Well, assuming that home automation worked right, with minimal overhead, I could see use where an X-Term or some other controlling terminal is mounted near the equipment, like in a laundry room, so different specific controls could be set for different kinds of wash loads, but it seems that it would be a bit excessive.
The only other way that such a complex system could seemingly be useful is if voice control matured to a point where you would want a central computer listening to what you said when you're in the house, to let you begin to preheat the oven, or to lower the temperature on the freezer if you're coming home with a large supply of food to put in it, etc, but beyond that, I'm not really sure.
I mean, not to sound like a complete luddite here, but do we really need remote control, through the internet of washers, dryers, toasters, ovens, and the like? I don't want some asshole figuring out how to exploit this little ROM attached to my oven, somehow tricking it into going into 'self-clean' mode, thereby getting really hot, using lots of energy, and possibly burning down my house if I'm not there to catch it. I don't want my washing machine turning on, or changing settings in the middle of the wash cycle, and I sure as hell don't want someone screwing with my Air Conditioner settings, living in a desert and all. So, if the real intent is for this to be controlled, via the internet then this is a bad idea.
If it was made for local control, this might not be such a problem, since a central regulating computer could work with it. However, if it's using a web server, this screams 'inefficient' for that kind of use, and would be much better using something along the lines of UPSd or even some kind of peek-poke method, like we used for IO address manipulation. Otherwise, it wouldn't even work very well for home automation.
So far, large enough portions of the public have wanted things like VCRs, PVRs, mp3 players, and CD copiers that I don't see why the technology industry has any reason to 'work together' with media. In fact, because of how media is distributed, through technologically savvy means, the media should, in theory, be more inclined to kiss ass to the tech people.
Tech leads to the development of more tech, while media seems to actively work against such. This is not a good deal.
I've managed to go through the first 22 years of my life without a cellphone. Yes, there would be a few times where it would be handy to have a phone, but I've never needed a phone for personal use.
For my job, my employer provides me with a phone, which largely stays unused. In fact, it's used primarily as a two-way pager, for text, and infrequently for calls. I think that I've reported car accidents more often than I've called for any other purpose, in fact.
Wanna learn to chill out? Ditch the phone, ditch the laptop, palm pilot, GPS, etc, and go just do something. Do something that doesn't require to make a big deal about doing it. Stuff like sitting in a park under a tree with a novel. You'll find your stress level and blood pressure will drop dramatically.
The thing to remember is that where I work at now, we don't resell anything, we use it for our internal system. The place before that, it was embedded, rather than a user-accessible system, so it was also therefore different.
Write to your senators. Write to your representative. Hell, write to your governors and state legislatures, just make it clear that you're not in favour of further restrictions on our rights.
For some reason, I'm beginning to think that this could signify a slow paradigm-shift in certain tech-savvy industries.
I worked for a telecommunications company that had started using NT 3.51/4.0 for embedded system work, because we were using off-the-shelf industrial servers, and at the time, Microsoft' Systems Architect for NT was gearing things toward being fairly decent as an embedded system. When the latter iteration of NT 4.0 and then 2000 came out, they had clearly changed their intent, and our product, to use a technical term, was "fucked". Ultimately, an investor with cold feet spelled the end of the company, but it was taking quite a long time to adapt to the new platform, and this was seen as a big problem.
We had trusted Microsoft to keep the platform stable for our uses, and they failed to do so. Had we had the source code to the OS, we could have potentially rewritten the parts that we needed to make things work, while still giving them their licensing fee for the newest product. We never (obviously) had the chance.
Now, I work for an organization that has to maintain a massive database, and while we bought the software that we use, we also received the source code, so we actively maintain our end. We and our vendor work to determine what changes we as an organization made, and sometimes these changes are rolled back into the next release or step of the product, if they're universally beneficial. Others aren't, and we simply have to go and check the new versions to make our changes. This approach works very well.
Even if 'open source' isn't the answer to everyones' problems, simply having the source at all can be very beneficial. Hopefully, more and more medium to large companies and organizations will realise this, and that this, rather than lawsuits, attacks, etc, will cause people to abandon Microsoft.
Yes, Microsoft's UI looks nice. Yes, Microsoft's UI's have looked nice since Windows Chicago Beta 1. The problem is that they don't do enough to the underlying structure to make the OS stable. My Slackware box, kludged together after the original install by upgrading without really following stuff out has had its shell in X running for about ninety days now without any problems. I have the Aqua-like themes for GTK and Sawfish running, and the thing is just sweet as can be in that regard.
I've never had Microsoft OSes, even 2000 or NT, remain up this long, when used as a userland machine.
*smile* I actually encourage Microsoft to continue to write new OSes, every year or two. This causes there to be no less than EIGHT 32bit Microsoft OSes actively in use, from those still running Windows 95 all the way through this new encantation, and with this much fragmentation, it'll only help to cause more and more strife, market confusion, broken 'standards', and non-upgrading by corporations and individuals, which has a significant chance of ultimately being what does Redmond in, rather than weak anti-trust enforcement and lack of acknowledgement by the community at large of the weaknesses of Microsoft's products (viruses, exploits, etc).
Assuming you're right, and the summary on the front page isn't, then my bad. Next time, I'll read the article a little more slowly, to avoid missing the important details.
I know that many people are probably going "WTF?!" at this, but I can see how she's justified. Anyone providing a service, especially a paid-in-advance service, should be required to actually maintain their services properly. If this doesn't happen, and it causes damages, I belive that the problem should be sorted out legally.
The woman might not be entitled to $65,000, but if she is working right now, she may be easily entitled to the differences between her current job's pay and the new one, for a court-determined period of time (like, a year, or maybe even two or three if it is determined that this amount of time will be required to get back 'on track'.
Here is Paul Wiegert's information on Cruithne, which has much of the same characteristic as this current space body, but his explanation actually makes sense for what appears to be a horseshoe orbit, when in reality it's only a horseshoe orbit from Earth's perspective, and is relatively sane looking when viewed off of the solar system plane.
...especially for a public announcement. I remember a while ago Microsoft was touting their big thing with how their clustering was going to out-do anything opensource with a few months, yet more and more large corporations, and not simply startups or new, tech-savvy ones, are adopting Linux or some other form of open source instead. I hope this demonstrates a continuing shift away from poorly written server code to something more viable and of better spec.
Do you know how hard it is getting these days to find a decently modern PCI card for use in a multihead system? It's still possible to get fairly acceptable 2d cards for raw display, but anything 3d and you're generally screwed. This is why I'm looking forward to multiple AGP slots, not because of other devices that may make use of the slot (just look at the failure of VESA Local bus for that mistake), but for added video capabilities without having to resort to a lack-luster multihead card, an expensive as all hell multihead card *cough*MatroxParhelia*cough*, or a lackluster PCI card. I will be able to buy about $200 worth of video cards to get decent multihead performance. This, above all else, is what looks to be really cool...
Remember one thing before worrying too much about even someone simply jumping into such a body of water... Most human and human-symbiotic cells, like bacteria, etc, need a certain temperature to function. So, if a person jumped into the lake, shed some skin cells, some bacteria, etc, it probably would not have much of an effect, except to provide more food to that which has grown to survive the temperature.
Also, remember that people don't generally like diving into frigid water (regardless of what the polar-bear club people say), and would probably, if they even go in person, isolate themselves from the environment they're entering. I certainly would...
...at least from my perspective: I came from Slackware. I loved slackware, except that little part about keeping it updated. I still have slackware machines, and it's a headache, having to update 20 or so different libraries and utilities in order to go from Sawfish.38 to Sawfish 1.0.1. Debian doesn't remove the hand-configuration, but gives me an easy way to keep current.
Since when is adding entries to an HTML document so difficult, and since when is managing date-based sorting a problem?
I edit my weblog with nano. Granted, I also edit it live, which bothers people as a concept, but I ssh into my data area for my web site, "nano -w weblog.html", and type away. When a month's worth of entries are generated (on the calendar change) I roll the old weblog over to weblog-archive-year-month.html, and start a new weblog with a template for the headers, page formatting, etc, using cp. I then link the new weblog.html to the archive, link the archive to the new weblog.html, and add an entry to the archive list page. It takes ten minutes per month if I'm drunk off my ass and can't type.
I know that I'm not necessarily doing it the standard way, but HOW can one write a full sized book on weblogging?
Better yet, how can someone justify paying more than $0.50 for said book?
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes?"
"Right Away!"
"As you wish"
"Stop Touching Me!"
"Don't you have a kingdom to run?"
Sorry, I played a little too much Warcraft II when I was in high school...
Well, assuming that home automation worked right, with minimal overhead, I could see use where an X-Term or some other controlling terminal is mounted near the equipment, like in a laundry room, so different specific controls could be set for different kinds of wash loads, but it seems that it would be a bit excessive.
The only other way that such a complex system could seemingly be useful is if voice control matured to a point where you would want a central computer listening to what you said when you're in the house, to let you begin to preheat the oven, or to lower the temperature on the freezer if you're coming home with a large supply of food to put in it, etc, but beyond that, I'm not really sure.
"I have to worry about my TV exploding from the /. effect?"
Only if your VCR kicks out a tape and knocks you in the skull with it, like what happened to Arsenio Hall in "Amazon Women on the Moon"...
I mean, not to sound like a complete luddite here, but do we really need remote control, through the internet of washers, dryers, toasters, ovens, and the like? I don't want some asshole figuring out how to exploit this little ROM attached to my oven, somehow tricking it into going into 'self-clean' mode, thereby getting really hot, using lots of energy, and possibly burning down my house if I'm not there to catch it. I don't want my washing machine turning on, or changing settings in the middle of the wash cycle, and I sure as hell don't want someone screwing with my Air Conditioner settings, living in a desert and all. So, if the real intent is for this to be controlled, via the internet then this is a bad idea.
If it was made for local control, this might not be such a problem, since a central regulating computer could work with it. However, if it's using a web server, this screams 'inefficient' for that kind of use, and would be much better using something along the lines of UPSd or even some kind of peek-poke method, like we used for IO address manipulation. Otherwise, it wouldn't even work very well for home automation.
So far, large enough portions of the public have wanted things like VCRs, PVRs, mp3 players, and CD copiers that I don't see why the technology industry has any reason to 'work together' with media. In fact, because of how media is distributed, through technologically savvy means, the media should, in theory, be more inclined to kiss ass to the tech people.
Tech leads to the development of more tech, while media seems to actively work against such. This is not a good deal.
I've managed to go through the first 22 years of my life without a cellphone. Yes, there would be a few times where it would be handy to have a phone, but I've never needed a phone for personal use.
For my job, my employer provides me with a phone, which largely stays unused. In fact, it's used primarily as a two-way pager, for text, and infrequently for calls. I think that I've reported car accidents more often than I've called for any other purpose, in fact.
Wanna learn to chill out? Ditch the phone, ditch the laptop, palm pilot, GPS, etc, and go just do something. Do something that doesn't require to make a big deal about doing it. Stuff like sitting in a park under a tree with a novel. You'll find your stress level and blood pressure will drop dramatically.
... when I change the track on my laserdisc player, my computer detects a UPSd call, and shuts down my fileserver...
... and we slashdot them straight out of existence.
You'd need to ask Microsoft about that one.
The thing to remember is that where I work at now, we don't resell anything, we use it for our internal system. The place before that, it was embedded, rather than a user-accessible system, so it was also therefore different.
We already slashdotted the Department of Justice, the other day, with this story...
Write to your senators. Write to your representative. Hell, write to your governors and state legislatures, just make it clear that you're not in favour of further restrictions on our rights.
Senators can be found here:
U.S. Senate Home
Representatives can be found here:
Representative Member Directory
If you do this, you have some form of say in our government, or at least a chance at influence. Don't waste it.
For some reason, I'm beginning to think that this could signify a slow paradigm-shift in certain tech-savvy industries.
I worked for a telecommunications company that had started using NT 3.51/4.0 for embedded system work, because we were using off-the-shelf industrial servers, and at the time, Microsoft' Systems Architect for NT was gearing things toward being fairly decent as an embedded system. When the latter iteration of NT 4.0 and then 2000 came out, they had clearly changed their intent, and our product, to use a technical term, was "fucked". Ultimately, an investor with cold feet spelled the end of the company, but it was taking quite a long time to adapt to the new platform, and this was seen as a big problem.
We had trusted Microsoft to keep the platform stable for our uses, and they failed to do so. Had we had the source code to the OS, we could have potentially rewritten the parts that we needed to make things work, while still giving them their licensing fee for the newest product. We never (obviously) had the chance.
Now, I work for an organization that has to maintain a massive database, and while we bought the software that we use, we also received the source code, so we actively maintain our end. We and our vendor work to determine what changes we as an organization made, and sometimes these changes are rolled back into the next release or step of the product, if they're universally beneficial. Others aren't, and we simply have to go and check the new versions to make our changes. This approach works very well.
Even if 'open source' isn't the answer to everyones' problems, simply having the source at all can be very beneficial. Hopefully, more and more medium to large companies and organizations will realise this, and that this, rather than lawsuits, attacks, etc, will cause people to abandon Microsoft.
Yes, Microsoft's UI looks nice. Yes, Microsoft's UI's have looked nice since Windows Chicago Beta 1. The problem is that they don't do enough to the underlying structure to make the OS stable. My Slackware box, kludged together after the original install by upgrading without really following stuff out has had its shell in X running for about ninety days now without any problems. I have the Aqua-like themes for GTK and Sawfish running, and the thing is just sweet as can be in that regard.
I've never had Microsoft OSes, even 2000 or NT, remain up this long, when used as a userland machine.
*smile* I actually encourage Microsoft to continue to write new OSes, every year or two. This causes there to be no less than EIGHT 32bit Microsoft OSes actively in use, from those still running Windows 95 all the way through this new encantation, and with this much fragmentation, it'll only help to cause more and more strife, market confusion, broken 'standards', and non-upgrading by corporations and individuals, which has a significant chance of ultimately being what does Redmond in, rather than weak anti-trust enforcement and lack of acknowledgement by the community at large of the weaknesses of Microsoft's products (viruses, exploits, etc).
Assuming you're right, and the summary on the front page isn't, then my bad. Next time, I'll read the article a little more slowly, to avoid missing the important details.
I know that many people are probably going "WTF?!" at this, but I can see how she's justified. Anyone providing a service, especially a paid-in-advance service, should be required to actually maintain their services properly. If this doesn't happen, and it causes damages, I belive that the problem should be sorted out legally.
The woman might not be entitled to $65,000, but if she is working right now, she may be easily entitled to the differences between her current job's pay and the new one, for a court-determined period of time (like, a year, or maybe even two or three if it is determined that this amount of time will be required to get back 'on track'.
just my two cents...
Is that 'bling' part of the URL the sound of a webhost bill post-slashdot effect?
nah. Your Athlon will burn up the mechanism too quickly.
It's Pres. Scroob (which is, nearly, Brooks backward).
for taking no time to look it up, I think I did all right...
King of the Druids: "One... Two... Three... Four... Five."
Dark Helmet: "That sounds like the combination an idiot would have on his luggage!"
<snip>
President Scrooge: "One two three four five? I can't believe it! I have the same combination on my luggage!"
Here is Paul Wiegert's information on Cruithne, which has much of the same characteristic as this current space body, but his explanation actually makes sense for what appears to be a horseshoe orbit, when in reality it's only a horseshoe orbit from Earth's perspective, and is relatively sane looking when viewed off of the solar system plane.
...especially for a public announcement. I remember a while ago Microsoft was touting their big thing with how their clustering was going to out-do anything opensource with a few months, yet more and more large corporations, and not simply startups or new, tech-savvy ones, are adopting Linux or some other form of open source instead. I hope this demonstrates a continuing shift away from poorly written server code to something more viable and of better spec.
Do you know how hard it is getting these days to find a decently modern PCI card for use in a multihead system? It's still possible to get fairly acceptable 2d cards for raw display, but anything 3d and you're generally screwed. This is why I'm looking forward to multiple AGP slots, not because of other devices that may make use of the slot (just look at the failure of VESA Local bus for that mistake), but for added video capabilities without having to resort to a lack-luster multihead card, an expensive as all hell multihead card *cough*MatroxParhelia*cough*, or a lackluster PCI card. I will be able to buy about $200 worth of video cards to get decent multihead performance. This, above all else, is what looks to be really cool...
Remember one thing before worrying too much about even someone simply jumping into such a body of water... Most human and human-symbiotic cells, like bacteria, etc, need a certain temperature to function. So, if a person jumped into the lake, shed some skin cells, some bacteria, etc, it probably would not have much of an effect, except to provide more food to that which has grown to survive the temperature.
Also, remember that people don't generally like diving into frigid water (regardless of what the polar-bear club people say), and would probably, if they even go in person, isolate themselves from the environment they're entering. I certainly would...
...at least from my perspective: I came from Slackware. I loved slackware, except that little part about keeping it updated. I still have slackware machines, and it's a headache, having to update 20 or so different libraries and utilities in order to go from Sawfish .38 to Sawfish 1.0.1. Debian doesn't remove the hand-configuration, but gives me an easy way to keep current.
Since when is adding entries to an HTML document so difficult, and since when is managing date-based sorting a problem?
I edit my weblog with nano. Granted, I also edit it live, which bothers people as a concept, but I ssh into my data area for my web site, "nano -w weblog.html", and type away. When a month's worth of entries are generated (on the calendar change) I roll the old weblog over to weblog-archive-year-month.html, and start a new weblog with a template for the headers, page formatting, etc, using cp. I then link the new weblog.html to the archive, link the archive to the new weblog.html, and add an entry to the archive list page. It takes ten minutes per month if I'm drunk off my ass and can't type.
I know that I'm not necessarily doing it the standard way, but HOW can one write a full sized book on weblogging?
Better yet, how can someone justify paying more than $0.50 for said book?