The same fears of robots taking jobs were evoked when industrialization was a new idea - everyone thought that a machine would replace many workers.
Mostly what really happened in the end was made each worker more productive. For mass production, I _can_ run a manual mill but with a CNC mill I can get some things done in a tenth of the time.
The manual mill concept is about 150 years old now, designed by Eli Whitney, which reduced the amount of skill needed in metalworking, and made it easier to mass produce interchangeable parts.
If a robot replaces my job, whatever, I'm not all that enthused with it anyway.
I will say that despite having a CNC mill, I still use a manual controlled mill with surprising regularity.
About half of the list consisted of using B.S. adjectives to describe things they never were meant to describe. In short, it mostly reads like clips from a wine taster's guide.
One of my biggest objections to high-end audiophilia is that the subjects more often than not refuse to try double-blind tests concerning the difference between two products.
They all claim that the difference is so stinking obvious, but if that were so, then they shouldn't be afraid to prove it. Pshych experiments show that even changing the color of a product's box changes people's perception of performance, so I want factors like that removed through a proper double blind test.
How all this connects to an AAC test, I don't know, but I hope that was properly administered as well.
I don't know the details of the process, but maybe they could have stalled it by refusing the subpoenas and refusing to say what was wrong with the filing.
Also, what happened with the Verizon appeal? Is it still on its upward march or pretty much deadended?
There is only one single point of water and power entry to a house, it is up to the distribution system inside the house to distribute the resource. The outside world doesn't need to know what IP each tap or plug is, that should be an internal matter.
If there is a problem of uneven IP allocation, then fix it. No need to make a technological solution to a political problem.
I agree. For a lot of those devices, I wouldn't want the IP address to be acessable from the outside world anyway.
If I need to remotely access stupid sensors, then I'd rather remotely access a single program on a server at or behind the firewall that handles that sort of thing, and hides the particulars to boot.
I was thinking of doing the same by making a MiniDisc megachanger. Instead, for now, I bought a Sony CD-Audio megachanger and it worked out of the box. I still intend to go back to that idea though.
One thing I wish would be done is better control of the Sony CD changer. There are S-link projects out there but all use the parallel port, and IMO, that's too hacktastic, I'd want to continue or build a serial port S-link controller. There is some _very_ slick control software that can even ID all the discs and tracks in the changer, and you select a track on a computer and the changer will play your music. Most people would do MP3 instead, but man-machine and electrical-mechanical interfacing is cool.
Unfortunately, there aren't any Sonys that can burn discs, at least none that I know, and none that I know that can be used as a CD-ROM changer, at least affordably, so this project still has some merit.
yeah, yeah, but most need fans, and unless in 1U format, a little too big IMO. There is also NO software DVD player that can deinterlace video source DVDs unless you call bluring or comb deinterlace methods like InterVideo tries to pretend they are so good at.
Computer software works fine for progressive scan coded DVDs, but the Bravo D1 and Samsung 931 both have far better deinterlacing algorithms.
In short, if you are watching a TV series or a movie where the DVD wasn't progressive encoded, you are better off with one of these two players.
From what I've seen, the Bravo doesn't implement HDCP on Macrovision signal, or anything for that matter. It technically should though but that break compatibility with a lot of things.
Bet you any money they still won't be able to produce laptop-sized motherboards for sale to the general public
You could, if you wanted a POS Kiwi or something like that. I really doubt you can get too much cheaper. Stuff that goes into a laptop is expensive due to the size difference, mini hard drives, mini optical drives, LiOn batteries, mini power supplies, etc.
When you have lots of space like in the ATX case, it's easy to standardize on pretty much one size, vs. the rediculous number of size form factors for laptops dictated by thickness, weight and display size demands, so laptop designers pretty much have to custom design the board to the case.
I gave up on Gillette about the time they introduced Mach 3. As it was, their twin blade crap clogs quickly anyway and while better than bargain stuff, not nearly enough better.
The accepted societal standard doesn't follow government standard.
Metric is the government standard measuring system, but I heard the populace didn't accept it because they thought that the gas stations were ripping them off!
I really don't know if there is a US language standard for goverment communications, but legalese or ratspeak might be close enough.
Sounds like one of their excuses to not support Apple computers. IIRC, most of their other Palm-based competitors have Mac dock software compatibility.
Interesting. Intel is the same company that put 1MB of L2 onto the PIII CPU that is in the Centrino chipset so that they'd get acceptable performance at a low clock.
I wonder if this is another one of Intel's strategies to separate Xscale from their x86 line as much as possible - they just might not want anyone using an Xscale in a high performance task when a Centrino would do the job twice as poorly (for the task). Centrino is nice, but not something you want to build a palm device around.
This is pretty much the reason why I haven't contributed to open source in the last five years. I'd much rather get paid selling units of the software itself than give it a way in hopes that someone will fund some little add-on.
Is altruism better in the long run? Probably yes, but frankly, I'm not going to give my efforts away for free to help the rest of the world as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the world may not have any problems taking my gift and trampling me with it.
Mind you, from a Slashdot geek perspective, the goggles are a cool idea, but I don't feel envious of the people who are going to have to use these things on an assembly line.
Geeks can "ooh" and "ahh" from a distance as they can't afford this sort of thing and their jobs, if they have one, wouldn't benefit from their use, I mean, a french fry machine doesn't need it.
I bought a used 500MHz Xeon workstation for $200, with 256k RAM, Firewire, USB, SuperIO, actual PCI slots, even three ISA slots for my legacy tasks, etc, in a better looking, albiet much larger, package, and the performance likekly easily nukes XBox. No reason to futz with mods and other crap.
But XBox isn't a quality DVD player either. But then, there aren't any really good DVD player programs as they only read the DVD's progressive flags, they just weave or bob. Weave often gives you combing, and bob simply blurs the image on a bad flag or a video sourced image.
For $200 one can get a real DVD player that reads 3:2 pull-down cadence and fixes it in real time. Or for $80 you can get a real interlaced DVD player that can at least read problem discs better and have better MPEG decoding.
I did build an HTPC too. There are a lot of good looking computer cases, some are even indistinguishable from standard consumer A/V hardware. Sure, they cost more, but it's well worth it. Besides, I don't like the XBox appearance, but the same goes for most consoles, except maybe the upcomming "PSX".
I'm not familiar with what batteries it uses, but aren't there similar batteries that could be bought? I think Digikey sticks a boggling array of batteries, there has to be one that's close enough.
The market for these things isn't big enough to justify a new custom proprietary battery type, is it?
Someone else mentioned that the original book only needed one format to last 900 years.
Computer technology is simply not designed to stand the test of time. Heck, most digital media and digital file formats that is only ten years old end up being useless. Progress is nice, but this is a critical shortfall in the system when older technology and older formats are completely deprecated with zero chance of backward compatibility.
With DVD, it might be able to hold out longer as the DVD consortium was smart enough to keep the disc size of CD, so at least theres a potential twenty years of backward compatibility built-in right there, but that might not be enough if manufacturers drop CD compatibility in favor future revisions rather than adding on.
In short, publish the dang thing on acid free paper too. We'll see if the digital or printed copies lost longer. Unless something changes, I bet the paper will last longer.
My understanding is that the Windows systems are now only for non-critical systems. At least on other ships they maintained a Windows network and a completely separate network using non-x86 systems for critical ship systems.
I didn't know there were problems with the older CVNs already, but I did hear from a Navy guy that the Enterprise has some radiological "hot spots".
A president's library is often constructed before they die. The Clinton Library is apparently already under construction:
http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.com/
But I agree, most things shouldn't be named in memory of still-living people. I wonder how many open names major dead politicians or servicemen left with a name equal in prominence to the best carrier in a fleet.
Thanks to you and the others for pointing out difficulties in dealing internationally.
Just because the web is international doesn't mean that a business should somehow be required to deal with people from every country. People that think technology erases borders should be in for a surprise when they find out the real world doesn't work 1% as quickly as they would like. Some times interstate business can be problematic when you get hit with fraud, now try reporting fraud in the old Eastern bloc or most of the SE Asian countries.
Also, I hate dealing with customs forms as it is. Usually it's not a problem but then suddenly we were required to register with the Customs' AES office to file some SEC form on one $700 civilian shipment to go to United Arab Emirates. The ironic thing is that if what I was selling was for military use, I wouldn't have needed to file any forms.
There is also no address resolution checking system to verify the credit card billing address.
Slashdot Mirror
The same fears of robots taking jobs were evoked when industrialization was a new idea - everyone thought that a machine would replace many workers.
Mostly what really happened in the end was made each worker more productive. For mass production, I _can_ run a manual mill but with a CNC mill I can get some things done in a tenth of the time.
The manual mill concept is about 150 years old now, designed by Eli Whitney, which reduced the amount of skill needed in metalworking, and made it easier to mass produce interchangeable parts.
If a robot replaces my job, whatever, I'm not all that enthused with it anyway.
I will say that despite having a CNC mill, I still use a manual controlled mill with surprising regularity.
Some of it sounds valid.
About half of the list consisted of using B.S. adjectives to describe things they never were meant to describe. In short, it mostly reads like clips from a wine taster's guide.
One of my biggest objections to high-end audiophilia is that the subjects more often than not refuse to try double-blind tests concerning the difference between two products.
They all claim that the difference is so stinking obvious, but if that were so, then they shouldn't be afraid to prove it. Pshych experiments show that even changing the color of a product's box changes people's perception of performance, so I want factors like that removed through a proper double blind test.
How all this connects to an AAC test, I don't know, but I hope that was properly administered as well.
I don't know the details of the process, but maybe they could have stalled it by refusing the subpoenas and refusing to say what was wrong with the filing.
Also, what happened with the Verizon appeal? Is it still on its upward march or pretty much deadended?
I don't think those analogies apply.
There is only one single point of water and power entry to a house, it is up to the distribution system inside the house to distribute the resource. The outside world doesn't need to know what IP each tap or plug is, that should be an internal matter.
If there is a problem of uneven IP allocation, then fix it. No need to make a technological solution to a political problem.
I just wait until all the features I want are part of the basic package, and not buy any extras, ever.
Of course, sometimes having them as extras are better as you wouldn't be paying for features or services you won't use.
I agree. For a lot of those devices, I wouldn't want the IP address to be acessable from the outside world anyway.
If I need to remotely access stupid sensors, then I'd rather remotely access a single program on a server at or behind the firewall that handles that sort of thing, and hides the particulars to boot.
I was thinking of doing the same by making a MiniDisc megachanger. Instead, for now, I bought a Sony CD-Audio megachanger and it worked out of the box. I still intend to go back to that idea though.
One thing I wish would be done is better control of the Sony CD changer. There are S-link projects out there but all use the parallel port, and IMO, that's too hacktastic, I'd want to continue or build a serial port S-link controller. There is some _very_ slick control software that can even ID all the discs and tracks in the changer, and you select a track on a computer and the changer will play your music. Most people would do MP3 instead, but man-machine and electrical-mechanical interfacing is cool.
Unfortunately, there aren't any Sonys that can burn discs, at least none that I know, and none that I know that can be used as a CD-ROM changer, at least affordably, so this project still has some merit.
yeah, yeah, but most need fans, and unless in 1U format, a little too big IMO. There is also NO software DVD player that can deinterlace video source DVDs unless you call bluring or comb deinterlace methods like InterVideo tries to pretend they are so good at.
Computer software works fine for progressive scan coded DVDs, but the Bravo D1 and Samsung 931 both have far better deinterlacing algorithms.
In short, if you are watching a TV series or a movie where the DVD wasn't progressive encoded, you are better off with one of these two players.
There was a nice looking color laser for ~$600-$700 at Sam's Club. I know it had parallel and Ethernet, I am reasonably sure it had USB too.
If you do a lot of printing, I'm sure the extra cost is well worth it.
From what I've seen, the Bravo doesn't implement HDCP on Macrovision signal, or anything for that matter. It technically should though but that break compatibility with a lot of things.
Bet you any money they still won't be able to produce laptop-sized motherboards for sale to the general public
You could, if you wanted a POS Kiwi or something like that. I really doubt you can get too much cheaper. Stuff that goes into a laptop is expensive due to the size difference, mini hard drives, mini optical drives, LiOn batteries, mini power supplies, etc.
When you have lots of space like in the ATX case, it's easy to standardize on pretty much one size, vs. the rediculous number of size form factors for laptops dictated by thickness, weight and display size demands, so laptop designers pretty much have to custom design the board to the case.
I gave up on Gillette about the time they introduced Mach 3. As it was, their twin blade crap clogs quickly anyway and while better than bargain stuff, not nearly enough better.
The accepted societal standard doesn't follow government standard.
Metric is the government standard measuring system, but I heard the populace didn't accept it because they thought that the gas stations were ripping them off!
I really don't know if there is a US language standard for goverment communications, but legalese or ratspeak might be close enough.
Sounds like one of their excuses to not support Apple computers. IIRC, most of their other Palm-based competitors have Mac dock software compatibility.
Interesting. Intel is the same company that put 1MB of L2 onto the PIII CPU that is in the Centrino chipset so that they'd get acceptable performance at a low clock.
I wonder if this is another one of Intel's strategies to separate Xscale from their x86 line as much as possible - they just might not want anyone using an Xscale in a high performance task when a Centrino would do the job twice as poorly (for the task). Centrino is nice, but not something you want to build a palm device around.
This is pretty much the reason why I haven't contributed to open source in the last five years. I'd much rather get paid selling units of the software itself than give it a way in hopes that someone will fund some little add-on.
Is altruism better in the long run? Probably yes, but frankly, I'm not going to give my efforts away for free to help the rest of the world as far as I'm concerned, the rest of the world may not have any problems taking my gift and trampling me with it.
Can one "stack" the phone module and the GPS module in the Handspring units, or must one be removed to use the other?
Mind you, from a Slashdot geek perspective, the goggles are a cool idea, but I don't feel envious of the people who are going to have to use these things on an assembly line.
Geeks can "ooh" and "ahh" from a distance as they can't afford this sort of thing and their jobs, if they have one, wouldn't benefit from their use, I mean, a french fry machine doesn't need it.
I bought a used 500MHz Xeon workstation for $200, with 256k RAM, Firewire, USB, SuperIO, actual PCI slots, even three ISA slots for my legacy tasks, etc, in a better looking, albiet much larger, package, and the performance likekly easily nukes XBox. No reason to futz with mods and other crap.
But XBox isn't a quality DVD player either. But then, there aren't any really good DVD player programs as they only read the DVD's progressive flags, they just weave or bob. Weave often gives you combing, and bob simply blurs the image on a bad flag or a video sourced image.
For $200 one can get a real DVD player that reads 3:2 pull-down cadence and fixes it in real time. Or for $80 you can get a real interlaced DVD player that can at least read problem discs better and have better MPEG decoding.
I did build an HTPC too. There are a lot of good looking computer cases, some are even indistinguishable from standard consumer A/V hardware. Sure, they cost more, but it's well worth it. Besides, I don't like the XBox appearance, but the same goes for most consoles, except maybe the upcomming "PSX".
I'm not familiar with what batteries it uses, but aren't there similar batteries that could be bought? I think Digikey sticks a boggling array of batteries, there has to be one that's close enough.
The market for these things isn't big enough to justify a new custom proprietary battery type, is it?
Someone else mentioned that the original book only needed one format to last 900 years.
Computer technology is simply not designed to stand the test of time. Heck, most digital media and digital file formats that is only ten years old end up being useless. Progress is nice, but this is a critical shortfall in the system when older technology and older formats are completely deprecated with zero chance of backward compatibility.
With DVD, it might be able to hold out longer as the DVD consortium was smart enough to keep the disc size of CD, so at least theres a potential twenty years of backward compatibility built-in right there, but that might not be enough if manufacturers drop CD compatibility in favor future revisions rather than adding on.
In short, publish the dang thing on acid free paper too. We'll see if the digital or printed copies lost longer. Unless something changes, I bet the paper will last longer.
My understanding is that the Windows systems are now only for non-critical systems. At least on other ships they maintained a Windows network and a completely separate network using non-x86 systems for critical ship systems.
I didn't know there were problems with the older CVNs already, but I did hear from a Navy guy that the Enterprise has some radiological "hot spots".
A president's library is often constructed before they die. The Clinton Library is apparently already under construction:
http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.com/
But I agree, most things shouldn't be named in memory of still-living people. I wonder how many open names major dead politicians or servicemen left with a name equal in prominence to the best carrier in a fleet.
Thanks to you and the others for pointing out difficulties in dealing internationally.
Just because the web is international doesn't mean that a business should somehow be required to deal with people from every country. People that think technology erases borders should be in for a surprise when they find out the real world doesn't work 1% as quickly as they would like. Some times interstate business can be problematic when you get hit with fraud, now try reporting fraud in the old Eastern bloc or most of the SE Asian countries.
Also, I hate dealing with customs forms as it is. Usually it's not a problem but then suddenly we were required to register with the Customs' AES office to file some SEC form on one $700 civilian shipment to go to United Arab Emirates. The ironic thing is that if what I was selling was for military use, I wouldn't have needed to file any forms.
There is also no address resolution checking system to verify the credit card billing address.