I don't know... if an empty PlayStation 2 Original Box And Receipt can go for $425, Microsoft's math might just work. How many units can you get if you want the media and key as well?
How is Palladium a problem for you, unless you want to pirate copyrighted media?
I'm not worried about MP3's... I don't need a 4ghz CPU for that (grin). I am worried about my old software and stuff I create working, however. My legit Office 97 still works fine for me. Think Microsoft will sign that app so it runs on x64 version of Windows Palladium? How about half-life mods? (or Starcraft II whenever it happens)
How about my legit Windows 98SE, stripped down to a lean mean gaming OS? Maybe it will still work on the new hardware, perhaps not. The fact that I worry about it means my cash will stay in my wallet until my fears are put to rest. That means I WON'T be shelling out mad cash for the Palladium kits when they hit the market. That's AMD's Opteron to put a face on what I am talking about. As a side note, the CPU id was one of the straws that got me to switch to the Athlon.
As for media - I just don't buy or listen to that much music or movies. I could really give a rat's ass about what corruption they do to keep their precious out of the evil copyright violators. Mess with my hardware, its personal....
If you have a palladium processor and palladium motherboard, hard drive whatever, you arent going to be limited to a palladium enabled OS, you just wont be able to use the benefits of a palladium trusted environment.
True... but I voted with my wallet when Intel added the ID to the CPU. I'll do the same this time too. I know if all my options are 'palladium' only for a bit, I'll spend the cash on other hardware components and wait for the market to 'correct' the problem. I may not get a choice, but as one of those early market adapters that spend more than they should I won't make the jump for the first cut... The current generation of CPU's will have a couple years faithful service in front of them.
The second year of our marriage, my bride looked at our one bedroom 'compartment' and strongly suggested I buy one system rather than have four or five boxes cluttered around my desk. As I dug through the cool scraps in the lockheed martin surplus store, I found my one box - a Sun 180 - complete with an eight foot tall 19" chassis for $25. The SCSI hard drives were stripped, but I paid cash and conned a coworker to help me lug the thing home. (oh, did I ever get into trouble for that one) I've racked all my gear since...
Today, it does actually house something with a sparc processor.... my sunblade's 500mhz UltraSPARC-IIe is a wee bit more useful than a 68020@16,67 Mhz is hidden in the bowels of the beast. Even my AMD workstations don't need a 1000 watt power supply. (grin) The look on peoples face is priceless when they walk into my office!
Re:subject site contains malicious spyware
on
Star Wars Origami
·
· Score: 2
The subject site tries to install the GATOR spyware program. I would recommend nobody go there.
Must be an IE only thing (snicker)... Mozilla works just fine and won't try to install the activex gator plug-ins - I with I knew that before I forwarded the link, however. Poor form on the webmaster's site.
Off topic for the CORBA reference? Tough crowd! I added some background information rather than just say I provided a data feed from a PBM system to something a physician would use. Consider the form it was posted in...
Anyhow, I suspect you missed the point. The article implied this kit is targeted for physicians rather than pharmacists. World according to me this is a bad idea because..
Physicians tend to be a wee bit technophobic. Even if the system rocked, it would be pearls to the swine. Good luck getting them to use it. I don't think most would type their prescription, much less use a robotic picker.
Pharmacist are the safety net to make sure one last check is made before a drug is dispenced. If this kit was for them, they have more time to spend making sure there are no drug-drug interaction problems and dealing with the patient. Alas, it is not...
We are saying the same thing... better go for another cup of coffee.
Granted, it was a sweeping generalization. I've had the pleasure to work with many MD's who showed me the Zen of statistics and coding tools to deal with drudgery. They are defiantly the expectation to the rule, however. The bitterness comes with knowing a desktop was given to many physicians and never even turned on.
I'd be real careful about buying 'chemistry' kits these days. If the war on drugs does not send the suits to your door, I'm sure the war on terror will.
Brewing - wine and beer are a good start. A fair amount of chemistry (and biology) involved when you think about it. Taking the alcohol content above 15% or so lets you play with even more toys.
Best college experience was making moonshine from captain crunch in the dorms. A bit of enzymes to convert the starch to sugar, let bubble, then we pulled out the still. Nothing like a mass spectrometer to assure you don't go blind....
This seems like a great idea, until I read the line - "Doctors type prescriptions into a pharmacy computer system and the orders send the robot into action." This implies a physician (or health care provider if you prefer a more derogatory term the insurance world uses) will actually use technology.... Not just a computer, but a handheld, tablet PC, something with a browser... the chances are slim to none with most of the baby boomers out there.
My first real world experience with CORBA was connecting a Cobol program on a mainframe to a Java application. The Java app would then shoot drug interaction and formulary data to be used by the Physician's winCE handheld. As a former biochemist that spent a serious amount of time working with MD/PhD's in a hospital, the app seemed like a killer idea - response time was fast, the data was secure, and the information was personalized. Then they tried to get them to use the thing. I understand 'you can lead a horse to water' on a whole new level.
Anyhow, there is the human factor as well. It is hard to beat a well designed smart system, but I like the idea of requiring two humans - one to order the drug, another to confirm. The physician spends a surprisingly little amount of time in the real sciences compared to a pharmacist. Different skill set (filtered on what I consider real science). As a side note, pharmacists were pretty good with technology - since they were using Power Builder thick clients and later web interfaces to deal with co-pays, adjudication, interaction warnings, etc.
Counting pills is not hard. Knowing that pill x with pill y scores you a role on the potion miscibility chart is priceless. A real easy fix to "has to read doctor's handwriting" problem? Get them to type the bloody prescription. Wait that would require them to use some funky software ranging from a typewriter to a computer thing...
nah... too hard.
Had this been a toolkit for a pharmacist, it would really take off.
US developers still have benefits over Indian ones. They're closer, easier to communicate with.
This is a very big deal. In order to use a remote team - in this case off shore developers - the business users have to actually document what they want and get it right the first time out. Solid requirements... I've seen this type of development succeed only a handful of times, most projects produce something between what they asked for (not to be confused with what they wanted) to catastrophic failure. Come to think of it, it has been a while for requirements too. Anyhow, the short of it is most business users will rather pay US rates so they don't have to do the groundwork required to move stuff over seas. Not to say they don't give it a try once or twice first...
One of my favorites was working with a business user who thought they needed complete creative latitude / absolute control. We went round and round about address and phone number validation. What is valid? (555) 555-1234, SOMENUMBER (alpha characters that map to digits), or extensions? A few months later the call came in on how to handle the UK customer's phone number.
Be careful at the graduation ceremony - I bet the Microserfs will be there waiting to assimilate you into the Collective...:)
Or waiting with the BSA to do an audit...
(stroking cat and adjusting monocle) I see you are no longer a student as of Thursday. Your 'navi' reported in and informed us you are no longer in compliance. The upgrade to your $10 office/xp/vs will cost you dearly and we want to check for MP3's while we are auditing - or you can buy this 'universal' subscription and renew it every couple years for only a couple thousand.
To me, it's no more "ultimate" than the White House Dog Cam, which I also did not visit.
whitehouse.com or whitehouse.gov? I suspect $50 may be a bit much for a 'dog cam', but who knows?
Amazing how much pay for pr0n these days..
Re:Okay ... a few things that really bug me here .
on
The End of Solotrek
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Look at the design, how the hell could you use this for defense?
Not a big fan of jump jets on your mecha? (kidding, kidding.. *grin* )
It is pure research. Never a bad thing. Had this been a 'show me a profit this quarter' deal, I'm sure it never would have left the ground. DARPA is one of the few places left to foot the bill for things that may be nothing more than a stepping stone for the next big thing.
I suspect it is a lot like flying a helecopter... it takes a long time before the machine goes where you think. A bit of PIC time and improved stability, there would be time to aim. Not sure what you would fire, but anyhow...
Easy for you, ever since The Bandsaw Incident. The rest of us use a digital standard that goes up to nine or ten (depending on whether you do C or Fortran).
I noticed a dozen others posted about the mini-itx - that will teach me to sit on a post for a while (grin).
Anyhow, correct - not AMD or Intel, but close it is x86 - close enough for me. I tried a bit of underclocking with some AMD chips and got very close to fanless... but in the end the heat was still too much for what I could deal with in the space.
The 533mhz C3 chip can play DVD's, but you really have to scrub the OS to get it to work well - playing from the ram / hard drive with the CSS removed helps significantly. I originally intended to just use it as an MP3 for my car, but I did give it a whirl. Even still, I'm going with a hardware mpeg converter card for my project box if it comes in the house and ends up in my home theater.... or pawn it off to my parents and get something with a faster cpu. Its just on the cusp of 'fast enough'.
Cost and availability are the biggest things. I was lurking the transmeta, amd, intel, and via sites looking for a low power x86 CPU that would not cost me as much as a strongarm solution. Looking at the other responses, the transmeta kit looks DOA.
"...it's now 2002 and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power. And don't even get started on desktop CPU comparison..."
Point 1: Er, *NOW* you're going to worry about your electric bill? Last I checked, the Crusoe 5xxx series didn't even require CPU fans.
I picked up a mini-itx board with a 533mhz fanless last spring for under $100USD shipped.
It included LAN, sound, USB, video (vga, svideo, and rca), serial, printer, ps/2 mouse and keyboard, standard ATX power supply, and a PCI port. As a bonus, it uses dirt cheap PC-133 sdram as well.
Did I mention it only uses 2.8 watts? Availavle months ago?
Now that is hardware I can screw around with. Car PC, box for playing DVD's in the house, random controllers that can use a serial port (wicked grin). If I want to spend a grand on some hardware kit, I have to ask my wife or sneak it in part by part...
But seriously, they're not going to give him diddly. Things are frequently never made "right," esp. when the criminal justice system is involved.
The courts or Adobe might never give him anything, but in my little world this guy has 'rock star' status. Not worth a lot of cash, mind you, but I suspect I am not alone.
I don't care so much what the major* is. I do care she (in my case) is a solid student and can stand on her own two feet when she is done. Like the parent post, she is being groomed for college as well as life in general.
Paying for college is a tricky thing. My wife and I both paid our own way through school without any parental help while we were (mostly) single. A couple minor grants here and there, but I had to work, as did she. Not a four year plan, but did it with honors. I had friends who were given tuition, room and board, cars, etc... and they squandered it. So yes, I am saving - I call it my 'Porsche' fund, though I suspect 'LearJet' might be closer the way tuition continues to climb. She can opt to ignore school.... but I'm taking the tax hit to make sure I'll be the one squandering it.
(*) I am cynical about majors, knowing now how little the actual degree means in the real world. I wish I had done a Math major rather than BioChem & MicroBiology. A solid Music program - other than the cost of tuition - does not scare me.
What I don't want is for this Gateway/Windows thing to become sentient, because then we would have a world dominated by an evil Master who numbed out our creative impulses, tortured us with relentless conformity, and controlled all political and economic traffic
The machines always turn on their creator, usually after wiping out a limited set of innocent civilians and scientists. The glass is really half full on this one...
There are tons out out of work sysadmins. Give them books, let them take the bar exam and proceed to become a prosecutor. Everyone wins.
God no! The last thing I want is the same folks who horked up our network doing things that might have more impact than a mail server.
I almost blew coffee through my nose when I saw the gnu/* trying to be explained... They should have known better when the prosecutors asked what a GUI was...
Somewhere in that there was some coverage of Jon having three OSen installed (FreeBSD, GNU/Linux and Windows), during which the prosecutor got confused by Jon referring to "GNU/Linux", rather than "Linux" per se; and appeared to be confused about how one computer can have more than one O/S (or, at least, there was a confusion which appeared to be about dual boot).
Slashdot Mirror
$1.1B in Microsoft products
What's that... a few hundred boxes of MS Office?
I don't know... if an empty PlayStation 2 Original Box And Receipt can go for $425, Microsoft's math might just work. How many units can you get if you want the media and key as well?
How is Palladium a problem for you, unless you want to pirate copyrighted media?
I'm not worried about MP3's... I don't need a 4ghz CPU for that (grin). I am worried about my old software and stuff I create working, however. My legit Office 97 still works fine for me. Think Microsoft will sign that app so it runs on x64 version of Windows Palladium? How about half-life mods? (or Starcraft II whenever it happens)
How about my legit Windows 98SE, stripped down to a lean mean gaming OS? Maybe it will still work on the new hardware, perhaps not. The fact that I worry about it means my cash will stay in my wallet until my fears are put to rest. That means I WON'T be shelling out mad cash for the Palladium kits when they hit the market. That's AMD's Opteron to put a face on what I am talking about. As a side note, the CPU id was one of the straws that got me to switch to the Athlon.
As for media - I just don't buy or listen to that much music or movies. I could really give a rat's ass about what corruption they do to keep their precious out of the evil copyright violators. Mess with my hardware, its personal....
If you have a palladium processor and palladium motherboard, hard drive whatever, you arent going to be limited to a palladium enabled OS, you just wont be able to use the benefits of a palladium trusted environment.
True... but I voted with my wallet when Intel added the ID to the CPU. I'll do the same this time too. I know if all my options are 'palladium' only for a bit, I'll spend the cash on other hardware components and wait for the market to 'correct' the problem. I may not get a choice, but as one of those early market adapters that spend more than they should I won't make the jump for the first cut... The current generation of CPU's will have a couple years faithful service in front of them.
Ah, classic computing...
The second year of our marriage, my bride looked at our one bedroom 'compartment' and strongly suggested I buy one system rather than have four or five boxes cluttered around my desk. As I dug through the cool scraps in the lockheed martin surplus store, I found my one box - a Sun 180 - complete with an eight foot tall 19" chassis for $25. The SCSI hard drives were stripped, but I paid cash and conned a coworker to help me lug the thing home. (oh, did I ever get into trouble for that one) I've racked all my gear since...
Today, it does actually house something with a sparc processor.... my sunblade's 500mhz UltraSPARC-IIe is a wee bit more useful than a 68020@16,67 Mhz is hidden in the bowels of the beast. Even my AMD workstations don't need a 1000 watt power supply. (grin) The look on peoples face is priceless when they walk into my office!
The subject site tries to install the GATOR spyware program. I would recommend nobody go there.
Must be an IE only thing (snicker)... Mozilla works just fine and won't try to install the activex gator plug-ins - I with I knew that before I forwarded the link, however. Poor form on the webmaster's site.
Anyhow, I suspect you missed the point. The article implied this kit is targeted for physicians rather than pharmacists. World according to me this is a bad idea because..
Physicians tend to be a wee bit technophobic. Even if the system rocked, it would be pearls to the swine. Good luck getting them to use it. I don't think most would type their prescription, much less use a robotic picker.
Pharmacist are the safety net to make sure one last check is made before a drug is dispenced. If this kit was for them, they have more time to spend making sure there are no drug-drug interaction problems and dealing with the patient. Alas, it is not...
We are saying the same thing... better go for another cup of coffee.
Granted, it was a sweeping generalization. I've had the pleasure to work with many MD's who showed me the Zen of statistics and coding tools to deal with drudgery. They are defiantly the expectation to the rule, however. The bitterness comes with knowing a desktop was given to many physicians and never even turned on.
I suspect this will improve over time too.
I'd be real careful about buying 'chemistry' kits these days. If the war on drugs does not send the suits to your door, I'm sure the war on terror will.
Brewing - wine and beer are a good start. A fair amount of chemistry (and biology) involved when you think about it. Taking the alcohol content above 15% or so lets you play with even more toys.
Best college experience was making moonshine from captain crunch in the dorms. A bit of enzymes to convert the starch to sugar, let bubble, then we pulled out the still. Nothing like a mass spectrometer to assure you don't go blind....
Anyone notice he took a photo of his checkbook on his photos?
Notice they are just deposit slips... no check blanks? Must be married
(/me ducking bride when she sees my post)
This seems like a great idea, until I read the line - "Doctors type prescriptions into a pharmacy computer system and the orders send the robot into action." This implies a physician (or health care provider if you prefer a more derogatory term the insurance world uses) will actually use technology.... Not just a computer, but a handheld, tablet PC, something with a browser... the chances are slim to none with most of the baby boomers out there.
My first real world experience with CORBA was connecting a Cobol program on a mainframe to a Java application. The Java app would then shoot drug interaction and formulary data to be used by the Physician's winCE handheld. As a former biochemist that spent a serious amount of time working with MD/PhD's in a hospital, the app seemed like a killer idea - response time was fast, the data was secure, and the information was personalized. Then they tried to get them to use the thing. I understand 'you can lead a horse to water' on a whole new level.
Anyhow, there is the human factor as well. It is hard to beat a well designed smart system, but I like the idea of requiring two humans - one to order the drug, another to confirm. The physician spends a surprisingly little amount of time in the real sciences compared to a pharmacist. Different skill set (filtered on what I consider real science). As a side note, pharmacists were pretty good with technology - since they were using Power Builder thick clients and later web interfaces to deal with co-pays, adjudication, interaction warnings, etc.
Counting pills is not hard. Knowing that pill x with pill y scores you a role on the potion miscibility chart is priceless. A real easy fix to "has to read doctor's handwriting" problem? Get them to type the bloody prescription. Wait that would require them to use some funky software ranging from a typewriter to a computer thing...
nah... too hard.
Had this been a toolkit for a pharmacist, it would really take off.
I thought the PC port was pretty solid. My controller was the real prob... oh, wait... nevermind (grin)
US developers still have benefits over Indian ones. They're closer, easier to communicate with.
This is a very big deal. In order to use a remote team - in this case off shore developers - the business users have to actually document what they want and get it right the first time out. Solid requirements... I've seen this type of development succeed only a handful of times, most projects produce something between what they asked for (not to be confused with what they wanted) to catastrophic failure. Come to think of it, it has been a while for requirements too. Anyhow, the short of it is most business users will rather pay US rates so they don't have to do the groundwork required to move stuff over seas. Not to say they don't give it a try once or twice first...
One of my favorites was working with a business user who thought they needed complete creative latitude / absolute control. We went round and round about address and phone number validation. What is valid? (555) 555-1234, SOMENUMBER (alpha characters that map to digits), or extensions? A few months later the call came in on how to handle the UK customer's phone number.
Be careful at the graduation ceremony - I bet the Microserfs will be there waiting to assimilate you into the Collective... :)
Or waiting with the BSA to do an audit...
(stroking cat and adjusting monocle) I see you are no longer a student as of Thursday. Your 'navi' reported in and informed us you are no longer in compliance. The upgrade to your $10 office/xp/vs will cost you dearly and we want to check for MP3's while we are auditing - or you can buy this 'universal' subscription and renew it every couple years for only a couple thousand.
Everyone did read the fine print, right?
To me, it's no more "ultimate" than the White House Dog Cam, which I also did not visit.
whitehouse.com or whitehouse.gov? I suspect $50 may be a bit much for a 'dog cam', but who knows?
Amazing how much pay for pr0n these days..
Look at the design, how the hell could you use this for defense?
Not a big fan of jump jets on your mecha? (kidding, kidding.. *grin* )
It is pure research. Never a bad thing. Had this been a 'show me a profit this quarter' deal, I'm sure it never would have left the ground. DARPA is one of the few places left to foot the bill for things that may be nothing more than a stepping stone for the next big thing.
I suspect it is a lot like flying a helecopter... it takes a long time before the machine goes where you think. A bit of PIC time and improved stability, there would be time to aim. Not sure what you would fire, but anyhow...
Easy for you, ever since The Bandsaw Incident. The rest of us use a digital standard that goes up to nine or ten (depending on whether you do C or Fortran).
Mine goes all the way to 11
I noticed a dozen others posted about the mini-itx - that will teach me to sit on a post for a while (grin).
Anyhow, correct - not AMD or Intel, but close it is x86 - close enough for me. I tried a bit of underclocking with some AMD chips and got very close to fanless... but in the end the heat was still too much for what I could deal with in the space.
The 533mhz C3 chip can play DVD's, but you really have to scrub the OS to get it to work well - playing from the ram / hard drive with the CSS removed helps significantly. I originally intended to just use it as an MP3 for my car, but I did give it a whirl. Even still, I'm going with a hardware mpeg converter card for my project box if it comes in the house and ends up in my home theater.... or pawn it off to my parents and get something with a faster cpu. Its just on the cusp of 'fast enough'.
Cost and availability are the biggest things. I was lurking the transmeta, amd, intel, and via sites looking for a low power x86 CPU that would not cost me as much as a strongarm solution. Looking at the other responses, the transmeta kit looks DOA.
What happens when the RIAA has sued all of their customers, retailers, and distributors?
I hear the MPAA has money....
"...it's now 2002 and mobile Intel and AMD chips are faster and use less power. And don't even get started on desktop CPU comparison..."
Point 1:
Er, *NOW* you're going to worry about your electric bill? Last I checked, the Crusoe 5xxx series didn't even require CPU fans.
I picked up a mini-itx board with a 533mhz fanless last spring for under $100USD shipped.
It included LAN, sound, USB, video (vga, svideo, and rca), serial, printer, ps/2 mouse and keyboard, standard ATX power supply, and a PCI port. As a bonus, it uses dirt cheap PC-133 sdram as well.
Did I mention it only uses 2.8 watts? Availavle months ago?
Now that is hardware I can screw around with. Car PC, box for playing DVD's in the house, random controllers that can use a serial port (wicked grin). If I want to spend a grand on some hardware kit, I have to ask my wife or sneak it in part by part...
How to you address them when it came down to "Nobody gets fired for using windows?"
With a pink slip when the audit rolls around?
But seriously, they're not going to give him diddly. Things are frequently never made "right," esp. when the criminal justice system is involved.
The courts or Adobe might never give him anything, but in my little world this guy has 'rock star' status. Not worth a lot of cash, mind you, but I suspect I am not alone.
I don't care so much what the major* is. I do care she (in my case) is a solid student and can stand on her own two feet when she is done. Like the parent post, she is being groomed for college as well as life in general.
Paying for college is a tricky thing. My wife and I both paid our own way through school without any parental help while we were (mostly) single. A couple minor grants here and there, but I had to work, as did she. Not a four year plan, but did it with honors. I had friends who were given tuition, room and board, cars, etc... and they squandered it. So yes, I am saving - I call it my 'Porsche' fund, though I suspect 'LearJet' might be closer the way tuition continues to climb. She can opt to ignore school.... but I'm taking the tax hit to make sure I'll be the one squandering it.
(*) I am cynical about majors, knowing now how little the actual degree means in the real world. I wish I had done a Math major rather than BioChem & MicroBiology. A solid Music program - other than the cost of tuition - does not scare me.
What if he wants to be an artist? Why shouldn't he be a doctor?
Your son is not your property.
I agree - the child is not my property. The tuition funds ARE, however. That should be the first 'real world' lession...
What I don't want is for this Gateway/Windows thing to become sentient, because then we would have a world dominated by an evil Master who numbed out our creative impulses, tortured us with relentless conformity, and controlled all political and economic traffic
The machines always turn on their creator, usually after wiping out a limited set of innocent civilians and scientists. The glass is really half full on this one...
There are tons out out of work sysadmins. Give them books, let them take the bar exam and proceed to become a prosecutor. Everyone wins.
God no! The last thing I want is the same folks who horked up our network doing things that might have more impact than a mail server.
I almost blew coffee through my nose when I saw the gnu/* trying to be explained... They should have known better when the prosecutors asked what a GUI was...
Somewhere in that there was some coverage of Jon having three OSen
installed (FreeBSD, GNU/Linux and Windows), during which the prosecutor
got confused by Jon referring to "GNU/Linux", rather than "Linux" per
se; and appeared to be confused about how one computer can have more
than one O/S (or, at least, there was a confusion which appeared to be
about dual boot).