Diesel locomotives are essentially big generators. They generate a large current which drives an electric motor. If I remember correctly they can go in either direction with equal power simply by reversing polarity.
Don't know if this is a great solution but locomotives definitely can produce lots of electric power.
Look, Microsoft is going to take a bath on the Xbox console. They knew that going in. Doesn't matter anyway. Software is where they will make their money on the console. Plus, unlike both Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft has $40,000,000,000 in the bank. That will sustain a very impressive burn rate trying to get into/take-over this market. Frankly if it wasn't for anti-trust concerns Microsoft could probably buy Sony and Nintendo just to eliminate them as competitors with petty cash.
You are aware that Excel is notorious for innaccurate calculations right? Some of the functions using the built in math libraries return answers that are wrong. And if you use VB scripting, which uses different libraries, the problem gets compounded to answers that are really wrong. See bugnet for some examples. If you insist on using Excel, use a third party (and adequately tested) math library with it for serious precision math.
Just because a machine is 20% faster doesn't mean I, as an engineer, will be 20% more productive. Most of the time any engineer is using any system besides a super-computer it is not for processor or graphics bound tasks. It is for setting up a model, or email, or CAD or web surfing, or report writing. With very rare exceptions you are only periodically push the system to it's limit.
Even as a render farm the economics don't work out. It would be cheaper to buy 2 Pentium systems now that are 80% as fast and which together are faster than the Fuel system for almost everything. (Heck you could buy 3-4 Pentium systems for the same money, presuming software availability of course)
I've worked with SGI's for almost the last 4 years, everything from an O2 to an Onyx to an Origin and everything in between. The economics of SGI's product line is not compelling any more except in very rare cases. We have proven directly in our facility and many of our plants have as well that there are more cost effective ways of getting our work done than machines from SGI. Would we prefer the SGI machines? Sure. But the company isn't going to buy them when there is a cheaper alternative that works just fine.
Disclaimer. I spent the last three years working daily on an SGI Octane. I loved it and turned down several offers to "upgrade" to a Windows based system that in real terms was faster. SGI makes excellent systems which are by and large great to work with.
This new system looks great but unless I was trapped by some particular piece of software I still could never cost justify buying one. $12000+? Sorry. Even presuming that the real world performance is significantly ahead of a high end Pentium system (which I doubt) it's still more expensive, especially once you factor in the service contracts. Those will add several thousand a year. Not to mention that a "well equiped" version will cost much more in all likelyhood.
SGI makes great machines but as a business they are in a teeny-tiny little market niche that is being eroded far too quickly by commodity hardware. They manage to keep ahead for the super high end stuff but that never leaves much room to grow. Frankly I'm mildly astonished the company is doing as well as it is.
I'd love to play around with one of these new Fuel systems but I doubt I'll ever have the chance. There just are too few cases where anyone could justify buying one. Sad really...
"Nobody's life, liberty or happiness are safe while Congress is in session" (Mark Twain I think but could be someone else)
I guess the one thing that really worries me about all this is not that the government wants to go after terrorists. I'm even willing to give them the benifit of the doubt about their intentions with the bill. The question I have is how do you define "terrorist"?
I know this sounds silly at first glance but it isn't. Everyone sort of assumes we know what we mean by a "terrorist" and Congress passed laws in order to help deal with them. But these laws will be with us even if we win this "war". And we as citizens will have to live with the consequences of them for years afterwards.
I think taking a significant amount of time to make sure the proposed rule changes don't cause more harm to the citizens than grief to the terrorists is not a particularly silly thing to ask for. Given the speed which with this bill was passed, I'm not convinced it will to more good than harm. I'd like to think it would but I've seen far too much to not be cynical about the prospects.
Geez, I think I remember this BBS. Long time ago and I'm not sure but it sounds awful familiar. I was in the Cleveland OH area during that time and probably logged onto most of the BBS's in the 216 area code that were around during the late 80's and early 90s. Ahhh, the memories. It was really exciting to log on back then.
I remember shelling out $250 bucks for a 2400 baud modem from Practical Periferals (subsidiary of Hayes if I recall with V.42bis which allowed me to get a little extra speed out of the connection through hardware compression. Probably wasn't worth the money but it was cool. 9600 baud modems had just hit the market and cost $500 at the time. This was back when my machine was a 286 with 1 meg of RAM. Dropped $1600 for that bad boy and still have the VGA (640x480 max) monitor for it which sees occasional service 13-14 years later.
The blob was found to be a cluster of stars 13.6 billion light years away, seen when the age of the universe was less than a billion years old.
Perhaps I've been out of touch with my astronomy studies for too long, I know there are a lot of discoveries being made. However I was under the impression that there was still a great deal of uncertainty about the age of the universe. It was generally agreed that it was somewhere between about 13 billion and 20 billion years old but exactly how old wasn't/isn't clear.
Is there something I don't know about or is this age prediction just an assumption? Have there been some consensus on this recently that I didn't hear about? Anyone know for sure? I'm always suspicious when I see "discoveries" like this whose results depend on something that hasn't been definitely proven.
Look, we're all sick to death of these various Outlook/Office/etc viruses due to the virtually nonexistant security in these applications. Obviously, MS hasn't been particularly interested in fixing the problem and it is highly unlikely that they will fix it anytime soon. Easy is what sells so that is what MS will do, even if it is the "Wrong Thing" to do.
One thing that annoys me though is that MS never seems to get plastered with responsibility for the problem. It's always a "computer virus", never an "Outlook virus" or "Office virus". And maybe that is to some degree our fault. Let me explain that.
Many of us who read Slashdot are techies, sysadmins, and programmers. We're the ones stuck dealing with and often fixing the mess Windows leaves behind. So perhaps, we need to be a little more persistant in placing the blame where it is due.
So here is what I'm going to do, and if it makes sense to you try it too. Henceforth, all viruses, worms, and trojans will be referred to as a Microsoft Outlook Virus or an Microsoft Office Virus. Written with Visual Basic? Fine, it's a Microsoft Office Virus. Takes advantage of Outlook? It's a Microsoft Outlook Virus. Yes that is inaccurate but that's not the point. The point is to make sure everyone is aware of who wrote the crappy software that permitted their computer to crash, why the network borked, and why they lost their files. It's because they insisted on using Microsoft products. I will insist on it, proclaim it from the highest mountain , and oh btw explain that there are alternatives.
Will this destroy Microsoft? No, of course not. But if everyone believes that Microsoft products are virus ridden and that the alternatives aren't it certainly is more likely that the alternatives (*cough*opensource*cough*) will get more consideration.
And if by some miracle enough of a stink is made, maybe, just maybe they'll fix the problem. And that wouldn't be too bad either...
Why does no one use VRML? Because virtually no one can use VRML. Not for anything interesting or useful anyway. Ever looked at a VRML file with any significant detail to it? They are huge. Far too large to comfortably send around the web, even with a broadband connection. Even when network speed isn't a consideration, it still is too bloated to do anything useful with that can't be done much better with proprietary (and better designed) 3D model formats.
In my job we use various 3D formats daily. Various CAD system (ProE, CATIA, AutoCAD, etc) native formats, IGES, STEP, STL, and yes VRML. We do work with virtual reality technologies, 3d modelling and simulation. The only use we have ever found for VRML is as a vendor neutral format for exporting tesselated images of CAD data between a few selected pieces of software. And even then we have to be careful how big the VRML we use is. 3D Studio Max (one of the more well known apps we use) will choke on a VRML bigger than 75-100 Meg. And this is on a Dual Proc 800Mhz P3 with 2Gig of RAM! You can generate a VRML that size with one automotive assembly with a decent amount of detail to it. (a single front axle module for instance) Forget building a world, you'll have trouble building more than a few simple objects with VRML.
If we cannot use VRML for anything useful beyond simple format translation, what chance is it ever going to have to be used for something more clever? VRML is useless because it is too big and it is too slow. Simple as that. If the format sucked less, the tools would come to take advantage of it. But right now, there is no point because VRML isn't useful for anything and even with computer speed increases isn't going to be for some time to come.
If you want to see a more useful 3D tesselated format look at.JT (from EAI) Granted, it's proprietary and not without some other problems, but it is much "lighter" than VRML ever dreamed of being while still looking quite good. It's getting used for PDM (Product Data Management) systems in the business world which require a relatively light weight, CAD vendor neutral, tesselated 3D model. This market opportunity was created in part because VRML was too bloated to be useful. The opportunity is still there, but VRML in it's current form just isn't the answer.
1) Perfect (or nearly so) compatibility with the.doc,.xls, and.ppt formats. Too much stuff out there in these formats to not have it.
2) Make it available everywhere. People use AOL because they made getting their software easy. They put CD's everywhere. Downloading it from the internet is not good enough. Very few people have a fast network connection at home and even if they did they wouldn't likely download it. Sun needs to provide it to all OEMs, carpet bomb the US with CD's containing StarOffice From Sun, etc. Yes this costs money but it won't hurt Office unless it is done.
3) Make it as close to Office as possible in look and feel, at least for a while. If people feel they know how to use it already, they will be much more inclined to switch. It doesn't matter if the interface to Office stinks, it is what people are used to.
4) Do a cost analysis and trumpet it everywhere. If StarOffice is even close in features and is highly compatible, you'll get the attention of IT managers and CFOs. Businesses only care about saving money. Make their jobs easier/cheaper and they'll migrate in droves.
Unfortunately I think Sun doesn't want to do any of this. Unless they do, StarOffice is going to be an also-ran for at least several more years.
between researching security and implementing it. Microsoft has lots of smart people working for it, at least some of whom I'm sure understand completely the security implications of what they do. They just purposely decide not to do anything about it.
Which brings up the next point in that there is often a difference between doing what's "Right" and doing what's profitable. Easy is what sells to most folks. Secure is not. (talking generalities here...) And making things secure often makes them dramatically less easy. Since the primary purpose of Microsoft is to make money, easy will always win out over secure in their world. Good, bad, or indifferrent, that's the way it is. Follow the money trail and you'll understand why MS acts the way they do.
Limux has the opposite approach. Generally in the *nix world, performance (including stability, speed and options) usually wins out over outright ease of use. That's what the users of it demand. Certainly some things are very easy, but in many cases it's a different kind of easy for a different kind of audience. Whether that is good or not is an excercise left to the reader. (i.e. you)
As impressive as the Williams sisters serves are, the fastest serving guys are hitting 143+ mph on their serves. Yipes. I can tell you from first hand experience, returning anything over 100mph is really tough to do. If they place it right, you don't have a chance.
Of course, nothing compares to jai-alai players who can chuck the ball at 180+mph and are periodically killed when they misjudge a catch.
If MS is broken up (ignore for the moment whether that is the right remedy or not) where will all the.NET stuff go? Will it go with the OS side, the apps side, some combination? At a glance it would go with the OS side, but is that the Right Thing? Will it all just dry up and go away? It's not such an easy question it seems.
Wondering where this initiative of MS will go worries me slightly. I'd hate for the court to unwittingly unleash a "monster" without some method of redress should whatever remedy they come up with prove innefectual.
If you have to play with the settings that much, it's a bad board IMHO. There should be settings it WILL work at, and those should be the default settings.
Most boards will work basically without tweaking. They just won't necessarily work well. You have to remember that every system is different. It would be virtually impossible to have a default group of settings that will work perfectly in all cases. When you buy a system from a vendor (i.e. Dell) you are paying them, in part, to do this configuration for you. Ideally, they should be mixing and matching components and settings and making sure the system they are selling you is stable and all the components play nice. Obviously some do a better job than others, but you are basically paying them to do the work for you. If you install the motherboard yourself, it is no different than compiling a kernel. You are building a custom solution and that means you will need to track down all the problems with it.
I understand your frustration, but I've been doing this a long time and it hasn't gotten much simpler, nor is it likely to. If you want to install a motherboard youself, you need to know what you are doing and be willing to patiently track down all the little problems. If you aren't, you're probably better off just purchasing a system from a reputable vendor and paying the markup for it. These days it isn't hard to get a wide variety of options so that isn't a bad way to go.
You've got a good approach to building systems. It's just too bad most folks can't see past the price barrier of SCSI.
Thanks. You're right about the price of SCSI. The price barrier of SCSI is worse than it used to be. Several years ago it was only about a ~20-50% premium once you included the cost of the controller. Now it's unfortunately considerably more. Still, I think if you have a choice (and I realize many don't) SCSI is the best way to go. I'm not saying you cannot build a great system with ATAPI, you certainly can. It's just usually a little more hassle and a little more prone to conflicts in my experience.
There is a huge difference between paying to support a police force or army and paying to support a corporations profits. Remember who the RIAA is. They are a cartel of large corporations, not a neutral government agency. They exist to make a profit, not to protect the well being of society like a police force (ostensibly) does.
You bring up a good point in that many people are not honest, but it is not my responsibility to subsidize companies who cannot deal with the problem. I already pay for a police department. If the RIAA catches someone violating the law, they are more than capable of turning them over to the appropriate authorities. If I pay a tax to the RIAA, I am paying for the same problem twice. I believe I have no legal or moral obligation to do so. The RIAA members are perfectly within their rights to defend their business but it is not my responsibility to subsidize that. They are perfectly capable of doing so themselves.
Haven't done anything illegal (by US law) with my CD burner. I've space-shifted a few CD's I own (perfectly legal) which the RIAA doesn't like but that's about as close as I come. Most of what I use my CD burner for is backing up data from my hard drive. I don't listen to much music and don't own many music CDs. I'm very choosy about the music I actually purchase media for and have no time or interest in downloading it off the web. My interests lie elsewhere. I do purchase blank media but what I use it for is none of the RIAA's business, nor should I pay them for the "priviledge" of using it.
I have a problem with a levy tax because it presumes that I am currently or will break the law. Since I do not purchase much music, why the hell I should reimburse the RIAA for money they wouldn't have gotten from me anyway? They aren't entitled to a dime from me. If their business model relies on laws that are impossible to enforce, that's just too bad for them. They aren't entitled to make money and I am not, and should not be, obligated to pay them for goods or services I do not use.
I used to have problems with my most recent MoBo until I managed to get my BIOS settings right. My machine is an ASUS board with a 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird PC133 RAM and an nVidia GeForce 2 GTS and an Adaptec SCSI controller. (I built it up myself because vendors won't assemble the machine I want without charging me up the wazoo for it)
Anyway I had a lot of flakeyness when I first got it. Turns out a lot of the problems were with getting the BIOS settings right. I had to slow the AGP port down to 2X, disable the onboard IDE controller (not in use), disable some of the power conservation features, and tweaked a half dozen other settings. Now the system is solid as a rock, even when I boot into Windows. (Win2000Pro, not ME/98) Haven't crashed anything in probably 6 months.
I've been building my own machines for about 10 years now. It's always the same, getting the right combination of BIOS settings, system settings, and stable software is an iterative process that just takes time. My machines are usually unstable for the first 2-4 months after I get them until I can stomp out all the bugs. Once in a while you run into a real dud piece of hardware and have to bite the bullet on it, but usually some persistance pays off. It does take time though.
I do take certain precautions now though to ensure a stable and easy to maintain system, not all of which are cheap but all help a lot. Some of these include
I always use SCSI. Yeah IDE is cheaper and it works just fine, but if you can afford it, SCSI is better in pretty much every aspect except price. Easier to set up, easier to expand, the drivers are usually better, it's faster (at the high end anyway), etc. If price isn't a huge issue, get SCSI.
I purchase a UPS. (I like APC personally.) They are cheap insurance. They will protect your machine from brief power dips which are often more damaging than spikes, they carry an insurance policy on them if you equipment is damaged, and they unless you want auto shutdowns, they don't have any compatibility issues.
I get a good power supply. PC Power and Cooling is my brand of choice. This is slightly paranoid but I've had two machine have power supplies go south on them. When the power supply goes, it usually fries things. So I get one that is very unlikely to go.
Don't get no name components if you can avoid it, and preferably get something you've worked with before. I use Adaptec controllers because I worked with them for many years, they work and I know what to expect. Not to say others don't work great but I know what I'm getting and that makes the inevitable debugging easier. It's also more likely that drivers will be available if more than 3 people have that piece of equipment.
I avoid equipment with unusual interfaces. If you have SCSI, get as much SCSI equipment as is practical. Don't mix and match interfaces if you can avoid it.
I generally avoid integrated controllers or disable them if I get one. Onboard SCSI and ATAPI can work fine but are usually harder to work with and troubleshoot. Driver availability tends to be not as good as a rule though this is not always true.
I don't overclock. Not that there is anything wrong with doing it, but don't expect a stable system if you overclock. You might get it but chances are fairly high you won't too.
There are a lot more to it obviously but these rules of thumb have helped me a lot. None are hard and fast rules obviously but they have minimized problems for me. It takes time and a systematic approach to get a stable system, particularly if you build it yourself.
Re:Yep... he's a gamer.
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I deal with what he was talking about pretty regularly. Can't say the comment was a well structured bit of prose but it made sense to me.
Everything he mentioned is pretty much true. "Gaming" cards do emphasize features which are not terribly useful for folks who need to move a lot of polygons. (CAD, scientific modelling, etc) That difference is why I'm still using an SGI Octane comfortably for 3D CAD graphics even though a gForce3 equipped PC by the specs should blow it out of the water. Since I don't care about textures, the Octane can hold it's own against the gaming cards for "professional" applications despite being 3-4 years older.
They won't come to you
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I crawl back in my dorm room at 1:30, phone rings, it's this girl. We go out for ice cream. She's so stoned she can't walk straight. Why the fuck do I even bother? Sitting in front of a computer 8 hours straight on a Saturday may not be much of a social life, but I'd prefer to have conversations with conscious people. After that I pretty much gave up trying to have a social life at school.
This is sort of the classic trap to fall into. I should know, I did. It's a simple fact of life that most people are more interested in themselves than they are in you. They aren't being inconsiderate, intentionally ignoring you, or anything else. You have to give other people a reason to pay attention to you. If you sit at a computer instead of interacting with people, you are not going to get any attention. You may as well be furniture.
Learn their name, find out something about them, talk to them and be interested (even if you aren't). You don't have to like them, be friends with them, date them or even see them again. But it's good practice for the Real World, and guess what? You'll meet some pretty interesting folks along the way.
Not everyone is interested in the same things you are. Just because someone could care less about computers does not make them boring, stupid, or worse in any way. It just means they are interested in other things. Chances are good those things might be pretty interesting themselves. Let them tell you about what they like. People love this.
Most people are just as scared as you. They may not show it, or cover it up better, but it is true. Meeting new people is very hard to do. But they aren't going to come to you. Show them that you care and are interested in them and they'll usually respond in kind. Just ask questions and show a genuine interest in the responses. Will you meet some jerks? Sure. But most folks are pretty decent at heart.
Just because some folks will not be that interested in you does not mean you should just go "oh well, nobody likes me, guess I'll just go play Quake". That is avoidance behavior. You're afraid of the opinions of a bunch of folks who are mostly interested in themselves. Most folks are more interested in themselves than anyone else most of the time. You probably are too, whether you care to admit it or not. It's ok, it's normal. But it's silly to go crawl into a corner because someone acted selfishly. It hasn't been the first time and it won't be the last. If you reach out and get ignored, it's ok, it happens to everyone. But if you stop reaching out, you will get ignored. Retreating into your computer, though seemingly comfortable, doesn't solve the problem. It's no different in most respects than an alchoholic drinking to forget his troubles. Sure you'll feel better for a while, but the problem will still be there the next day because you haven't dealt with it.
No, not all reporters are. Just most of them. Most of the reporters I've met are little more than a talking hair-do and are fascinated by anything with blinking lights even though they almost never comprehend anything you tell them. You can just watch anything you tell them go in one ear and out the other.
Why do I say this? I work in a tech center. We do a lot of nifty complicated work usually involving a lot of computers and/or math. It's neat stuff, but not that hard to understand what it is even if you don't understand the details of it. (part prototyping, databases, 3d computer graphics, etc) Because of the kind of work we do, we are something of a showpiece for the company. We get reporters and TV crews coming through all the time. The visits usually go something like this:
Us: Here's this nifty complicated new piece of equipment that is going to help us make widgets faster, better and cheaper.
Then: Uh-huh. Can you turn the lights in the room down and stand over by the blinking lights? We need a picture.
Us: But those lights are the air conditioning system.
Them: Yeah but it looks cool and I didn't understand a word you said anyway.
They also have this peculiar fascination with taking pictures in low light conditions with glowing things. My wife worked in a lab where they used radioactive chemical markers for testing. They wanted to turn the lights down to get a picture of the spectrometer (which wasn't even in use) while showing someone handling radioactive chemicals in the dark. Very safe...
Needless to say, I don't watch the evening news anymore...
I'm around medical students quite a lot. Now if you've ever seen what medical students have to learn, it involves huge amounts of memorization and studying upwards of 12-18 hours per day (including classes) much of the time. Obviously unless you are some freak of nature you cannot concentrate effectively for that long. (yes this includes programmers too...)
I have numerous 2nd and 3rd hand accounts of the use of some prescription drugs (including ritalin) being used to aid concentration during long study sessions. (Obvously it isn't hard for medical personnel to get them or to know the side effects.) How widespread this practice is or how effective it is, I have no idea but it does appear to happen and apparently to some degree.
Maybe that's why I was never a curve wrecker in college. Everyone else was doping... Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket...
Slashdot Mirror
Diesel locomotives are essentially big generators. They generate a large current which drives an electric motor. If I remember correctly they can go in either direction with equal power simply by reversing polarity.
Don't know if this is a great solution but locomotives definitely can produce lots of electric power.
Sums it up pretty well I think...
Look, Microsoft is going to take a bath on the Xbox console. They knew that going in. Doesn't matter anyway. Software is where they will make their money on the console. Plus, unlike both Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft has $40,000,000,000 in the bank. That will sustain a very impressive burn rate trying to get into/take-over this market. Frankly if it wasn't for anti-trust concerns Microsoft could probably buy Sony and Nintendo just to eliminate them as competitors with petty cash.
You are aware that Excel is notorious for innaccurate calculations right? Some of the functions using the built in math libraries return answers that are wrong. And if you use VB scripting, which uses different libraries, the problem gets compounded to answers that are really wrong. See bugnet for some examples. If you insist on using Excel, use a third party (and adequately tested) math library with it for serious precision math.
Do you know what the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is?
The car salesman knows when he's lying to you.
Just because a machine is 20% faster doesn't mean I, as an engineer, will be 20% more productive. Most of the time any engineer is using any system besides a super-computer it is not for processor or graphics bound tasks. It is for setting up a model, or email, or CAD or web surfing, or report writing. With very rare exceptions you are only periodically push the system to it's limit.
Even as a render farm the economics don't work out. It would be cheaper to buy 2 Pentium systems now that are 80% as fast and which together are faster than the Fuel system for almost everything. (Heck you could buy 3-4 Pentium systems for the same money, presuming software availability of course)
I've worked with SGI's for almost the last 4 years, everything from an O2 to an Onyx to an Origin and everything in between. The economics of SGI's product line is not compelling any more except in very rare cases. We have proven directly in our facility and many of our plants have as well that there are more cost effective ways of getting our work done than machines from SGI. Would we prefer the SGI machines? Sure. But the company isn't going to buy them when there is a cheaper alternative that works just fine.
Disclaimer. I spent the last three years working daily on an SGI Octane. I loved it and turned down several offers to "upgrade" to a Windows based system that in real terms was faster. SGI makes excellent systems which are by and large great to work with.
This new system looks great but unless I was trapped by some particular piece of software I still could never cost justify buying one. $12000+? Sorry. Even presuming that the real world performance is significantly ahead of a high end Pentium system (which I doubt) it's still more expensive, especially once you factor in the service contracts. Those will add several thousand a year. Not to mention that a "well equiped" version will cost much more in all likelyhood.
SGI makes great machines but as a business they are in a teeny-tiny little market niche that is being eroded far too quickly by commodity hardware. They manage to keep ahead for the super high end stuff but that never leaves much room to grow. Frankly I'm mildly astonished the company is doing as well as it is.
I'd love to play around with one of these new Fuel systems but I doubt I'll ever have the chance. There just are too few cases where anyone could justify buying one. Sad really...
"Nobody's life, liberty or happiness are safe while Congress is in session" (Mark Twain I think but could be someone else)
I guess the one thing that really worries me about all this is not that the government wants to go after terrorists. I'm even willing to give them the benifit of the doubt about their intentions with the bill. The question I have is how do you define "terrorist"?
I know this sounds silly at first glance but it isn't. Everyone sort of assumes we know what we mean by a "terrorist" and Congress passed laws in order to help deal with them. But these laws will be with us even if we win this "war". And we as citizens will have to live with the consequences of them for years afterwards.
I think taking a significant amount of time to make sure the proposed rule changes don't cause more harm to the citizens than grief to the terrorists is not a particularly silly thing to ask for. Given the speed which with this bill was passed, I'm not convinced it will to more good than harm. I'd like to think it would but I've seen far too much to not be cynical about the prospects.
Geez, I think I remember this BBS. Long time ago and I'm not sure but it sounds awful familiar. I was in the Cleveland OH area during that time and probably logged onto most of the BBS's in the 216 area code that were around during the late 80's and early 90s. Ahhh, the memories. It was really exciting to log on back then.
I remember shelling out $250 bucks for a 2400 baud modem from Practical Periferals (subsidiary of Hayes if I recall with V.42bis which allowed me to get a little extra speed out of the connection through hardware compression. Probably wasn't worth the money but it was cool. 9600 baud modems had just hit the market and cost $500 at the time. This was back when my machine was a 286 with 1 meg of RAM. Dropped $1600 for that bad boy and still have the VGA (640x480 max) monitor for it which sees occasional service 13-14 years later.
The blob was found to be a cluster of stars 13.6 billion light years away, seen when the age of the universe was less than a billion years old.
Perhaps I've been out of touch with my astronomy studies for too long, I know there are a lot of discoveries being made. However I was under the impression that there was still a great deal of uncertainty about the age of the universe. It was generally agreed that it was somewhere between about 13 billion and 20 billion years old but exactly how old wasn't/isn't clear.
Is there something I don't know about or is this age prediction just an assumption? Have there been some consensus on this recently that I didn't hear about? Anyone know for sure? I'm always suspicious when I see "discoveries" like this whose results depend on something that hasn't been definitely proven.
Look, we're all sick to death of these various Outlook/Office/etc viruses due to the virtually nonexistant security in these applications. Obviously, MS hasn't been particularly interested in fixing the problem and it is highly unlikely that they will fix it anytime soon. Easy is what sells so that is what MS will do, even if it is the "Wrong Thing" to do.
One thing that annoys me though is that MS never seems to get plastered with responsibility for the problem. It's always a "computer virus", never an "Outlook virus" or "Office virus". And maybe that is to some degree our fault. Let me explain that.
Many of us who read Slashdot are techies, sysadmins, and programmers. We're the ones stuck dealing with and often fixing the mess Windows leaves behind. So perhaps, we need to be a little more persistant in placing the blame where it is due.
So here is what I'm going to do, and if it makes sense to you try it too. Henceforth, all viruses, worms, and trojans will be referred to as a Microsoft Outlook Virus or an Microsoft Office Virus. Written with Visual Basic? Fine, it's a Microsoft Office Virus. Takes advantage of Outlook? It's a Microsoft Outlook Virus. Yes that is inaccurate but that's not the point. The point is to make sure everyone is aware of who wrote the crappy software that permitted their computer to crash, why the network borked, and why they lost their files. It's because they insisted on using Microsoft products. I will insist on it, proclaim it from the highest mountain , and oh btw explain that there are alternatives.
Will this destroy Microsoft? No, of course not. But if everyone believes that Microsoft products are virus ridden and that the alternatives aren't it certainly is more likely that the alternatives (*cough*opensource*cough*) will get more consideration.
And if by some miracle enough of a stink is made, maybe, just maybe they'll fix the problem. And that wouldn't be too bad either...
Why does no one use VRML? Because virtually no one can use VRML. Not for anything interesting or useful anyway. Ever looked at a VRML file with any significant detail to it? They are huge. Far too large to comfortably send around the web, even with a broadband connection. Even when network speed isn't a consideration, it still is too bloated to do anything useful with that can't be done much better with proprietary (and better designed) 3D model formats.
.JT (from EAI) Granted, it's proprietary and not without some other problems, but it is much "lighter" than VRML ever dreamed of being while still looking quite good. It's getting used for PDM (Product Data Management) systems in the business world which require a relatively light weight, CAD vendor neutral, tesselated 3D model. This market opportunity was created in part because VRML was too bloated to be useful. The opportunity is still there, but VRML in it's current form just isn't the answer.
In my job we use various 3D formats daily. Various CAD system (ProE, CATIA, AutoCAD, etc) native formats, IGES, STEP, STL, and yes VRML. We do work with virtual reality technologies, 3d modelling and simulation. The only use we have ever found for VRML is as a vendor neutral format for exporting tesselated images of CAD data between a few selected pieces of software. And even then we have to be careful how big the VRML we use is. 3D Studio Max (one of the more well known apps we use) will choke on a VRML bigger than 75-100 Meg. And this is on a Dual Proc 800Mhz P3 with 2Gig of RAM! You can generate a VRML that size with one automotive assembly with a decent amount of detail to it. (a single front axle module for instance) Forget building a world, you'll have trouble building more than a few simple objects with VRML.
If we cannot use VRML for anything useful beyond simple format translation, what chance is it ever going to have to be used for something more clever? VRML is useless because it is too big and it is too slow. Simple as that. If the format sucked less, the tools would come to take advantage of it. But right now, there is no point because VRML isn't useful for anything and even with computer speed increases isn't going to be for some time to come.
If you want to see a more useful 3D tesselated format look at
1) Perfect (or nearly so) compatibility with the .doc, .xls, and .ppt formats. Too much stuff out there in these formats to not have it.
2) Make it available everywhere. People use AOL because they made getting their software easy. They put CD's everywhere. Downloading it from the internet is not good enough. Very few people have a fast network connection at home and even if they did they wouldn't likely download it. Sun needs to provide it to all OEMs, carpet bomb the US with CD's containing StarOffice From Sun, etc. Yes this costs money but it won't hurt Office unless it is done.
3) Make it as close to Office as possible in look and feel, at least for a while. If people feel they know how to use it already, they will be much more inclined to switch. It doesn't matter if the interface to Office stinks, it is what people are used to.
4) Do a cost analysis and trumpet it everywhere. If StarOffice is even close in features and is highly compatible, you'll get the attention of IT managers and CFOs. Businesses only care about saving money. Make their jobs easier/cheaper and they'll migrate in droves.
Unfortunately I think Sun doesn't want to do any of this. Unless they do, StarOffice is going to be an also-ran for at least several more years.
between researching security and implementing it. Microsoft has lots of smart people working for it, at least some of whom I'm sure understand completely the security implications of what they do. They just purposely decide not to do anything about it.
Which brings up the next point in that there is often a difference between doing what's "Right" and doing what's profitable. Easy is what sells to most folks. Secure is not. (talking generalities here...) And making things secure often makes them dramatically less easy. Since the primary purpose of Microsoft is to make money, easy will always win out over secure in their world. Good, bad, or indifferrent, that's the way it is. Follow the money trail and you'll understand why MS acts the way they do.
Limux has the opposite approach. Generally in the *nix world, performance (including stability, speed and options) usually wins out over outright ease of use. That's what the users of it demand. Certainly some things are very easy, but in many cases it's a different kind of easy for a different kind of audience. Whether that is good or not is an excercise left to the reader. (i.e. you)
Of course, nothing compares to jai-alai players who can chuck the ball at 180+mph and are periodically killed when they misjudge a catch.
Wondering where this initiative of MS will go worries me slightly. I'd hate for the court to unwittingly unleash a "monster" without some method of redress should whatever remedy they come up with prove innefectual.
Most boards will work basically without tweaking. They just won't necessarily work well. You have to remember that every system is different. It would be virtually impossible to have a default group of settings that will work perfectly in all cases. When you buy a system from a vendor (i.e. Dell) you are paying them, in part, to do this configuration for you. Ideally, they should be mixing and matching components and settings and making sure the system they are selling you is stable and all the components play nice. Obviously some do a better job than others, but you are basically paying them to do the work for you. If you install the motherboard yourself, it is no different than compiling a kernel. You are building a custom solution and that means you will need to track down all the problems with it.
I understand your frustration, but I've been doing this a long time and it hasn't gotten much simpler, nor is it likely to. If you want to install a motherboard youself, you need to know what you are doing and be willing to patiently track down all the little problems. If you aren't, you're probably better off just purchasing a system from a reputable vendor and paying the markup for it. These days it isn't hard to get a wide variety of options so that isn't a bad way to go.
Thanks. You're right about the price of SCSI. The price barrier of SCSI is worse than it used to be. Several years ago it was only about a ~20-50% premium once you included the cost of the controller. Now it's unfortunately considerably more. Still, I think if you have a choice (and I realize many don't) SCSI is the best way to go. I'm not saying you cannot build a great system with ATAPI, you certainly can. It's just usually a little more hassle and a little more prone to conflicts in my experience.
You bring up a good point in that many people are not honest, but it is not my responsibility to subsidize companies who cannot deal with the problem. I already pay for a police department. If the RIAA catches someone violating the law, they are more than capable of turning them over to the appropriate authorities. If I pay a tax to the RIAA, I am paying for the same problem twice. I believe I have no legal or moral obligation to do so. The RIAA members are perfectly within their rights to defend their business but it is not my responsibility to subsidize that. They are perfectly capable of doing so themselves.
I have a problem with a levy tax because it presumes that I am currently or will break the law. Since I do not purchase much music, why the hell I should reimburse the RIAA for money they wouldn't have gotten from me anyway? They aren't entitled to a dime from me. If their business model relies on laws that are impossible to enforce, that's just too bad for them. They aren't entitled to make money and I am not, and should not be, obligated to pay them for goods or services I do not use.
Anyway I had a lot of flakeyness when I first got it. Turns out a lot of the problems were with getting the BIOS settings right. I had to slow the AGP port down to 2X, disable the onboard IDE controller (not in use), disable some of the power conservation features, and tweaked a half dozen other settings. Now the system is solid as a rock, even when I boot into Windows. (Win2000Pro, not ME/98) Haven't crashed anything in probably 6 months.
I've been building my own machines for about 10 years now. It's always the same, getting the right combination of BIOS settings, system settings, and stable software is an iterative process that just takes time. My machines are usually unstable for the first 2-4 months after I get them until I can stomp out all the bugs. Once in a while you run into a real dud piece of hardware and have to bite the bullet on it, but usually some persistance pays off. It does take time though.
I do take certain precautions now though to ensure a stable and easy to maintain system, not all of which are cheap but all help a lot. Some of these include
There are a lot more to it obviously but these rules of thumb have helped me a lot. None are hard and fast rules obviously but they have minimized problems for me. It takes time and a systematic approach to get a stable system, particularly if you build it yourself.
Everything he mentioned is pretty much true. "Gaming" cards do emphasize features which are not terribly useful for folks who need to move a lot of polygons. (CAD, scientific modelling, etc) That difference is why I'm still using an SGI Octane comfortably for 3D CAD graphics even though a gForce3 equipped PC by the specs should blow it out of the water. Since I don't care about textures, the Octane can hold it's own against the gaming cards for "professional" applications despite being 3-4 years older.
This is sort of the classic trap to fall into. I should know, I did. It's a simple fact of life that most people are more interested in themselves than they are in you. They aren't being inconsiderate, intentionally ignoring you, or anything else. You have to give other people a reason to pay attention to you. If you sit at a computer instead of interacting with people, you are not going to get any attention. You may as well be furniture.
Learn their name, find out something about them, talk to them and be interested (even if you aren't). You don't have to like them, be friends with them, date them or even see them again. But it's good practice for the Real World, and guess what? You'll meet some pretty interesting folks along the way.
Not everyone is interested in the same things you are. Just because someone could care less about computers does not make them boring, stupid, or worse in any way. It just means they are interested in other things. Chances are good those things might be pretty interesting themselves. Let them tell you about what they like. People love this.
Most people are just as scared as you. They may not show it, or cover it up better, but it is true. Meeting new people is very hard to do. But they aren't going to come to you. Show them that you care and are interested in them and they'll usually respond in kind. Just ask questions and show a genuine interest in the responses. Will you meet some jerks? Sure. But most folks are pretty decent at heart.
Just because some folks will not be that interested in you does not mean you should just go "oh well, nobody likes me, guess I'll just go play Quake". That is avoidance behavior. You're afraid of the opinions of a bunch of folks who are mostly interested in themselves. Most folks are more interested in themselves than anyone else most of the time. You probably are too, whether you care to admit it or not. It's ok, it's normal. But it's silly to go crawl into a corner because someone acted selfishly. It hasn't been the first time and it won't be the last. If you reach out and get ignored, it's ok, it happens to everyone. But if you stop reaching out, you will get ignored. Retreating into your computer, though seemingly comfortable, doesn't solve the problem. It's no different in most respects than an alchoholic drinking to forget his troubles. Sure you'll feel better for a while, but the problem will still be there the next day because you haven't dealt with it.
Why do I say this? I work in a tech center. We do a lot of nifty complicated work usually involving a lot of computers and/or math. It's neat stuff, but not that hard to understand what it is even if you don't understand the details of it. (part prototyping, databases, 3d computer graphics, etc) Because of the kind of work we do, we are something of a showpiece for the company. We get reporters and TV crews coming through all the time. The visits usually go something like this:
Us: Here's this nifty complicated new piece of equipment that is going to help us make widgets faster, better and cheaper.
Then: Uh-huh. Can you turn the lights in the room down and stand over by the blinking lights? We need a picture.
Us: But those lights are the air conditioning system.
Them: Yeah but it looks cool and I didn't understand a word you said anyway.
They also have this peculiar fascination with taking pictures in low light conditions with glowing things. My wife worked in a lab where they used radioactive chemical markers for testing. They wanted to turn the lights down to get a picture of the spectrometer (which wasn't even in use) while showing someone handling radioactive chemicals in the dark. Very safe...
Needless to say, I don't watch the evening news anymore...
I have numerous 2nd and 3rd hand accounts of the use of some prescription drugs (including ritalin) being used to aid concentration during long study sessions. (Obvously it isn't hard for medical personnel to get them or to know the side effects.) How widespread this practice is or how effective it is, I have no idea but it does appear to happen and apparently to some degree.
Maybe that's why I was never a curve wrecker in college. Everyone else was doping... Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket...