It took me a few years to learn to communicate to middle and upper management in getting the tech goodies I have today. But before I pass on my little nuggets of wisdom, allow me to introduce my position.
I manage the IT facilities a faculty (of approx 1000 students and 100 staff) within a British university located in Malaysia and I have to contend with a "big brother" who provides our network & internet access along with login privileges. My users look up to me and my small team to prevent "big brother" from bullying them into submission (my users generally have more computing freedom than other faculties so in essence my dept is treated like the red headed step child).
The university in general (the main campus in the UK and all its branch campuses) has been recently directed to switch 100% to Microsoft &.NET for all it's solutions. I've managed to retain my Linux & LAMP servers within that environment and not to mention got a few new tech goodies along the way.
The secret to it all is that management thinks in (literally) dollars (in my case Ringgit) and cents, so it would in your benefit to brush up in that area. Explain to management the costs involved in the "manufacturing" of a Linux distro, and that how it's a community effort hence why it is given away for "free". If they are uncomfortable with the fact that support is "sporadic" give them the option of going with a branded distro (i.e. Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu) they will have to pay for support but support IS guaranteed.
Next make a comparison on the costs of moving to MS.NET vs. staying with your LAMP solution. Talk in terms of man hours needed to setup the MS.NET (translating to costs), personnel training to handle the.NET systems, software costs (MS licenses don't come cheap) AND annual maintenance fees on the.NET systems (some MS licenses require a annual fee). Don't forget to mention/factor the costs of NEW hardware for the.NET systems; from experience LAMP systems can function perfectly fine on under-speced machines for years without giving any signs of stress when compared to MS based systems.
Next talk about redundancies in your IT department (I'm assuming you are NOT an army of one), with switching over to.NET many personnel will lose their function in the organisation and this will lead to either:
Retraining of the personnel for better efficiency
Fire the old and hire new, which means for about a period of 3 months the new guys will be
learning the ropes of the organisation, translating again to 3 months of minimal productivity. Not to mention the periods when a position cannot be filled because a suitable candidate can't be found. Also it *MIGHT* cost the organisation more in terms of salary to hire a nrew suitable person versus keeping the current person around and re-training him/her (and don't forget to compare it against NOT moving).
Lastly mention about the transition period on how every one MUST transition over to the newer system and learn to use it. Translating to lost revenue from loss of productivity from the staff. If your core business is web related, do a business generation analysis from 1 minute of up time versus 1 minute of down time (in relation to the system being down for transition) and don't forget to include the time when the team work out the kinks in the system after it has gone live.
Remember that most people in management didn't get their tech trench badge, they are in their position to make sure the company's bottom line stays in the black and nicely elevated. Learn to speak their language and you'll most probably get what you want. Best of all, if you can work this out with your CEO/President and he/she agrees I doubt any other manager is going to question the leader's decision.
Hmmmm... well my kit is an ana-morphic kit, meaning it changes based on the needs of the site I'm visiting. I support a range of systems from your old MS-DOS, Windows 9x to your common Linux platforms. But here are the constants in my kit...
No.2 Phillips/Cross screw driver Multi-head screw driver with accompanying bits Needle Nose Pliers Cutters Razor Blade Crimper Spare Screws Straight-pair UTP network cable Cross-pair UTP network cable DB-9/25 RS-232 null cable Digital Test-meter (you just need ot know how to read the results) Symantec Ghost Boot Floppy (God bless norton for this)
The variables in my kit Boot CDs of the relevent OS I'm responding to (typically it's Windows more than anyting) Various common day applications such as word processor and spread-sheets some "can't-live-without" apps like power archiver
After reading through the article (and accompanying articles as well) I am truely torn in the middle on this issue. On one hand we would be able to save countless number of lives, relieve economic burden on goverments for disaster relief funds, increase potential agricultural yield and more importantly possibly help slow/stop the onset of global warming.
On the other hand without the destructive forces of nature the balance of the globe's delicate echo system would be effected. Without floods, fertile top soil would not be replinished by decomposing matter from rivers, streams and oceans. Without bush fires (naturaly occuring ones) flora and fauna which are normally controlled by nature's on destructive processes would run rampant and out of control. The list goes on.
Being a man of science I am truely torn with these issues, on one hand we would be able to improve overall quality of life globally and possibly use such methods to terraform less hospitable lands (and even planets) with such controlls, but on the other we would be going the natural order which have their reasons for occuring known to us or not. Even with strict legislations by world goverments and UN what is to stop politcians from lobbying to have small amendments made to such legislations? Even a mighty oak tree can be fell by a tiny termite, all it needs is time.
I gave up using floppies the day I got my IoMega ZIP 100, even I gave up on the ZIP media since my last drive COD (Click-Of-Death) on me. I'm a happy CD-RW user putting my data into CDs. Not only do I find them lasting longer (just take proper care of your CDs) they are also cheaper. I buy them in bulk and they cost me around $0.20 per 700MB CD.
But I still do have the "LEGACY" device in my tower from my last upgrade, something todo with the fact that my bosses still insist on passing them soft copies of my reports on them, and what happened to my old floppies which might be workable??? Well they're now sitting in a local art college, my buddy turned it into some modern art piece.
Since I run around a fair bit and I have an AVC Soul (OEM Clone to the Rio Volt) I prefer to have my collection in MP3 format encoded at 128kbit. Since there's a fair amount of ambient noise from my surroundings I can't really notice the subtle difference from my original CDs played over my custom designed Hi-Fi system.
However recently I have made a docking seat for my AVC Soul on my Hi-Fi system so I've been re-encoding my MP3s atleast at 192kbit to preserve most of the quality. Admitedly I would prefer a lossles compression system but until my portable player supports such a format I guess I'll be using MP3 till then.
Hmmm... so "HAL" has the intelligence of an 18 month old human being and an adult level intelligence in another 10. If we follow that same rate of progress it will probably have sentient awareness at about 2025, by then "HAL" would most probably be capable of mobility.
I sure as heck hope those scientist placed safe guards into "HAL's" "subconscious" 'coz i sure don't want to pick up my morning paper and read "HAL Goes Beserk, Creators Killed!". Then again maybe they should just implant it with Asimov's Robotic Laws!
There is a remote chance (although it doesn't seem so remote now) that the Vcc pin (that's the power supply to recharge the palm to you not so technically inclined people) may leak some voltage to the DTACK or TX pin on the HotSync cradle due to a voltage spike on the Palm Circuit board during the recharge cycle.
Some mobo's utilise the more advanced serial controller chips which regulate signal voltage which keeps the signal at a good +5V but there are some controller chips which lack this function and this voltage generally leaks into the into the motherboard's voltage controller circuit causing devastating effects since the voltage controller circuits are contolled by logic ICs.
I'm not certain which mobos utilise the more advanced chip, but my advice to prevent such a problem is to avoid charging your palm/visor while you hotsynch. This may also apply to other palm devices such as the iPaq so i suggest everyone with a PDA that recharges with their synch cradle/connecter to be careful.
Well for us IT workers (coder/network admin/support staff/etc.) in Malaysia we work an average of about 11 - 12 hours a day with an average of 5.5 day week so that works out to be about 60.5 to 66 hour week. -----
Erm... firstly (which I think has been mentioned many times already) It's been available for like the past 3 - 4 years already.
Persoanlly I purchased the Jap version and watched and I'm highly dissapointed with it. Why? simple I fell asleep during Air: End of Evangelion. The only interesting bit is during the Rebirth part (when Asuka really kicks some a**) other than that it's nothing more than just some flashy re-caps of the series and tying up all the loose ends (well sorta).
I only would reccomend you purchase this if you want to complete your Eva set or you're a die hard fan. -----
Well said, The world's tallest is building is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I Should bloody well know since my office is located there! The name of the building? The Petronas Twin Towers.
You can check the compay who manages the building out at http://www.petronas.com.my/
PS. The building is not located in Melaka as shown in Entrapment, trust me on this one;) -----
This was probably posted somewhere in the countless other post, but to get things straight.
Comp. Eng. can't exist without Comp. Sc. and vice versa. When I was doing Comp. Eng I discovered we couldn't do many things without the aid of Comp. Sc. material and most of my friends who did Comp. Sc. agreed that they couldn't do things without the aid of Comp. Eng. material. However most people would agree that you would cover more in Comp. Eng. in comparison to Comp. Sc. as you would be coverting the best of both worlds (electronic and software) however in Comp. Sc. you would cover very little on electronics and focus entirely on software.
In the real world graduates from Comp. Eng. have an easier time getting jobs in either an engineering company or a software company. However Comp. Sc. graduates have the options somewhat limited. However it is only fair to mention that you don't have to severly rack your brains when studying Comp. Sc. since you won't be dealing with complex mathematical theorems and calulating compression algos with nothing more than your calculator.
Well I've stated my case and only you can decide on what you truly want. My opinion? Do Comp. Eng. you won't regret it. -----
Hmmm... Where have I seen it before????
on
The Ultimate Chair
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm... some models looks like it came off the stage for the SeaQuest series some from Babylon 5 (the White Star's navigator deck) and some from movies like Gataca & Matrix.
Frankly I wouldn't mind having one in the office, but for the price my company would be paying I say give a nice big fat bonus! -----
I've had it with all this recording companies affiliated with RIAA, can't they accept the fact that monopolizing the music industry will eventually fail?
There is a corporate saying which goes like "If you try to hard to perfect something, then that something will eventually destroy itself". I think that is quite true in this case, a good analogy would the children's story called 'Yertle The Turtle' by Dr. Seus. All it takes it one of their affiliates to succumb to the preasure caused by the top most guy and everything will crumble into oblivion.
So go ahead block it if you can, you may win the battle but you will never-ever win the war, legions of tech-savvy people (read hackers) will arise and defeat your every single obstacle in the way!
"Arise legions of the damned, go forth and destroy every single obstacle in your way"
It's no wonder that/. chose to use Bil-locutos as the mascot all the M$ announcements. It would appear that M$ is trying to assimilate everything into it's domain by planting it's malicious codes into every single OS hence turning them into M$ drones...
On a brighter note now we can see the beloved BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) on your KDE/GNOME/X11 without having to switch over to M$ Win-dohs!
For me, I'll be keeping my Linux a virgin & not let M$ defile it thank you!
I remeber such a comment being made on many publications & many websites. I also remember the responses we the Linux community made to such sites, organizations, companies & in-duh-viduals.
All I've gotta say again to such responses is...
Quite frankly who gives a rats ass about RAMBUS anyway, unless you're running really powerful server class systems, home users wouldn't really benefit the use of it now. I can bet you the RAMBUS will go the way of the dinousaurs in maybe a year or 2... here is a brief genealogy of RAM for home PC users...
1975 - 1990 -- Good old standard DIP/SIP RAM chips (still used today in most electronic appliances)
1990 - 1994 -- SIMM/DIMM RAM basically DIP RAM on slots.
1994 - 1997 -- EDO RAM things start to get better with faster access RAM
1997 - 1998 -- SDRAM (PC66) this was meant for the first generation PIIs but could still be used with some Super Socket 7 chips.
1998 - 1999 -- SDRAM (PC100) Better mobos require faster RAMs for their faster processors
1999 - NOW -- SDRAM (PC133) Very few mobos support this type of RAM and demand is very low in comparison to the others
FYI before SDRAM entered the main stream market for the masses it was actually used on High End Servers (I know about this 'cos my components supplier for my PC said I was *NUTS* using SDRAM for my PC). Even when they came out for the masses I still paid a pretty penny for my 1st 64MB (about USD$5/MB) and that was back in 1997
The way I see it is that RAMBUS will probably make a hoo-haa in the PC market maybe in about 1 year from now and last about 6-8 months before being super suceeded by another breed of RAM. My suggestion is to stick with SDRAM until INTEL can solve the problem with the Data Bottleneck in their controller chips.
Hey INTEL! Take a few a few design pointers from AMD on their controller design -----
Lacing digital music (or video data) with watermarks is a good ides... for about 30 days. It'll take most hakerz & algorithm geniuses that long to figure out the code. By then a few proggies will hit the hakerz sites that will allow you to decrypt encrypted data not to mention it is even possible to create independent hardware decrypters to defeat such a system
Remeber the fiasco we had when Xing made DVD players which allowed it to play encrypted DVDs? Then a few weeks later a bunch of hakerz made it possible to rip DVDs using Xing technology?
The solution to this marvellous new technolgy is to let them create and market it. It won't be long before they somehow screw up and we use their own technology against them.
It's great that Cartoon Network would be showing anime (at long last) but I say FORGET IT! You've probably wondering why just about every anime out there is going to be watered down (read chopped up) for all the kiddies (or people with kids IQ anyway) to watch
You're probably thinking that I'm some sort of anti-anime nut, well you're darn wrong why don't you check out my webpage to see what it all about!. It's nothing more than anime. The problem is that most anime out there contain alot of violence, gore, sensless destruction, nudity or scenes which are just to disturbing for our kids, little brothers & sisters. here are a few listed anime which would be hacked to pieces if ever got shown
Ranma ½
SailorMoon
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Dual! Parallel Adventures
The first one listed (Ranma ½) would be hacked to itty-bitty pieces the moment it came on screen, it's chok full of nudity (check out the bath scenes) not to mention about that peverted old coot Happosai. Sure it's a fun watch but I wouldn't want little kiddies to follow their behaviour. The last three has way lots of violence (I could name you other but you wouldn't have of them anyway) & don't get me started on the nude scenes in them!
So what the bottom line here? Simple, don't bother showing anime unless they don't intend on mutilating or mind your kids or little brothers & sisters being exposed to all the negativity (which BTW is meant for more mature minds).
While you're at it, why not not shutdown RealMedia, Winamp, Microsoft Media Division (yeah I would love that one) and a slew of other net radios! It's as if people haven't found ways to beat the streaming copy protection of the file which happens to be located in a cached directory on your local PC (for you bootleggers wannabe just go read some of them hackerz sites for this info)
The problem isn't with Napster or GNUtella or any of these other softwares, it's with people out there who are abusing it and RIAA making a giant mountain outta an ants hill (ants hills are smaller than moles hill most of the time take a peek!). I myself download songs using Napster & such but if you really want to hear more music from that artist which you just download, support them by buying some of their albums then you can download more.
The only reason that Napster is getting the heat is because of that Metallica drummer (sorry can't remeber his name right now) who made such a big fuss about it. Don't get me wrong here I like music from Metallica infact I have a few of their albums along with some MP3s from which I can't get their albums
All I'm saying is that RIAA should check around before getting a court injunction on Napster while other softwares with bigger companies (eg Microsoft) get away with similar acts.
In closing I would just like to say is that Recording Industry Ascociations of the World (not just America) take note... music fans are STILL paying your paychecks
OLD NEWS! It's been successfuly done many times with other media no matter what the size
I've personally managed to fit it on a 100MB ZiP disk, a 1.44 MB Floppy & even some success on a flash ROM (can't remember the size though) and all of them ran like it was running from a HDD. So what's the big deal of running it off your SuperDisk?
If you really want news try squeezing Winxows 9x into 1 SuperDisk and run it from there!
Winxows 9x: A 32-bit extension of a 16-bit OS meant for a 8-bit processor which originated from a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company which can't stand 1-bit of competition
Slashdot Mirror
It took me a few years to learn to communicate to middle and upper management in getting the tech goodies I have today. But before I pass on my little nuggets of wisdom, allow me to introduce my position.
I manage the IT facilities a faculty (of approx 1000 students and 100 staff) within a British university located in Malaysia and I have to contend with a "big brother" who provides our network & internet access along with login privileges. My users look up to me and my small team to prevent "big brother" from bullying them into submission (my users generally have more computing freedom than other faculties so in essence my dept is treated like the red headed step child).
The university in general (the main campus in the UK and all its branch campuses) has been recently directed to switch 100% to Microsoft & .NET for all it's solutions. I've managed to retain my Linux & LAMP servers within that environment and not to mention got a few new tech goodies along the way.
The secret to it all is that management thinks in (literally) dollars (in my case Ringgit) and cents, so it would in your benefit to brush up in that area. Explain to management the costs involved in the "manufacturing" of a Linux distro, and that how it's a community effort hence why it is given away for "free". If they are uncomfortable with the fact that support is "sporadic" give them the option of going with a branded distro (i.e. Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu) they will have to pay for support but support IS guaranteed.
Next make a comparison on the costs of moving to MS .NET vs. staying with your LAMP solution. Talk in terms of man hours needed to setup the MS .NET (translating to costs), personnel training to handle the .NET systems, software costs (MS licenses don't come cheap) AND annual maintenance fees on the .NET systems (some MS licenses require a annual fee). Don't forget to mention/factor the costs of NEW hardware for the .NET systems; from experience LAMP systems can function perfectly fine on under-speced machines for years without giving any signs of stress when compared to MS based systems.
Next talk about redundancies in your IT department (I'm assuming you are NOT an army of one), with switching over to .NET many personnel will lose their function in the organisation and this will lead to either:
Lastly mention about the transition period on how every one MUST transition over to the newer system and learn to use it. Translating to lost revenue from loss of productivity from the staff. If your core business is web related, do a business generation analysis from 1 minute of up time versus 1 minute of down time (in relation to the system being down for transition) and don't forget to include the time when the team work out the kinks in the system after it has gone live.
Remember that most people in management didn't get their tech trench badge, they are in their position to make sure the company's bottom line stays in the black and nicely elevated. Learn to speak their language and you'll most probably get what you want. Best of all, if you can work this out with your CEO/President and he/she agrees I doubt any other manager is going to question the leader's decision.
Hmmmm... well my kit is an ana-morphic kit, meaning it changes based on the needs of the site I'm visiting. I support a range of systems from your old MS-DOS, Windows 9x to your common Linux platforms. But here are the constants in my kit...
No.2 Phillips/Cross screw driver
Multi-head screw driver with accompanying bits
Needle Nose Pliers
Cutters
Razor Blade
Crimper
Spare Screws
Straight-pair UTP network cable
Cross-pair UTP network cable
DB-9/25 RS-232 null cable
Digital Test-meter (you just need ot know how to read the results)
Symantec Ghost Boot Floppy (God bless norton for this)
The variables in my kit
Boot CDs of the relevent OS I'm responding to (typically it's Windows more than anyting)
Various common day applications such as word processor and spread-sheets
some "can't-live-without" apps like power archiver
ME!
Well my Sun Cobalt (Raq 4i) server anyway. It's working well enough to host my web & email server so I say leave it alone.
You wouldn't believe the headaches I had to go through to update my workstation from 2.2.x to 2.4.x
After reading through the article (and accompanying articles as well) I am truely torn in the middle on this issue. On one hand we would be able to save countless number of lives, relieve economic burden on goverments for disaster relief funds, increase potential agricultural yield and more importantly possibly help slow/stop the onset of global warming.
On the other hand without the destructive forces of nature the balance of the globe's delicate echo system would be effected. Without floods, fertile top soil would not be replinished by decomposing matter from rivers, streams and oceans. Without bush fires (naturaly occuring ones) flora and fauna which are normally controlled by nature's on destructive processes would run rampant and out of control. The list goes on.
Being a man of science I am truely torn with these issues, on one hand we would be able to improve overall quality of life globally and possibly use such methods to terraform less hospitable lands (and even planets) with such controlls, but on the other we would be going the natural order which have their reasons for occuring known to us or not. Even with strict legislations by world goverments and UN what is to stop politcians from lobbying to have small amendments made to such legislations? Even a mighty oak tree can be fell by a tiny termite, all it needs is time.
Hmmm... seven hours of flight eh? Well assuming your iBook is up to it, you could try "REAL" classics head over to http://www.mame.dk
download the MAME for your Apple but you'll need to hit the newsgroups for the ROMs. You can get the information from the above site as well
I gave up using floppies the day I got my IoMega ZIP 100, even I gave up on the ZIP media since my last drive COD (Click-Of-Death) on me. I'm a happy CD-RW user putting my data into CDs. Not only do I find them lasting longer (just take proper care of your CDs) they are also cheaper. I buy them in bulk and they cost me around $0.20 per 700MB CD.
But I still do have the "LEGACY" device in my tower from my last upgrade, something todo with the fact that my bosses still insist on passing them soft copies of my reports on them, and what happened to my old floppies which might be workable??? Well they're now sitting in a local art college, my buddy turned it into some modern art piece.
Since I run around a fair bit and I have an AVC Soul (OEM Clone to the Rio Volt) I prefer to have my collection in MP3 format encoded at 128kbit. Since there's a fair amount of ambient noise from my surroundings I can't really notice the subtle difference from my original CDs played over my custom designed Hi-Fi system.
However recently I have made a docking seat for my AVC Soul on my Hi-Fi system so I've been re-encoding my MP3s atleast at 192kbit to preserve most of the quality. Admitedly I would prefer a lossles compression system but until my portable player supports such a format I guess I'll be using MP3 till then.
Hmmm... so "HAL" has the intelligence of an 18 month old human being and an adult level intelligence in another 10. If we follow that same rate of progress it will probably have sentient awareness at about 2025, by then "HAL" would most probably be capable of mobility.
I sure as heck hope those scientist placed safe guards into "HAL's" "subconscious" 'coz i sure don't want to pick up my morning paper and read "HAL Goes Beserk, Creators Killed!". Then again maybe they should just implant it with Asimov's Robotic Laws!
There is a remote chance (although it doesn't seem so remote now) that the Vcc pin (that's the power supply to recharge the palm to you not so technically inclined people) may leak some voltage to the DTACK or TX pin on the HotSync cradle due to a voltage spike on the Palm Circuit board during the recharge cycle.
Some mobo's utilise the more advanced serial controller chips which regulate signal voltage which keeps the signal at a good +5V but there are some controller chips which lack this function and this voltage generally leaks into the into the motherboard's voltage controller circuit causing devastating effects since the voltage controller circuits are contolled by logic ICs.
I'm not certain which mobos utilise the more advanced chip, but my advice to prevent such a problem is to avoid charging your palm/visor while you hotsynch. This may also apply to other palm devices such as the iPaq so i suggest everyone with a PDA that recharges with their synch cradle/connecter to be careful.
Well for us IT workers (coder/network admin/support staff/etc.) in Malaysia we work an average of about 11 - 12 hours a day with an average of 5.5 day week so that works out to be about 60.5 to 66 hour week.
-----
Erm... firstly (which I think has been mentioned many times already) It's been available for like the past 3 - 4 years already.
Persoanlly I purchased the Jap version and watched and I'm highly dissapointed with it. Why? simple I fell asleep during Air: End of Evangelion. The only interesting bit is during the Rebirth part (when Asuka really kicks some a**) other than that it's nothing more than just some flashy re-caps of the series and tying up all the loose ends (well sorta).
I only would reccomend you purchase this if you want to complete your Eva set or you're a die hard fan.
-----
We've got "Bulls", but who want's pizza when you can get a decent 'Nasi Lemak'
-----
Well said, The world's tallest is building is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I Should bloody well know since my office is located there! The name of the building? The Petronas Twin Towers.
;)
You can check the compay who manages the building out at http://www.petronas.com.my/
PS. The building is not located in Melaka as shown in Entrapment, trust me on this one
-----
This was probably posted somewhere in the countless other post, but to get things straight.
Comp. Eng. can't exist without Comp. Sc. and vice versa. When I was doing Comp. Eng I discovered we couldn't do many things without the aid of Comp. Sc. material and most of my friends who did Comp. Sc. agreed that they couldn't do things without the aid of Comp. Eng. material. However most people would agree that you would cover more in Comp. Eng. in comparison to Comp. Sc. as you would be coverting the best of both worlds (electronic and software) however in Comp. Sc. you would cover very little on electronics and focus entirely on software.
In the real world graduates from Comp. Eng. have an easier time getting jobs in either an engineering company or a software company. However Comp. Sc. graduates have the options somewhat limited. However it is only fair to mention that you don't have to severly rack your brains when studying Comp. Sc. since you won't be dealing with complex mathematical theorems and calulating compression algos with nothing more than your calculator.
Well I've stated my case and only you can decide on what you truly want. My opinion? Do Comp. Eng. you won't regret it.
-----
Hmmm... some models looks like it came off the stage for the SeaQuest series some from Babylon 5 (the White Star's navigator deck) and some from movies like Gataca & Matrix.
Frankly I wouldn't mind having one in the office, but for the price my company would be paying I say give a nice big fat bonus!
-----
DUH...! Have you bothered to check the Kernel Version before commenting? Just a suggestion.
-----
If any of you /.-ers out there had read my earlier statement of Anime being screened over Cartoon Network here is my follow-up
Let the mutilation begin!
-----
I've had it with all this recording companies affiliated with RIAA, can't they accept the fact that monopolizing the music industry will eventually fail?
There is a corporate saying which goes like "If you try to hard to perfect something, then that something will eventually destroy itself". I think that is quite true in this case, a good analogy would the children's story called 'Yertle The Turtle' by Dr. Seus. All it takes it one of their affiliates to succumb to the preasure caused by the top most guy and everything will crumble into oblivion.
So go ahead block it if you can, you may win the battle but you will never-ever win the war, legions of tech-savvy people (read hackers) will arise and defeat your every single obstacle in the way!
"Arise legions of the damned, go forth and destroy every single obstacle in your way"
-----
It's no wonder that /. chose to use Bil-locutos as the mascot all the M$ announcements. It would appear that M$ is trying to assimilate everything into it's domain by planting it's malicious codes into every single OS hence turning them into M$ drones...
On a brighter note now we can see the beloved BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) on your KDE/GNOME/X11 without having to switch over to M$ Win-dohs!
For me, I'll be keeping my Linux a virgin & not let M$ defile it thank you!
-----
I remeber such a comment being made on many publications & many websites. I also remember the responses we the Linux community made to such sites, organizations, companies & in-duh-viduals. All I've gotta say again to such responses is...
-----
Quite frankly who gives a rats ass about RAMBUS anyway, unless you're running really powerful server class systems, home users wouldn't really benefit the use of it now. I can bet you the RAMBUS will go the way of the dinousaurs in maybe a year or 2... here is a brief genealogy of RAM for home PC users...
1975 - 1990 -- Good old standard DIP/SIP RAM chips (still used today in most electronic appliances)1990 - 1994 -- SIMM/DIMM RAM basically DIP RAM on slots.
1994 - 1997 -- EDO RAM things start to get better with faster access RAM
1997 - 1998 -- SDRAM (PC66) this was meant for the first generation PIIs but could still be used with some Super Socket 7 chips.
1998 - 1999 -- SDRAM (PC100) Better mobos require faster RAMs for their faster processors
1999 - NOW -- SDRAM (PC133) Very few mobos support this type of RAM and demand is very low in comparison to the others
FYI before SDRAM entered the main stream market for the masses it was actually used on High End Servers (I know about this 'cos my components supplier for my PC said I was *NUTS* using SDRAM for my PC). Even when they came out for the masses I still paid a pretty penny for my 1st 64MB (about USD$5/MB) and that was back in 1997
The way I see it is that RAMBUS will probably make a hoo-haa in the PC market maybe in about 1 year from now and last about 6-8 months before being super suceeded by another breed of RAM. My suggestion is to stick with SDRAM until INTEL can solve the problem with the Data Bottleneck in their controller chips.
Hey INTEL! Take a few a few design pointers from AMD on their controller design-----
Lacing digital music (or video data) with watermarks is a good ides... for about 30 days. It'll take most hakerz & algorithm geniuses that long to figure out the code. By then a few proggies will hit the hakerz sites that will allow you to decrypt encrypted data not to mention it is even possible to create independent hardware decrypters to defeat such a system
Remeber the fiasco we had when Xing made DVD players which allowed it to play encrypted DVDs? Then a few weeks later a bunch of hakerz made it possible to rip DVDs using Xing technology?
The solution to this marvellous new technolgy is to let them create and market it. It won't be long before they somehow screw up and we use their own technology against them.
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It's great that Cartoon Network would be showing anime (at long last) but I say FORGET IT! You've probably wondering why just about every anime out there is going to be watered down (read chopped up) for all the kiddies (or people with kids IQ anyway) to watch
You're probably thinking that I'm some sort of anti-anime nut, well you're darn wrong why don't you check out my webpage to see what it all about!. It's nothing more than anime. The problem is that most anime out there contain alot of violence, gore, sensless destruction, nudity or scenes which are just to disturbing for our kids, little brothers & sisters. here are a few listed anime which would be hacked to pieces if ever got shown
Ranma ½
SailorMoon
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Dual! Parallel Adventures
The first one listed (Ranma ½) would be hacked to itty-bitty pieces the moment it came on screen, it's chok full of nudity (check out the bath scenes) not to mention about that peverted old coot Happosai. Sure it's a fun watch but I wouldn't want little kiddies to follow their behaviour. The last three has way lots of violence (I could name you other but you wouldn't have of them anyway) & don't get me started on the nude scenes in them!
So what the bottom line here? Simple, don't bother showing anime unless they don't intend on mutilating or mind your kids or little brothers & sisters being exposed to all the negativity (which BTW is meant for more mature minds).
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While you're at it, why not not shutdown RealMedia, Winamp, Microsoft Media Division (yeah I would love that one) and a slew of other net radios! It's as if people haven't found ways to beat the streaming copy protection of the file which happens to be located in a cached directory on your local PC (for you bootleggers wannabe just go read some of them hackerz sites for this info)
The problem isn't with Napster or GNUtella or any of these other softwares, it's with people out there who are abusing it and RIAA making a giant mountain outta an ants hill (ants hills are smaller than moles hill most of the time take a peek!). I myself download songs using Napster & such but if you really want to hear more music from that artist which you just download, support them by buying some of their albums then you can download more.
The only reason that Napster is getting the heat is because of that Metallica drummer (sorry can't remeber his name right now) who made such a big fuss about it. Don't get me wrong here I like music from Metallica infact I have a few of their albums along with some MP3s from which I can't get their albums
All I'm saying is that RIAA should check around before getting a court injunction on Napster while other softwares with bigger companies (eg Microsoft) get away with similar acts.
In closing I would just like to say is that Recording Industry Ascociations of the World (not just America) take note... music fans are STILL paying your paychecks
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OLD NEWS! It's been successfuly done many times with other media no matter what the size
I've personally managed to fit it on a 100MB ZiP disk, a 1.44 MB Floppy & even some success on a flash ROM (can't remember the size though) and all of them ran like it was running from a HDD. So what's the big deal of running it off your SuperDisk?
If you really want news try squeezing Winxows 9x into 1 SuperDisk and run it from there!
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