smart group of lads and lasses will build a decent wireless entertainment control hub. Until that day, your chances of home entertainment device makers doing something sane like standardizing remote signals are slim and none, and slim just walked out the building.
Such things are quite possible through 802.11* interfaces. Remember, 802.11, like ethernet, is a lower-level protocol than TCP/IP; while both technologies are usually paired up with TCP/IP, they could be used with protocols such as Appletalk or DECnet as well. Thus, one could very easily implement a protocol that does everything you just described, yet still have essentially invisible expandability up to talking with a "real" network. The only real issue would be implementing the kernel-side interface for allowing networked items to function as i/o devices, but similar work had to be done with bluetooth. I'd imagine that much of the work could carry over fairly easily.
This isn't to say that bluetooth isn't interesting technology, it's just that maybe it could easily die without all that much trouble, if one were to take the truly interesting bits and place them atop 802.11.
Why would you need to be adminnining your system whilst using this anyways? Once I get a system up, especially a system like a tablet where I know I'll have a hard time getting it fixed, I'll make damn sure that it's rock stable and leave it that way. Yeah, I have my desktop very heavily tweaked with a lot of beta and alpha software, but my portable system's something that I want to Just Work, thus, I'll throw debian on there, probably sticking with stable, and just get the bug/security fixes. If something does go wrong, that's why you have nightly backups of the/etc directory, so that recovery is really easy.
Besides, if I did get a tablet, I'd also get one of those roll-up keyboards and stick that wherever, just in case.
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Gravity assist slingshotting has been around for years, and usually works very well. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission used it to rescue the astronauts, as there was no way that the rocket had enough onboard fuel to allow the capsule to return to earth. Since then, it's been used countless times, as it is much cheaper than using chemical means to send a rocket into deep space. The mars incident is a rare failure in a pretty useful and ingeneous technique.
You're close to the money as far as the basics, but still pretty far off as far as the heritage of housecats goes. Domestic felines and tigers are pretty far separated, genetically. The closest wild ancestor of the housecat lives in northern africa, IIRC, can't be arsed to look up which species exactly. They're about the same size as a current housecat though.
No need to breed an allergen free kitten. Just get one of the rex breeds of cats, like the cornish rex or devon rex. From what I've heard, they're supposed to be a very good cat for those with allergies. Though they do have very tight curly fur, and thus, aren't as good as a petting cat, imo, as a good domestic shorthair.
Moves like this are why I absolutely will not buy any apple product at this time, period. I want an open hardware spec. I want to be able to price and buy my own components. I don't want to buy into a lifestyle, I just want to buy a fucking computer. Apple just doesn't let me do that, and I won't give my money to them until they change their ways.
It's probably not as useful on the home level as it is on the professional level, but that's not saying it's useful there, either. Imagine having one blazing fast application box hidden away somewhere, and small, moderately fast, inexpensive desktops in the living room, etc, so that you can upgrade one unit and have every family member's computing usage go faster.
Unfortunately, Taco et al have drank the Jobs Kool-Aide and have become little more than a drooling fanboy WRT Apple's hardware. Thus, they ignore apple's many shortcomings, including price, compatibility, their obnoxious hardware design, etc. As Apple is the last computer maker to head into the modern era with a 64 bit processor -- something other makers have had for months, if not years -- they're trying to generate hype for themselves and other fanboys so they can keep saying to themselves that the money they spent on the crapware from cupertino was somehow worth it.
Do some people drive an SUV when they don't need one? Yes. But implying that no one needs an SUV is just plain silly.
Because different people need different vehicles. Yes, you may do just fine in a sedan, but the person down the street may need an SUV. Thus, it only makes sense to provide an efficient vehicle that can still provide a good amount of performance in an intelligent manner. If you just focus on small cars, you ignore those who live in rural areas and need a vehicle that has a large towing and hauling capacity. Trust me, when you are 30 miles from the nearest decent sized town, you want a vehicle that can provide power and towing capacity, so you don't have to make that trip any more than you really need to.
I disagree with the evolution evaluation. As others have said, evolution's too big, too dependent on library hell. I'd put my money on apple using part, or all of kroupware/kolab, at least as a backend, as it seems to offer the benefits of outlook, without the proprietary nature of said product, and is already pretty well polished.
As far as I can tell, your statement is simply not true. Apple's products are neither Unix 98, nor Unix 95 certified, and a search on google reveals no reports of a press release stating that Apple has met the UNIX certification requirements needed for certification. Surely if such an announcement ever existed, at least one Apple fanboy site would still be mirroring it.Apple is a member of the Open Group, but much of their work seems to be with other committees, such as the School Interoperability Framework committee.
Actually, they'd have to get Darwin specifically certified as a unix to stay out of trouble. OS X is an amalgamation of BSDs, with lots of NetBSD in the Kernel, a lot of FreeBSD in the userland, plus some NeXT/OpenSTEP in there too. Thus, getting FreeBSD certified would do little to nothing in the case at hand.
I've always wanted to get the camera gear to create a superhero parody -- AOL CD Guy -- who would be sort of a cross between Gambit, the Punnisher, and other superheroes. His weapon of choice would be an endless supply of AOL CDs, which he'd fling or fire, haven't decided which, at his foes. The big issue I had was if said guy was going to be a villain or not...I really should finish the script for that project.
I think you need to use your brain a bit here and realize that commercial software solutions aren't always the best way to go. And while you're at it, you need to fix that security hole in your website that's been there for months now.
You also don't have to worry about tracking licensing costs, and if the terminal server system is built well enough, you should have far fewer worries about downtime. Yes, training is definitely an issue, but designed properly, a FOSS based system will be competitive, if not less expensive, than a proprietary system. You've just got to figure out exactly what's needed.
Such a move makes sense in my opinion, because why should you need two chipsets and two standards to communicate through wireless? We don't have two cabling standards, so two wireless standards just seems silly in my opinion.
Now a mixture of clustering technologies, say a beowulf of mosix clusters, and things begin to get intriguing ;3.
As a tangental notice, I've always wondered why there wasn't some sort of equalization field in the ID3 specs, so that media players could automagically adjust their eqs to compensate for the compression differences of that particular song. Seems to me that it could help lessen some of the flaws of a particular encoder. At the very least, it'll give an embedded hint to the player as to how to set up the environment for good playing.
Fuck consumer-grade hardware. The vast majority of my hardware is workstation-grade hardware. It's better quality and is better able to keep running the current software longer than consumer-level hardware. Besides, I doubt you're going to see the G5 for any cheaper than the current price of the Opteron anyways.
Yeah, you've got to settle on having 64 bit support Real Soon Now. Meanwhile, I've got several 64 bit processors available right now to choose from: Opteron, which should provide a comparable bang for the buck as Apple's offering, the UltraSparc if I want insane scalability, the Alpha for if I want to run the insanely reliable VMS, the Itanium which looks to take over for the Alpha in the midrange datacenter department, or the MIPS line which is IMO one of the cleanest proc designs ever. All of which run unix today, and except for the MIPS, all of which run FreeBSD. I'd even run FreeBSD on the 970, seeing as how the mach-based core of OS X will hamper the performance of the 970 to a noticable degree. Microkernels are an interesting educational toy, but they just don't make sense in the real world.
Besides, OS X is built around a BSD, but it sure as hell isn't FreeBSD. There are a hell of a lot of differences between the two systems. If anything, OS X is little more than OpenStep 5 with an overweight windowing system.
It probably would have also been useful for my place back in NM, so that I would have known the thunderstorm was coming, and thus, would have made sure to put the refridgerator into the moving truck before getting the tow dolly. Would have probably avoided a big dent in said fridge that way =<
More efficiently, maybe. Cheaper, nope. Remotes have been refined and tweaked to the point where they're damn cheap to make. There's not that much more to them than an IC and a handfull of discreet components. Once everything goes digital and gets a firewire port, however, I'd imagine that there will be talk of a standard control protocol for firewire entertainment devices, and once that happens, some smart group of lads and lasses will build a decent wireless entertainment control hub. Until that day, your chances of home entertainment device makers doing something sane like standardizing remote signals are slim and none, and slim just walked out the building.
This isn't to say that bluetooth isn't interesting technology, it's just that maybe it could easily die without all that much trouble, if one were to take the truly interesting bits and place them atop 802.11.
Besides, if I did get a tablet, I'd also get one of those roll-up keyboards and stick that wherever, just in case.