Much like the megahertz myth, the need for a diamond engagement ring has been cultivated through careful marketing and peer pressure.
But.
The cost of NOT getting this diamond ring may be the relationship itself. It may not occur right away (she might still accept your proposal) but this will be a major disappointment to a woman who has had an engagement ring (or a rock as my ex-girlfriend called it), and it just might set the tone for the rest of your time together.
As has been pointed out elsehwhere in this very thread, gasoline, diamonds, honey, opium, and a whole bunch of other products all contribute to terrorism or cruel treatment of our fellow humans or various other badnesses in the world.
In the end, though, it will be infinitely easier to get a fuel-efficient car and switch away from various other products than it will be to alter the mindset of the woman (and ALL of her friends) who considers not where it came from or how it got there, but merely that it is on her finger.
So, if you want to get married and start of on the right foot with her, you should of course shop for the best value you can find in your budget and so on, but yes, the diamond is worth it.
[save your energy... cede her victory on this one, fight the good fight when she wants to know why you are "wasting" so much money on a cable modem/DSL, fast graphics cards, etc.]
First, is it possible for HBO et al. to broadcast Macrovision copy protection on their signal so that one cannot record such broadcasts? I know TiVo honors copy protection (on video tapes primarily) so I wondered.
My actual question, along a similar avenue, is whether the general public would repond in anger or in apathy to any real implentation of copy protection. Macrovision can be filtered out (but the copy of a VHS tape may not be worth the trouble) and CD copy protection hasn't caught on enough to trip up the masses. But what if copy protection just started appearing without warning, like that HBO scenario?
What is going to happen when the RIAA and the MPAA finally purchase the right representatives and get all of these laws and practices changed in their favor? Will people simply not watch some programs since they can't record them? Will there be an uprising after people are effected by all of this nerdy stuff they read about on the internet for so long? Will people simply go with the flow and accept the reductions in freedoms?
For every form of copy protection I've ever seen (dongled software, MS keys, macrovision, DAT copy bits, exploding paper, etc) there always seems to be a workaround to circumvent the protection and allow the copy... if that becomes impossible (it might at some point, they could get lucky) what will the public at large do?
I have to admit, I would almost (ALMOST) like to see all of these protections get implemented just to see what happens.
Unfortunately, I think the public at large will be angered, and they might even lament their inaction as it was all unfolding (that would be now), but they will feel and be powerless to make any changes. They will still patronize RIAA and MPAA properties and in time people will forget that we used to be able to tape movies to watch later.
I found the Parallel (sometimes called "Wall-Eyed") mode to be the best, especially at this early hour. If you get your head in just the right spot and relax your eyes just right, you get a decent 3D effect without the odd color effects of the old 3D glasses method (which also works, but to me it looks odd).
If you've viewed random dot autosteroegrams using the wall-eyed technique (or the cross-eyed technique) this is the same thing, except the movement will be a distraction.
Actually, a sphere passing through a 2D world would appear to be a point, then a line of increasing length, then decreasing length, then a point again.
Or maybe that is a 3D'er view of things? I used a compact disc and a pencil to demonstrate this recently, and if my 2D example beings lived in the plane of the CD, then the pencil passing through the center of the CD would look similar to a sphere passing through a similar plane, if viewed along the plane (as a resident of said plane).
A long time ago, I read this silly book called Planiverse about a fictitious 2D world. The author presented it in a fantasy-like format about encountering 2D beings via a computer, but the concepts were presented such that a young person (as I was then) could see what was going on. For what it's worth...
By the way, I just looked, and it Planiverse is still around. I had never read Flatland, but that is linked there on that Amazon page as well.
Why hide a perfectly good display on the PDA? Yes, this mod is slick, but I personally would like to see an attached display device show me info... much like LCD and other serial/parallel display case mods do now on the case itself.
Similar to this product, a PDA attached to a desktop machine (and a charger) could and should extend the usefulness of both. Maybe a game controller like that linked product, maybe a desktop clock, maybe weather updates, stock tickers, an mp3 playlist interface, etc etc.
Like I said, a slick mod, but seems slightly counterproductive. Not that there are many satellite display apps that work with many PDAs available presently, but I'm hopeful. With bluetooth catching on, it might happen.
I've seen a couple of projects on freshmeat that do this. Basically, a daemon sits around and watches files and if they change, they do something about it. This could be anything from logging to sounding an alarm to replacing the content.
I could have a repository sitting offline storing all of my content (or even everything... OS, databases, scripts, tools, etc etc) and have it "log in" to the servers from the inside and check everything for changes periodically. In a lot of cases, tests could be done from the outside as well (web content specifically). That machine, though physically connected, would simply shut off its interfaces and block everything unless it was doing its work.
I think a recent website hack occurred at USA Today... such a scheme could have caught the hack within minutes and even have replaced the forged content with whatever was supposed to be there.
According to what this says, the avionics package meets or exceeds expectations. Now, this is not an MS bash, but I can recall of the top of my head that our intelligence services have database software that can only search on one term that probably met or exceeded expectations, and there's that ship that had to be towed back to port due to some NT failures.
Now this is more of an MS bash... people have come to expect system failures, and I've read admissions that 5-9's uptime is just too difficult and expensive a goal, and so-on, and of course this mostly points to MS desktop and server software. I wonder if people who sit at desks and write specs all day for military projects decided that only having to reboot now and then exceeds expectations as set by people not flying in the aircraft.
I'll probably get modded down, but I just think this sort of thing (Boeing's press release, the actual performance as reported, and the overall state of technology in our government) is a bit troubling and it doesn't appear to be getting better.
Anyone with a passing interest in radio controlled airplanes already knows this fact:
Plastic propellers disintegrate at high rpm.
So they use wooden ones. The document (the cached version, sans photos) did not go into great detail about the nature of the material failures, which they claim will be investigated with SEMs, but it would be interesting to use their same setup with same-size components made of other materials. A wooden CD-sized disc, an aluminum one, etc.
Not that CDs should be made of wood, but certainly plastic at high rpms is a compromise between cost and durability.
Personally, I am looking forward to more widespread use of geothermal heat exchange systems (see this document and a few links at the bottom of that page for more info) to gain efficiency and save energy (and money). As every VW Bug owner knows, air is okay as a heat exchange medium, but it is not the best. Using the ground to move the energy around makes a whole lot of sense, and can be tacked on to an existing A/C setup (with a whole lot of digging, of course).
Living in Phoenix as I do, I can definitely appeciate this invention, and let's not forget Carnot.
It is precisely for this reason that "we" must spy on everybody. Sort of a "mutually assured security breach" that keeps the world's security organizations on guard.
An interesting article here about running gigabit ethernet over Cat5 wire. It sounds like planning ahead now will leave the possibility open a few years out.
The article is pretty clear that going beyond gigabit on those wires is not likely, but it seems that buying good cable and setting it up correctly now will pay off without adding a lot of up-front expense with Cat6 or Cat7 or whatever else might be coming along.
Just two days ago I was at a company called Ultimate Entertainment in Scottsdale, AZ, and they said they run cat5 all over for automation, alarm, and even video distribution as part of their structured wiring package.
Apparently, they distribute HDTV throughout the home, and while they will also run coax or other normal structured wiring, this seemed interesting to me just because it would seem to simplify things a bit.
I actually went there looking into home automation work that they do based on a recommendation, including the fact that they are doing a project in southern california for $1.2 million in home entertainment and automation electronics alone. They are really focused on the entertainment side (as their name suggests), though, so I wouldn't consider them a superior resource for the other stuff, but a lot of automation devices can be added if cat5 is already run to the places you want it. If you plan ahead, you can avoid X-10 and have a system that works quite well.
I was particularly impressed with the wall-mounted touchscreens from ELAN and Crestron that they had mounted in their demo rooms, because they looked really great and make for a clean thermostat/security/lighting/A/V control panel.
Bottom line, Cat5 is useful for lots of other stuff in addition to computer networking. BTW, I am not affiliated in any way with any of the companies I referred to.
Re:Why not have the electrician do the CAT5
on
Wiring A New House?
·
· Score: 1
I've asked a couple of people about this, and they all say the same thing:
Do not get the electrician to do the low voltage wiring. End of discussion.
This is for residential projects, where I guess the population of electricians is not wise to the ways of wiring for ethernet and whatnot. Wiring high and low voltage at the same time (possibly close to each other for reduced labor) might get you a bunch of noise from the 110 lines (or even 220 lines).
I don't know either way, but it is something to consider. I would suggest checking to see that an electrician has some knowledge or, more importantly, experience with LV wiring to make sure you don't find problems after move-in (which undoes all the convenience of wiring before drywall).
Actually, that "Advisor" title is just a misstatement in the slashdot posting. Read the Microsoft bio on the guy (already pointed to in another post here, but I'll copy it... here), which starts off with
As chief security officer for Microsoft Corp., Howard Schmidt...
Did this in college 8 yeras ago
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1
Class of '93, a project for Advanced Microprocessor something or other, a good friend and fellow engineering buddy and I came up with a goofy little project.
On no budget, and with little sense of what a pain it would be, we set out to design a "balancing robot" that would balance itself on a cylinder and, given the command, attempt to roll forward or back. Basically, an upside-down inverted pendulum.
It came really close to working... the batteries we used to way to heavy, but my cohort made a kickass mechanical gyro and we wire-wrapped our own 68hc11 computer to control the thing. It would balance for several seconds before the underpowered motor was overcome by the weight of the assembly. Like I said, not budget.
It was a lesson to be sure... and maybe prior art. Hmmmm. I think we got a B on it.
See here and elsewhere via google for lots of info.
ipmasquerading is an example of this using in the linux kernel, where packets from one ip address (your neighbor's wirelessly-connected laptop, perhaps) are changed so that they appear to come from a different place (the ip address associated with the cable modem, for example), and reply packets are then forwarded back to the translated source.
read about iptables and netfilter in kernel 2.4.x for the latest...
I've been out of the LCD module game for over a year now, so what I know is ancient history, but basically, an LCD panel in a normal desktop application is clocked at about 60Hz, unless you are getting something special (the large IBM display referred to in another reply to this post, etc). Again, this is the comodity screen market, and don't be fooled by the maximum input clock speed... you need to check the specs of the panel itself. Panels are not multisync in the same sense that CRTs are.
In fact, if you drive an analog input on an LCD with anything other than 60Hz refresh, it is getting converted anyway when it is digitized. Pure-digital inputs are the way to go, but until panels available on the street are running efficiently at very high refresh rates like CRTs are today, you won't see any benefit from faster screen refresh times provided by the video card.
Now, if somebody starts implementing motion blur compensation in the video card (the ideal place, though more difficult since it would ideally support different panels from different manufacturers), rather than in the panel, that would be really interesting.
According to the nightly build comments for Nov 20, there is a new theme page. If you check out the MozillaZine build comments here, you'll see the mention and the bugzilla bug number...
Note that I have not actually tried this myself... I'm just happy that other stuff is working as well as it is at this point with the nightly build from last thursday or so.
Of course I can't find the article, but I read somewhere recently that a national organization of state DMV officials has convened to standardize the license process, including issuance and information stored (on the card via magstripe and in the big database). Keep an eye on this development, but it is going to be a while to get 50 DMVs to agree on something.
My sister works in the county attorney office where I live, and she and I were just talking about this last night. Her office has just this past week finished workstation upgrades to Windows XP as part of a state-wide upgrade to the legal IT infrastructure here.
Someone else posted about the IRS having a similar use for computers, but here is what my sister described to me.
The people in her office are expressly forbidden from using anything other than Internet Explorer as installed, and are subject to disciplinary action if anything like Mozilla, Opera, or Netscape Navigator are found installed.
Initially, a large amount of legal document preparation took place using WordPerfect, which apparently includes a number of legal templates to speed the process. Apparently, the site license for WP ends at yearend, and a complete conversion (with training and document compatibility problems and everything) to MS Word is in progress.
Though they have upgraded to WindowsXP from Win98, they (the people in this particular office, anyway) are expressly forbidden from using any multimedia features of the OS. Needless to say, installation of any other software (see IE comment above) is cause for disciplinary action.
Once legal documents are prepared, they are exported using Adobe Acrobat to PDF so that they can be moved around and archived. One issue they are grappling with now is PDF security and rights management (not dissimilar to eBooks, but in this case it seems like a good idea).
They recently migrated all email clients to Outlook again requiring more training and headache.
Whatever legal database they were using has been migrated to a Microsoft product running on Windows XP, accessible via IE through an html interface, presumably through IIS. (my sister is a lawyer, not a computer head, so I don't know the specifics)
Use of systems for person business, including web browsing or personal emailing, are grounds for disciplinary action, including termination.
Much like the IRS story posted in another discussion on slashdot somewhere, the legal system in my state uses their computers (for government business only) to prepare documents according to accepted layout and content standards (ie line numbers, spacing, fonts, etc), send and receive multimedia-free email, prepare and view PDF documents (which are printed out and filed as well), and access database records via a web browser (with an associated database-webserver backend). And that's it!
The big concerns in this example moving forward? Document security and access control, and system security and access control. Windows XP is considered by the legal IT people in my state to be a step in that direction. Maybe it is, but at tremendous cost.
It boggles the mind, especially since I am paying a part of this bill to install overpriced MS software onto overpriced X Terminals.
It would be ideal, in my opinion anyway, to have government agencies begin to transition these sorts of applications over to linux-based systems (a couple of cities have started in this direction I guess, but not enough to gain any sort of critical mass yet), and then show real bottom line savings in the short term, and productivity gains in the medium and long term.
As other posts have suggested, jumping into the unknown or misunderstood is not something that at CEO, CTO, or CIO wants to rush into. Unfortunately, in the case of my local government example, they are so concerned with interoperatbility and manageability that they also refuse to consider those unknown and misunderstood options, which in the end would provide more than the interoperability they seek (and managing a network of X-Terminals, where nobody is allowed to install anything on their own, would surely be a challenge...).
While any effort to get such an agency to convert to linux-based infrastructure would be an uphill battle at best, I am hoping that our own government offices that spend millions (billions?) of our dollars on bloatware to word process, email, and access databases will consider saving taxpayer money, and maybe business will begin to see the light.
Somebody already asked about a Palm Pilot being a suitable replacement (er, successor). There are certainly scientific calculator apps for Palm Pilots and similar devices, and there are already hp calculator emulators in various states of functionality for various platforms.
I wonder what HP is going to do with the many years of development that went into the roms and downloadable software that we've all come to know and love. Would Bruce Perens be able to swing an open source release so that the hp calcs can live on?
And if that were to happen, what would be the best way to make use of such software? Would a Palm Pilot with perhaps a native port of a 49G rom be feasible? A strongarm port? A transmeta-based super-calc?
By the way, I still have my 28s somewhere, my 48GX was stolen, and I have a 49G right here next to my keyboard. At least I'll have it to show to my grandkids, or something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Much like the megahertz myth, the need for a diamond engagement ring has been cultivated through careful marketing and peer pressure.
But.
The cost of NOT getting this diamond ring may be the relationship itself. It may not occur right away (she might still accept your proposal) but this will be a major disappointment to a woman who has had an engagement ring (or a rock as my ex-girlfriend called it), and it just might set the tone for the rest of your time together.
As has been pointed out elsehwhere in this very thread, gasoline, diamonds, honey, opium, and a whole bunch of other products all contribute to terrorism or cruel treatment of our fellow humans or various other badnesses in the world.
In the end, though, it will be infinitely easier to get a fuel-efficient car and switch away from various other products than it will be to alter the mindset of the woman (and ALL of her friends) who considers not where it came from or how it got there, but merely that it is on her finger.
So, if you want to get married and start of on the right foot with her, you should of course shop for the best value you can find in your budget and so on, but yes, the diamond is worth it.
[save your energy... cede her victory on this one, fight the good fight when she wants to know why you are "wasting" so much money on a cable modem/DSL, fast graphics cards, etc.]
First, is it possible for HBO et al. to broadcast Macrovision copy protection on their signal so that one cannot record such broadcasts? I know TiVo honors copy protection (on video tapes primarily) so I wondered.
My actual question, along a similar avenue, is whether the general public would repond in anger or in apathy to any real implentation of copy protection. Macrovision can be filtered out (but the copy of a VHS tape may not be worth the trouble) and CD copy protection hasn't caught on enough to trip up the masses. But what if copy protection just started appearing without warning, like that HBO scenario?
What is going to happen when the RIAA and the MPAA finally purchase the right representatives and get all of these laws and practices changed in their favor? Will people simply not watch some programs since they can't record them? Will there be an uprising after people are effected by all of this nerdy stuff they read about on the internet for so long? Will people simply go with the flow and accept the reductions in freedoms?
For every form of copy protection I've ever seen (dongled software, MS keys, macrovision, DAT copy bits, exploding paper, etc) there always seems to be a workaround to circumvent the protection and allow the copy... if that becomes impossible (it might at some point, they could get lucky) what will the public at large do?
I have to admit, I would almost (ALMOST) like to see all of these protections get implemented just to see what happens.
Unfortunately, I think the public at large will be angered, and they might even lament their inaction as it was all unfolding (that would be now), but they will feel and be powerless to make any changes. They will still patronize RIAA and MPAA properties and in time people will forget that we used to be able to tape movies to watch later.
Alternate scenarios encouraged...
Then Windows costs several thousand dollars per year for me, the single user.
My time isn't free, but I'll spend time learning about an OS that wants to be learned, not wrestling with an OS that doesn't.
I found the Parallel (sometimes called "Wall-Eyed") mode to be the best, especially at this early hour. If you get your head in just the right spot and relax your eyes just right, you get a decent 3D effect without the odd color effects of the old 3D glasses method (which also works, but to me it looks odd).
If you've viewed random dot autosteroegrams using the wall-eyed technique (or the cross-eyed technique) this is the same thing, except the movement will be a distraction.
As always, YMMV
Actually, a sphere passing through a 2D world would appear to be a point, then a line of increasing length, then decreasing length, then a point again.
Or maybe that is a 3D'er view of things? I used a compact disc and a pencil to demonstrate this recently, and if my 2D example beings lived in the plane of the CD, then the pencil passing through the center of the CD would look similar to a sphere passing through a similar plane, if viewed along the plane (as a resident of said plane).
A long time ago, I read this silly book called Planiverse about a fictitious 2D world. The author presented it in a fantasy-like format about encountering 2D beings via a computer, but the concepts were presented such that a young person (as I was then) could see what was going on. For what it's worth...
By the way, I just looked, and it Planiverse is still around. I had never read Flatland, but that is linked there on that Amazon page as well.
Why hide a perfectly good display on the PDA? Yes, this mod is slick, but I personally would like to see an attached display device show me info... much like LCD and other serial/parallel display case mods do now on the case itself.
Similar to this product, a PDA attached to a desktop machine (and a charger) could and should extend the usefulness of both. Maybe a game controller like that linked product, maybe a desktop clock, maybe weather updates, stock tickers, an mp3 playlist interface, etc etc.
Like I said, a slick mod, but seems slightly counterproductive. Not that there are many satellite display apps that work with many PDAs available presently, but I'm hopeful. With bluetooth catching on, it might happen.
It's not the embracing that hurts.
It's the extending...
I've seen a couple of projects on freshmeat that do this. Basically, a daemon sits around and watches files and if they change, they do something about it. This could be anything from logging to sounding an alarm to replacing the content.
I could have a repository sitting offline storing all of my content (or even everything... OS, databases, scripts, tools, etc etc) and have it "log in" to the servers from the inside and check everything for changes periodically. In a lot of cases, tests could be done from the outside as well (web content specifically). That machine, though physically connected, would simply shut off its interfaces and block everything unless it was doing its work.
I think a recent website hack occurred at USA Today... such a scheme could have caught the hack within minutes and even have replaced the forged content with whatever was supposed to be there.
According to what this says, the avionics package meets or exceeds expectations. Now, this is not an MS bash, but I can recall of the top of my head that our intelligence services have database software that can only search on one term that probably met or exceeded expectations, and there's that ship that had to be towed back to port due to some NT failures.
Now this is more of an MS bash... people have come to expect system failures, and I've read admissions that 5-9's uptime is just too difficult and expensive a goal, and so-on, and of course this mostly points to MS desktop and server software. I wonder if people who sit at desks and write specs all day for military projects decided that only having to reboot now and then exceeds expectations as set by people not flying in the aircraft.
I'll probably get modded down, but I just think this sort of thing (Boeing's press release, the actual performance as reported, and the overall state of technology in our government) is a bit troubling and it doesn't appear to be getting better.
Anyone with a passing interest in radio controlled airplanes already knows this fact:
Plastic propellers disintegrate at high rpm.
So they use wooden ones. The document (the cached version, sans photos) did not go into great detail about the nature of the material failures, which they claim will be investigated with SEMs, but it would be interesting to use their same setup with same-size components made of other materials. A wooden CD-sized disc, an aluminum one, etc.
Not that CDs should be made of wood, but certainly plastic at high rpms is a compromise between cost and durability.
Any Disney crop circles will have a little (C) mark somewhere nearby.
And maybe some mouse ears.
Personally, I am looking forward to more widespread use of geothermal heat exchange systems (see this document and a few links at the bottom of that page for more info) to gain efficiency and save energy (and money). As every VW Bug owner knows, air is okay as a heat exchange medium, but it is not the best. Using the ground to move the energy around makes a whole lot of sense, and can be tacked on to an existing A/C setup (with a whole lot of digging, of course).
Living in Phoenix as I do, I can definitely appeciate this invention, and let's not forget Carnot.
It is precisely for this reason that "we" must spy on everybody. Sort of a "mutually assured security breach" that keeps the world's security organizations on guard.
An interesting article here about running gigabit ethernet over Cat5 wire. It sounds like planning ahead now will leave the possibility open a few years out.
The article is pretty clear that going beyond gigabit on those wires is not likely, but it seems that buying good cable and setting it up correctly now will pay off without adding a lot of up-front expense with Cat6 or Cat7 or whatever else might be coming along.
Just two days ago I was at a company called Ultimate Entertainment in Scottsdale, AZ, and they said they run cat5 all over for automation, alarm, and even video distribution as part of their structured wiring package.
Apparently, they distribute HDTV throughout the home, and while they will also run coax or other normal structured wiring, this seemed interesting to me just because it would seem to simplify things a bit.
I actually went there looking into home automation work that they do based on a recommendation, including the fact that they are doing a project in southern california for $1.2 million in home entertainment and automation electronics alone. They are really focused on the entertainment side (as their name suggests), though, so I wouldn't consider them a superior resource for the other stuff, but a lot of automation devices can be added if cat5 is already run to the places you want it. If you plan ahead, you can avoid X-10 and have a system that works quite well.
I was particularly impressed with the wall-mounted touchscreens from ELAN and Crestron that they had mounted in their demo rooms, because they looked really great and make for a clean thermostat/security/lighting/A/V control panel.
Bottom line, Cat5 is useful for lots of other stuff in addition to computer networking. BTW, I am not affiliated in any way with any of the companies I referred to.
I've asked a couple of people about this, and they all say the same thing:
This is for residential projects, where I guess the population of electricians is not wise to the ways of wiring for ethernet and whatnot. Wiring high and low voltage at the same time (possibly close to each other for reduced labor) might get you a bunch of noise from the 110 lines (or even 220 lines).
I don't know either way, but it is something to consider. I would suggest checking to see that an electrician has some knowledge or, more importantly, experience with LV wiring to make sure you don't find problems after move-in (which undoes all the convenience of wiring before drywall).
Actually, that "Advisor" title is just a misstatement in the slashdot posting. Read the Microsoft bio on the guy (already pointed to in another post here, but I'll copy it... here), which starts off with
Class of '93, a project for Advanced Microprocessor something or other, a good friend and fellow engineering buddy and I came up with a goofy little project.
On no budget, and with little sense of what a pain it would be, we set out to design a "balancing robot" that would balance itself on a cylinder and, given the command, attempt to roll forward or back. Basically, an upside-down inverted pendulum.
It came really close to working... the batteries we used to way to heavy, but my cohort made a kickass mechanical gyro and we wire-wrapped our own 68hc11 computer to control the thing. It would balance for several seconds before the underpowered motor was overcome by the weight of the assembly. Like I said, not budget.
It was a lesson to be sure... and maybe prior art. Hmmmm. I think we got a B on it.
Network Address Translation
See here and elsewhere via google for lots of info.
ipmasquerading is an example of this using in the linux kernel, where packets from one ip address (your neighbor's wirelessly-connected laptop, perhaps) are changed so that they appear to come from a different place (the ip address associated with the cable modem, for example), and reply packets are then forwarded back to the translated source.
read about iptables and netfilter in kernel 2.4.x for the latest...
I've been out of the LCD module game for over a year now, so what I know is ancient history, but basically, an LCD panel in a normal desktop application is clocked at about 60Hz, unless you are getting something special (the large IBM display referred to in another reply to this post, etc). Again, this is the comodity screen market, and don't be fooled by the maximum input clock speed... you need to check the specs of the panel itself. Panels are not multisync in the same sense that CRTs are.
In fact, if you drive an analog input on an LCD with anything other than 60Hz refresh, it is getting converted anyway when it is digitized. Pure-digital inputs are the way to go, but until panels available on the street are running efficiently at very high refresh rates like CRTs are today, you won't see any benefit from faster screen refresh times provided by the video card.
Now, if somebody starts implementing motion blur compensation in the video card (the ideal place, though more difficult since it would ideally support different panels from different manufacturers), rather than in the panel, that would be really interesting.
According to the nightly build comments for Nov 20, there is a new theme page. If you check out the MozillaZine build comments here, you'll see the mention and the bugzilla bug number...
Note that I have not actually tried this myself... I'm just happy that other stuff is working as well as it is at this point with the nightly build from last thursday or so.
Of course I can't find the article, but I read somewhere recently that a national organization of state DMV officials has convened to standardize the license process, including issuance and information stored (on the card via magstripe and in the big database). Keep an eye on this development, but it is going to be a while to get 50 DMVs to agree on something.
My sister works in the county attorney office where I live, and she and I were just talking about this last night. Her office has just this past week finished workstation upgrades to Windows XP as part of a state-wide upgrade to the legal IT infrastructure here.
Someone else posted about the IRS having a similar use for computers, but here is what my sister described to me.
Much like the IRS story posted in another discussion on slashdot somewhere, the legal system in my state uses their computers (for government business only) to prepare documents according to accepted layout and content standards (ie line numbers, spacing, fonts, etc), send and receive multimedia-free email, prepare and view PDF documents (which are printed out and filed as well), and access database records via a web browser (with an associated database-webserver backend). And that's it!
The big concerns in this example moving forward? Document security and access control, and system security and access control. Windows XP is considered by the legal IT people in my state to be a step in that direction. Maybe it is, but at tremendous cost.
It boggles the mind, especially since I am paying a part of this bill to install overpriced MS software onto overpriced X Terminals.
It would be ideal, in my opinion anyway, to have government agencies begin to transition these sorts of applications over to linux-based systems (a couple of cities have started in this direction I guess, but not enough to gain any sort of critical mass yet), and then show real bottom line savings in the short term, and productivity gains in the medium and long term.
As other posts have suggested, jumping into the unknown or misunderstood is not something that at CEO, CTO, or CIO wants to rush into. Unfortunately, in the case of my local government example, they are so concerned with interoperatbility and manageability that they also refuse to consider those unknown and misunderstood options, which in the end would provide more than the interoperability they seek (and managing a network of X-Terminals, where nobody is allowed to install anything on their own, would surely be a challenge...).
While any effort to get such an agency to convert to linux-based infrastructure would be an uphill battle at best, I am hoping that our own government offices that spend millions (billions?) of our dollars on bloatware to word process, email, and access databases will consider saving taxpayer money, and maybe business will begin to see the light.
But I'm not holding my breath
System Management Mode?
Somebody already asked about a Palm Pilot being a suitable replacement (er, successor). There are certainly scientific calculator apps for Palm Pilots and similar devices, and there are already hp calculator emulators in various states of functionality for various platforms.
I wonder what HP is going to do with the many years of development that went into the roms and downloadable software that we've all come to know and love. Would Bruce Perens be able to swing an open source release so that the hp calcs can live on? And if that were to happen, what would be the best way to make use of such software? Would a Palm Pilot with perhaps a native port of a 49G rom be feasible? A strongarm port? A transmeta-based super-calc?
By the way, I still have my 28s somewhere, my 48GX was stolen, and I have a 49G right here next to my keyboard. At least I'll have it to show to my grandkids, or something like that.