All this talk of climate and greenhouse gases and the effect of humans on the ozone layer have forced me to remember what I believe to be a particularly funny bit by Lewis Black.
"The weather in this country is completely out of control and nobody seems to care about it. I knew we were in trouble 12 years ago when I was in Boston, MA and in 4 days in February, I experienced 5 seasons. It was 30, it was 60, it was 90 and it was 12. And on the last day, there was thunder, lightning and snow together. And I had not done drugs."
"Cause when you're lying in bed, you hear thunder outside, and you get up to look, you have an expectation. And it's not snow with lightning behind it. That's not right."
"They don't even write about that kind of weather in the bible. And I imagine if a prophet had seen that kind of weather, after he wiped the poop out of his pants, he'd have told us about it. I was supposed to work that night, I said I'm not coming in. I'm scared to death, cause I know what the next season's going to be....locusts."
Actually, he does several bits about weather. For those of you that haven't heard of Lewis Black, he is an actor turned political comedian, and let me tell you I've never laughed so hard in my life. In fact I will not listen to him while I drive for fear of killing myself or others. But it's like everything I guess, his humor isn't for everybody.
This is another thing that bothers me about this scenario. I can't say that I've ever admined 100 servers, the most I've ever had was about 30, but if we had a power loss of any kind, you'd just repower them and walk away. Most of them were DEC Alpha gear running Tru64. Why would you spec out a box that has to be handheld every reboot? The only time you should have to handhold a server is during an upgrade. A power cycle without proper SIGHUP or term signals should just run fdisk on it's way back up. (K, so it might take an hour for the server to go live again, but still.) I mean, am I missing something here? Maybe since nothing I've admined got the traffic these things do.... I'm just lost. Some one hit me with the clue by four.
The only thing I can even think of is they have explicit services that must be started manually..... but why would you want that? If you have a power hiccup in the middle of the night, you want it to come back up, and be live and happy again *before* you even get the first page. I mean sure, if there was a surge, and that destroyed components, and those components have to be replaced..... but..... a reboot is a reboot, man. Here, smoke some source. It's the good stuff.
I know nothing of how InterNap is set up. I just want to throw that out there ahead of time. Now, it's time for my patent pending "Bull Shit Theory of the Day."
Ok, here is the rant. I used to work for a Colocation facility. Nothing special, small by Telco terms. The whole facility only had about 1500 cabinets. (Though I hear they are now full, and going to be expanding.)
We had a main power draw off of the local grid. We had a backup power draw off of the *next* cities power grid. (ie, when all the offices around us went dark, we still had power.) And you don't even want to know the kind of red tape we had to go through for *that* pull. I'm still not sure how they did it. We had fly wheel kinetic electricity storage systems, battery backups, and a diesel engine from a train so large it had it's own building.
We used to joke that if we lost power, we had more important things to worry about. And again, we were small time compared to some of the massiveness that is out there. *cough*AADS Chicago*cough*
So I'm kind of in agreement with the statement currently on LiveJournal. It's unknown to me how any self respecting colo facility can say "We've had a power outage that also took our redundant systems."
I have to call bullshit on that entire train of thought. If that's true then they don't *have* any redundant systems, and I'd be looking for a new provider. The most likely thing (at least in my mind) is that someone, somewhere got mad at something specific and decided to make a point by popping the main breaker to their portion of the facility.
Oh, that was another thing, each room had several "main" breakers. It took a hell of a power surge to pop all of them, and the Liebert systems had power filters of some kind, really really big capacitors or something I think, so a surge really never made it to the other side anyway, it got stored in the cap and then trickled out like the rest of the power.
But I was a UNIX admin, not the EE that was planning the power generation aspects of the facility. So take some of it with grains of what ever white powdered spice you prefer.
It's time for me to come out of lurker mode to once again bring all the enthusiastic readers my patent pending Bull Shit Theory of the Day (BTOD).
It pains me to say, given that with free speech comes free opinion, but I am getting fed up with the pissing, the moaning, the bitching and the complaining that get done in the name of Company X is the AntiChrist, Company Y Save Us! Apple Computer, Inc. is a Corporation. Their sole purpose for being in business is not to cater to your every whim. They are in business to please their shareholders. Shareholders are pleased by making money. They don't care about you or me.... no wait, I'm a shareholder, maybe they do care about me.
The point is that they are in business to make money. If they think that selling a $500 Mac or selling a $9000 PowerMac will make them money, then they will do that. By contrast if keeping Real Networks and their music off the iPod will make them money, they will find every legal way to do that. (Better stay legal, don't make me flex my voting options.)
What never ceases to amaze me though, is the rule that "What is good for the goose is *not* good for the gander." All nature of items that you use for a goose so many people refuse to use for a gander. Why is that?
Let me explain
People are up in arms about the fact that Apple has made changes to the iPod firmware to keep music bought from Real Networks from working on the iPod. Real used AAC DRM controlled files bought and downloaded from Apple that were reverse engineered to give them the keys that allowed them to change their own AAC controlled files so that they looked like an Apple iTMS file to the iPod. Apple, as their right, changes the firmware and now they have become Company X.
I must interrupt to call bullshit on this. Apple is the Goose.
You see, my Mom drives a Chevy Blazer. It's the largest pile of cow dung I've ever been forced to examine. It is, at this moment, slowly bleeding to death in my parents garage. (And to skip the flame baiting and trollers, I am married and live 35 miles away from my parents.) It leaks from the transmission, it leaks from the rear main seal, it leaks from the oil pan, heck for all I know the transfer cases leaks and I'm not even sure that there *is* fluid in there.
Hang with me, the point is coming.
Even though she is mad as a hornet in a hen house at GM, and even though the vehicles that they purchase for my father will never again be GM (He currently has a Ford F150 and a Dodge Van) my mother *will* be buying another Blazer. Why?
On Star
Does that mean she has the right to sue GM because On Star isn't available on a Ford? What do you think GM, as a Corporation and we've already covered what their interests are, would do if Ford discretely hacked the On Star system so that their brand new Ford Mustang authenticated itself as a Buick LeSabre? Do you think they would offer assistance to a driver in a Mustang that was upside down on it's roof?
"Help, I've flipped my car and I can't get out." "I see that you are in a Buick LeSabre, the side windows are specifically designed to be kicked out in the event of a roll over." "LeSabre? I'm in a Ford Mustang GT." "...click...buzzzzzz." "Hello? Hello??
So now we have the GM Gander. You and I both know what is going to happen, GM is going to change the On Star system so that Ford vehicles can't use it. Why? Because if Ford wants an On Star like system, they need to build their own system with their own network and have their own button. Call it the FoMo Net or something. Is this anti-competitive? Would anyone even think twice about this happening?! No. Why? It's the auto business, a Ford is not a Chevy.
Yet we argue about this same thing day in and day out with Apple and Real, Linux and Microsoft, BeOS and Palm.... no.... wait, that one's the same thing now
I've been in touch with a couple of other purchasers of this laptop
now, and one of them agreed to break his warranty seal and investigate
the ACTUAL part number etched on the CPU chip. He had the $598 model,
advertised as an "Athlon XP-M 1600+". The actual OPN on his CPU is
AHM1100AV53B, which if you refer to AMD's part# breakdown guide, is a
1.1GHz (not 1600+) mobile Athlon 4, not an XP-M.
Though, I'm not sure you can blame this one on Wal-Mart. It isn't like it is a Wal-Mart brand named computer. They are buying it, just like all their other products, from a third-party manufacturer. Now, they may have a lot of muscle to lean in on that third-party, but ultimately it's a cheap knock-off being shipped in directly from Asia vs. the quality knock-offs with things like the IBM badge on them being shipped in directly from Asia.
techefnet wrote:
Who needs a livecd containing cygwin anyway? Why dont you just install cygwin locally? Someone explain to me.
I currently work for an organization that has very strict (and government controlled) policies in place for the installation and use of software packages. It's called bureaucracy. To install PuTTy on my XP workstation I must submit a ticket via our Management System interface. That ticket must then be assigned to my manager for an approval for the request of the software. Once my manager approves (could be a week or more) the ticket is then assigned to a senior manager for approval. Once that senior manager approves the installation of the software the ticket is assigned to an auditor to evaluate the financial impact on the company, the auditor must then write up a RFP (Request for Purchase) and submit approval to the ticket. The ticket is then assigned to the final approver (who is usually the CIO or another officer just below) who evaluates the ticket, verifies the approvals, verifies the finanical impact, approves the ticket, then assigns it to the Desktop Admin. The Desktop Admin then assigns the ticket to a Support Technician to be implemented. (ie. installed) (Oh, and I'm a member of IT and a Support Analyst, by the way.)
At any point in that process, if there is a denial. The whole thing must be reviewed, reentered, and start all over again.
This, I drop it in the CD-ROM, install nothing, run the X apps I need to run on the UNIX gear I monitor. Remove the CD, reboot, and no impact to the installed system that requires red tape.
but that doesn't change the fact that your work is perhaps the very essence of trivial. **You are building something that has already been built.** To me it seems like you are doing the equivilent of building a new version of the leaning tower of Pisa that isn't leaning
Well, I have to step in here and fire up my rant machine. Everyone else is having a row, I want one too. So here goes: It's time for my Bullshit Theory of the Day!
You say that the team is building something that has already been built. You claim that they are attempting to reinvent a wheel that is no longer useful. I must call bullshit on this whole diatribe. This isn't the wheel. I know how to build a wheel. More importantly I'm pretty sure you know how to build a wheel. My little brother knows how to build a wheel. With so many people building wheels we have to stop using this analogy for open source implementation.
I say this is building a Pyramid. Do you know how to build a Pyramid? I know I sure don't, and they are one of the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramid was built within the lifetime of one man. But the secrets that allowed them to build the Pyramid died with the master builder. (Oh, and let's nip this before it starts. The workers were not slaves. They were freemen as evidenced by "signatures" around the pyramid structure.)
The secrets of the source of the Win32 API are held by one man. He (and his team) know exactly how to push this block on that level and move it hundreds of feet into the air to start the next level of the Pyramid being built. I don't know how to move that block, and the ReactOS guys don't know how to move that block either. But they are trying to learn.
For hundreds of years man has attempted to relearn knowledge that was lost through the sands of time. Hundreds have tried to decode exactly how this block moved to be placed on top of that one after being rough cut by hand from a quarry at the base. Is this worthless? Is the knowledge of how a structure was designed, fabricated, built, and weathered as such that it has lasted hundreds of years useless information?
Rome had aquaducts, plumbing, roads. All structures designed in the minds of men and built on the backs of men. But which required decades, if not centuries, to recreate elsewhere in the world after the fall of the Roman Empire. Those structures too are still standing today.
My house, however, built only a year and a half ago, is not. Creaky boards, swaying walls, truly horrifing things happening. I, Sir, want an aquaduct. I want a Pyramid, a Castle. I want a home I know is going to stand for centuries. Not a measely couple of decades.
This is no different than what is happening here. There is no amount of information which is not knowledge. There is no knowledge that is not power. Power is what mankind strives to achieve. The very fact that the secrets of how to move those blocks into the air to get Word to run belong to so few is why so many are working so hard to recreate the information needed to perform these tasks.
It's the *why*. Why does x+y=z? Why does yellow + blue = green? Why is the sky blue? This isn't about recreating an OS that is dying if not dead just so they can have a perfectly dead OS. This is not about wanting to run an old copy of Word 2.0 they happen to have lying around. This is about the why of the power.
It's also the exact same why that created Linux.
Why is it that whenever someone with so little resources accomplishes so much there are always millions waiting to tear them down and tell them to go to hell? You don't want to install ReactOS to run Word 2.0 because you've already pirated XP SP2? Fine! Don't download it, don't install it, don't run it. But as a member of mankind at least understand that we will always rebuild what has already been built. Always.
Cars, Trains, Buildings, Waterways, Boats, Spaceships, and yes even the leaning t
I once worked for a company that had this desktop mentality. If it was a desktop PC it ran NT, authenticated and connected to an NT server and stored files on an NT controlled file server. Now, as I was hired into the company as a Junior UNIX Admin for all the *outside* boxes (which not a one happened to be MS) I was a little interested in the fact that the other Junior as well as the Senior admins (who focused primarily on the large Cisco gear) never once even raised a stink about it. Just went on with it, not wanting to step on toes, since the *internal* administrator was MS centric.
So, I decided to take myself out of the loop. Formatted my machine, installed Red Hat (still say I should have used SuSE - but we had a couple Red Hat boxes and could get support so *shrugs*) tweaked it up a little to look a little more like NT (not perfect mind you, but it was hard to tell that it wasn't NT with a theme on top to the untrained eye) Plus I was in an office so my machine faced away from the door, so it was hard to see what I was doing anyway.
So when the LAN Admin finally finds out (who was actually a pretty cool guy, but had several hundred desktops he had to deal with on the network) he comes to me and says "So.... you obviously know what you're doing with UNIX, you can authenticate against NT? You have access to files? You can print?..... I don't have to support you?"
He walked out of my office and I never heard word one about it again. Makes me wonder if there are any *NIX friendly people that got sucked into MS that are still running a *NIX but not telling anyone about it.
Any way, that was my rant, I now return you to your regularly scheduled/.
I don't know if all tape based camcorders are doomed to die. Tape still has a lot of life left in it, just look at your local news production facility. Chances are very good that they are using a Betamax camcorder for on the spot feeds, etc.
With that being said, however, I am going to be buying an http://www.aiptek.com/ aiptek digital camera for my wife for Christmas. The DV3100 model is just under $100 US, uses Compact Flash (CF) which our other Kodak camera uses, and can record up to 180 minutes of video and audio on a 512 MB CF.
Ok, so it's no MPEG2 CCD wonder wiz. It's recording directly to MPEG4, in a size that is half of TV, I think. 320 x something if memory serves, and it isn't even a full 30 (ok 29.97) frames per second. But we were blessed last year with a new daughter and she keeps saying "Oh, I wish we had a camcorder..." etc, etc. So it will get the job done.
The fact that you can buy a camera that is also a camcorder, regardless of quality, that can capture a full two hours worth of video and sound, direct to CF which on my Mac and a USB dongle shows up as a hard drive, so I can manipulate the CF files directly, no fuss, no muss. Can a tape format that doesn't allow fast and easy movement between formats, devices, TV's, cameras, computers, etc, ad nauseam really be viable for much longer?
My parents own a really nice JVC VHS-C camcorder. Does all sorts of things. I think you can buy the same model right now for just under $300 US. But I don't even own a VCR, everything in my house is digital. DVD, House wired for Ethernet, computers in every room, all CD's bought instantly get put into iTunes, most new music being bought is from iTMS (iTunes Music Store) and I'm right now working out a way to put all my families movies into a MythTV style server repository along with a Microsoft-esque Digital TV Set top box in each room so we can "On Demand" every movie we own.
An interesting side effect of IPTV, BPL. Wait, is that BPL is an interesting side effect of IPTV. Argh! I've given myself an ice cream headache. Let me start over again.
BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) looks to allow your electricity provider to offer you other services, namely internet access. With IPTV they can now also offer you TV over the power lines as well. Who needs cable, satellite or telephone services?
Frankly I welcome the new Power Transmission Owner Overlord Emperor, Yeah!
Unfortunately, I'm currently mad at my PTOOEY. Evil, pure evil I tell you. But what are you going to do? I'd set up a generator and feed power back into the grid just to spite them. But I can't.... NDA and all....
Maybe they'll have to get someone to make the best damn show ever exclusively for their... IPTV network
Well.... they kind of already have a killer show that is exclusively an Internet program. Though it is available on DVD. I know many, many people dislike all that is the Microsoft Borg, but I laughed so hard at Red vs. Blue that it kind of questions sanity.
While I know that Red vs. Blue isn't offically a truly sanctioned Microsoft product, do you think they didn't at least give a nod to the rabid lawyers to keep from destroying it in it's entirety? Also, since they are such big Halo (and by Proxy Microsoft) fans anyway, do you really think they'd give the rights to stream it as a TV program to anyone else?
Heck, I'm interested in this right now, as I'm currently an SBC DSL subscriber, if it gets me away from my evil and bastardized cable company. I may be clinically insane, but at one point last year I was talking to VC about starting my own cable company for just my subdivision and maybe the one next to it. That's how mad I was at them.
However, reality eventually set it..... man do you know how expensive gear to decode then re-encode TV broadcast from air and sat is right now? Not to mention license fees for all the stations you want to offer on the network. I would have been, like, the UPN Cable Company because that was the only channel I think I could have even begged into throwing me a bone to be on the network.
So sad, so sad. TV started out free, paid for by advertising, with which I was very very fine. You want me to watch a soap commercial to laugh at Gilligan? Hey, fine, no problem. Now, I pay more for freaking TV than I do for internet access, telephone service, trash service, property taxes, housing and groceries combined!
This has officially degenerated into a rant. I apologize and will end it now. Thank you for your optical time.
Akamai is the global leader in distributed computing solutions and services, helping organizations grow their online businesses without growing their IT infrastructures. The company created the world's largest and most widely used on-demand distributed computing platform, with more than 14,000 servers in 1,100 networks in 65+ countries.
Now is the time to show how little I know from working with a company that housed servers for Akamai.
Akamai is basically a huge cache system. Many of the internet favorites that people hit on a regular basis are Akamai customers. Apple, BMW, FedEx, etc. They are all companies that know they have a pretty big userbase and need to be able to give those customers a good chunk of bandwidth. However it is impossible and impractical to install the needed bandwidth for one site.... say IBM.
Now, I know you say "But IBM is this huge goliath of a company that has customers worldwide." That doesn't mean it is cost effective for them to install 14,000 OC-128's to handle all the traffic. Akamai provides a way of distributing your information in a way that allows people to pull that information from a site that is technologically near to them.
Let's not go into how a certain cable company goes to *New York* before passing any traffic to *California* So I did not mean geographically near.
Anyway.... I know nothing about their rates or services or even if they are cheaper than running 14,000 OC-128's to your office. I like to exaggerate and embellish, ok. I'd hate to see the SONET gear needed to switch 14,000 circuits. But they would be a good bet for you. Because your customer would hit your site. Click the link for whatever 4 Meg, etc app you need them to run, the link would find the closest Akamai center and bam.... they'd probably be downloading it from Japan when they are in Wyoming.... but hey, what are you going to do with technology, right?
Just my three cents.
Re:Anyone want to buy a NeXT Cube?
on
NeXTSTEP To Mac OS X
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As Much as I would love to purchase your Cube, I am no where near CO, but in IN and the shipping would be most prohibitive. However:
Black Hole, Incorporated
3007 Conestoga Ct.
Fort Collins, CO 80526
970-223-9976 Phone
970-223-9975 Fax
President: Rob Blessin
Black Hole is a company located in CO that deals with NeXT equipment and acts as a reseller of used machines and other NeXT items including printers.
Note: This post in no way is meant as an advertisement for Black Hole, Inc. I am not affiliated, nor have I ever actually had business dealing with, the mentioned company.
Just thought the info might come in handy. Though, if you don't think the shipping would be *too* bad, or if you happen to have any *dead* cubes. I'd be interested in an email.
A little off topic, but related nonetheless. Does anyone have any links to pictures and perhaps even step by steps of a complete teardown of one of these? I've seen the TurboStations.... they are very similar to a same year model Sun Pizza box. Layout and all of my SparcStation 5 is very close (not cookie cutter mind you, but still you can see that the inspiration was there)
These cubes are so huge... 12" by 12"... compared to a similar Pizza box. In fact it looks like you could have two Mainboards in a Cube? How many drives did this thing hold? What's the internal chassis look like? I'm curious to know, but don't have a lot money (shipping a computer that size/weight is enormous) to spend to just strip the thing with no intention of ever actually using it. (I have 6 various Sparc machines, none Ultra, that just sit around already)
Now, since I just got to work, and hence just online to see this story, it's a pretty good piece of the way down and no one may ever even read this. Also, I skimmed, searched and read most of what's here and there is a toy missing that I feel needs to be highlighted.
That toy? M.A.S.K. The Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. (Hey, it had to be K to fit with the acronym, poor spelling skills be damned). As a child I skrimped and saved my allowance and pretty much had the entire toy line. Sure, it meant I couldn't buy He-Man or even G.I.Joe most of the time. But who needed them when you had M.A.S.K.?
With all the revisiting the 80's toy lines, including Star Wars (all of them) and Master of the Universe, it's curious to me that M.A.S.K. hasn't been similarly resurrected. For those too old or too young to remember the toy line, let me put on my "When I was your age..." cap and begin to knit my yarn.
The entire toy line was based on real vehicles. It was, I guess in a way, our answer to the Japanese invasion of Transformers. Instead of robots, however, the M.A.S.K. vehicles all transformed into massive vehicles of battle. All covered with weaponry, death and destruction. Did the combatants end there though? No. They each also had a helmet, or MASK, that was also itself a weapon and each one had it's own individual power. Not unlike a nod to the huge comic property of superheroes in the day. Some even came with hand held weapons. These toys were just ready to take out the world.
On further introspection, maybe I can see why it hasn't been resurrected, however He-Man certainly has massive amounts of weaponry as well. G.I.Joe is most openly a military body..... any way, I digress.
Now, while I'm geek enough to remember each of the vehicles, weapons, drivers, and masks in turn. I will not bore you with those details. But I will hit highlights of the back story surrounding the toy line and a grand overview of the vehicles involved.
Matt Trakker, leader of the forces of M.A.S.K. and on the side of light and good, came by his weaponry from his brother, Andy. His brother had been partners with Miles Mayhem, leader of the forces of V.E.N.O.M. (The Vicious and Evil Network Of Mayhem) who together found the crystals that powered all the devices in the series. Andy knew that Miles was getting ready to pull something, and built a second series of masks and hid them for Matt to find.
Then we get into the standard cliche villian plot. Miles wanted to take over the world and to that end had hundreds of schemes that Matt and M.A.S.K. were always there to thwart.
This toy line touched it all (at least for a boy) It gave you cars to "drive," figures that could get into the cars. Cars that transformed into weapons platforms. Back story to relive battles with the toy line. Interchangable components. (The masks were removeable, and could fit different figures, etc. Unlike some toys even today where they are basically cast plastic figurines that don't even move..... toy my eye.) Superhero like powers. Really cool villians to fight (I mean come on, Stink Man? [He-Man Villian])
*sighs* Ah well.... and look at the DVD run of items coming out. Knight Rider, Munsters, Strawberry Shortcake??.... and yet, still no M.A.S.K. love..... truely a forgotten artifact of the past. Now all we need is Indiana Jones to help us find it!
Also known by its Japanese title Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru (I Would Die For You). You play as a rather ordinary character who one day falls in love at the first sight of a particularly hot chick. From then on, the character puts all his energy into getting the girl, only to find numerous obstacles in his way. The game was given its name to deliver the sense of how serious the main character's attraction is to the girl -- a good thing, because the entire point of the game is to earn the girl's affection. You use the Nintendo DS's touch panel to interact with the game and make the girl grow fond of you. The basic gist of the game is to touch the girl via the touch screen. In fact, the game doesn't even use the standard D-pad and button controls -- it's all about the touch.
http://ds.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=1216
Buy her a fish tank: Goldfish are the surest way to a woman's heart, but be careful! Even if you happen to spill the tank and an innocent bystander accidentally ingests your sea animals, you still have a chance to show your worth. Get the fish back! Use the stylus to push the guppies back through the man's digestive system so he coughs them into the tank. Not only have you saved tiny aquatic lives, but you've kept your cool in a slippery situation.
Man, I hate it when people think they simply know everything there is to know about everything. You are not a Mac User. You make it obvious you are not a Mac User. You go so far as to say Mac Users are Dorks, yet you pretend to know everything there is to know about the Macintosh third party market.
... and you can't even put in your own damn sound card.
You, Sir, are most certainly wrong. You *can* install your own sound card, your own video card, your own any PCI based card in PCI based Macs. Which all Mac OS X compliant Macs are PCI based. PCI is an industry standard, and any PCI card from any manufacturer will go right into your Mac. Now the problem you will run into is drivers, but the card POSTs and tells the Mac what it is, in fact there are companies that even have Mac drivers if you can believe that! *GASPS!*
Here is a Mac compatible, PCI based third party sound card. http://www.portlandmusiccompany.com/phile.html/ Here is a blurb from the website about said sound card, because I know most are too lazy to actually read anything but blogs.
M Audio's Audiophile 2496 card is the latest addition to its highly successful Delta family of soundcards. The Audiophile 2496 is an all-in-one high fidelity soundcard solution for a wide variety of applications, ranging from multitrack recording to computer-based home theatre. Analog I/O is available on RCA jacks, utilizing the same professional 24-bit 96kHz conversion as the Delta 44 and Delta 66 cards. S/PDIF I/O and MIDI I/O provide connectivity to both digital devices and the world of MIDI. The Audiophile 2496 includes a powerful digital mixer/router, and control over SCMS (Serial Copy Management System). Delta cards support all computer platforms and major software programs.
With software support, the Audiophile 2496 becomes the highest fidelity home theatre soundcard available today.
Minimum System Requirements for Mac:
G4, G3 or G3 accelerator
System 8.5.1 or above
128 MB RAM for 96kHz operation
96 MB RAM for 48kHz operation
If you are going to *pretend* to know everything, please at least do a little bit of research first.
I heard somewhere [Local Radio Station Perhaps?] that the new trailer is supposed to be played at the beginning of The Incredibles movie. Anyone know if there is truth associated to this?
While we have all joined each other in loud, hearty guffaws at the rate at which SCO as a company has driven itself to hell without aid of handbasket, I must take a moment for an aside.
According to the SCO website, they are still attempting to deliver a UNIXWare(R) product. This means that they *must* still have technically savvy folks working for them. Slaving over a hot pentium all day to cook us up some UNIXWare(R) goodness. How do they find the strength to get up in the morning and make the drive to work? For that matter, how does Darl McBride? The writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. How many of them are just hanging in, hoping for a long enough tenure with the company to get *something* out of all their hard work?
This only causes to reenforce in my mind an earlier (albeit drunken) revelation I had about the truths of the online community that is/. I am sorely tempted to register a holding company, some Corporation designed to hold stock. I know there are legal Corp Classes that are allowed to do such things. Get everyone on every online forum I can find to be shareholders of the Holding Company and use all share money to outright purchase SCO and end this once and for all.
I mean, they do have *some* validity to the claim that they own UNIX(R) Source. I'm not quite sure how much they truly own lock/stock. But what happens when their bubble *does* bust? We all know it's coming, we all know it's going to happen. Think that which is the UNIX(R) Source will suddenly become automagically opened?
Most likely Microsoft or some other non open friendly giant will swoop in at the last minute and purchase up what remains of the UNIX(R) Source so that it will forever remain in a corporate collective somewhere. If it is Microsoft, they would probably begin the litigation anew. After they ran patents for everything and anything that looked like it might clear the US Patent Office in favor of the new owners.
Ok, the current icon for a generic BSD story on/. right now is the Daemon, right? Everyone I know associates the Daemon with BSD regardless of flavor. NetBSD has attempted to single themselves out as a seperate distro from the rest of the BSD group/stables. Why would it make any sense to use their new logo as the *generic* BSD logo? If the/. story is 100% devoted to NetBSD, then sure, use the flag like Apple has their own logo. But I don't think it would be worthwhile to replace the Daemon with the NetBSD flag on a story dealing with OpenBSD.
It seems to me, that a trademark infringement like creating a new game with Link and Zelda or Samus Arun in it is very obviously a legal event waiting to happen. But simply stating "Hey, I love playing Zelda"... That can't possibly be an event Nintendo would win in anything other than "We have enough money to out lawyer you into the poor house"
The dual-processor Sun Java Workstation W2100z, first in a new line of AMD Opteron processor-based workstations from Sun, delivers ultimate performance, visualization-class graphics solutions, high I/O throughput, and the ability to deploy large data sets (up to 16 GB in size) across multiple operating systems, including the Solaris OS, Linux, and Windows.
Actually SUN likes Linux just fine. Very happy with the decisions buyers are making with their hardware and a Linux OS, and with how Linux is shaping up in the world around them, actually. They just don't like Red Hat. Which, say it with me now, is *not* Linux. They are a distro. The CTO has some quotes running around the web about it. I think Red Hat stepped on one too many toes at SUN or something.
The title is a little interesting to me. The Return of the SUN Workstation. Does this mean to say that the current versions of UltraSPARC and Sun Blade systems shouldn't be considered workstations? What do we (as a/. community) describe workstation as, anyway? Do we mean to say really high end 3D work in CAD/CAM, etc? Is the lowly XP machine I'm forced to use at work a "workstation" because it's where I get work done?
The new Java Workstation series with the AMD Opteron processor is a pretty neat box. Hit SUN.com and download their PDF's on the machine. One includes a diagram/schematic of the motherboard. The motherboard is the mainboard and daughterboard. The daughterboard happens to house the PCI bus and associated gear as well as the SCSI adapter onboard. I wonder why. Will SUN later introduce a different daughterboard with some other version of expansion upgradability? Maybe with SATA instead of SCSI? Just a way to keep the mainboard more flexible?
It also needs to be said that this isn't just a dual Opteron machine. There is a single proc version of the motherboard. They are also as full on x86 as you can get. No really out there ROMs or chips that only SUN knows about, because they are rated to run Windows as well.
So the units will run all x86 OS's without a hitch, they just happen to have some SUN engineering behind them as well as the SUN name. I think the main push for the Opteron was that they have an entry level server built around it. SUN knows that not everybody buys really high end multi $$K machines and that some data centers only need one or two sub $1K servers.
Is this why SUN is so vocal about their new found friends at Microsoft? Because they knew they would be releasing x86 gear that would be certified for Windows Server products and wanted to make sure the world knew that you didn't have to get your WinBoxes from Dell or HP anymore?
Slashdot Mirror
All this talk of climate and greenhouse gases and the effect of humans on the ozone layer have forced me to remember what I believe to be a particularly funny bit by Lewis Black.
"The weather in this country is completely out of control and nobody seems to care about it. I knew we were in trouble 12 years ago when I was in Boston, MA and in 4 days in February, I experienced 5 seasons. It was 30, it was 60, it was 90 and it was 12. And on the last day, there was thunder, lightning and snow together. And I had not done drugs."
"Cause when you're lying in bed, you hear thunder outside, and you get up to look, you have an expectation. And it's not snow with lightning behind it. That's not right."
"They don't even write about that kind of weather in the bible. And I imagine if a prophet had seen that kind of weather, after he wiped the poop out of his pants, he'd have told us about it. I was supposed to work that night, I said I'm not coming in. I'm scared to death, cause I know what the next season's going to be....locusts."
Actually, he does several bits about weather. For those of you that haven't heard of Lewis Black, he is an actor turned political comedian, and let me tell you I've never laughed so hard in my life. In fact I will not listen to him while I drive for fear of killing myself or others. But it's like everything I guess, his humor isn't for everybody.
This is another thing that bothers me about this scenario. I can't say that I've ever admined 100 servers, the most I've ever had was about 30, but if we had a power loss of any kind, you'd just repower them and walk away. Most of them were DEC Alpha gear running Tru64. Why would you spec out a box that has to be handheld every reboot? The only time you should have to handhold a server is during an upgrade. A power cycle without proper SIGHUP or term signals should just run fdisk on it's way back up. (K, so it might take an hour for the server to go live again, but still.) I mean, am I missing something here? Maybe since nothing I've admined got the traffic these things do .... I'm just lost. Some one hit me with the clue by four.
The only thing I can even think of is they have explicit services that must be started manually ..... but why would you want that? If you have a power hiccup in the middle of the night, you want it to come back up, and be live and happy again *before* you even get the first page. I mean sure, if there was a surge, and that destroyed components, and those components have to be replaced ..... but ..... a reboot is a reboot, man. Here, smoke some source. It's the good stuff.
I know nothing of how InterNap is set up. I just want to throw that out there ahead of time. Now, it's time for my patent pending "Bull Shit Theory of the Day."
Ok, here is the rant. I used to work for a Colocation facility. Nothing special, small by Telco terms. The whole facility only had about 1500 cabinets. (Though I hear they are now full, and going to be expanding.)
We had a main power draw off of the local grid. We had a backup power draw off of the *next* cities power grid. (ie, when all the offices around us went dark, we still had power.) And you don't even want to know the kind of red tape we had to go through for *that* pull. I'm still not sure how they did it. We had fly wheel kinetic electricity storage systems, battery backups, and a diesel engine from a train so large it had it's own building.
We used to joke that if we lost power, we had more important things to worry about. And again, we were small time compared to some of the massiveness that is out there. *cough*AADS Chicago*cough*
So I'm kind of in agreement with the statement currently on LiveJournal. It's unknown to me how any self respecting colo facility can say "We've had a power outage that also took our redundant systems."
I have to call bullshit on that entire train of thought. If that's true then they don't *have* any redundant systems, and I'd be looking for a new provider. The most likely thing (at least in my mind) is that someone, somewhere got mad at something specific and decided to make a point by popping the main breaker to their portion of the facility.
Oh, that was another thing, each room had several "main" breakers. It took a hell of a power surge to pop all of them, and the Liebert systems had power filters of some kind, really really big capacitors or something I think, so a surge really never made it to the other side anyway, it got stored in the cap and then trickled out like the rest of the power.
But I was a UNIX admin, not the EE that was planning the power generation aspects of the facility. So take some of it with grains of what ever white powdered spice you prefer.
It's time for me to come out of lurker mode to once again bring all the enthusiastic readers my patent pending Bull Shit Theory of the Day (BTOD) .
It pains me to say, given that with free speech comes free opinion, but I am getting fed up with the pissing, the moaning, the bitching and the complaining that get done in the name of Company X is the AntiChrist, Company Y Save Us! Apple Computer, Inc. is a Corporation. Their sole purpose for being in business is not to cater to your every whim. They are in business to please their shareholders. Shareholders are pleased by making money. They don't care about you or me .... no wait, I'm a shareholder, maybe they do care about me.
The point is that they are in business to make money. If they think that selling a $500 Mac or selling a $9000 PowerMac will make them money, then they will do that. By contrast if keeping Real Networks and their music off the iPod will make them money, they will find every legal way to do that. (Better stay legal, don't make me flex my voting options.)
What never ceases to amaze me though, is the rule that "What is good for the goose is *not* good for the gander." All nature of items that you use for a goose so many people refuse to use for a gander. Why is that?
Let me explain
People are up in arms about the fact that Apple has made changes to the iPod firmware to keep music bought from Real Networks from working on the iPod. Real used AAC DRM controlled files bought and downloaded from Apple that were reverse engineered to give them the keys that allowed them to change their own AAC controlled files so that they looked like an Apple iTMS file to the iPod. Apple, as their right, changes the firmware and now they have become Company X.
I must interrupt to call bullshit on this. Apple is the Goose.
You see, my Mom drives a Chevy Blazer. It's the largest pile of cow dung I've ever been forced to examine. It is, at this moment, slowly bleeding to death in my parents garage. (And to skip the flame baiting and trollers, I am married and live 35 miles away from my parents.) It leaks from the transmission, it leaks from the rear main seal, it leaks from the oil pan, heck for all I know the transfer cases leaks and I'm not even sure that there *is* fluid in there.
Hang with me, the point is coming.
Even though she is mad as a hornet in a hen house at GM, and even though the vehicles that they purchase for my father will never again be GM (He currently has a Ford F150 and a Dodge Van) my mother *will* be buying another Blazer. Why?
On Star
Does that mean she has the right to sue GM because On Star isn't available on a Ford? What do you think GM, as a Corporation and we've already covered what their interests are, would do if Ford discretely hacked the On Star system so that their brand new Ford Mustang authenticated itself as a Buick LeSabre? Do you think they would offer assistance to a driver in a Mustang that was upside down on it's roof?
"Help, I've flipped my car and I can't get out."
"I see that you are in a Buick LeSabre, the side windows are specifically designed to be kicked out in the event of a roll over."
"LeSabre? I'm in a Ford Mustang GT."
"...click...buzzzzzz."
"Hello? Hello??
So now we have the GM Gander. You and I both know what is going to happen, GM is going to change the On Star system so that Ford vehicles can't use it. Why? Because if Ford wants an On Star like system, they need to build their own system with their own network and have their own button. Call it the FoMo Net or something. Is this anti-competitive? Would anyone even think twice about this happening?! No. Why? It's the auto business, a Ford is not a Chevy.
Yet we argue about this same thing day in and day out with Apple and Real, Linux and Microsoft, BeOS and Palm .... no .... wait, that one's the same thing now
No, he isn't the only one. Look here:
http://www.webservertalk.com/message444851-1.html
Though, I'm not sure you can blame this one on Wal-Mart. It isn't like it is a Wal-Mart brand named computer. They are buying it, just like all their other products, from a third-party manufacturer. Now, they may have a lot of muscle to lean in on that third-party, but ultimately it's a cheap knock-off being shipped in directly from Asia vs. the quality knock-offs with things like the IBM badge on them being shipped in directly from Asia.
I currently work for an organization that has very strict (and government controlled) policies in place for the installation and use of software packages. It's called bureaucracy. To install PuTTy on my XP workstation I must submit a ticket via our Management System interface. That ticket must then be assigned to my manager for an approval for the request of the software. Once my manager approves (could be a week or more) the ticket is then assigned to a senior manager for approval. Once that senior manager approves the installation of the software the ticket is assigned to an auditor to evaluate the financial impact on the company, the auditor must then write up a RFP (Request for Purchase) and submit approval to the ticket. The ticket is then assigned to the final approver (who is usually the CIO or another officer just below) who evaluates the ticket, verifies the approvals, verifies the finanical impact, approves the ticket, then assigns it to the Desktop Admin. The Desktop Admin then assigns the ticket to a Support Technician to be implemented. (ie. installed) (Oh, and I'm a member of IT and a Support Analyst, by the way.)
At any point in that process, if there is a denial. The whole thing must be reviewed, reentered, and start all over again.
This, I drop it in the CD-ROM, install nothing, run the X apps I need to run on the UNIX gear I monitor. Remove the CD, reboot, and no impact to the installed system that requires red tape.
Does that help?
Well, I have to step in here and fire up my rant machine. Everyone else is having a row, I want one too. So here goes: It's time for my Bullshit Theory of the Day!
You say that the team is building something that has already been built. You claim that they are attempting to reinvent a wheel that is no longer useful. I must call bullshit on this whole diatribe. This isn't the wheel. I know how to build a wheel. More importantly I'm pretty sure you know how to build a wheel. My little brother knows how to build a wheel. With so many people building wheels we have to stop using this analogy for open source implementation.
I say this is building a Pyramid. Do you know how to build a Pyramid? I know I sure don't, and they are one of the wonders of the world. The Great Pyramid was built within the lifetime of one man. But the secrets that allowed them to build the Pyramid died with the master builder. (Oh, and let's nip this before it starts. The workers were not slaves. They were freemen as evidenced by "signatures" around the pyramid structure.)
The secrets of the source of the Win32 API are held by one man. He (and his team) know exactly how to push this block on that level and move it hundreds of feet into the air to start the next level of the Pyramid being built. I don't know how to move that block, and the ReactOS guys don't know how to move that block either. But they are trying to learn.
For hundreds of years man has attempted to relearn knowledge that was lost through the sands of time. Hundreds have tried to decode exactly how this block moved to be placed on top of that one after being rough cut by hand from a quarry at the base. Is this worthless? Is the knowledge of how a structure was designed, fabricated, built, and weathered as such that it has lasted hundreds of years useless information?
Rome had aquaducts, plumbing, roads. All structures designed in the minds of men and built on the backs of men. But which required decades, if not centuries, to recreate elsewhere in the world after the fall of the Roman Empire. Those structures too are still standing today.
My house, however, built only a year and a half ago, is not. Creaky boards, swaying walls, truly horrifing things happening. I, Sir, want an aquaduct. I want a Pyramid, a Castle. I want a home I know is going to stand for centuries. Not a measely couple of decades.
This is no different than what is happening here. There is no amount of information which is not knowledge. There is no knowledge that is not power. Power is what mankind strives to achieve. The very fact that the secrets of how to move those blocks into the air to get Word to run belong to so few is why so many are working so hard to recreate the information needed to perform these tasks.
It's the *why*. Why does x+y=z? Why does yellow + blue = green? Why is the sky blue? This isn't about recreating an OS that is dying if not dead just so they can have a perfectly dead OS. This is not about wanting to run an old copy of Word 2.0 they happen to have lying around. This is about the why of the power.
It's also the exact same why that created Linux.
Why is it that whenever someone with so little resources accomplishes so much there are always millions waiting to tear them down and tell them to go to hell? You don't want to install ReactOS to run Word 2.0 because you've already pirated XP SP2? Fine! Don't download it, don't install it, don't run it. But as a member of mankind at least understand that we will always rebuild what has already been built. Always.
Cars, Trains, Buildings, Waterways, Boats, Spaceships, and yes even the leaning t
I once worked for a company that had this desktop mentality. If it was a desktop PC it ran NT, authenticated and connected to an NT server and stored files on an NT controlled file server. Now, as I was hired into the company as a Junior UNIX Admin for all the *outside* boxes (which not a one happened to be MS) I was a little interested in the fact that the other Junior as well as the Senior admins (who focused primarily on the large Cisco gear) never once even raised a stink about it. Just went on with it, not wanting to step on toes, since the *internal* administrator was MS centric.
So, I decided to take myself out of the loop. Formatted my machine, installed Red Hat (still say I should have used SuSE - but we had a couple Red Hat boxes and could get support so *shrugs*) tweaked it up a little to look a little more like NT (not perfect mind you, but it was hard to tell that it wasn't NT with a theme on top to the untrained eye) Plus I was in an office so my machine faced away from the door, so it was hard to see what I was doing anyway.
So when the LAN Admin finally finds out (who was actually a pretty cool guy, but had several hundred desktops he had to deal with on the network) he comes to me and says "So .... you obviously know what you're doing with UNIX, you can authenticate against NT? You have access to files? You can print? ..... I don't have to support you?"
He walked out of my office and I never heard word one about it again. Makes me wonder if there are any *NIX friendly people that got sucked into MS that are still running a *NIX but not telling anyone about it.
Any way, that was my rant, I now return you to your regularly scheduled /.
I don't know if all tape based camcorders are doomed to die. Tape still has a lot of life left in it, just look at your local news production facility. Chances are very good that they are using a Betamax camcorder for on the spot feeds, etc.
With that being said, however, I am going to be buying an http://www.aiptek.com/ aiptek digital camera for my wife for Christmas. The DV3100 model is just under $100 US, uses Compact Flash (CF) which our other Kodak camera uses, and can record up to 180 minutes of video and audio on a 512 MB CF.
Ok, so it's no MPEG2 CCD wonder wiz. It's recording directly to MPEG4, in a size that is half of TV, I think. 320 x something if memory serves, and it isn't even a full 30 (ok 29.97) frames per second. But we were blessed last year with a new daughter and she keeps saying "Oh, I wish we had a camcorder ..." etc, etc. So it will get the job done.
The fact that you can buy a camera that is also a camcorder, regardless of quality, that can capture a full two hours worth of video and sound, direct to CF which on my Mac and a USB dongle shows up as a hard drive, so I can manipulate the CF files directly, no fuss, no muss. Can a tape format that doesn't allow fast and easy movement between formats, devices, TV's, cameras, computers, etc, ad nauseam really be viable for much longer?
My parents own a really nice JVC VHS-C camcorder. Does all sorts of things. I think you can buy the same model right now for just under $300 US. But I don't even own a VCR, everything in my house is digital. DVD, House wired for Ethernet, computers in every room, all CD's bought instantly get put into iTunes, most new music being bought is from iTMS (iTunes Music Store) and I'm right now working out a way to put all my families movies into a MythTV style server repository along with a Microsoft-esque Digital TV Set top box in each room so we can "On Demand" every movie we own.
News at 11
An interesting side effect of IPTV, BPL. Wait, is that BPL is an interesting side effect of IPTV. Argh! I've given myself an ice cream headache. Let me start over again.
BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) looks to allow your electricity provider to offer you other services, namely internet access. With IPTV they can now also offer you TV over the power lines as well. Who needs cable, satellite or telephone services?
Frankly I welcome the new Power Transmission Owner Overlord Emperor, Yeah!
Unfortunately, I'm currently mad at my PTOOEY. Evil, pure evil I tell you. But what are you going to do? I'd set up a generator and feed power back into the grid just to spite them. But I can't .... NDA and all ....
Oh well. I'm going back to sulking now, thanks.
Well .... they kind of already have a killer show that is exclusively an Internet program. Though it is available on DVD. I know many, many people dislike all that is the Microsoft Borg, but I laughed so hard at Red vs. Blue that it kind of questions sanity.
While I know that Red vs. Blue isn't offically a truly sanctioned Microsoft product, do you think they didn't at least give a nod to the rabid lawyers to keep from destroying it in it's entirety? Also, since they are such big Halo (and by Proxy Microsoft) fans anyway, do you really think they'd give the rights to stream it as a TV program to anyone else?
Heck, I'm interested in this right now, as I'm currently an SBC DSL subscriber, if it gets me away from my evil and bastardized cable company. I may be clinically insane, but at one point last year I was talking to VC about starting my own cable company for just my subdivision and maybe the one next to it. That's how mad I was at them.
However, reality eventually set it ..... man do you know how expensive gear to decode then re-encode TV broadcast from air and sat is right now? Not to mention license fees for all the stations you want to offer on the network. I would have been, like, the UPN Cable Company because that was the only channel I think I could have even begged into throwing me a bone to be on the network.
So sad, so sad. TV started out free, paid for by advertising, with which I was very very fine. You want me to watch a soap commercial to laugh at Gilligan? Hey, fine, no problem. Now, I pay more for freaking TV than I do for internet access, telephone service, trash service, property taxes, housing and groceries combined!
This has officially degenerated into a rant. I apologize and will end it now. Thank you for your optical time.
http://www.akamai.com/en/html/about/overview.html/
Akamai is the global leader in distributed computing solutions and services, helping organizations grow their online businesses without growing their IT infrastructures. The company created the world's largest and most widely used on-demand distributed computing platform, with more than 14,000 servers in 1,100 networks in 65+ countries.
Now is the time to show how little I know from working with a company that housed servers for Akamai.
Akamai is basically a huge cache system. Many of the internet favorites that people hit on a regular basis are Akamai customers. Apple, BMW, FedEx, etc. They are all companies that know they have a pretty big userbase and need to be able to give those customers a good chunk of bandwidth. However it is impossible and impractical to install the needed bandwidth for one site .... say IBM.
Now, I know you say "But IBM is this huge goliath of a company that has customers worldwide." That doesn't mean it is cost effective for them to install 14,000 OC-128's to handle all the traffic. Akamai provides a way of distributing your information in a way that allows people to pull that information from a site that is technologically near to them.
Let's not go into how a certain cable company goes to *New York* before passing any traffic to *California* So I did not mean geographically near.
Anyway .... I know nothing about their rates or services or even if they are cheaper than running 14,000 OC-128's to your office. I like to exaggerate and embellish, ok. I'd hate to see the SONET gear needed to switch 14,000 circuits. But they would be a good bet for you. Because your customer would hit your site. Click the link for whatever 4 Meg, etc app you need them to run, the link would find the closest Akamai center and bam .... they'd probably be downloading it from Japan when they are in Wyoming .... but hey, what are you going to do with technology, right?
Just my three cents.
As Much as I would love to purchase your Cube, I am no where near CO, but in IN and the shipping would be most prohibitive. However:
Black Hole, Incorporated
3007 Conestoga Ct.
Fort Collins, CO 80526
970-223-9976 Phone
970-223-9975 Fax
President: Rob Blessin
Black Hole is a company located in CO that deals with NeXT equipment and acts as a reseller of used machines and other NeXT items including printers.
Note: This post in no way is meant as an advertisement for Black Hole, Inc. I am not affiliated, nor have I ever actually had business dealing with, the mentioned company.
Just thought the info might come in handy. Though, if you don't think the shipping would be *too* bad, or if you happen to have any *dead* cubes. I'd be interested in an email.
A little off topic, but related nonetheless. Does anyone have any links to pictures and perhaps even step by steps of a complete teardown of one of these? I've seen the TurboStations .... they are very similar to a same year model Sun Pizza box. Layout and all of my SparcStation 5 is very close (not cookie cutter mind you, but still you can see that the inspiration was there)
These cubes are so huge ... 12" by 12" ... compared to a similar Pizza box. In fact it looks like you could have two Mainboards in a Cube? How many drives did this thing hold? What's the internal chassis look like? I'm curious to know, but don't have a lot money (shipping a computer that size/weight is enormous) to spend to just strip the thing with no intention of ever actually using it. (I have 6 various Sparc machines, none Ultra, that just sit around already)
Thanks in advance for any info.
Now, since I just got to work, and hence just online to see this story, it's a pretty good piece of the way down and no one may ever even read this. Also, I skimmed, searched and read most of what's here and there is a toy missing that I feel needs to be highlighted.
That toy? M.A.S.K. The Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. (Hey, it had to be K to fit with the acronym, poor spelling skills be damned). As a child I skrimped and saved my allowance and pretty much had the entire toy line. Sure, it meant I couldn't buy He-Man or even G.I.Joe most of the time. But who needed them when you had M.A.S.K.?
With all the revisiting the 80's toy lines, including Star Wars (all of them) and Master of the Universe, it's curious to me that M.A.S.K. hasn't been similarly resurrected. For those too old or too young to remember the toy line, let me put on my "When I was your age..." cap and begin to knit my yarn.
The entire toy line was based on real vehicles. It was, I guess in a way, our answer to the Japanese invasion of Transformers. Instead of robots, however, the M.A.S.K. vehicles all transformed into massive vehicles of battle. All covered with weaponry, death and destruction. Did the combatants end there though? No. They each also had a helmet, or MASK, that was also itself a weapon and each one had it's own individual power. Not unlike a nod to the huge comic property of superheroes in the day. Some even came with hand held weapons. These toys were just ready to take out the world.
On further introspection, maybe I can see why it hasn't been resurrected, however He-Man certainly has massive amounts of weaponry as well. G.I.Joe is most openly a military body ..... any way, I digress.
Now, while I'm geek enough to remember each of the vehicles, weapons, drivers, and masks in turn. I will not bore you with those details. But I will hit highlights of the back story surrounding the toy line and a grand overview of the vehicles involved.
Matt Trakker, leader of the forces of M.A.S.K. and on the side of light and good, came by his weaponry from his brother, Andy. His brother had been partners with Miles Mayhem, leader of the forces of V.E.N.O.M. (The Vicious and Evil Network Of Mayhem) who together found the crystals that powered all the devices in the series. Andy knew that Miles was getting ready to pull something, and built a second series of masks and hid them for Matt to find.
Then we get into the standard cliche villian plot. Miles wanted to take over the world and to that end had hundreds of schemes that Matt and M.A.S.K. were always there to thwart.
This toy line touched it all (at least for a boy) It gave you cars to "drive," figures that could get into the cars. Cars that transformed into weapons platforms. Back story to relive battles with the toy line. Interchangable components. (The masks were removeable, and could fit different figures, etc. Unlike some toys even today where they are basically cast plastic figurines that don't even move ..... toy my eye.) Superhero like powers. Really cool villians to fight (I mean come on, Stink Man? [He-Man Villian])
*sighs* Ah well .... and look at the DVD run of items coming out. Knight Rider, Munsters, Strawberry Shortcake?? .... and yet, still no M.A.S.K. love ..... truely a forgotten artifact of the past. Now all we need is Indiana Jones to help us find it!
Thanks for letting me ramble about the past
http://ds.ign.com/objects/682/682868.html
Feel the Magic: XY/XX
also known as:
Project Rub
I Would Die For You
Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru (JPN)
Also known by its Japanese title Kimi no Tame Nara Shineru (I Would Die For You). You play as a rather ordinary character who one day falls in love at the first sight of a particularly hot chick. From then on, the character puts all his energy into getting the girl, only to find numerous obstacles in his way. The game was given its name to deliver the sense of how serious the main character's attraction is to the girl -- a good thing, because the entire point of the game is to earn the girl's affection. You use the Nintendo DS's touch panel to interact with the game and make the girl grow fond of you. The basic gist of the game is to touch the girl via the touch screen. In fact, the game doesn't even use the standard D-pad and button controls -- it's all about the touch.
http://ds.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=1216
Buy her a fish tank: Goldfish are the surest way to a woman's heart, but be careful! Even if you happen to spill the tank and an innocent bystander accidentally ingests your sea animals, you still have a chance to show your worth. Get the fish back! Use the stylus to push the guppies back through the man's digestive system so he coughs them into the tank. Not only have you saved tiny aquatic lives, but you've kept your cool in a slippery situation.
Just some Info for you.
Man, I hate it when people think they simply know everything there is to know about everything. You are not a Mac User. You make it obvious you are not a Mac User. You go so far as to say Mac Users are Dorks, yet you pretend to know everything there is to know about the Macintosh third party market.
You, Sir, are most certainly wrong. You *can* install your own sound card, your own video card, your own any PCI based card in PCI based Macs. Which all Mac OS X compliant Macs are PCI based. PCI is an industry standard, and any PCI card from any manufacturer will go right into your Mac. Now the problem you will run into is drivers, but the card POSTs and tells the Mac what it is, in fact there are companies that even have Mac drivers if you can believe that! *GASPS!*Here is a Mac compatible, PCI based third party sound card. http://www.portlandmusiccompany.com/phile.html/ Here is a blurb from the website about said sound card, because I know most are too lazy to actually read anything but blogs.
If you are going to *pretend* to know everything, please at least do a little bit of research first.
I heard somewhere [Local Radio Station Perhaps?] that the new trailer is supposed to be played at the beginning of The Incredibles movie. Anyone know if there is truth associated to this?
While we have all joined each other in loud, hearty guffaws at the rate at which SCO as a company has driven itself to hell without aid of handbasket, I must take a moment for an aside.
According to the SCO website, they are still attempting to deliver a UNIXWare(R) product. This means that they *must* still have technically savvy folks working for them. Slaving over a hot pentium all day to cook us up some UNIXWare(R) goodness. How do they find the strength to get up in the morning and make the drive to work? For that matter, how does Darl McBride? The writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. How many of them are just hanging in, hoping for a long enough tenure with the company to get *something* out of all their hard work?
This only causes to reenforce in my mind an earlier (albeit drunken) revelation I had about the truths of the online community that is /. I am sorely tempted to register a holding company, some Corporation designed to hold stock. I know there are legal Corp Classes that are allowed to do such things. Get everyone on every online forum I can find to be shareholders of the Holding Company and use all share money to outright purchase SCO and end this once and for all.
I mean, they do have *some* validity to the claim that they own UNIX(R) Source. I'm not quite sure how much they truly own lock/stock. But what happens when their bubble *does* bust? We all know it's coming, we all know it's going to happen. Think that which is the UNIX(R) Source will suddenly become automagically opened?
Most likely Microsoft or some other non open friendly giant will swoop in at the last minute and purchase up what remains of the UNIX(R) Source so that it will forever remain in a corporate collective somewhere. If it is Microsoft, they would probably begin the litigation anew. After they ran patents for everything and anything that looked like it might clear the US Patent Office in favor of the new owners.
Ok, the current icon for a generic BSD story on /. right now is the Daemon, right? Everyone I know associates the Daemon with BSD regardless of flavor. NetBSD has attempted to single themselves out as a seperate distro from the rest of the BSD group/stables. Why would it make any sense to use their new logo as the *generic* BSD logo? If the /. story is 100% devoted to NetBSD, then sure, use the flag like Apple has their own logo. But I don't think it would be worthwhile to replace the Daemon with the NetBSD flag on a story dealing with OpenBSD.
Well, the tip top of the line is $8700.00, but they start out much cheaper than that.
w1100zOpteron Model 144 (Single)
1 MB L2 Cache
Quadro NVS280 Graphics
512 MB RAM
80 GB HDD
GigE
5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
$1,495.00
Opteron Model 150 (Single)
1 MB L2 Cache
Quadro FX500 Graphics
1 GB RAM
80 GB HDD
GigE
5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
$2,095.00
w2100z
Opteron Model 246 (Dual)
1 MB L2 Cache
Quadro NVS280 Graphics
2 GB RAM
73 GB HDD (SCSI)
GigE
5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
$4,695.00
Opteron Model 250 (Dual)
1 MB L2 Cache
Quadro FX3000 Graphics
4 GB RAM
73 GB HDD (SCSI)
GigE
5 USB, 2 1394, 2 Serial, 1 AGP 8x, 5 PCI-X
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
$8,695.00
It seems to me, that a trademark infringement like creating a new game with Link and Zelda or Samus Arun in it is very obviously a legal event waiting to happen. But simply stating "Hey, I love playing Zelda" ... That can't possibly be an event Nintendo would win in anything other than "We have enough money to out lawyer you into the poor house"
Right?
Nope, no custom firmware. From: http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/w2100z/
Actually SUN likes Linux just fine. Very happy with the decisions buyers are making with their hardware and a Linux OS, and with how Linux is shaping up in the world around them, actually. They just don't like Red Hat. Which, say it with me now, is *not* Linux. They are a distro. The CTO has some quotes running around the web about it. I think Red Hat stepped on one too many toes at SUN or something.
The title is a little interesting to me. The Return of the SUN Workstation. Does this mean to say that the current versions of UltraSPARC and Sun Blade systems shouldn't be considered workstations? What do we (as a /. community) describe workstation as, anyway? Do we mean to say really high end 3D work in CAD/CAM, etc? Is the lowly XP machine I'm forced to use at work a "workstation" because it's where I get work done?
The new Java Workstation series with the AMD Opteron processor is a pretty neat box. Hit SUN.com and download their PDF's on the machine. One includes a diagram/schematic of the motherboard. The motherboard is the mainboard and daughterboard. The daughterboard happens to house the PCI bus and associated gear as well as the SCSI adapter onboard. I wonder why. Will SUN later introduce a different daughterboard with some other version of expansion upgradability? Maybe with SATA instead of SCSI? Just a way to keep the mainboard more flexible?
It also needs to be said that this isn't just a dual Opteron machine. There is a single proc version of the motherboard. They are also as full on x86 as you can get. No really out there ROMs or chips that only SUN knows about, because they are rated to run Windows as well.
So the units will run all x86 OS's without a hitch, they just happen to have some SUN engineering behind them as well as the SUN name. I think the main push for the Opteron was that they have an entry level server built around it. SUN knows that not everybody buys really high end multi $$K machines and that some data centers only need one or two sub $1K servers.
Is this why SUN is so vocal about their new found friends at Microsoft? Because they knew they would be releasing x86 gear that would be certified for Windows Server products and wanted to make sure the world knew that you didn't have to get your WinBoxes from Dell or HP anymore?