Actually, I was using ssh to connect to it; it was just somewhat inconvenient because I couldn't use graphical programs that need text input. Such as, for example, the "Add/Remove Software" thing necessary to install the VNC stuff...
I don't know about your machines, but my machines say extremely little under the control of the BIOS. There's a thing that gives the copyright notice and counts the memory, and then a thing that show the detected hardware, then it passes everything off to LILO, which uses it a little and then goes into Linux, which doesn't use the BIOS at all. Then the messages start appearing.
I'd like to see a BIOS-replacement that actually provided some information and used good resolution (my monitor has the resolution to display everything the BIOS and Linux during startup produce in a readable font, all on the screen at once; but not in text mode) and could use pictures (memory bank 3 is dead-- here's a photo of the motherboard showing which one that is...).
As we speak, I'm running Qtopia on my Zaurus, it's a big pain that it's *not* using X, because if it were, I could trivially have the programs appear on my monitor rather than just on the Zaurus (whose keyboard is inaccessible while it's in the cradle, which is providing network to it).
The scary thing is that that was actually UNIX running one of the weird SGI window managers. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the makers of a movie featuring special effects knew about more IRIX than the geeks in the audience... (what you didn't see was that she navigated through all of that stuff to get to an xterm, and then she typed a command with 6 pipes and more punctuation than letters, but that wasn't on camera)
CDs and such work by having a middle layer with different optical properties depending on the data. For a CD, you press the middle layer with a machine that makes a lot of identical ones cheaply. CD-Rs work by having a middle layer that can be modified by a burner.
The main cost in CD production is setting up the machine to produce a given middle layer; after that, it's cheap to make each CD as long as you keep it the same. In CD-R production, you make tons of identical, blank middle layers; the burnable middle layer is more expensive, and the burner is slower than the CD press.
This means that it's expensive to start a run of CDs but cheap to press each one, and free to start a run of CD-Rs but more expensive to press each one. Therefore, CD-Rs are cheaper when there are few identical products and CDs are cheaper when there are many of the same. The record label in question is selling albums out of a huge catalog, where every customer wants a different album.
They want people to buy XP, probably. It isn't in their interests to give people free tools that let the stuff people already have do more useful things, if they can require people to buy new software to use the free tools.
I think the visual inspiration isn't sufficient to make someone an actor (rather than a voice actor). However, it seems like the actor's contribution to a piece (aside from voice) is in gestures and expressions, which in this case were actually recorded digitally off of the person and used to control the model. With conventional CGI, this sort of information is up to the animator; here the CGI was used to make the model (like makeup), and (presumably) to do the stunts. It therefore falls into the traditional role of an actor: to portray a character by moving in such a way as to let the audience know the character's emotions. In this case, instead of recording the actor with a camera, they've recording the actor with a set of sensors and generated the image of the character with a computer.
All of the parts already existed, according to the article. All they've done is package them in a way pleasing to this target market. You can do all of this without threedegrees, but it's too much of a pain for anybody to actually do so.
As far as study groups, it is great for that, and MIT's had it in place for about a decade (without the file sharing, although it's only recently that people have had files in local storage they might want to share).
The top end is actually above orbit, such that the center of inertia of the entire thing (elevator included) is in orbit (adjusting for the different gravity over the length of the cable, of course). So the real answer is that there is excess upwards force, but the end can't fly off because the cable holds it down. Then the elevator pulls against that force.
Power companies get really unhappy about people running their meters backwards and it's generally against regulations. Power companies are actually generally a bit unhappy if you simply fail to use as much power as expected (since they've built capacity for you, which is a much bigger expense than running the plants when they're working right); a Boston-area power company actually sued MIT when MIT built a cogeneration plant and stopped using the city power so much.
It's easy to get X to remap keys arbitrarily; there's basically a very large set of possible keys, and you can set any actual key on your keyboard to any of them. I haven't seen anything that remaps a key to be a modified key (i.e., ctrl-C) but there's no reason it couldn't be done. On the other hand, programs ought to support keys such as "Undo", and X should really have Cut, Copy, and Paste keys defined.
It's also possible with most window managers to arbitrarily make keys do window manager functions including starting programs (my "pause/break" key starts/pauses/resumes the CD player).
Most people don't really know about this functionality, of course, because there isn't really a good interface to it commonly available.
Of course, if you don't think Windows is "Super", you can replace that with Meta, so long as anything that it going to use the keys agrees (common practice these days seems to be to make the Alt keys be Alt, and Emacs seems content with this). I have left-super set to window list, shift-left-super set to iconify, and the menu key set to give the root menu. This makes it really easy to manage windows with the keyboard.
Of course, at some point they're producing enough energy that you can go off the grid entirely, at which point there's a major incentive to actually do so: you'll avoid outages and pay fewer bills. At that point there's a qualitative difference, which makes the quantitative difference somewhat irrelevant. It's actually possible, although expensive and bulky (for power storage), now. I know a family in New Hampshire who haven't used the grid this winter.
FTP is marginally better supported by interactive text clients, which means that geeks who haven't gotten any new software in the past decade will find it more convenient.
Really, it doesn't make sense to call HTTP wimpy when it's what's used to distribute The linux kernel, perl, glibc, and so forth.
The American Bar Association shouldn't be expected to oppose the right of anyone to sue anyone for anything or nothing. After all, lawyers are always evenly split between being the good guys and being the bad guys and are always against things being simple and people either following the rules or not getting caught.
I certainly hope your computer doesn't break down, because it'll be really hard these days to get a replacement system that can run your software. You might want to look into Linux for that reason: it can emulate DOS (and may be able to run your software natively-- I remember seeing a *nix version of spice), and supports available hardware.
Hopefully, the seasoned old mechanic will be able to use a brand-new titanium wrench if his grandpa's old one finally gets lost. For that matter, switching to a lighter but equally strong material might be a good idea anyway.
The universe doesn't have to collapse in order for there to be multiple Big Bang events. It's possible that there is some substrate outside of the visible universe which is expanding so rapidly that Big Bang-like events occuring in it are dragged away from each other faster than they grow, such that having each visible universe expand forever will not lead to them colliding. So even if there is never another Big Bang where we are, such events could be common over an area we can't sense.
The Big Bang in this case is just the beginning of locally-visible information, which is the beginning of time for us, but not for the energy of which we are formed.
But the really interesting fact is that computer programs are in development that can mimic the play of particular chess players, not simply play well (very important for users who don't want to play against a grand master opponent). These programs are not simply evaluating possible moves for whether they would win the game, they are evaluating them in terms of whether the specified human would play them. This means that the computer has to understand the sorts of features that people care about and leads to a much more human-like intelligence than the very mechanical traditional chess AI.
Python is not statically verifiable. This makes it impractical as the single language of any large, complicated project. On the other hand, Python is ideal for prototypes (i.e., coding before design to inform the design, rather than for actual use) and for scripting (getting a set of functions in another language like C to have the overall effect that you want).
In neither case is the resulting code going to need to be reasoned about for correctness, which means that it is not so much as issue that small parts of the code cannot be verified in isolation.
Bandwidth isn't a consumable resource, in general. As long as the company isn't needing to buy more bandwidth to support people's browsing habits or having problems with running out of bandwidth for real work, they don't incur any incremental cost from your browsing.
If you want to think about personal use of company property, just think how much rent the company pays to store your junk while you're not working...
I also recall people posting that they had some success offering to ban all BSA-member software from the workplace in order to be able to prove compliance. Basically, they're just trying to get you to buy more licenses, and if you demonstrate a preference for changing platforms over paying their clients more for the software you're currently using, they're likely to shut up, and likely to offer you better deals anyway. After all, MicroSoft is better off with people running Windows illegally than people not running Windows; people running it illegally might actually pay them something at some point, and it doesn't cost MicroSoft anything for someone to run their software.
Actually, Intel uses the CPU technology they develop to make a CPU that runs cooler. It's called the strongarm; it runs at 200Mhz and is cool enough to keep in your pocket. They've got a faster CPU (the xscale), but it's got some problems in the current revision.
The x86 market is still pushing for speed, but I suspect that the next generation of the cheap PC will run cool instead of being faster.
Re:I'll have to see the bandwidth tests first.
on
A Sound Server For X
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· Score: 1
The X protocol gets slow for some applications because the applications are generating too many requests, because they're doing the rendering essentially on the client side and sending it in little updates across the network to the server. That's why MAS "processes graphic information locally (i.e., on the X server)", so that you send the compressed synchronized sound and video to the server, which then puts it on the screen without sending it uncompressed over the network, like xmms is doing with its UI.
Personally, I generally don't use icons; instead, I have the titles with no icon. It's just as easy to click and generally easier to identify.
But the real news is that there's now a SVG rendering library that's sufficiently compact and fast to use for rendering icons, which means that it's sufficiently mature and general to add to web browsers, which means that it's likely to become useable on the web. And the web does really need a graphics format which is resolution-independant, so that designers can let the graphics fit the text and window, rather than making the text and window fit the graphics.
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Actually, I was using ssh to connect to it; it was just somewhat inconvenient because I couldn't use graphical programs that need text input. Such as, for example, the "Add/Remove Software" thing necessary to install the VNC stuff...
I don't know about your machines, but my machines say extremely little under the control of the BIOS. There's a thing that gives the copyright notice and counts the memory, and then a thing that show the detected hardware, then it passes everything off to LILO, which uses it a little and then goes into Linux, which doesn't use the BIOS at all. Then the messages start appearing.
I'd like to see a BIOS-replacement that actually provided some information and used good resolution (my monitor has the resolution to display everything the BIOS and Linux during startup produce in a readable font, all on the screen at once; but not in text mode) and could use pictures (memory bank 3 is dead-- here's a photo of the motherboard showing which one that is...).
As we speak, I'm running Qtopia on my Zaurus, it's a big pain that it's *not* using X, because if it were, I could trivially have the programs appear on my monitor rather than just on the Zaurus (whose keyboard is inaccessible while it's in the cradle, which is providing network to it).
Povray is the ed of 3D-modeling; vi and emacs both have user interfaces.
The scary thing is that that was actually UNIX running one of the weird SGI window managers. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the makers of a movie featuring special effects knew about more IRIX than the geeks in the audience... (what you didn't see was that she navigated through all of that stuff to get to an xterm, and then she typed a command with 6 pipes and more punctuation than letters, but that wasn't on camera)
CDs and such work by having a middle layer with different optical properties depending on the data. For a CD, you press the middle layer with a machine that makes a lot of identical ones cheaply. CD-Rs work by having a middle layer that can be modified by a burner.
The main cost in CD production is setting up the machine to produce a given middle layer; after that, it's cheap to make each CD as long as you keep it the same. In CD-R production, you make tons of identical, blank middle layers; the burnable middle layer is more expensive, and the burner is slower than the CD press.
This means that it's expensive to start a run of CDs but cheap to press each one, and free to start a run of CD-Rs but more expensive to press each one. Therefore, CD-Rs are cheaper when there are few identical products and CDs are cheaper when there are many of the same. The record label in question is selling albums out of a huge catalog, where every customer wants a different album.
They want people to buy XP, probably. It isn't in their interests to give people free tools that let the stuff people already have do more useful things, if they can require people to buy new software to use the free tools.
I think the visual inspiration isn't sufficient to make someone an actor (rather than a voice actor). However, it seems like the actor's contribution to a piece (aside from voice) is in gestures and expressions, which in this case were actually recorded digitally off of the person and used to control the model. With conventional CGI, this sort of information is up to the animator; here the CGI was used to make the model (like makeup), and (presumably) to do the stunts. It therefore falls into the traditional role of an actor: to portray a character by moving in such a way as to let the audience know the character's emotions. In this case, instead of recording the actor with a camera, they've recording the actor with a set of sensors and generated the image of the character with a computer.
All of the parts already existed, according to the article. All they've done is package them in a way pleasing to this target market. You can do all of this without threedegrees, but it's too much of a pain for anybody to actually do so.
As far as study groups, it is great for that, and MIT's had it in place for about a decade (without the file sharing, although it's only recently that people have had files in local storage they might want to share).
The top end is actually above orbit, such that the center of inertia of the entire thing (elevator included) is in orbit (adjusting for the different gravity over the length of the cable, of course). So the real answer is that there is excess upwards force, but the end can't fly off because the cable holds it down. Then the elevator pulls against that force.
Power companies get really unhappy about people running their meters backwards and it's generally against regulations. Power companies are actually generally a bit unhappy if you simply fail to use as much power as expected (since they've built capacity for you, which is a much bigger expense than running the plants when they're working right); a Boston-area power company actually sued MIT when MIT built a cogeneration plant and stopped using the city power so much.
It's easy to get X to remap keys arbitrarily; there's basically a very large set of possible keys, and you can set any actual key on your keyboard to any of them. I haven't seen anything that remaps a key to be a modified key (i.e., ctrl-C) but there's no reason it couldn't be done. On the other hand, programs ought to support keys such as "Undo", and X should really have Cut, Copy, and Paste keys defined.
It's also possible with most window managers to arbitrarily make keys do window manager functions including starting programs (my "pause/break" key starts/pauses/resumes the CD player).
Most people don't really know about this functionality, of course, because there isn't really a good interface to it commonly available.
Give this to xmodmap in your xinitrc:
keycode 115 = Super_L
keycode 116 = Super_R
keycode 117 = Menu
add mod3 = Super_L Super_R
Of course, if you don't think Windows is "Super", you can replace that with Meta, so long as anything that it going to use the keys agrees (common practice these days seems to be to make the Alt keys be Alt, and Emacs seems content with this). I have left-super set to window list, shift-left-super set to iconify, and the menu key set to give the root menu. This makes it really easy to manage windows with the keyboard.
Of course, at some point they're producing enough energy that you can go off the grid entirely, at which point there's a major incentive to actually do so: you'll avoid outages and pay fewer bills. At that point there's a qualitative difference, which makes the quantitative difference somewhat irrelevant. It's actually possible, although expensive and bulky (for power storage), now. I know a family in New Hampshire who haven't used the grid this winter.
FTP is marginally better supported by interactive text clients, which means that geeks who haven't gotten any new software in the past decade will find it more convenient.
Really, it doesn't make sense to call HTTP wimpy when it's what's used to distribute The linux kernel, perl,
glibc, and so forth.
The American Bar Association shouldn't be expected to oppose the right of anyone to sue anyone for anything or nothing. After all, lawyers are always evenly split between being the good guys and being the bad guys and are always against things being simple and people either following the rules or not getting caught.
I certainly hope your computer doesn't break down, because it'll be really hard these days to get a replacement system that can run your software. You might want to look into Linux for that reason: it can emulate DOS (and may be able to run your software natively-- I remember seeing a *nix version of spice), and supports available hardware.
Hopefully, the seasoned old mechanic will be able to use a brand-new titanium wrench if his grandpa's old one finally gets lost. For that matter, switching to a lighter but equally strong material might be a good idea anyway.
The universe doesn't have to collapse in order for there to be multiple Big Bang events. It's possible that there is some substrate outside of the visible universe which is expanding so rapidly that Big Bang-like events occuring in it are dragged away from each other faster than they grow, such that having each visible universe expand forever will not lead to them colliding. So even if there is never another Big Bang where we are, such events could be common over an area we can't sense.
The Big Bang in this case is just the beginning of locally-visible information, which is the beginning of time for us, but not for the energy of which we are formed.
But the really interesting fact is that computer programs are in development that can mimic the play of particular chess players, not simply play well (very important for users who don't want to play against a grand master opponent). These programs are not simply evaluating possible moves for whether they would win the game, they are evaluating them in terms of whether the specified human would play them. This means that the computer has to understand the sorts of features that people care about and leads to a much more human-like intelligence than the very mechanical traditional chess AI.
Python is not statically verifiable. This makes it impractical as the single language of any large, complicated project. On the other hand, Python is ideal for prototypes (i.e., coding before design to inform the design, rather than for actual use) and for scripting (getting a set of functions in another language like C to have the overall effect that you want).
In neither case is the resulting code going to need to be reasoned about for correctness, which means that it is not so much as issue that small parts of the code cannot be verified in isolation.
Bandwidth isn't a consumable resource, in general. As long as the company isn't needing to buy more bandwidth to support people's browsing habits or having problems with running out of bandwidth for real work, they don't incur any incremental cost from your browsing.
If you want to think about personal use of company property, just think how much rent the company pays to store your junk while you're not working...
I also recall people posting that they had some success offering to ban all BSA-member software from the workplace in order to be able to prove compliance. Basically, they're just trying to get you to buy more licenses, and if you demonstrate a preference for changing platforms over paying their clients more for the software you're currently using, they're likely to shut up, and likely to offer you better deals anyway. After all, MicroSoft is better off with people running Windows illegally than people not running Windows; people running it illegally might actually pay them something at some point, and it doesn't cost MicroSoft anything for someone to run their software.
Actually, Intel uses the CPU technology they develop to make a CPU that runs cooler. It's called the strongarm; it runs at 200Mhz and is cool enough to keep in your pocket. They've got a faster CPU (the xscale), but it's got some problems in the current revision.
The x86 market is still pushing for speed, but I suspect that the next generation of the cheap PC will run cool instead of being faster.
The X protocol gets slow for some applications because the applications are generating too many requests, because they're doing the rendering essentially on the client side and sending it in little updates across the network to the server. That's why MAS "processes graphic information locally (i.e., on the X server)", so that you send the compressed synchronized sound and video to the server, which then puts it on the screen without sending it uncompressed over the network, like xmms is doing with its UI.
Personally, I generally don't use icons; instead, I have the titles with no icon. It's just as easy to click and generally easier to identify.
But the real news is that there's now a SVG rendering library that's sufficiently compact and fast to use for rendering icons, which means that it's sufficiently mature and general to add to web browsers, which means that it's likely to become useable on the web. And the web does really need a graphics format which is resolution-independant, so that designers can let the graphics fit the text and window, rather than making the text and window fit the graphics.