It would be trivial to put the Jargon file on a Palm.
I have the entire New International Version Bible on my Handspring, and it takes less than half the memory. That's using a custom reader program which is doing compression/decompression on the fly.
If the Jargon file is available, I would like to get it. I have one of the older printed versions - published as The Hacker's Dictionary - and it's one of my favorite computer books.
Making a catalog of my ~two hundred CD's and ~five hundred books. They all have UPC codes on the back and hopefully there's an internet-accessible free database that could be used to return data from the UPC. This could let me quickly build my own little "card catalog", accessible through my own website, and also loaded onto my Handspring. This would help me avoid buying books I already own, and when some book comes up in conversation and I can't remember the exact title, or author, I would be able to find it.
But there's no way I'm going to type in all that stuff by hand. Running the barcode reader over each book would only take a couple of hours though, certainly worth doing.
The only way to filter it then would be to filter all encrypted content, or, to filter all transfers that are not either to or from an "official" web site - i.e. a big, money-making web site.
In other words, rip the heart out of the internet and turn it into TV.
I don't think it will happen. Napster might get shut down. So Gnutella will be there. If people start filtering Gnutella, they will add encryption. If Guvmint, Inc. starts filtering all peer to peer communications they can't read, well, it will be time for the next American Revolution.
Actually, Slashdot did a story on this way back when MyMP3.com started up, and some people reverse-engineered part of the beam-it process.
Apparently, it was actually quite well designed. The server would request a random assortment of sectors from the CD, and the client had to send them back. This doesn't take long, but if you don't have the CD theres no way to supply the correct information.
So it was actually quite difficult to dupe the server.
On the other hand, it would be pretty easy for you and a friend to swap CD collections one afternoon and each add eachother's CD's.
OK then. Which of the parties do you think I should vote for?
Which one do you think is going to appoint supreme court justices that attempt to stick to a literal reading of the constitution instead of bending it? And support free speech at the expense of corporate control?
I'm so happy that you can tell me, because I'm damned if I can tell from the ads on TV! I honestly don't know!
< rant >
By the way, why do candidates put up signs with just their freakin NAME on them? Am I supposed to vote for them because I like their NAME? Why the h3ll don't they put something like their policies on the stupid signs if they are going to print ten thousand of them and stick them on lawns all over the city?
</rant >
I still think I'm right. Voting just doesn't make much difference.
In my opinion, the biggest problem the US faces is that big companies are far too powerful - both in controlling consumers and influencing government. Both of the big parties will probably support the RIAA, the big movie studios, and other large companies in their ongoing efforts to control consumers, control the internet, control all media, make money off everything that people do, and patent everything in the world.
The Democrats, I think, are only slightly more likely to work on solving this problem.
And as far as other "real world issues" - well, I just don't see much difference between the two big parties.
And sadly, it is unlikely that Nader and the Greens will get enough votes to make much of a difference.
So I don't think that voting this fall will make any significant difference to the future of the United States, (unless the Greens make a really significant showing). Therefore I stand by my statement - donating money to the EFF will make more of a difference than voting.
As far as the math and the books go - I guess the ideal book for me would be something that carefully defined and explained all these terms like Standard Model and Gauge Fields, and then went on to give some overviews of the proofs. I suspect I won't be able to understand all the math in the books you mentioned, but I can certainly read calculus and discrete math equations, so I'll see how far I get...
Thanks again. Posts like yours make Slashdot worth reading.
You are painfully ignorant of the history of Linux and BSD, and are blaming Linus for something that is not his fault.
See A Brief History of FreeBSD for some of the gory details of how FreeBSD got started, out of personal and legal fights over the old 386BSD code in 1993. FreeBSD didn't get fully clear of the legal problems until December 1994.
Meanwhile, Linus started writing Linux in 1991, and he did so because there was no freely available Unix-like operating system for x86. For heavens sake, Red Hat had already been founded by the time FreeBSD had a clear legal status!
So don't blame Linus for not working on BSD. He did NOT fail us miserably. (By the way, I have nothing against BSD - I use FreeBSD at work, and have an OpenBSD machine at home.)
And what's with your attitude that people should do what's best for the community? What community? Who decides what's best for the community? You? A system like that really would deserve the label "communism" that Free Software has been unjustly stuck with.
Free Software has historically been about people writing software that "scratches their own itch". If somebody's itch is to play DOOM on their camera, who the hell gives anyone else the right to say they should be doing something else?
God forbid that we end up with an "Open Source Community" that tells people what to do.
By the way, just so the rest of you don't slashdot the RISKS submission queue, I should mention I submitted this story to RISKS yesterday when I saw it mentioned on "The Register".
I don't understand. If the current owners can easily absorb the $119 million current debt, why don't they just plunk down another $200 million and keep all the profits for themselves?
After all, the people running up the value of the stock are doing so with the expectation that Transmeta is going to be making buckets of cash. So why sell any of the company unless you have to?
As you have no doubt realized, when I referred to "epicycles added to epicycles" I was repeating what I had heard elsewhere (probably in elementary school) and accepted as fact.
It may be too late posting to this thread to get a reply, but oh well...
You say the current model of particle physics is the simplest model that is possible, and it's difficult to explain why.
That sounds a little like what we call a "hardness" proof in computer science.
I have a very good theoretical computer science background. Sometimes in computer science we can prove what we call "hardness" of a problem. That is, for some problem like multiplying two n-bit numbers, there is no algorithm that can do it in less than f(n) steps on some rigorously defined hardware (probably a virtual machine). These results are very difficult to obtain in general, and a lot the ones we do know aren't very good. For instance, it is easy to show that there is no way to sort n items in less than n steps, regardless of what algorithm you use, because you have to look at each item at least once.
Anyway...
When you say there is "no simpler theory" do you mean that it is possible to rigorously prove that? For instance, can you prove that any theory of particle physics that matches experimental results must be supersymmetric, or must have at least 11 spatial dimensions, or whatever?
If it's really too hard to explain in a Slashdot post, can you recommend a good book? I can handle the math - layperson stuff like "Shrodinger's kittens and the search for reality" is easy reading for me.
And what would you suggest happen? Make something up? Perhaps you know the answers?.... Perhaps the scientists should stop doing physics and wait till a simpler explanation drops into their lap?
I totally agree that it's hard to come up with other answers. Of course I don't think that scientists should stop doing physics.
The problem is, (and I should have made it clearer in my earlier post) I really get the impression that most physicists today are just trying to "patch up" these theories. And there are so many holes that there is lots to do, so they all keep pretty busy.
Is anyone (other than crackpots) even trying to come up with an alternative explanation? Or is it true, as another response to my post said, that "string theory IS the simpler theory.". If so, why are there so many different string theories, and what's with the M-theory "unifying" them but "adding complications"?
Are there physicists out there writing journal articles that say:
"Let's assume that all this string theory stuff is just wrong. Instead of patching holes in it (adding epicycles!) here's an alternative explanation..."
I have only a laypersons understanding of quantum physics, so feel free to ignore me.
Whenever I read about these incredibly complex theories, like 11 dimensional superstrings, the M-theory, "sparticles", and what have you, it just reminds me of the "theories of planetary motion" that people used to come up with before they realized the earth goes around the sun.
To explain the observed motion of the planets in a way consistent with the sun going around the earth, they invented "epicycles", which were essentially loops within loops on the hypothical orbits. This went on for years, with the epicycles getting more and more complicated. They built amazing geared machines to simulate the motion of the planets. Now we look back at them and shake our heads, thinking "Why didn't they look for the simpler explanation? Why did it take so long for a Copernicus to come along?"
I don't mean to dis modern physics... but I can't help thinking that in 100 years, people will look back on M-theory and sparticles and laugh, saying "Why didn't those people realize how ridiculous those theories are? Why didn't they try harder to find a simpler explanation?"
Maybe the real world really is that complicated. But history would indicate otherwise.
I have a Pentium 120 running OpenBSD 2.6 for my firewall, and even when my other four computers are generating loads of traffic and completely filling my DSL it doesn't even slow down.
I used OpenBSD for the firewall because I'm not an expert on security and wanted to be less likely to screw it up. The OpenBSD FAQ had a pretty good section on how to set up the IP Masquerading and IP Firewalling, including opening a few ports up to connect to the Linux HTTP / Web server behind it.
It's not as easy to install as Mandrake, but it was fun. I like a little variety.
Hmmm. I overreacted in my previous post where I said I would demand they give my thesis away for free.
I have a better idea now. On the details page where they list the options for purchasing from them ($30 for PDF, up to $66 for bound copy) I want them to put a link that says something like:
"The author of this thesis has made it available for free download from (my site)".
I think that is the best solution, and true to the spirit of the scientific method and the GPL.
If so, why are they charging people 30 bucks to download MY thesis as a PDF?
I would be happy to send it to anyone who wants it, for free.
This isn't like Red Hat making money selling Linux. Red Hat has free downloads, and puts some really significant work into the distribution they produce.
But Contentville is basically just a photocopying company. They are obviously attempting to profit from my work, and the work of thousands of others who intended their research to be freely available.
It's nice in some ways - I can easily link to it from an on-line resume, for example, and it might help some researcher find my work.
But overall, I don't approve of Contentville's use of my copyrighted material: in particular, selling it for a profit.
It's not that I don't want people reading it. After all, I wrote it with the expectation that other researchers would use it and hopefully benefit from it. That's the whole point of the scientific method.
My thesis is copyright by me. I have allowed the University of Victoria library unlimited rights to make FREE copies of it for the purposes of interlibrary loans and whatnot - that's part of the deal with publishing it at UVic. But I'm sure that no-one is supposed to profit from copying it except (optionally) me.
I'm going to check the details of the copyright on my thesis tonight. Then I'll be writing a letter to Contentville demanding that they give my thesis away for free (or at most the cost of copying and postage).
I also agree that we shouldn't make it too easy to vote. Politicians pandering to the uninformed herd is what has got this country into the hole it is today.
I don't know about finding the roots of a quadratic though. I agree that it's not a good question. I think a better thing would be a basic test on relevant political issues, and some general knowlege questions. It's a little tricky to come up with a list off the top of my head, but topics like: basic economics (how to balance a checkbook), basics of taxation (i.e. state vs federal), some knowlege of the national debt, and some really basic recent political history.
The problem is, it will never happen. The big political parties LIKE having stupid voters. It's a lot easier to influence them through TV commercials. If people actually understood the important issues (including the ones the ma$$ media ignores), lots of things would change. That would be bad for the politicians and their big money, big union, and big company buddies.
I don't think Heinlein is a "nitpicky educational elitist". That list of basic human skills you quoted indicates that the things he thought were important could mostly be learned outside of a classroom. (changing diapers, butchering, cooperating, acting alone, taking orders, giving orders, etc.) None of those are educational elitism. I've always liked that list, and hope to master the whole thing before I'm 40 years old.
Finally, I don't know who to vote for. I like Republican policies a little better, except for the environmental issues. And that's a big deal, so I'm undecided. I think both parties basically suck.
Well, I've had a look at the presentation and it's pretty slick. It's the only handheld I've seen so far that makes me look at my HandSpring and go "hmmmm....". The big drawback is still the battery life - one day. Ouch. My Handspring goes for at least three weeks. But I'm impressed by the screen, and the ability to hook up both PC cards and CompactFlash. Sound is nice too.
And actually, the software on it (Windows CE) looks pretty good. They seem to have taken all the good stuff that Palm and Handspring did, and improved on it in many subtle and not-so subtle ways. The contact book, day planner, etc. all look nice.
As usual for Microsoft, by the third time around they often produce something usable. Of course this assumes that the software is actually stable... another thing about the Handspring is I've only gotten it to crash once, and that was while using HackMaster to rotate the screen with custom fonts in some third-party application...
So I have to ask? If the Windows software is stable, would putting Linux on this device improve it's usability, or is it just a neat hack to prove it could be done? I mean, yeah, it would be cool to have the command line and secure shell... but wouldn't you be better off with a good SSH-supporting terminal program just running under Windows?
I kind of think it's just one of those things that people do to show how l33t they are. And that's ok. If I had one, I might try Linux on it just for the boasting rights but after a few days I bet I would want the original software back.
X Windows and Unix were never really designed for handheld computers. (Yeah, windows wasn't either, but Windows CE is only a little like regular Windows.)
Disk speed is a problem for a lot of average apps, but there are solutions:
New motherboards from ABit (and probably other companies) have built in RAID 0/1 for ATA100. If you put two nice fast 7200 RPM ATA100 drives on those, you get a major boost in hard drive performance for very little extra cost. Better than SCSI for many applications (but not servers).
And with RAM so cheap, you can always just add another 128 MB DIMM and get extra caching. Just about every operating system, even Microsoft's, does a pretty good job of using extra memory to speed up disk access these days.
< daydream >
My next machine will be the dual theme:
dual Athelons, (when the motherboards come out), dual video cards (one wicked-fast AGP 3d, one cheaper PCI), dual monitors, dual ATA100 hard drives in a striped RAID config, and dual data rate SDRAM -- dual 256 MB DIMMs = 512MB, hopefully interleaved.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be trivial to put the Jargon file on a Palm.
I have the entire New International Version Bible on my Handspring, and it takes less than half the memory. That's using a custom reader program which is doing compression/decompression on the fly.
If the Jargon file is available, I would like to get it. I have one of the older printed versions - published as The Hacker's Dictionary - and it's one of my favorite computer books.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I know what I could use it for:
Making a catalog of my ~two hundred CD's and ~five hundred books. They all have UPC codes on the back and hopefully there's an internet-accessible free database that could be used to return data from the UPC. This could let me quickly build my own little "card catalog", accessible through my own website, and also loaded onto my Handspring. This would help me avoid buying books I already own, and when some book comes up in conversation and I can't remember the exact title, or author, I would be able to find it.
But there's no way I'm going to type in all that stuff by hand. Running the barcode reader over each book would only take a couple of hours though, certainly worth doing.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Just a small comment:
It would be trivial to add encryption to Napster.
The only way to filter it then would be to filter all encrypted content, or, to filter all transfers that are not either to or from an "official" web site - i.e. a big, money-making web site.
In other words, rip the heart out of the internet and turn it into TV.
I don't think it will happen. Napster might get shut down. So Gnutella will be there. If people start filtering Gnutella, they will add encryption. If Guvmint, Inc. starts filtering all peer to peer communications they can't read, well, it will be time for the next American Revolution.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Actually, Slashdot did a story on this way back when MyMP3.com started up, and some people reverse-engineered part of the beam-it process.
Apparently, it was actually quite well designed. The server would request a random assortment of sectors from the CD, and the client had to send them back. This doesn't take long, but if you don't have the CD theres no way to supply the correct information.
So it was actually quite difficult to dupe the server.
On the other hand, it would be pretty easy for you and a friend to swap CD collections one afternoon and each add eachother's CD's.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
OK then. Which of the parties do you think I should vote for?
/rant >
Which one do you think is going to appoint supreme court justices that attempt to stick to a literal reading of the constitution instead of bending it? And support free speech at the expense of corporate control?
I'm so happy that you can tell me, because I'm damned if I can tell from the ads on TV! I honestly don't know!
< rant >
By the way, why do candidates put up signs with just their freakin NAME on them? Am I supposed to vote for them because I like their NAME? Why the h3ll don't they put something like their policies on the stupid signs if they are going to print ten thousand of them and stick them on lawns all over the city?
<
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I still think I'm right. Voting just doesn't make much difference.
In my opinion, the biggest problem the US faces is that big companies are far too powerful - both in controlling consumers and influencing government. Both of the big parties will probably support the RIAA, the big movie studios, and other large companies in their ongoing efforts to control consumers, control the internet, control all media, make money off everything that people do, and patent everything in the world.
The Democrats, I think, are only slightly more likely to work on solving this problem.
And as far as other "real world issues" - well, I just don't see much difference between the two big parties.
And sadly, it is unlikely that Nader and the Greens will get enough votes to make much of a difference.
So I don't think that voting this fall will make any significant difference to the future of the United States, (unless the Greens make a really significant showing). Therefore I stand by my statement - donating money to the EFF will make more of a difference than voting.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Everyone who can should go over to the EFF web site and donate some money for the defense.
Become an EFF member while you're at it.
That single act will probably provide more benefit to the future of the United States than voting this fall.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Thanks for an incredibly informative post.
As far as the math and the books go - I guess the ideal book for me would be something that carefully defined and explained all these terms like Standard Model and Gauge Fields, and then went on to give some overviews of the proofs. I suspect I won't be able to understand all the math in the books you mentioned, but I can certainly read calculus and discrete math equations, so I'll see how far I get...
Thanks again. Posts like yours make Slashdot worth reading.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
You are painfully ignorant of the history of Linux and BSD, and are blaming Linus for something that is not his fault.
See A Brief History of FreeBSD for some of the gory details of how FreeBSD got started, out of personal and legal fights over the old 386BSD code in 1993. FreeBSD didn't get fully clear of the legal problems until December 1994.
Meanwhile, Linus started writing Linux in 1991, and he did so because there was no freely available Unix-like operating system for x86. For heavens sake, Red Hat had already been founded by the time FreeBSD had a clear legal status!
So don't blame Linus for not working on BSD. He did NOT fail us miserably. (By the way, I have nothing against BSD - I use FreeBSD at work, and have an OpenBSD machine at home.)
And what's with your attitude that people should do what's best for the community? What community? Who decides what's best for the community? You? A system like that really would deserve the label "communism" that Free Software has been unjustly stuck with.
Free Software has historically been about people writing software that "scratches their own itch". If somebody's itch is to play DOOM on their camera, who the hell gives anyone else the right to say they should be doing something else?
God forbid that we end up with an "Open Source Community" that tells people what to do.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
By the way, just so the rest of you don't slashdot the RISKS submission queue, I should mention I submitted this story to RISKS yesterday when I saw it mentioned on "The Register".
I presume it will be in the next issue.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I don't understand. If the current owners can easily absorb the $119 million current debt, why don't they just plunk down another $200 million and keep all the profits for themselves?
After all, the people running up the value of the stock are doing so with the expectation that Transmeta is going to be making buckets of cash. So why sell any of the company unless you have to?
(confused)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Wow. Thanks for the informative post.
As you have no doubt realized, when I referred to "epicycles added to epicycles" I was repeating what I had heard elsewhere (probably in elementary school) and accepted as fact.
I learn something on slashdot every day!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
It may be too late posting to this thread to get a reply, but oh well...
You say the current model of particle physics is the simplest model that is possible, and it's difficult to explain why.
That sounds a little like what we call a "hardness" proof in computer science.
I have a very good theoretical computer science background. Sometimes in computer science we can prove what we call "hardness" of a problem. That is, for some problem like multiplying two n-bit numbers, there is no algorithm that can do it in less than f(n) steps on some rigorously defined hardware (probably a virtual machine). These results are very difficult to obtain in general, and a lot the ones we do know aren't very good. For instance, it is easy to show that there is no way to sort n items in less than n steps, regardless of what algorithm you use, because you have to look at each item at least once.
Anyway...
When you say there is "no simpler theory" do you mean that it is possible to rigorously prove that? For instance, can you prove that any theory of particle physics that matches experimental results must be supersymmetric, or must have at least 11 spatial dimensions, or whatever?
If it's really too hard to explain in a Slashdot post, can you recommend a good book? I can handle the math - layperson stuff like "Shrodinger's kittens and the search for reality" is easy reading for me.
Thanks!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I totally agree that it's hard to come up with other answers. Of course I don't think that scientists should stop doing physics.
The problem is, (and I should have made it clearer in my earlier post) I really get the impression that most physicists today are just trying to "patch up" these theories. And there are so many holes that there is lots to do, so they all keep pretty busy.
Is anyone (other than crackpots) even trying to come up with an alternative explanation? Or is it true, as another response to my post said, that "string theory IS the simpler theory.". If so, why are there so many different string theories, and what's with the M-theory "unifying" them but "adding complications"?
Are there physicists out there writing journal articles that say:
"Let's assume that all this string theory stuff is just wrong. Instead of patching holes in it (adding epicycles!) here's an alternative explanation..."
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I have only a laypersons understanding of quantum physics, so feel free to ignore me.
Whenever I read about these incredibly complex theories, like 11 dimensional superstrings, the M-theory, "sparticles", and what have you, it just reminds me of the "theories of planetary motion" that people used to come up with before they realized the earth goes around the sun.
To explain the observed motion of the planets in a way consistent with the sun going around the earth, they invented "epicycles", which were essentially loops within loops on the hypothical orbits. This went on for years, with the epicycles getting more and more complicated. They built amazing geared machines to simulate the motion of the planets. Now we look back at them and shake our heads, thinking "Why didn't they look for the simpler explanation? Why did it take so long for a Copernicus to come along?"
I don't mean to dis modern physics... but I can't help thinking that in 100 years, people will look back on M-theory and sparticles and laugh, saying "Why didn't those people realize how ridiculous those theories are? Why didn't they try harder to find a simpler explanation?"
Maybe the real world really is that complicated. But history would indicate otherwise.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Yup - OpenBSD works really nicely for that.
I have a Pentium 120 running OpenBSD 2.6 for my firewall, and even when my other four computers are generating loads of traffic and completely filling my DSL it doesn't even slow down.
I used OpenBSD for the firewall because I'm not an expert on security and wanted to be less likely to screw it up. The OpenBSD FAQ had a pretty good section on how to set up the IP Masquerading and IP Firewalling, including opening a few ports up to connect to the Linux HTTP / Web server behind it.
It's not as easy to install as Mandrake, but it was fun. I like a little variety.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
According to those benchmarks, postgres is very impressive. I'd like to learn more about it.
I liked the New Riders book on MySQL. Is there a similar book from any publisher for postgres?
Or maybe some good web sites?
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Hmmm. I overreacted in my previous post where I said I would demand they give my thesis away for free.
I have a better idea now. On the details page where they list the options for purchasing from them ($30 for PDF, up to $66 for bound copy) I want them to put a link that says something like:
"The author of this thesis has made it available for free download from (my site)".
I think that is the best solution, and true to the spirit of the scientific method and the GPL.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I don't think what they are doing is legal. If it is, it shouldn't be.
Yes, anyone who wants to can get my thesis from a library through an interlibrary loan.
But they should not be allowed to turn around and sell it without even notifying me or paying me a dime.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
If so, why are they charging people 30 bucks to download MY thesis as a PDF?
I would be happy to send it to anyone who wants it, for free.
This isn't like Red Hat making money selling Linux. Red Hat has free downloads, and puts some really significant work into the distribution they produce.
But Contentville is basically just a photocopying company. They are obviously attempting to profit from my work, and the work of thousands of others who intended their research to be freely available.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I have mixed feelings to find that my masters thesis on Cache Scheduling is available there.
It's nice in some ways - I can easily link to it from an on-line resume, for example, and it might help some researcher find my work.
But overall, I don't approve of Contentville's use of my copyrighted material: in particular, selling it for a profit.
It's not that I don't want people reading it. After all, I wrote it with the expectation that other researchers would use it and hopefully benefit from it. That's the whole point of the scientific method.
My thesis is copyright by me. I have allowed the University of Victoria library unlimited rights to make FREE copies of it for the purposes of interlibrary loans and whatnot - that's part of the deal with publishing it at UVic. But I'm sure that no-one is supposed to profit from copying it except (optionally) me.
I'm going to check the details of the copyright on my thesis tonight. Then I'll be writing a letter to Contentville demanding that they give my thesis away for free (or at most the cost of copying and postage).
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I also agree that we shouldn't make it too easy to vote. Politicians pandering to the uninformed herd is what has got this country into the hole it is today.
I don't know about finding the roots of a quadratic though. I agree that it's not a good question. I think a better thing would be a basic test on relevant political issues, and some general knowlege questions. It's a little tricky to come up with a list off the top of my head, but topics like: basic economics (how to balance a checkbook), basics of taxation (i.e. state vs federal), some knowlege of the national debt, and some really basic recent political history.
The problem is, it will never happen. The big political parties LIKE having stupid voters. It's a lot easier to influence them through TV commercials. If people actually understood the important issues (including the ones the ma$$ media ignores), lots of things would change. That would be bad for the politicians and their big money, big union, and big company buddies.
I don't think Heinlein is a "nitpicky educational elitist". That list of basic human skills you quoted indicates that the things he thought were important could mostly be learned outside of a classroom. (changing diapers, butchering, cooperating, acting alone, taking orders, giving orders, etc.) None of those are educational elitism. I've always liked that list, and hope to master the whole thing before I'm 40 years old.
Finally, I don't know who to vote for. I like Republican policies a little better, except for the environmental issues. And that's a big deal, so I'm undecided. I think both parties basically suck.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
No. No. No.
They didn't use electron beams. Where did you get that idea?
I quote: "V-Groove, in addition to lithography techniques, uses chemicals to create an anisotropic chemical reaction..."
Don't be in so much of a hurry to post to actually read the article.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Well, I've had a look at the presentation and it's pretty slick. It's the only handheld I've seen so far that makes me look at my HandSpring and go "hmmmm....". The big drawback is still the battery life - one day. Ouch. My Handspring goes for at least three weeks. But I'm impressed by the screen, and the ability to hook up both PC cards and CompactFlash. Sound is nice too.
And actually, the software on it (Windows CE) looks pretty good. They seem to have taken all the good stuff that Palm and Handspring did, and improved on it in many subtle and not-so subtle ways. The contact book, day planner, etc. all look nice.
As usual for Microsoft, by the third time around they often produce something usable. Of course this assumes that the software is actually stable... another thing about the Handspring is I've only gotten it to crash once, and that was while using HackMaster to rotate the screen with custom fonts in some third-party application...
So I have to ask? If the Windows software is stable, would putting Linux on this device improve it's usability, or is it just a neat hack to prove it could be done? I mean, yeah, it would be cool to have the command line and secure shell... but wouldn't you be better off with a good SSH-supporting terminal program just running under Windows?
I kind of think it's just one of those things that people do to show how l33t they are. And that's ok. If I had one, I might try Linux on it just for the boasting rights but after a few days I bet I would want the original software back.
X Windows and Unix were never really designed for handheld computers. (Yeah, windows wasn't either, but Windows CE is only a little like regular Windows.)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Disk speed is a problem for a lot of average apps, but there are solutions:
/daydream >
New motherboards from ABit (and probably other companies) have built in RAID 0/1 for ATA100. If you put two nice fast 7200 RPM ATA100 drives on those, you get a major boost in hard drive performance for very little extra cost. Better than SCSI for many applications (but not servers).
And with RAM so cheap, you can always just add another 128 MB DIMM and get extra caching. Just about every operating system, even Microsoft's, does a pretty good job of using extra memory to speed up disk access these days.
< daydream >
My next machine will be the dual theme:
dual Athelons, (when the motherboards come out), dual video cards (one wicked-fast AGP 3d, one cheaper PCI), dual monitors, dual ATA100 hard drives in a striped RAID config, and dual data rate SDRAM -- dual 256 MB DIMMs = 512MB, hopefully interleaved.
<
(sigh).
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)