The battery life is disproportionate to the amount of music you can fit on it (assuming a 32 GB drive). But it looks kind of neat, and would be cool if they could make a version specifically for the car. I'd think the laptop drives would hold up better too, since they're designed for mobility.
Who cares if an asteroid impacts the Earth in 2070 if humanity has exhausted both it's fresh water and fossil fuel supplies? What about pollution, the ozone hole, or global warming?
People will read a story about an expected asteroid impact in 70 years, and think, "Hmm, well, that's far enough away we don't need to worry yet." Or, "We need to build a defense system for our planet!"
The problem is that if you put it off, who knows what will be happening in the future. If you're in the middle of a global war, famine, water shortage, etc. how much time will get spent on trying to protect the planet from incoming asteroids? Or, let's say we build a global defense for interstellar objects... then when the nations of earth go to war and annihilate each other trying to acquire the last of the planet's fossil fuels, the defense we built will have nothing to left to defend.
Having a "long term" outlook on the state of the world means looking 100 years or more into the future, and trying to plan your actions so future generations will benefit. You can start by taking public transit to work tomorrow, or being more conscious of your use of water resources. Then when the asteroid comes to destroy humanity, at least we'll still be around to be concerned about it.
We could have a colony on Mars right now. Not a massive metropolis, but something similar to SkyLab. It would have taken 30 years back in the 60s, but it was possible. It's over 30 years later an no station on Mars. Now we're considering missions to Mars at phenomenal costs.
The system was essentially a flower with the Earth at the center and Mars at the end of the "petals." You'd have under 10 petals, each representing the path a space craft would take to meet Mars in it's orbit. The shuttles would provide supplies and transport people to the Mars station, keeping them resupplied every 6 months (or 3 months, depending on the number of shuttles, etc).
Why didn't we do it in the 60s? We'd been to the moon, and that had satisfied the public's lust for space exploration. The space race was essentially over and political tides were turning. The "hippie generation" was speaking it's mind, and wanted to cut the space program. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, the voters pay for the programs, so they should decide where the money gets spent. The problem is that it's always more expensive the longer you wait... sure it cost a lot then, but it costs far more today (adjusted for inflation!).
Sadly, many fantastic advances have come from defense spending (and the space program). Things like the semiconductor. These technologies eventually trickle down (oh no, here it comes;)) to the commercial market. Can you imagine buying night vision goggles 15 years ago?
What about the ever laughed at AOL user? Will @home's claim convince them to use their service?
I think we can agree that the average AOL user has no frickin idea what security is. They foward those spam emails that "look real" to their friends because the email says that there might be a way for bad, bad men to read their files if they run AOL on Saturday afternoon at 3:44 Pacific time.
So, along comes @home with these outrageous claims... who are they trying to convince? They want to convince the kind of person who doesn't want to waste their time finding out if their claim has any basis in technological facts.
These are the same people who go to college and are so excited to get on the ethernet, that they do stupid things like share their C drive to everyone (giving full access to all).
Do these people deserve a wake up call? Yes, but do you really expect them to understand?
"Welcome to the world of technology, please remain ignorant until your kernel has come to a complete stop!"
I've used 5 megs of RAM as a RAM disk for Netscape's cache for a long long time. Since MacOS 8 first came out, IIRC. I also turn off Virtual Memory and turn the disk cache down.
Netscape is very fast loading pages from the RAM disk... I recommend it to everyone.
Although for some reason, no matter what I set the actual cache size to, Netscape refuses to fill the RAM disk. That's nice, but that means that I have 2 megs or so sitting there empty. Go figure.
It's more likely to hit water. The ratio of water to land on the surface of the earth is nice and high. The exact numbers escape me at this juncture.
At any rate, maybe some newspaper will pay $50,000 for a verifiable piece, and then two chaps will bring a piece in within 5 minutes of each other. Sound familiar?
I also wonder how many people will actually use Office on Linux... if someone was willing to pay the Microsoft tax and buy Office, wouldn't they be just as likely to buy Windows as well?
In addition, most people who use Linux do so because they don't like Microsoft (okay, it's a generalization). So why would they use MS Office when StarOffice, Applix, etc exist? Compatibility? Okay, but that's not going to be enough sales to justify the expense of porting Office to Linux. Most people who want compatibility will run Windows on the desktop. Not to mention the fact that retraining the users for a desktop Linux environment would be expensive. And if a user is being trained for Linux and have not been previously trained for MS software, why use Office at all? Just train them for any of the already-available office apps for Linux.
Maybe it's all a ploy in case the breakup goes through.
Or, maybe it's an attempt by Microsoft to bring the macroviruses to Linux!
Well, they sure have enough time to work on it... Hopefully they'll work on the Mac/"other" OS ports concurrently. It'd be nice if they were all released at the same time.
Hopefully they'll take a lot of the story/lore from the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game books... those were very cool, and were excellent reading.
The Tales Of The Jedi stories were cool, I liked the comics... that will make for some excellent game play.
And where's the video clip of the Challenger exploding? Maybe it wasn't a "rocket" but that was quite a display.
Happy fourth of July from Nasa! We just wasted billions of dollars on rockets that don't work.
::music blares::
America, America...
--
Okay, okay, I should be nicer... NASA has done a lot of great stuff, and I thank them for it. What they used out of necessity, has become some of our favorite play things. Thanks for the semiconductor!
If Gates planned this all along, then where is Billy boy's side of the company going to make money? Linux apps? That's a joke. Mac apps? Not enough market share. Oh, maybe the X-Box.
Not to be confrontational, but it just seems like if he planned it, he didn't plan much farther than when Windows dies out.
Granted someone else could buy Windows if the new company wasn't making money, but by then it's out of Billy's control... Windows could take some drastic turns that would make Office's market share vanish.
The article's section on "About Linux" is almost as long as the part about SiS's support of their chipset. I would think by now people could have a smaller blurb about Linux with a link to some site (linux.com maybe) for more info.
While I don't necessarily agree with the tracking of the user via GPS, I think it can be useful for guiding users to a certain location (eg, Yahoo! Maps) or advertising that XYZ company 3 blocks away is having a 50% off sale on penguins.
But the problem is... how do you direct the user? Telling them "go 2 blocks north" is going to get people lost. Sure, it's their own fault they don't know which way is which, but none the less it will be a problem. Most people have trouble getting a map right side up, let alone knowing which way is north (without a compass -- or maybe even with one!).
Chuck D and Shawn Fanning should write a quick pro-Napster bit and sing it for the Small Business Committee. They (of all people) should appreciate the theatrics. Then distribute the song (well, I guess it would be a bootleg) on Napster.
Slashdot Mirror
The Neo 25 has a whole 1.5 hours of life:
5 27:
From http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=205-2
Runs off of included Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery (up to 1.5 hours of use*)
*Battery Life will vary depending on hard drive used
The battery life is disproportionate to the amount of music you can fit on it (assuming a 32 GB drive). But it looks kind of neat, and would be cool if they could make a version specifically for the car. I'd think the laptop drives would hold up better too, since they're designed for mobility.
I mean, it works when you pretend to be an answering machine.
"I'm sorry, we're not in the office right now. Please hold your warrant up to the camera and leave a message. Thank you, come again!"
Who cares if an asteroid impacts the Earth in 2070 if humanity has exhausted both it's fresh water and fossil fuel supplies? What about pollution, the ozone hole, or global warming?
People will read a story about an expected asteroid impact in 70 years, and think, "Hmm, well, that's far enough away we don't need to worry yet." Or, "We need to build a defense system for our planet!"
The problem is that if you put it off, who knows what will be happening in the future. If you're in the middle of a global war, famine, water shortage, etc. how much time will get spent on trying to protect the planet from incoming asteroids? Or, let's say we build a global defense for interstellar objects... then when the nations of earth go to war and annihilate each other trying to acquire the last of the planet's fossil fuels, the defense we built will have nothing to left to defend.
Having a "long term" outlook on the state of the world means looking 100 years or more into the future, and trying to plan your actions so future generations will benefit. You can start by taking public transit to work tomorrow, or being more conscious of your use of water resources. Then when the asteroid comes to destroy humanity, at least we'll still be around to be concerned about it.
To put an actual anchor tag in the article where they mentioned /.
I think not. They did it for D:C, and for the other referenced articles.
We could have a colony on Mars right now. Not a massive metropolis, but something similar to SkyLab. It would have taken 30 years back in the 60s, but it was possible. It's over 30 years later an no station on Mars. Now we're considering missions to Mars at phenomenal costs.
;)) to the commercial market. Can you imagine buying night vision goggles 15 years ago?
The system was essentially a flower with the Earth at the center and Mars at the end of the "petals." You'd have under 10 petals, each representing the path a space craft would take to meet Mars in it's orbit. The shuttles would provide supplies and transport people to the Mars station, keeping them resupplied every 6 months (or 3 months, depending on the number of shuttles, etc).
Why didn't we do it in the 60s? We'd been to the moon, and that had satisfied the public's lust for space exploration. The space race was essentially over and political tides were turning. The "hippie generation" was speaking it's mind, and wanted to cut the space program. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, the voters pay for the programs, so they should decide where the money gets spent. The problem is that it's always more expensive the longer you wait... sure it cost a lot then, but it costs far more today (adjusted for inflation!).
Sadly, many fantastic advances have come from defense spending (and the space program). Things like the semiconductor. These technologies eventually trickle down (oh no, here it comes
What about the ever laughed at AOL user? Will @home's claim convince them to use their service?
I think we can agree that the average AOL user has no frickin idea what security is. They foward those spam emails that "look real" to their friends because the email says that there might be a way for bad, bad men to read their files if they run AOL on Saturday afternoon at 3:44 Pacific time.
So, along comes @home with these outrageous claims... who are they trying to convince? They want to convince the kind of person who doesn't want to waste their time finding out if their claim has any basis in technological facts.
These are the same people who go to college and are so excited to get on the ethernet, that they do stupid things like share their C drive to everyone (giving full access to all).
Do these people deserve a wake up call? Yes, but do you really expect them to understand?
"Welcome to the world of technology, please remain ignorant until your kernel has come to a complete stop!"
Ever seen Fight Club? Check it out.
I've used 5 megs of RAM as a RAM disk for Netscape's cache for a long long time. Since MacOS 8 first came out, IIRC. I also turn off Virtual Memory and turn the disk cache down. Netscape is very fast loading pages from the RAM disk... I recommend it to everyone. Although for some reason, no matter what I set the actual cache size to, Netscape refuses to fill the RAM disk. That's nice, but that means that I have 2 megs or so sitting there empty. Go figure.
It's more likely to hit water. The ratio of water to land on the surface of the earth is nice and high. The exact numbers escape me at this juncture.
At any rate, maybe some newspaper will pay $50,000 for a verifiable piece, and then two chaps will bring a piece in within 5 minutes of each other. Sound familiar?
Hint: It starts with an "S"
I also wonder how many people will actually use Office on Linux... if someone was willing to pay the Microsoft tax and buy Office, wouldn't they be just as likely to buy Windows as well?
In addition, most people who use Linux do so because they don't like Microsoft (okay, it's a generalization). So why would they use MS Office when StarOffice, Applix, etc exist? Compatibility? Okay, but that's not going to be enough sales to justify the expense of porting Office to Linux. Most people who want compatibility will run Windows on the desktop. Not to mention the fact that retraining the users for a desktop Linux environment would be expensive. And if a user is being trained for Linux and have not been previously trained for MS software, why use Office at all? Just train them for any of the already-available office apps for Linux.
Maybe it's all a ploy in case the breakup goes through.
Or, maybe it's an attempt by Microsoft to bring the macroviruses to Linux!
Well, they sure have enough time to work on it... Hopefully they'll work on the Mac/"other" OS ports concurrently. It'd be nice if they were all released at the same time.
Hopefully they'll take a lot of the story/lore from the Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game books... those were very cool, and were excellent reading.
The Tales Of The Jedi stories were cool, I liked the comics... that will make for some excellent game play.
A Star Wars timeline
Check out the band Man... Or Astroman? who have a song entitled, "Philip K. Dick In The Pet Section Of A Walmart"
It's from the "Project Infinity" album. I also recommend the songs "Sferic Waves" "Escape Velocity" and "Put Your Finger In The Socket"
Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? has an excellent explanation of the Deckard dilemma.
Why wait for Ridley Scott, when you can read the book?
And where's the video clip of the Challenger exploding? Maybe it wasn't a "rocket" but that was quite a display.
Happy fourth of July from Nasa! We just wasted billions of dollars on rockets that don't work.
::music blares::
America, America...
--
Okay, okay, I should be nicer... NASA has done a lot of great stuff, and I thank them for it. What they used out of necessity, has become some of our favorite play things. Thanks for the semiconductor!
This post made with top-secret space technology.
That's odd. Why was the Voodoo 2 tested under 98, but the V3 tested under 95?
And strange that the Matrox tests weren't even tested against Linux or Windows at all.
If Gates planned this all along, then where is Billy boy's side of the company going to make money? Linux apps? That's a joke. Mac apps? Not enough market share. Oh, maybe the X-Box.
Not to be confrontational, but it just seems like if he planned it, he didn't plan much farther than when Windows dies out.
Granted someone else could buy Windows if the new company wasn't making money, but by then it's out of Billy's control... Windows could take some drastic turns that would make Office's market share vanish.
The article's section on "About Linux" is almost as long as the part about SiS's support of their chipset. I would think by now people could have a smaller blurb about Linux with a link to some site (linux.com maybe) for more info.
While I don't necessarily agree with the tracking of the user via GPS, I think it can be useful for guiding users to a certain location (eg, Yahoo! Maps) or advertising that XYZ company 3 blocks away is having a 50% off sale on penguins.
But the problem is... how do you direct the user? Telling them "go 2 blocks north" is going to get people lost. Sure, it's their own fault they don't know which way is which, but none the less it will be a problem. Most people have trouble getting a map right side up, let alone knowing which way is north (without a compass -- or maybe even with one!).
If all the faithful slashdot readers go visit the new island, can will it be the first recorded slashdotting of a landform?
Yes, humans can trimph over nature!
Chuck D and Shawn Fanning should write a quick pro-Napster bit and sing it for the Small Business Committee. They (of all people) should appreciate the theatrics. Then distribute the song (well, I guess it would be a bootleg) on Napster.