The one about the crazy geek that ported Linux to run on that piece of home electronics that was never intended to run Linux. That's a keeper.
And that other one about that crazy geek that modified his computer case for no reason other than it looked cool. I'll be telling that story to my grandkids.
Those phone numbers are 17 years old. You could prank them if you want, but a white pages would be just as good.
Them: Hello? You: Someone who worked in that office in 1985 posted to usenet about the Y2K bug! Them: So? You: Ummmm...Is your refrigerator running? Them: *click*
"Hey, at least they aren't rolling out METERED BANDWIDTH pricing... at least yet..."
Metered bandwidth has been mentioned for a long time. It makes sense. You pay for electricity and water that way and it works great. You want to use more, you pay more. You want to save money, you conserve. The problem with metering is the fact that it would make people furious when they downloaded X-10's latest "illegally tape naked girls without their consent" pop-up ads. Those ads are bad enough, but when they cost you money I think people will openly revolt. I've gotten two telemarketer calls on my cell phone during the day and I was pissed. They would have to figure out a way to differentiate content you asked for and unsolicited content that wouldn't count towards your fees. Then 8 minutes later a 10K software program blocks all the content you aren't being charged for. Then 8 minutes after that, the remaining ad revenue supported sites go under.
Instead of yelling at you for leaving the front door open, your dad could yell at you for leaving the firewall open. "I'm not paying to serve warez to the whole neighborhood, you know."
Is Comcast really AT&T? I'm moving to Atlanta next week and Comcast said they don't offer service there and AT&T does. I guess that would make sense that they wouldn't compete against each other. But wouldn't the Comcast rep have told me, "You'll need to contact our AT&T partner"?
The parent poster went out of his way to say that IA64 was his choice in the "long term" and didn't mention Itanium once. He was talking about instruction set design, and you rebut with specific CPU implementation. Yes, Itanium is a giant monster of a CPU that will probably fail on most levels. But don't judge an instruction set based on the first implementation out of the gate. They'll get a lot better at it in the near future. The Pentium Pro was a big disaster (not a new instruction set, but new core). The engineers learned from that experience and came back with some damn fine chips.
Are you comparing DEC's Alpha marketing effort to Intel's marketing? DEC couldn't market donuts to cops. Intel has convinced millions of people that "MMX technology" meant a damn thing and that the P4 will make "the internet" go faster.
A lot of people don't even know what brand of computer they own, even though that's printed on the front. But they know the CPU inside that they've never seen is made by Intel. That's good branding.
"...now that win 2K is stable enough that that most people don't need to upgrade ever again."
I don't know about the "ever again" part, but I agree is that W2k pro is by far and away the best OS that MS has produced so far. That's why I found it very interesting that Dell (and I assume other retailers) have been forbidden from offering 2k on home systems since March. XP is now the only OS they'll sell you. Hmmmm...I wonder why?
Intentionally blinding people or building a weapon designed to blind people is against a treaty the US ratified way back in 1999. They're saying this weapon is designed to destroy vehicles, but also happens to blind people nearby. My first thought was, "It's a weapon, weapons are supposed to hurt people. So what." Then I started thinking about a) We're building a multi-billion dollar next generation strike aircraft that blinds people? That's not very impressive. And then b) If we're advertising ourselves as the Good Guys, maybe we shouldn't be finding loopholes in international treaties. But at least it's better than completely ignoring the treaty like we're doing for Star Wars.
The whole point of the ACLU is to provide legal defense for unpopular speech. The fact that you felt strongly enough about that to donate money, and then stopped donating when they defended NAMBLA doesn't make sense to me. I completely agree with the ACLU's defense of the Nazis in Skokie, and my family is Jewish. To consider yourself a real civil libertarian, I think you have to support ALL free speech ("Fire" not withstanding). As soon as you draw a line for yourself saying "I support free speech, but those guys at NAMBLA are too repulsive" then you're making a distinction of speech based on taste. And if you're willing to make that distinction for yourself, then by extension you are supporting that distinction by the government. And once the government gets to make free speech decisions based on popularity or taste, we're all screwed.
I know this is sort of off-topic and I don't mean to call you out personaly, but I'm a very big supporter of the ACLU and you're post sort of struck me.
They didn't even have to make up that business plan. The mob has been doing it for years, except they call it "Protection Money" instead of "Maintainence Plan".
*thinking of Simpsons* Bill Gates: Buy em out, boys.
I was actually looking at the Civic Hybrid yesterday. It has a real back seat and a real trunk, things that other hybrids have not had. My girlfriend really wanted a Civic Hybrid, but will probably end up buying a Civic EX this week because the Hybrid just costs too much. The MSRP on the web site says $19,500, but the ones on the lot were all above 21k. The 2002 Civic EXs were in the 17s and low 18s. Using the gas cost calculator on Honda's own web site says that the Hybrid will only save her $400-$500 over 5 years against the EX (32/37 mpg). You also get a $2000 tax write off for buying a low emmisions vehicle, but that doesn't cover much of the price difference.
So as it stands, you have to pay something like $2000 just for the priveledge of buying a hybrid car. Unless they can offer more compelling reasons, they're not going to sell a lot of hybrids.
By all accounts, Google became profitable very quickly and has remained profitable for a couple years now.
Re:M.I.N.U.M.A.M. ??
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Besides the aweful acronym, we already have a weapons system called the Minuteman. It would be a damn shame if some top brass ordered a test of these robots and launched our ICBMs instead.
Are you kidding? The original X-Wing was so amazingly better than TIE Fighter. You flew for the good side, and (resisting urge to hit caps lock) you got to fly the trench run. THE TRENCH RUN! (sorry). When you drop that torpedo into the port, it is just the coolest thing ever. The original SW sit down video game had a trench run that was pretty excellent, but the graphics where green lines, which isn't too immersive. TIE Fighter was good. Rogue Squadrod had it's moments. But due almost entirely to the trench run, X-Wing will always be one of my favorite games.
That was called Superman Lives and was supposed to be the movie that followed his death in the comic book. There isn't much of anything on IMDB, but this is what I remember about the project. Nick Cage was signed up to be the new supe. Kevin Smith was paid $300k to write a script, which he cranked out in three weeks and had Superman fighting Braniac (Smith has been a comic book geek for a lot longer than a movie geek). Tim Burton signed up to direct, but on the condition that they throw away Kevin Smith's script. After that, the project completely disappeared. I'm pretty sure the producer was Joel Silver. I just looked at his IMDB list and it's possible that Superman Lives got canned after Matrix hit big and he realized that he could start his own big franchise instead of rehashing an existing (and basically dead) one.
What I don't get is how MSFT is using thier monopoly in the IM arena when an inch above it says, "AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market." Only on Slashdot can MSFT have a monopoly in a market segment that they're a distant second in.
We use a program at work where you pass it street address, city, and state, and it will return 5+4 ZIP and timezone. People write in Zip codes wrong all the time, but rarely make a mistake on city or state. I would bet that this kind of software is very common.
Every animal on Earth, ourselves included, have been evolving for millions of years with only one real constant, gravity. The land has changed, the air has changed, but that 1g has been present for every ancestor we've had. Moving to a low or no g environment is something our bodies were never designed for. It's like using anything well outside of it's design specs, the bad possibilities are going to outweight the good possibilities by a big margain.
Yes, dance music and vinyl are always entwined because of how dance music is DJed. Yes, dance music is much more popular in Europe than here in the states. Yes, vinyl sales are up over the last 5 years.
Now the bad part: Vinyl sales are down 90% from 1989 and probably much more from 1979, but I can't find good numbers pre-1989.
If you were to walk in to any major chain store in the US and ask where they kept the LPs, they would look at you like you were from another planet.
"Now what are you going to make the one at the other end out of..."
The same stuff that the original is made out of...carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, iron...
I have absolutely no idea HOW you could do this, but there's nothing special about the basic ingredients that we're all made of. I have read before that the chemicals in our bodies are worth about 6 bucks on the open market.
"...where are the 1.21 gigawatts needed to do it going to come from"
Either lightning hitting the old clock tower or the wall outlet.
Slashdot Mirror
The one about the crazy geek that ported Linux to run on that piece of home electronics that was never intended to run Linux. That's a keeper.
And that other one about that crazy geek that modified his computer case for no reason other than it looked cool. I'll be telling that story to my grandkids.
-B
Those phone numbers are 17 years old. You could prank them if you want, but a white pages would be just as good.
Them: Hello?
You: Someone who worked in that office in 1985 posted to usenet about the Y2K bug!
Them: So?
You: Ummmm...Is your refrigerator running?
Them: *click*
-B
"Hey, at least they aren't rolling out METERED BANDWIDTH pricing ... at least yet..."
Metered bandwidth has been mentioned for a long time. It makes sense. You pay for electricity and water that way and it works great. You want to use more, you pay more. You want to save money, you conserve. The problem with metering is the fact that it would make people furious when they downloaded X-10's latest "illegally tape naked girls without their consent" pop-up ads. Those ads are bad enough, but when they cost you money I think people will openly revolt. I've gotten two telemarketer calls on my cell phone during the day and I was pissed. They would have to figure out a way to differentiate content you asked for and unsolicited content that wouldn't count towards your fees. Then 8 minutes later a 10K software program blocks all the content you aren't being charged for. Then 8 minutes after that, the remaining ad revenue supported sites go under.
Instead of yelling at you for leaving the front door open, your dad could yell at you for leaving the firewall open. "I'm not paying to serve warez to the whole neighborhood, you know."
-B
Is Comcast really AT&T? I'm moving to Atlanta next week and Comcast said they don't offer service there and AT&T does. I guess that would make sense that they wouldn't compete against each other. But wouldn't the Comcast rep have told me, "You'll need to contact our AT&T partner"?
The parent poster went out of his way to say that IA64 was his choice in the "long term" and didn't mention Itanium once. He was talking about instruction set design, and you rebut with specific CPU implementation. Yes, Itanium is a giant monster of a CPU that will probably fail on most levels. But don't judge an instruction set based on the first implementation out of the gate. They'll get a lot better at it in the near future. The Pentium Pro was a big disaster (not a new instruction set, but new core). The engineers learned from that experience and came back with some damn fine chips.
-B
Are you comparing DEC's Alpha marketing effort to Intel's marketing? DEC couldn't market donuts to cops. Intel has convinced millions of people that "MMX technology" meant a damn thing and that the P4 will make "the internet" go faster.
A lot of people don't even know what brand of computer they own, even though that's printed on the front. But they know the CPU inside that they've never seen is made by Intel. That's good branding.
(BTW: I pretty much agree with you)
-B
"...now that win 2K is stable enough that that most people don't need to upgrade ever again."
I don't know about the "ever again" part, but I agree is that W2k pro is by far and away the best OS that MS has produced so far. That's why I found it very interesting that Dell (and I assume other retailers) have been forbidden from offering 2k on home systems since March. XP is now the only OS they'll sell you. Hmmmm...I wonder why?
-B
Intentionally blinding people or building a weapon designed to blind people is against a treaty the US ratified way back in 1999. They're saying this weapon is designed to destroy vehicles, but also happens to blind people nearby. My first thought was, "It's a weapon, weapons are supposed to hurt people. So what." Then I started thinking about a) We're building a multi-billion dollar next generation strike aircraft that blinds people? That's not very impressive. And then b) If we're advertising ourselves as the Good Guys, maybe we shouldn't be finding loopholes in international treaties. But at least it's better than completely ignoring the treaty like we're doing for Star Wars.
-B
The whole point of the ACLU is to provide legal defense for unpopular speech. The fact that you felt strongly enough about that to donate money, and then stopped donating when they defended NAMBLA doesn't make sense to me. I completely agree with the ACLU's defense of the Nazis in Skokie, and my family is Jewish. To consider yourself a real civil libertarian, I think you have to support ALL free speech ("Fire" not withstanding). As soon as you draw a line for yourself saying "I support free speech, but those guys at NAMBLA are too repulsive" then you're making a distinction of speech based on taste. And if you're willing to make that distinction for yourself, then by extension you are supporting that distinction by the government. And once the government gets to make free speech decisions based on popularity or taste, we're all screwed.
I know this is sort of off-topic and I don't mean to call you out personaly, but I'm a very big supporter of the ACLU and you're post sort of struck me.
-B
They didn't even have to make up that business plan. The mob has been doing it for years, except they call it "Protection Money" instead of "Maintainence Plan".
*thinking of Simpsons*
Bill Gates: Buy em out, boys.
-B
So it's not really Microsoft's security lapse, it's Hayes'? I guess it's a good thing they went out of business 5 years ago.
-B
Wordcom is a monopoly? Does AT&T know?
I was actually looking at the Civic Hybrid yesterday. It has a real back seat and a real trunk, things that other hybrids have not had. My girlfriend really wanted a Civic Hybrid, but will probably end up buying a Civic EX this week because the Hybrid just costs too much. The MSRP on the web site says $19,500, but the ones on the lot were all above 21k. The 2002 Civic EXs were in the 17s and low 18s. Using the gas cost calculator on Honda's own web site says that the Hybrid will only save her $400-$500 over 5 years against the EX (32/37 mpg). You also get a $2000 tax write off for buying a low emmisions vehicle, but that doesn't cover much of the price difference.
So as it stands, you have to pay something like $2000 just for the priveledge of buying a hybrid car. Unless they can offer more compelling reasons, they're not going to sell a lot of hybrids.
-B
By all accounts, Google became profitable very quickly and has remained profitable for a couple years now.
Besides the aweful acronym, we already have a weapons system called the Minuteman. It would be a damn shame if some top brass ordered a test of these robots and launched our ICBMs instead.
-B
Are you kidding? The original X-Wing was so amazingly better than TIE Fighter. You flew for the good side, and (resisting urge to hit caps lock) you got to fly the trench run. THE TRENCH RUN! (sorry). When you drop that torpedo into the port, it is just the coolest thing ever. The original SW sit down video game had a trench run that was pretty excellent, but the graphics where green lines, which isn't too immersive. TIE Fighter was good. Rogue Squadrod had it's moments. But due almost entirely to the trench run, X-Wing will always be one of my favorite games.
-B
That was called Superman Lives and was supposed to be the movie that followed his death in the comic book. There isn't much of anything on IMDB, but this is what I remember about the project. Nick Cage was signed up to be the new supe. Kevin Smith was paid $300k to write a script, which he cranked out in three weeks and had Superman fighting Braniac (Smith has been a comic book geek for a lot longer than a movie geek). Tim Burton signed up to direct, but on the condition that they throw away Kevin Smith's script. After that, the project completely disappeared. I'm pretty sure the producer was Joel Silver. I just looked at his IMDB list and it's possible that Superman Lives got canned after Matrix hit big and he realized that he could start his own big franchise instead of rehashing an existing (and basically dead) one.
-B
What I don't get is how MSFT is using thier monopoly in the IM arena when an inch above it says, "AOL is the undisputed leader in the IM market." Only on Slashdot can MSFT have a monopoly in a market segment that they're a distant second in.
We use a program at work where you pass it street address, city, and state, and it will return 5+4 ZIP and timezone. People write in Zip codes wrong all the time, but rarely make a mistake on city or state. I would bet that this kind of software is very common.
He has a custom built 1000 HP Ferrari. You don't see a lot of those parked outside of FermiLab.
That would make entirely too much sense.
Every animal on Earth, ourselves included, have been evolving for millions of years with only one real constant, gravity. The land has changed, the air has changed, but that 1g has been present for every ancestor we've had. Moving to a low or no g environment is something our bodies were never designed for. It's like using anything well outside of it's design specs, the bad possibilities are going to outweight the good possibilities by a big margain.
-B
addendum addendum:
How much does that cost a month?
Yes, dance music and vinyl are always entwined because of how dance music is DJed. Yes, dance music is much more popular in Europe than here in the states. Yes, vinyl sales are up over the last 5 years.
Now the bad part:
Vinyl sales are down 90% from 1989 and probably much more from 1979, but I can't find good numbers pre-1989.
If you were to walk in to any major chain store in the US and ask where they kept the LPs, they would look at you like you were from another planet.
-B
"Now what are you going to make the one at the other end out of..."
The same stuff that the original is made out of...carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, iron...
I have absolutely no idea HOW you could do this, but there's nothing special about the basic ingredients that we're all made of. I have read before that the chemicals in our bodies are worth about 6 bucks on the open market.
"...where are the 1.21 gigawatts needed to do it going to come from"
Either lightning hitting the old clock tower or the wall outlet.
-B