Huh? I would have thought it would have been between 10x to 100x that much. Especially if they cache most pages. (Maybe they just use dram for the indexes, and hd's for the cache?)
I still don't understand that claim. $300 will get me a 160G drive, and I can load four of them in a cheap PC case or 1U rackmount case, 640G per unit. That's under $2K for.64 Terabyte.
RAM prices vary wide, but say on the low side I can get 256M for $20. I'd need 2560 sticks of 256M to equal 640G, or $51,200 for the equivalent storage. And that doesn't take into account that most reasonably priced PC motherboards only handle 2G or 4G of memory these days. You'd need 160 motherboards in the best case, adding $80,000 to the cost, assuming you could get 4G per unit, and $500 per motherboard/chassis. Let's, see $51K+80K = $131K, versus $2K.
RAM, as I figure it, is at least 65 times more expensive (that's not 65% more, it's 6500% more).
Either their archive is a lot smaller than I assumed, or they're talking performance/price tradeoffs, where speed has a high premium.
I'm betting this will be fixes to XP only (even if there were shared code that would benefit W2K, W98, WME). So this is going to finally give a reason for IS managers to upgrade to XP. Ugh.
So they're addressing their embarassing security and reliability, while boosting sagging XP sales.
If you dont like it, move. I am sure you can find a country that would love to limit the privacy of its citizens.
Actually, D00d, I *don't* live in your country. so I don't have to move:-). But that's irrelevant for this conversation.
thats the proce we pay for freedom..
Ummmm, explain that to me again? Protection of criminals' privacy is the price you pay for freedom? Define freedom? Freedom from the authorities knowing what illegal activity you might be up to? I'm not being sarcastic, I just want to know what particular part of your privacy you're protecting that would prevent authorities from knowing about criminals' activity?
Maybe I'm just too damn squeaky clean, and I don't smoke pot (I don't have any problem with anyone else doing it, and think it probably should be legalized), and I don't pirate software (heck, I'm on slashdot, I run open source OS's at home, and I relish the free stuff out there), I don't copy music (if you can even call it "music" that the producers are cranking out these days") or movies (there hasn't been a great one in awhile, and when there is $5 at the local video store well fix me up fine). Maybe if there was some petty piracy crime that was worthwhile, I'd feel different:-) I got absolutely nothing to hide, and I'm willing to sacrifice absolute privacy, for criminals to do the same.
Providing absolute privacy to *all* citizens means you provide absolute privacy to *all* *criminals* as well. That's not freedom, in my book. Unfortunately, in any group of people, there are some elements that you need protecdtion from, and giving *them* absolute protection just doesn't cut it. Especially after September 11th.
Anyhow, I've been personally victimized enough by criminals with too much privacy, and other folks hiding behind veils of anonymity, to be a big fan of privacy thsee days.
Man, I'm getting sick of the overly-liberal attitude around here.:-)
I'm all for whatever someone does in the privacy of their own home is their own business, but when they're killing thousands, something has to be done, privacy be damned.
If the government used this to "out" five gay guys living in the same apartment in NY, can you imagine the huge scandle it would create? It just would *not* be used for invasion of privacy purposes like that.
But if they spotted a bunch of Afghanistan citizens who bought one-way tickets, and stopped a major disaster, more power to them. (And if the lead was bogus, no harm done, but a minor inconvenience.)
I think North American society has gone too far towards protecting the privacy of citizens; it ends up protecting the rights of criminals as well. I'd love it if the government checked the serial numbers of all consumer hardware in everyone's house on a monthly basis. They'd get nothing on me (I bought it all legally, I've got *nothing* to hide!), and they'd likely find all my stolen stereos, shop gear, and other stuff that was taken during two burglaries of our house. If there were a society that had that as it's policy, I'd sign up in a second, and sleep better at night (as would my daughter, who still has nightmares about the burglary).
I'm feeling more violated by the rights of the criminals under these "protections", than they supposedly provide me. Sure, give me a rundown now and then, as a minor inconvenience, as long as it nabs the people who are violating me through burglaries and other social crimes.
I agree. There is nothing inherent about the technology of Linux that makes it less suitable for PDA's.
But PDA's by their nature, are a bit more proprietary, where vendors try hard to differentiate themselves from each other. (Who would stand out in a group of a dozen PDA's that all run RedHat 7.2.)
Any successful PDA isn't going to be a public domain project, but a business venture. And BSD's licensing makes a more viable foundation than Linux. It breaks my heart, as I have used Linux from the start, but GPL is just too "restrictive in it's forced freedom":-) I'm pretty much BSD-only these days, as I can *do* *what* *I* *want* with the code, without any strings attached.
And it still amazes me how people dump on using Linux or BSD on PDA's (why bother). These are *excellent* general purpose operating systems that are far more flexible than Windows CE and PalmOS, and can be made to not use a lot more resources. I think they're a perfect base, even if that's completely hidden. The big trick is to get a proper application suite on top of it, that is workable on a PDA. No standard X apps nor window managers are workable on a PDA. Qt's attempts are better, but still leave a lot to be desired. Once the productivity apps are there, and workable on a handheld form factor, you'll see FreeBSD/Linux PDA's take off...
- Take one cup flour
- Add two eggs
- Mix in 1/2 tsp of baking soda; be careful with this stuff, it can fizz pretty bad if you get it wet!
- Mix in one cup of milk; careful not to spill this, or get it in your eyes. If you do, immediately flush with water.
- Place content in 6" circular patterns over heated metal grill at 450 degrees; no more or no less, or you could ignite it! Leave until golden brown.
- Cover with carmelized sugar (heat sugar in frying pan at 450 degrees for ten minutes until liquid brown)
- These discs are now ready for deployment. Fling them at your enemy at will. They should succumb immediately (or at least get somewhat sticky).
Please post this to as many sites as you can, in case this site gets shut down for posting this!
You have to consider who will be doing the installs. Would the average person in the average MIS department, sooner spend the time and effort getting a Beowulf cluster working properly, or instead recommend to his boss that there's a more "effective" solutions (where he or she just point-and-click's together a bunch of Mac's).
Yes, it'd be most costly up front, and less effective in the long run, but anyone who doesn't go above and beyond (which is an awful lot of people), will pick the way which is more visibly easier on them.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but Promise has become more and more Linux-unfriendly lately.
There's different minor revisions of the 100Tx2 controllers; you can only tell by looking at the chip on board, I think only the last digit is different. I could not get the latest ones working with Linux at all. I ended up buying these boards under the Maxtor brand name (same units, but slightly older), which had the older chip set.
On the latest boards, it seems Promise appears to have intentionally made certain registers read only, thwarting open source driver development.
With that kind of behaviour, I'm staying away from Promise controllers, period. (I also had a hard time with their Raid5 controllers.)
Back when they were Linux-friendly, their ATA100tx2 cards were nice. But with the latest incompatible chipsets and no help from the company, forget it.
I also had some frustration with Adaptec's 2400 controller. It is *still* only supported by Adaptec under RedHat 7.0. And it has no audible alarm for drive failure, most annoying. Finally, under FreeBSD 4.3, it's performance was abysmal; there was definitely something wrong with the I2O driver working with this card. (I haven't tried 4.4 yet.)
For now, I'm just sticking with motherboard IDE controllers; far more tried and true.
I'm generally more trusting of corporations than a lot of folks that hang out here. But in the case of banning cell phone usage on airplanes, I can't help but believe the interest is at least partly related forcing people to use the horribly expensive SkyTel system on board, instead of their relatively cheap cell phone time.
I can just see them pulling the same thing with fuel cells. Under the guise of "safety," they'll make more bucks by banning fuel cell refilling, forcing you to plug into their special outlets (or use their special "safe" fuel cell fuel) for a fee. Watch for it:-)
(I just wish the airlines would focus upon making money through transportation, and making that a pleasurable experience so do more of it, rather than gouging us every step of the way on extras. Heck, you have our money for the ticket, make us happy with a few cheap extras, and we'll be back for another ticket.)
So it only applies to depositions? Does this mean we won't get to see Bill being interviewed on tape? That was one of the most entertaining parts of the trail to date!
This talks about some of the funny parts (arguing over the definition of "define":-).
Other things he couldn't define were "we", and "compete." What a hoot. Another great quote: "I have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'ask'." It really smacked of a guy who had some professional coaching on how to dodge questions, but executed it very inelegantly.
If not showing this type of questioning publicly is indeed what the court order means, I'm not surprised Microsoft fought hard for it. Bill just looked as dishonest and sneaky as many people think that he is.
Also, if I'm staying in a hotel, charging my batteries is free. If I use the fuel cell, I could get charged $3 per day or more for using my laptop. That's not much if I can write it off as a business expense, but if it is for my two week vacation to Alaska, it can get fairly expensive.
I don't know how you're getting to Alaska, or where you're staying when you're there, but I'm guessing $3/day is paltry as compared to other expenses.
(Unless you're driving from Whitehorse and staying in a tent, that is...)
Seriously, though, $3 as a starting point isn't too bad, and it will only drop. Don't forget that those $300 batteries you buy for your laptop don't last forever; if you ran them from full charge to empty 100 times, I'm sure they'd have a good portion of their useful life used up. I'm assuming fuel cells will have a far longer duty cycle, as long as more fuel is supplied.
I had a Dell, less than 6 months old, whose two expensive batteries are now useless. Maybe a manufacturing defect, but try convincing Dell of that.
Of all the additional things that educational institutions are dinging students for these days, I think imposing a "technology fee" is disgusting.
Any fees for research should come from government, industry, and other organizations. The students should contribute to technology innvoation through their *work*, their *research*, their projects, and such. Not through a "fee".
I know about inflation, but my University (which I gruaduated from in 10 years ago), is now charging *three* times what I paid for tuition. This is just wrong that higher education is becoming more and more exclusive. Things like this fee are just plain wrong, especially if they're having trouble finding what to do with it.
Instead, they should encourage projects where interested students put their time and effort in, above and beyond, doing technologically interesting projects. People who are interested will do the world. Those who are ridden with apathy, won't be involved, and wont' care. No big loss.
Tools like then internet will always help keep the flow of information going. If genetic researchers start restricting information (for financial reasons, most likely), this is no different from software companies restricting their flow of information (source code). I have no problem with either. People have the freedom using the global communication tool of the internet, to do "alternative" projects that accomplish the same.
(Although I have a bit more of a problem with it in the case of genetic research, which more directly impacts humankind; on the other hand, it impacts mainly the well-developed and financially affluent nations, which can afford to apply genetic results. Third world nations would benefit more from a better supply of penicillin than genetic research; so in the global scheme of things, genetic researchers holding back information doesn't make a big difference to the world. Even if a cure for cancer was found, I would guess that *far* fewer people die from cancer than more basic things, world-wide. Most of the world's population doesn't live long enough to develop cancer, and other more subtle diseases for which genetic research would make a major difference.)
Of course, all of the above is subject to me not being fully informed on the subject, which I'm most certainly not. Regardless it's an interesting discussion.
Something like this could be used to truly improve UI's. By studying key presses (and mouse movements), and seeing the particular things that *slow* people down in their interactions, better UI's could be created.
Things like the Fitaly keyboard (and an IBM equivalent, and others), were created by using large texts to estimate pen motion and such. Actual user interaction would be even more valuable (although it's hard to say if it'd be much different; certainly some things like cursor motion and other navigation would come out higher in real world analysis, than using text analysis).
The concept of automated collection and analysis of user interaction efficiency is pretty exciting. It really could amount to more than "which keys have you pressed the most." (With me, it'd be backspace:-)
I used DV/X in the olden days. It was most impressive. It really had better multi-tasking that Windows 3.1 of the day. I had great hopes for it, and I think with better positioning, it could have given Windows a run for the money. It was well targeted upon it's first release, and could have made a difference, but they just didn't follow through. And as they languished, it just became less and less relevant. Still a very cool way of turning an old 486 into a X terminal (and client). Would probably be more efficient than (Linux|FreeBSD)+X.
There's quite a list of things in my book that really could have "made a difference" in the industry, but just didn't follow through effectively. Microsoft may be slow to respond in a lot of cases, but they *do* respond; other folks take years, or never do anything. For fun, here's my list (off the top of my head): Corel Linux, Corel Office, Star Office, BeOS, QNX (lower the damn license fees, okay?:-), SunRays, most thin Clients, Linux PDA's. I'm sure there's a dozen more (and I'm sure they're all sitting in my basement, colecting dust:-)
Here's hoping we'll see more companies whose management can realize when they have a product that can make a difference, and they redirect resources accordingly, rather than thoroughly botching it.
The sad thing is, that with bootable linux CD's, they *could* do just this, just like a console. There's no reason games couldn't be designed with a known, working kernel, bootable on a CD. The main issue I could think of offhand is hardware compatability; a "Linux game box specification" (list of supported graphics cards, sound cards, etc., would address that).
Recovering the iMac at all is very cool. Every PC and Mac should have some "phone home" program installed; I bet most stolen computers aren't wiped. Anyone buying a Mac/PC on the super-cheap, is unlikely to buy or dig up a copy of the OS to start fresh.
The lack of a prosecution for the theft is disappointing. (As someone who has had their place robbed twice in the past two years, I find the low capture/prosecution rates depressing; it just doesn't seem to be a priority with law enforcement. Sigh. Oh well, if anyone tries to hit me again, they'll be on candid camera:-)
What might also have been cool, would be to use AppleScript to flip on the microphone, record the sound in the room, and send the recordings now and then, when connected. (Or use AppleScript to download a program that does the same; I don't know AppleScript.) That would potentially allow more "evidence" to be collected. If the lady didn't steal it, there's a chance you'd record something that would be useful. (Her thanking her brother-in-law for the Mac, or the like.) Having the Mac copy you on all incoming and outgoing mail may also be useful. (Not sure if the Mac could do it; Outlook almost does this by itself, with all the viruses it accepts:-)
Probably not admissible in court, I guess. Although using a stolen device for surveillance really *should* be a legal means of admissible evidence, in a perfect world:-)
SGI's O2 computers were cool like that. Everything, including power supply, hard drives, etc., popped out in a slidable tray. When you popped 'em all out, it was pretty much an empty shell.
It would definitely be a nice trend.
I also like the early Macs (not sure about the current ones), where you could remove all components with tabs and such, no screwdriver required.
I always thought that was a cool way of using existing, smaller standard connectors, for better sizes. For most cards (ethernet, vga, etc.), a DIMM form factor is fine, and would give a great mix of tiny size, and the flexibility we all crave:-)
D'oh! One more post from me. That "stripe" of on bits, is actually kind of a "start bit" sequence. The hole image need to be shifted up to the first 1's, in order to line up right. Sorry 'bout that. Modified perl is left as an exercise to the reader:-)
Okay, I guess it's not too bad. Wonder why they used 127 instead of 128. And there is kind of a "stripe" in it, which acts as a hint to line it up (although it's not perfect; is that the "noise" they introduced? Why not just make it noise-resistant, than introduce noise??)
Here's an ugly perl command to reformat it (I started doing so in vi, then realized there were 6000 more lines to do:-)
Sheeeesh, why don't they make it more obvious, not something that has to be "cracked"?
Like a regular sequence of on/off that just can't be missed (your "start bits" that get noticed:-), and then raster images of what they want to communicate, repeating over and over.
"Hey, look at this regular pattern of signal! That's weird. And it's interspersed with these garbage; if we just kind of line it up in rows, look, images!" (Assuming the concept of images means anything to whatever intelligence comes across it:-)
(Of course, I might be way off base, as I didn't read the article. Will I get kicked off/. because of that?)
Those LED Christmas Lights would be a blessing, except for one potential concern: it looks like they have the same hateful friction-and-two-thin-bent-wires method of putting the each "bulb" in it's receptacle. With mini-lights, I find as many failures of that contact as with burnt out bulbs, so the same grief could be caused, with a bit of corroding of the contacts, loosening of the bulbs, and so forth.
In fact, by looking at the color mismatch between the receptacle/wires and the bulb casing, it looks like they may have used traditional wires/receptacles, and just put in the LED bulbs. If so, I wouldn't bet on great reliability.
Also, I suspect the wife and others would find the traditional LED colours a little "off" from more traditional Christmas colours, but that's just speculation. The green and yellow look pretty pale...
Does anyone know different regarding how they fit in their receptacles???
"what happens when the fee goes up to $199.95/month"? Give me a break. This isn't Microsoft, after all:-)
Seriously, I'd pay $9.95/mo for an eternity, to have access to 100 songs/month. If it were a more exhaustive list of labels and songs (i.e. mostly everything). I think a lot of folks would. $120/year for the convenience of hearing every song every made, any time you want. I think nearly everyone would go for that, and the industry would make far more money off of us consumers. Hopefully, this will be a start of the industry waking up, and we'll reach that goal eventually. In the meantime, I'm setting up my household MP3 server (from ripped CD's I own), with mobile gateways, etc., so I can hear *my* music, anywhere, anytime... If it were a service (and not windows-only:-), I'd pay for it, instead of doing it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? I would have thought it would have been between 10x to 100x that much. Especially if they cache most pages. (Maybe they just use dram for the indexes, and hd's for the cache?)
I still don't understand that claim. $300 will get me a 160G drive, and I can load four of them in a cheap PC case or 1U rackmount case, 640G per unit. That's under $2K for
RAM prices vary wide, but say on the low side I can get 256M for $20. I'd need 2560 sticks of 256M to equal 640G, or $51,200 for the equivalent storage. And that doesn't take into account that most reasonably priced PC motherboards only handle 2G or 4G of memory these days. You'd need 160 motherboards in the best case, adding $80,000 to the cost, assuming you could get 4G per unit, and $500 per motherboard/chassis. Let's, see $51K+80K = $131K, versus $2K.
RAM, as I figure it, is at least 65 times more expensive (that's not 65% more, it's 6500% more).
Either their archive is a lot smaller than I assumed, or they're talking performance/price tradeoffs, where speed has a high premium.
-me
I'm betting this will be fixes to XP only (even if there were shared code that would benefit W2K, W98, WME). So this is going to finally give a reason for IS managers to upgrade to XP. Ugh.
So they're addressing their embarassing security and reliability, while boosting sagging XP sales.
As someone else said, be afriad, be very afrid.
-me
Actually, D00d, I *don't* live in your country. so I don't have to move
Ummmm, explain that to me again? Protection of criminals' privacy is the price you pay for freedom? Define freedom? Freedom from the authorities knowing what illegal activity you might be up to? I'm not being sarcastic, I just want to know what particular part of your privacy you're protecting that would prevent authorities from knowing about criminals' activity?
Maybe I'm just too damn squeaky clean, and I don't smoke pot (I don't have any problem with anyone else doing it, and think it probably should be legalized), and I don't pirate software (heck, I'm on slashdot, I run open source OS's at home, and I relish the free stuff out there), I don't copy music (if you can even call it "music" that the producers are cranking out these days") or movies (there hasn't been a great one in awhile, and when there is $5 at the local video store well fix me up fine). Maybe if there was some petty piracy crime that was worthwhile, I'd feel different
Providing absolute privacy to *all* citizens means you provide absolute privacy to *all* *criminals* as well. That's not freedom, in my book. Unfortunately, in any group of people, there are some elements that you need protecdtion from, and giving *them* absolute protection just doesn't cut it. Especially after September 11th.
Anyhow, I've been personally victimized enough by criminals with too much privacy, and other folks hiding behind veils of anonymity, to be a big fan of privacy thsee days.
-me
You'd prefer a .DOC?
Be thankful it's in at least a semi-readable format, than completely proprietary...
-me
Man, I'm getting sick of the overly-liberal attitude around here. :-)
I'm all for whatever someone does in the privacy of their own home is their own business, but when they're killing thousands, something has to be done, privacy be damned.
If the government used this to "out" five gay guys living in the same apartment in NY, can you imagine the huge scandle it would create? It just would *not* be used for invasion of privacy purposes like that.
But if they spotted a bunch of Afghanistan citizens who bought one-way tickets, and stopped a major disaster, more power to them. (And if the lead was bogus, no harm done, but a minor inconvenience.)
I think North American society has gone too far towards protecting the privacy of citizens; it ends up protecting the rights of criminals as well. I'd love it if the government checked the serial numbers of all consumer hardware in everyone's house on a monthly basis. They'd get nothing on me (I bought it all legally, I've got *nothing* to hide!), and they'd likely find all my stolen stereos, shop gear, and other stuff that was taken during two burglaries of our house. If there were a society that had that as it's policy, I'd sign up in a second, and sleep better at night (as would my daughter, who still has nightmares about the burglary).
I'm feeling more violated by the rights of the criminals under these "protections", than they supposedly provide me. Sure, give me a rundown now and then, as a minor inconvenience, as long as it nabs the people who are violating me through burglaries and other social crimes.
-me
I agree. There is nothing inherent about the technology of Linux that makes it less suitable for PDA's.
:-) I'm pretty much BSD-only these days, as I can *do* *what* *I* *want* with the code, without any strings attached.
But PDA's by their nature, are a bit more proprietary, where vendors try hard to differentiate themselves from each other. (Who would stand out in a group of a dozen PDA's that all run RedHat 7.2.)
Any successful PDA isn't going to be a public domain project, but a business venture. And BSD's licensing makes a more viable foundation than Linux. It breaks my heart, as I have used Linux from the start, but GPL is just too "restrictive in it's forced freedom"
And it still amazes me how people dump on using Linux or BSD on PDA's (why bother). These are *excellent* general purpose operating systems that are far more flexible than Windows CE and PalmOS, and can be made to not use a lot more resources. I think they're a perfect base, even if that's completely hidden. The big trick is to get a proper application suite on top of it, that is workable on a PDA. No standard X apps nor window managers are workable on a PDA. Qt's attempts are better, but still leave a lot to be desired. Once the productivity apps are there, and workable on a handheld form factor, you'll see FreeBSD/Linux PDA's take off...
-me
Recipe for Dave's Killer Discs:
With common household ingredients!
- Take one cup flour
- Add two eggs
- Mix in 1/2 tsp of baking soda; be careful with this stuff, it can fizz pretty bad if you get it wet!
- Mix in one cup of milk; careful not to spill this, or get it in your eyes. If you do, immediately flush with water.
- Place content in 6" circular patterns over heated metal grill at 450 degrees; no more or no less, or you could ignite it! Leave until golden brown.
- Cover with carmelized sugar (heat sugar in frying pan at 450 degrees for ten minutes until liquid brown)
- These discs are now ready for deployment. Fling them at your enemy at will. They should succumb immediately (or at least get somewhat sticky).
Please post this to as many sites as you can, in case this site gets shut down for posting this!
Fight the power!
You have to consider who will be doing the installs. Would the average person in the average MIS department, sooner spend the time and effort getting a Beowulf cluster working properly, or instead recommend to his boss that there's a more "effective" solutions (where he or she just point-and-click's together a bunch of Mac's).
Yes, it'd be most costly up front, and less effective in the long run, but anyone who doesn't go above and beyond (which is an awful lot of people), will pick the way which is more visibly easier on them.
-me
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but Promise has become more and more Linux-unfriendly lately.
There's different minor revisions of the 100Tx2 controllers; you can only tell by looking at the chip on board, I think only the last digit is different. I could not get the latest ones working with Linux at all. I ended up buying these boards under the Maxtor brand name (same units, but slightly older), which had the older chip set.
On the latest boards, it seems Promise appears to have intentionally made certain registers read only, thwarting open source driver development.
With that kind of behaviour, I'm staying away from Promise controllers, period. (I also had a hard time with their Raid5 controllers.)
Back when they were Linux-friendly, their ATA100tx2 cards were nice. But with the latest incompatible chipsets and no help from the company, forget it.
I also had some frustration with Adaptec's 2400 controller. It is *still* only supported by Adaptec under RedHat 7.0. And it has no audible alarm for drive failure, most annoying. Finally, under FreeBSD 4.3, it's performance was abysmal; there was definitely something wrong with the I2O driver working with this card. (I haven't tried 4.4 yet.)
For now, I'm just sticking with motherboard IDE controllers; far more tried and true.
-me
I'm generally more trusting of corporations than a lot of folks that hang out here. But in the case of banning cell phone usage on airplanes, I can't help but believe the interest is at least partly related forcing people to use the horribly expensive SkyTel system on board, instead of their relatively cheap cell phone time.
:-)
I can just see them pulling the same thing with fuel cells. Under the guise of "safety," they'll make more bucks by banning fuel cell refilling, forcing you to plug into their special outlets (or use their special "safe" fuel cell fuel) for a fee. Watch for it
(I just wish the airlines would focus upon making money through transportation, and making that a pleasurable experience so do more of it, rather than gouging us every step of the way on extras. Heck, you have our money for the ticket, make us happy with a few cheap extras, and we'll be back for another ticket.)
-me
So it only applies to depositions? Does this mean we won't get to see Bill being interviewed on tape? That was one of the most entertaining parts of the trail to date!
:-).
This talks about some of the funny parts (arguing over the definition of "define"
Other things he couldn't define were "we", and "compete." What a hoot. Another great quote: "I have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'ask'." It really smacked of a guy who had some professional coaching on how to dodge questions, but executed it very inelegantly.
If not showing this type of questioning publicly is indeed what the court order means, I'm not surprised Microsoft fought hard for it. Bill just looked as dishonest and sneaky as many people think that he is.
-me
I don't know how you're getting to Alaska, or where you're staying when you're there, but I'm guessing $3/day is paltry as compared to other expenses.
(Unless you're driving from Whitehorse and staying in a tent, that is...)
Seriously, though, $3 as a starting point isn't too bad, and it will only drop. Don't forget that those $300 batteries you buy for your laptop don't last forever; if you ran them from full charge to empty 100 times, I'm sure they'd have a good portion of their useful life used up. I'm assuming fuel cells will have a far longer duty cycle, as long as more fuel is supplied.
I had a Dell, less than 6 months old, whose two expensive batteries are now useless. Maybe a manufacturing defect, but try convincing Dell of that.
-me
Man, that is so screwed up.
Of all the additional things that educational institutions are dinging students for these days, I think imposing a "technology fee" is disgusting.
Any fees for research should come from government, industry, and other organizations. The students should contribute to technology innvoation through their *work*, their *research*, their projects, and such. Not through a "fee".
I know about inflation, but my University (which I gruaduated from in 10 years ago), is now charging *three* times what I paid for tuition. This is just wrong that higher education is becoming more and more exclusive. Things like this fee are just plain wrong, especially if they're having trouble finding what to do with it.
Instead, they should encourage projects where interested students put their time and effort in, above and beyond, doing technologically interesting projects. People who are interested will do the world. Those who are ridden with apathy, won't be involved, and wont' care. No big loss.
-me
Tools like then internet will always help keep the flow of information going. If genetic researchers start restricting information (for financial reasons, most likely), this is no different from software companies restricting their flow of information (source code). I have no problem with either. People have the freedom using the global communication tool of the internet, to do "alternative" projects that accomplish the same.
(Although I have a bit more of a problem with it in the case of genetic research, which more directly impacts humankind; on the other hand, it impacts mainly the well-developed and financially affluent nations, which can afford to apply genetic results. Third world nations would benefit more from a better supply of penicillin than genetic research; so in the global scheme of things, genetic researchers holding back information doesn't make a big difference to the world. Even if a cure for cancer was found, I would guess that *far* fewer people die from cancer than more basic things, world-wide. Most of the world's population doesn't live long enough to develop cancer, and other more subtle diseases for which genetic research would make a major difference.)
Of course, all of the above is subject to me not being fully informed on the subject, which I'm most certainly not. Regardless it's an interesting discussion.
-me
Something like this could be used to truly improve UI's. By studying key presses (and mouse movements), and seeing the particular things that *slow* people down in their interactions, better UI's could be created.
:-)
Things like the Fitaly keyboard (and an IBM equivalent, and others), were created by using large texts to estimate pen motion and such. Actual user interaction would be even more valuable (although it's hard to say if it'd be much different; certainly some things like cursor motion and other navigation would come out higher in real world analysis, than using text analysis).
The concept of automated collection and analysis of user interaction efficiency is pretty exciting. It really could amount to more than "which keys have you pressed the most." (With me, it'd be backspace
-me
I used DV/X in the olden days. It was most impressive. It really had better multi-tasking that Windows 3.1 of the day. I had great hopes for it, and I think with better positioning, it could have given Windows a run for the money. It was well targeted upon it's first release, and could have made a difference, but they just didn't follow through. And as they languished, it just became less and less relevant. Still a very cool way of turning an old 486 into a X terminal (and client). Would probably be more efficient than (Linux|FreeBSD)+X.
:-), SunRays, most thin Clients, Linux PDA's. I'm sure there's a dozen more (and I'm sure they're all sitting in my basement, colecting dust :-)
There's quite a list of things in my book that really could have "made a difference" in the industry, but just didn't follow through effectively. Microsoft may be slow to respond in a lot of cases, but they *do* respond; other folks take years, or never do anything. For fun, here's my list (off the top of my head): Corel Linux, Corel Office, Star Office, BeOS, QNX (lower the damn license fees, okay?
Here's hoping we'll see more companies whose management can realize when they have a product that can make a difference, and they redirect resources accordingly, rather than thoroughly botching it.
-me
The sad thing is, that with bootable linux CD's, they *could* do just this, just like a console. There's no reason games couldn't be designed with a known, working kernel, bootable on a CD. The main issue I could think of offhand is hardware compatability; a "Linux game box specification" (list of supported graphics cards, sound cards, etc., would address that).
Just a thought...
-me
Recovering the iMac at all is very cool. Every PC and Mac should have some "phone home" program installed; I bet most stolen computers aren't wiped. Anyone buying a Mac/PC on the super-cheap, is unlikely to buy or dig up a copy of the OS to start fresh.
:-)
:-)
:-)
The lack of a prosecution for the theft is disappointing. (As someone who has had their place robbed twice in the past two years, I find the low capture/prosecution rates depressing; it just doesn't seem to be a priority with law enforcement. Sigh. Oh well, if anyone tries to hit me again, they'll be on candid camera
What might also have been cool, would be to use AppleScript to flip on the microphone, record the sound in the room, and send the recordings now and then, when connected. (Or use AppleScript to download a program that does the same; I don't know AppleScript.) That would potentially allow more "evidence" to be collected. If the lady didn't steal it, there's a chance you'd record something that would be useful. (Her thanking her brother-in-law for the Mac, or the like.) Having the Mac copy you on all incoming and outgoing mail may also be useful. (Not sure if the Mac could do it; Outlook almost does this by itself, with all the viruses it accepts
Probably not admissible in court, I guess. Although using a stolen device for surveillance really *should* be a legal means of admissible evidence, in a perfect world
-me
SGI's O2 computers were cool like that. Everything, including power supply, hard drives, etc., popped out in a slidable tray. When you popped 'em all out, it was pretty much an empty shell.
It would definitely be a nice trend.
I also like the early Macs (not sure about the current ones), where you could remove all components with tabs and such, no screwdriver required.
-me
There are some specialized embedded systems around, that use DIMM form factors for the insertable cards.
:-)
See: Jumptec for example.
I always thought that was a cool way of using existing, smaller standard connectors, for better sizes. For most cards (ethernet, vga, etc.), a DIMM form factor is fine, and would give a great mix of tiny size, and the flexibility we all crave
-me
D'oh! One more post from me. That "stripe" of on bits, is actually kind of a "start bit" sequence. The hole image need to be shifted up to the first 1's, in order to line up right. Sorry 'bout that. Modified perl is left as an exercise to the reader :-)
Okay, I guess it's not too bad. Wonder why they used 127 instead of 128. And there is kind of a "stripe" in it, which acts as a hint to line it up (although it's not perfect; is that the "noise" they introduced? Why not just make it noise-resistant, than introduce noise??)
:-)
.= $_; if (length($a) >= 127) { print substr($a),0,127), "\n"; $a = substr($a,127); }' output_stream.txt
Here's an ugly perl command to reformat it (I started doing so in vi, then realized there were 6000 more lines to do
perl -n -e 'chomp; $a
-me
Sheeeesh, why don't they make it more obvious, not something that has to be "cracked"?
:-), and then raster images of what they want to communicate, repeating over and over.
:-)
/. because of that?)
Like a regular sequence of on/off that just can't be missed (your "start bits" that get noticed
"Hey, look at this regular pattern of signal! That's weird. And it's interspersed with these garbage; if we just kind of line it up in rows, look, images!" (Assuming the concept of images means anything to whatever intelligence comes across it
(Of course, I might be way off base, as I didn't read the article. Will I get kicked off
-me
In fact, by looking at the color mismatch between the receptacle/wires and the bulb casing, it looks like they may have used traditional wires/receptacles, and just put in the LED bulbs. If so, I wouldn't bet on great reliability.
Also, I suspect the wife and others would find the traditional LED colours a little "off" from more traditional Christmas colours, but that's just speculation. The green and yellow look pretty pale...
Does anyone know different regarding how they fit in their receptacles???
-me
"what happens when the fee goes up to $199.95/month"? Give me a break. This isn't Microsoft, after all :-)
:-), I'd pay for it, instead of doing it myself.
Seriously, I'd pay $9.95/mo for an eternity, to have access to 100 songs/month. If it were a more exhaustive list of labels and songs (i.e. mostly everything). I think a lot of folks would. $120/year for the convenience of hearing every song every made, any time you want. I think nearly everyone would go for that, and the industry would make far more money off of us consumers. Hopefully, this will be a start of the industry waking up, and we'll reach that goal eventually. In the meantime, I'm setting up my household MP3 server (from ripped CD's I own), with mobile gateways, etc., so I can hear *my* music, anywhere, anytime... If it were a service (and not windows-only
-me