If they get that far, they now have a long stream of billions of bits, so the format of those bits is suddenly very significant.
And if they were looking for bits representing a digital format, they'd be completely lost. The pits on laserdisc have analog spacing, because it's really an overmodulated (to +/- 100% modulation) broadband FM signal, containing analog audio and video (and sometimes digital audio) in various sub-bands.
I believe the real problem comes in with the Remote Terminals. These are beige boxes about the size of a standalone freezer (or a refrigerator on its side) with lots of doors. Sometimes, particularly in California, they're entirely buried underground, with only a small door and electrical junction box above ground.
They contain a miniature Central Office, including SBC owned DSLAM equipment. SBC doesn't want to have to open up rack space inside the RTs to third party CLECs like Covad. And since the potential area to be covered by RTs is much bigger than that covered by CO's, the CLECs have to lease a full DSL circuit from SBC. As I understand it, this is often at the same cost that direct customer of SBC's Internet would pay.
In addition, SBC has RTs within what would be normal DSL range of a CO (I know, because I'm on one, even though I would probably get at least 2.5 mbits via a direct-to-CO line pair), thus increasing the percentage of homes and businesses that aren't served by a direct (and shared by FCC mandate) CO line.
I don't know what they do with the old copper that they're bypassing when they build RTs, but if they were smart about wanting to be anti-competitive, they'd dig it up or find some other way to make it unusable.
How about meta flash-mobbing? As in you have a flash mob group who watches a different flash mob site to figure out what they're up to, get there at the same time, and do something else, possibly related in some way to the "official" behavior.
Look for a sudden spike in demand for those Niven books at used bookstores today. Sort of a "flash crowd flash crowd" effect. Good thing there's lots of Akamai-style load balancing for those book servers!
I worked as a contractor at SBC for a short time a couple of years ago, and at one point they had some sort of explanatory session about the Act, and what certain non-compete rules meant for sharing information between different divisions of SBC. The one thing that I found interesting about this was that their requirement to share DSL lines with CLECs was not due to TAo96. It was actually a condition of the Ameritech merger that allowed them to sell long distance service in that area.
That having been said, from the viewpoint of a customer getting DSL from a 3rd party ISP back then, I wasn't too impressed with this, primarily because it caused the formation of ASI (which I think stands for "Advanced Systems Inc.") ASI was the ILEC holding company formed to handle the DSL circuits themselves, and its creation caused a severe increase in the delay of DSL installation, and these delays went on for at least a year.
The second issue I was aware of back then was exactly what these ISPs are complaining about. At some point SBC decided that the resale price for a DSL line to ISPs would be (surprise!) exactly the same as what they charged individual customers for basic DSL (with ISP) service at the same speed.
My ISP wasn't too happy about this, but they really died because they got "hosed" after they were bought out by a CLEC. Another ISP in the area, TexasNet, wasn't too happy about it either, but didn't get rid of DSL until SBC decided that it would remove one mode of billing, I think the one that let SBC pass the charges through to the ISP (the other being having the charges go onto the customer's phone bill).
These days I get my DSL through SBC, fast and reliable but expensive (6Mbit), thanks to being near a Remote Terminal. I depend on them for nothing but a pipe, and have made a point of ignoring their stupid SBC/Yahoo nonsense. In fact, the only ISP service I can't and don't do myself is NNTP.
One year when I went to MacWorld Expo Boston, I took the T over to Cambridge and walked down to see the Media Lab. Of course it was a Saturday and nothing was going on, but I was there! Heh.
Actually I thought this one other building was more interesting. It was like ten stories tall, and was barely big enough for one lecture hall per level, so that's exactly what they put in it.
A different year's MacWorld Expo had an appearance by Stephen Hawking, and was well worth the effort.
A trip I took some years before that was a week in London. One place I made a point of going to was Fencurch Station, because of the mention in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Another place was the 200 block of Baker Street, where I was amused to find a computer store selling Apple gear. If I went now, I'd add Mornington Crescent to that list. But really, the coolest place of all during that trip was the British Museum, where I got to see the Rosetta Stone.
Another place worth seeing if you're in the area is the Infomart in Dallas. The escalators are freaky, because after you get to the top, you have to cross three feet of glass floor. Not fun if you're acrophobic.
Knowing Sony, they're probably going to be those crippled (as in no power supply wires) iLink ports. I can't tell from the linked pictures. If so, you can forget about using Firewire to charge an iPod, or using a bus-powered hard drive.
With respect to the NYT, I registered some time ago. Never received any associated spam or experienced any problems other than trying think up fake information different than all the other fake information I'd submitted elsewhere.
Sure, but they have your e-mail address and know that you're a 34 year old woman from Indonesia who makes $75,000-$100,000 a year. Er, uh, wait a minute. Your e-mail address is what? "lkjweq@akl.asb"? Never mind.
I'm old enough that I dropped a lot of quarters into Spy Hunter back in my college days. One day I was driving down the highway and had a momentary urge to drive into the back of a Coca Cola truck. (To get the oil slick, I'm sure.) Unfortunately it didn't want to put its ramp down for me. Damn those red trucks!
Mac video cards have always required a ROM on board to describe the capabilities of the card. In addition, I think they also require a big-endian access mode in either the PCI interface or video chipset.
You could probably use a Mac video card in a PC, but (apparently) not the other way around.
Macs conserve batteries. Some older mac powerbooks allow you to run os 9.2.2 permitting virtual memory to be DISABLED saving more electricity from not needing drives spinning.
Mine's running 10.2.6, and I caught it with the drive spun down just the other day. I do miss having a control strip item to spin down the drive on command, but in my experience, 9.x was a lot more likely to keep the drive spun up than 7.1 was on my old PB145.
Most mac powerbooks never need to have their internal emergency fans kick on, even while crunching hard core mathematical benchmarks on warm days.
There are normally only two times that the fan in my Powerbook comes on. First, when I set it on an insulating surface, like on the bed. Second, when I'm doing something that makes use of features in the video chip, like 3D games, or sometimes DVD or DivX playback. You're right that warm days have an effect, though.
While they're not quite as fast, I used a moving sidewalk between terminals at DFW airport once when my connecting flight was in a different terminal.
This is where I found the main problem with moving sidewalks in general: they can only go straight. I had to walk all the freaking way from the terminal area to the connecting area, and out to the other terminal area. That sucked.
For those who don't know, the terminals at DFW are semicircles. That time I had to go from a high C terminal to a mid A. I guess I should've taken the train, but I didn't realize just how far away it was!
Better yet, let's put in seats for people to sit on. And then we could put groups of seats together on a fixed platform. At that point you don't need all the surface area, so you can propel the platforms from the edges.
Here's the really cool (and tricky) part: then you put the motors inside the platforms themselves. Then you don't need miles long rubber belts that can wear out. Just replace them with concrete floors. And to keep people from falling out, add walls. If you add a roof, you can operate them outside, even when it's raining! And for more capacity (to make up for having the seats in the first place), you can use more than one platform stacked together.
I also have several of the black cables stashed away. For those of you who don't know, the black cables are the ones with oldskool 5-pin DIN connectors on the end for old AT motherboards. Yes, I still use an AT motherboard, for my ISA card EPROM burner which is only supported under DOS. (And the crazy part is that Fry's still sells 'em!)
Plus there is a mini model-M for those with limited desk space. The only drawback is that most minis I've found don't have removable key caps like the full size units have.
That's all well and good, but unfortunately the real problem is when you use a PS/2 to USB converter and plug a Model M into a Mac, you find out that the missing Winderz keys are mapped as the command keys. Oops!
So while it's normally a plus that Model M keyboards (and I wuv mine all, even the one with a dead left shift key) don't have the evil Winderz keys, it's a minus when you get the bright idea to use one with a KVM switch to hook up all your Macs and PCs to one display.
1. The fax feature did not integrate well with the address book. BUT...you can have one machine as the dedicated fax machine and all other computers in the office can fax through it.
I understand that fax receive is supported? Now if only there was a way to leave a getty process running that would detect a modem login vs an incoming fax, and especially if it could do a PPP session, then I'd have one more reason to ditch Linux.
Often, there is an advertising company that charges $1500 or so to "advertise" your product for you. They then pay subcontractors to actually send it.
And if this money isn't trackable, the Internal/Inland Revenue people are going to be very interested in finding out why. Al Capone wasn't done in by the G-men (FBI), he was done in by the T-men (IRS).
Well, if the problem is that Harrison Ford is getting to old, then we need to find someone younger. Who better than a young star of movies with "and the" in the title?
Yes, folks, get ready for Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom!
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And if they were looking for bits representing a digital format, they'd be completely lost. The pits on laserdisc have analog spacing, because it's really an overmodulated (to +/- 100% modulation) broadband FM signal, containing analog audio and video (and sometimes digital audio) in various sub-bands.
I could understand it if he had a wing or even vinyl performance stickers, but that thing is so Not Rice it's not funny.
They contain a miniature Central Office, including SBC owned DSLAM equipment. SBC doesn't want to have to open up rack space inside the RTs to third party CLECs like Covad. And since the potential area to be covered by RTs is much bigger than that covered by CO's, the CLECs have to lease a full DSL circuit from SBC. As I understand it, this is often at the same cost that direct customer of SBC's Internet would pay.
In addition, SBC has RTs within what would be normal DSL range of a CO (I know, because I'm on one, even though I would probably get at least 2.5 mbits via a direct-to-CO line pair), thus increasing the percentage of homes and businesses that aren't served by a direct (and shared by FCC mandate) CO line.
I don't know what they do with the old copper that they're bypassing when they build RTs, but if they were smart about wanting to be anti-competitive, they'd dig it up or find some other way to make it unusable.
Of course you know what this ends up being, don't you? Team trolling!
How about meta flash-mobbing? As in you have a flash mob group who watches a different flash mob site to figure out what they're up to, get there at the same time, and do something else, possibly related in some way to the "official" behavior.
Look for a sudden spike in demand for those Niven books at used bookstores today. Sort of a "flash crowd flash crowd" effect. Good thing there's lots of Akamai-style load balancing for those book servers!
That having been said, from the viewpoint of a customer getting DSL from a 3rd party ISP back then, I wasn't too impressed with this, primarily because it caused the formation of ASI (which I think stands for "Advanced Systems Inc.") ASI was the ILEC holding company formed to handle the DSL circuits themselves, and its creation caused a severe increase in the delay of DSL installation, and these delays went on for at least a year.
The second issue I was aware of back then was exactly what these ISPs are complaining about. At some point SBC decided that the resale price for a DSL line to ISPs would be (surprise!) exactly the same as what they charged individual customers for basic DSL (with ISP) service at the same speed.
My ISP wasn't too happy about this, but they really died because they got "hosed" after they were bought out by a CLEC. Another ISP in the area, TexasNet, wasn't too happy about it either, but didn't get rid of DSL until SBC decided that it would remove one mode of billing, I think the one that let SBC pass the charges through to the ISP (the other being having the charges go onto the customer's phone bill).
These days I get my DSL through SBC, fast and reliable but expensive (6Mbit), thanks to being near a Remote Terminal. I depend on them for nothing but a pipe, and have made a point of ignoring their stupid SBC/Yahoo nonsense. In fact, the only ISP service I can't and don't do myself is NNTP.
Actually I thought this one other building was more interesting. It was like ten stories tall, and was barely big enough for one lecture hall per level, so that's exactly what they put in it.
A different year's MacWorld Expo had an appearance by Stephen Hawking, and was well worth the effort.
A trip I took some years before that was a week in London. One place I made a point of going to was Fencurch Station, because of the mention in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Another place was the 200 block of Baker Street, where I was amused to find a computer store selling Apple gear. If I went now, I'd add Mornington Crescent to that list. But really, the coolest place of all during that trip was the British Museum, where I got to see the Rosetta Stone.
Another place worth seeing if you're in the area is the Infomart in Dallas. The escalators are freaky, because after you get to the top, you have to cross three feet of glass floor. Not fun if you're acrophobic.
Knowing Sony, they're probably going to be those crippled (as in no power supply wires) iLink ports. I can't tell from the linked pictures. If so, you can forget about using Firewire to charge an iPod, or using a bus-powered hard drive.
Sure, but they have your e-mail address and know that you're a 34 year old woman from Indonesia who makes $75,000-$100,000 a year. Er, uh, wait a minute. Your e-mail address is what? "lkjweq@akl.asb"? Never mind.
I'm old enough that I dropped a lot of quarters into Spy Hunter back in my college days. One day I was driving down the highway and had a momentary urge to drive into the back of a Coca Cola truck. (To get the oil slick, I'm sure.) Unfortunately it didn't want to put its ramp down for me. Damn those red trucks!
You could probably use a Mac video card in a PC, but (apparently) not the other way around.
Anyone who thinks that "at least one subscriber in a zip code" is a good metric has never seen the zip code map of west Texas.
Mine's running 10.2.6, and I caught it with the drive spun down just the other day. I do miss having a control strip item to spin down the drive on command, but in my experience, 9.x was a lot more likely to keep the drive spun up than 7.1 was on my old PB145.
Most mac powerbooks never need to have their internal emergency fans kick on, even while crunching hard core mathematical benchmarks on warm days.
There are normally only two times that the fan in my Powerbook comes on. First, when I set it on an insulating surface, like on the bed. Second, when I'm doing something that makes use of features in the video chip, like 3D games, or sometimes DVD or DivX playback. You're right that warm days have an effect, though.
This is where I found the main problem with moving sidewalks in general: they can only go straight. I had to walk all the freaking way from the terminal area to the connecting area, and out to the other terminal area. That sucked.
For those who don't know, the terminals at DFW are semicircles. That time I had to go from a high C terminal to a mid A. I guess I should've taken the train, but I didn't realize just how far away it was!
Here's the really cool (and tricky) part: then you put the motors inside the platforms themselves. Then you don't need miles long rubber belts that can wear out. Just replace them with concrete floors. And to keep people from falling out, add walls. If you add a roof, you can operate them outside, even when it's raining! And for more capacity (to make up for having the seats in the first place), you can use more than one platform stacked together.
I think it would look something like this.
P.S. they didn't say social engineering was against the rules, did they?
2) ???
3) PROFIT!
I also have several of the black cables stashed away. For those of you who don't know, the black cables are the ones with oldskool 5-pin DIN connectors on the end for old AT motherboards. Yes, I still use an AT motherboard, for my ISA card EPROM burner which is only supported under DOS. (And the crazy part is that Fry's still sells 'em!)
Plus there is a mini model-M for those with limited desk space. The only drawback is that most minis I've found don't have removable key caps like the full size units have.
So while it's normally a plus that Model M keyboards (and I wuv mine all, even the one with a dead left shift key) don't have the evil Winderz keys, it's a minus when you get the bright idea to use one with a KVM switch to hook up all your Macs and PCs to one display.
I understand that fax receive is supported? Now if only there was a way to leave a getty process running that would detect a modem login vs an incoming fax, and especially if it could do a PPP session, then I'd have one more reason to ditch Linux.
And I might mention that Windows 2000 is actually NT 5.0, while XP is NT 5.1. It's only a ".#" release and Microsoft is charging money for it? Heresy!
And if this money isn't trackable, the Internal/Inland Revenue people are going to be very interested in finding out why. Al Capone wasn't done in by the G-men (FBI), he was done in by the T-men (IRS).
Yes, folks, get ready for Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom!