At least they picked the right motherboard... specifically the ASUS P4B533 series which is the best on the planet right now for a DDR mobo. Rock solid stable and an overclocker's dream all at the same time. I've got machines using the ASUS P4TE and P4B266 and now wish I'd waited a couple more months and held out for the P4B533 and P4T533. Oh well, at least I've gotten a few good months of service out of my machines before they became obsolete:-)
Aviation: Instrument Approach Fixes Humor
on
Hacking the Highways
·
· Score: 3, Funny
In the world of aviation, even the FAA has some humor. For instance on the GPS 16 approach into Portsmouth NH, the Instrument Approach Fixes (IAF's, points defined in airspace for an instrument flight path to a runway) are named ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TATT and the missed approach is named IDEED.
On the ILS 18 approach into Lebanon NH, the fixes are named HAMMM, BURGER and FRYYS
This product definitely bears a notable price tag, but then you get what you pay for too. I especially like the way they express the requirements to get authenticated:
I've got a P3V4X that's never once crashed on me in over two years of hard use, and I'm overclocking a slot-1 P-III/600 coppermine to 800MHz with it (huge Alpha HSF keeping the cpu cool).
Just upgraded this weekend to a shiny new P4T-E and 1.6a OC'd to FSB133 and 2.13GHz, rock solid stable and running cool at 1.5v:-).
ASUS mobos definitely earn their #1 ranking, though I can't agree with the review only giving genuine Intel mobos only a 5.5 on performance. Every Intel mobo I've seen runs equally as fast as it's ASUS counterpart when at stock clocking speeds.
That's right - Experimental Aircraft Association. The EAA is to small aircraft what the open source movement is to computers. Basically they're all about design & built it yourself aircraft. There's a lot of political opposition trying to take away the freedom to build and fly your own machines, and the EAA is a strong voice to help us preserve that freedom.
Case in point: That stupid moron kid who stole the Cessna 172 and crashed it into a bank in Florida. All he accomplished was broke out a few windows, destroyed a beautiful little airplane, caused a media circus.... and raised the overall IQ of the human race slightly when he removed himself from the gene pool.
Small airplanes pose less risk to the public than cars and motorcycles do. They can't carry much more weight that the pilot and passenegers or can do much damage to anything.. a car can inflict much greater collision damage due to its weight, and Timothy McVeigh proved to the world that a rental truck can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction. A small airplane (an aluminum one anyway) is basically made of thick "Reynolds Wrap" aluminum foil. It crumples to bits when it hits anything. Large airliners are a genuine risk because of their massive weight and the enormous amount of fuel they carry. We all know about that now:-(
All the wear, pitting, and erosion that Pioneer 10 has sustained are probably over now. The asteroid belt and the severe conditions of Jupiter have already been experienced. Now, Pioneer is in the vacuum of space where the average spatial density of molecules is one trillionth the density of the best vacuum we can draw on Earth. We expect Pioneer to last an indeterminate period of time, probably outlasting its home planet, the Earth. In 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant, expand, envelop the orbit of the Earth, and consume it. Pioneer will still be out there in interstellar space. Erosional processes in the interstellar environment are largely unknown, but are very likely less efficient than erosion within the solar system, where a characteristic erosion rate, due largely to micrometeoritic pitting, is of the order of 1 Angstrom/yr. Thus a plate etched to a depth ~ 0.01 cm should survive recognizable at least to as distance ~ 10 parsecs, and most probably to 100 parsecs. Accordingly, Pioneer 10 and any etched metal message aboard it are likely to survive for much longer periods than any of the works of Man on Earth.
Read that last sentence again. Pioneer 10 is likely to become one of the longest lasting things that mankind has ever created. Think deeply.... that is one heavy-duty accomplishment. We should leave it out there just for that reason.
The amount of ammonium hydroxide needed would be pretyt small. Heck, it's still used in propane powered refrigerators for camping trailers and RV's. I had a 35' camping trailer just a few years ago that had one, so not *all* adsorption refrigerators are out of production... just ones for standard in-home use. The amount of gasoline you carry onboard in the fuel tank poses a vastly greater safety hazard.
Why not simply use an adsorption type "refrigeration" (ammonium hydroxide & water) system to cool the air/fuel intake charge to make it more dense and get some more efficiency out of the internal combustion engine? The waste heat going out the exhaust and radiator could run the adsorption-cycle cooling system.
I predict that in the long run, there will end up being only main three families of processor chips. Intel, SPARC, and POWER. The rest will fade into obscurity.
Anybody ever stop to think that maybe if MS is allowed to continue their usual behavior without punishment, that it won't be long until the rest of the market (the joe sixpacks who don't read/.) eventually get tired enough of them that a real demand for alternatives will begin grow and help fuel a rebound in the econmomy for software development?
I have actually paid for three different copies myself (6.1, 6.3, 7.1) and felt like I got a good deal just due to the convenience of getting all the cdroms and books.
I too am about to replace Exchange/Outlook with Domino/Notes for a ~500 user network. I really wanted to use Linux servers, so that I can get some more life out of the Compaq Proliants I already have, but alas... there is NO ANTIVIRUS software (like GroupShield) in existance for Domino-on-Linux, so I'm going to deploy it on an RS6000 running AIX.
b) Inertia -- "this has always worked before, and I don't like change"
Businesses are about to suddenly be rudely awakened to the fact that even if they stick with a pure Microsoft platform, they are going to be forced to change anyway, because MS is not making any money off existing installed Windows, they need to keep on selling over and over and over to the same customers.... They've now adopted a trend in most upgrades to their products that tie it to a forced upgrade of another as well. MS shops might think you only need to upgrade an application, but you'll end up have to upgrade the client operating systems, the server operating systems, and then re-buy all their CALs (client access licenses) too. Case in point: Suppose you're an MS Exchange shop and you've been running 5.0 for a few years because the bean counters said you have to get 5-7 years out of the expensive email system you bought only just a few years ago. The current product is Exchange 2000, but it will only run on Windows 2000 Server, not NT4, which is your shop's core NOS. So that means you have to upgrade (1) your server O/S PLUS (2) your Exchange server software PLUS (3) all your Exchange CALs PLUS (4) all your NT4 CALs upgrade to W2K Server CALs PLUS (5) if you want to use the new kerb-based authentication you have to upgrade the workstation O/S as well... in essence you have to repurchase your entire NOS infrastructure software just to upgrade your email software!!!. Talk about tying products together.....and you may ask,"If the Exch 5.0 system is still working fine and doing the job you need, why upgrade?", well if you want antivirus protection in the MS Exchange system (and nowadays, that is an *absolute MUST-HAVE*), you'll find that the main antivirus vendors have announced end-of-life of their support for Exch 5.0 Server already, with plans real soon now to end-of-life their support for 5.5 already announced. This is premature forced obsolescence of existing products , and is not only being done my MS, but others as well. All these corporate MS installations are going to have to change one way or another, and with the threat of BSA audits crammed down their throats, you'd be surprised just how many CIOs have had enough of feeding the perpetually hungry MS marketing monster. Once apon a time not too long ago, you used to be able to get 5-10 years of service life out of an expensive IT infrastructure investment. Nowadays, you're being forced to buy it all over again every 18-24 months and even the bean counters all over corporate America who were the biggest fans of MS software are sick of it too, especially now that the economy has taken a downturn. Linux and free open source stuff is much more appearing to them, especially since they've also learned the hard way that "vendor-supported turnkey apps" are a farce, that they can no longer get adequate support from the vendors they bought the stuff from a couple years ago... if those vendors are even still in business anymore. It is once again making sense to keep some development staff in house, since you don't have to worry so much that Programmer Joe that works for you will write a mission critical app, then bail out and leave you in a heartbeat to take another job at some dot-com outfit. Management knows that IT jobs are getting harder to find and they are once again willing to trust they'll be able to retain adequate in-house programming staff. That's what I've seen unfold in this business over the past 10-12 months anyway.
That's funny.... I, and most folks in my particular line of work (sysadmins who work for various state and local govts) consider MS to be the toy operating systems, at best they are "consumer-grade", not "commercial-grade" due to the lack of stability, arbitrary and capricious "upgrades" and dubious bugfixes that tend to wreak havoc with already installed apps, forced premature obsolescence... and an exhasperating void where security should be present.
I used to think AIX was a lame flavor of Unix... until after I'd been the sysadmin for 5 years for a govt organization that runs a mixture of AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, *BSD, and NT. I used to prefer Solaris, but now AIX is my favorite. It's the most stable by far, and performance is top notch for the hardware it runs upon. True, it's got its quirks and wierdnesses, but they all do. You just get used to them over time. The AIX LVM/JFS and memory management is the finest of all.
Brain Wave is one of my all time favorite classic sci-fi tales, right up there with Alfred Bester's The Stars, My Destination. The concept of an intelligence-dampening field floating thru space was such a truly mind-blowing concept for a story.
Slashdot Mirror
At least they picked the right motherboard... specifically the ASUS P4B533 series which is the best on the planet right now for a DDR mobo. Rock solid stable and an overclocker's dream all at the same time. I've got machines using the ASUS P4TE and P4B266 and now wish I'd waited a couple more months and held out for the P4B533 and P4T533. Oh well, at least I've gotten a few good months of service out of my machines before they became obsolete :-)
In the world of aviation, even the FAA has some humor. For instance on the GPS 16 approach into Portsmouth NH, the Instrument Approach Fixes (IAF's, points defined in airspace for an instrument flight path to a runway) are named ITAWT ITAWA PUDYE TATT and the missed approach is named IDEED.
On the ILS 18 approach into Lebanon NH, the fixes are named HAMMM, BURGER and FRYYS
I have 100% microsoft OS on my webserver, and it never crashes either. Funny how these things work... :)
I have a 100% Microsoft OS on one of my servers at work too, and it never crashes either.... it hangs!
There's a difference you know.
This product definitely bears a notable price tag, but then you get what you pay for too. I especially like the way they express the requirements to get authenticated:
#1) you have to have something... and
#2) you have to know something
I've got a P3V4X that's never once crashed on me in over two years of hard use, and I'm overclocking a slot-1 P-III/600 coppermine to 800MHz with it (huge Alpha HSF keeping the cpu cool).
:-).
Just upgraded this weekend to a shiny new P4T-E and 1.6a OC'd to FSB133 and 2.13GHz, rock solid stable and running cool at 1.5v
ASUS mobos definitely earn their #1 ranking, though I can't agree with the review only giving genuine Intel mobos only a 5.5 on performance. Every Intel mobo I've seen runs equally as fast as it's ASUS counterpart when at stock clocking speeds.
That's right - Experimental Aircraft Association. The EAA is to small aircraft what the open source movement is to computers. Basically they're all about design & built it yourself aircraft. There's a lot of political opposition trying to take away the freedom to build and fly your own machines, and the EAA is a strong voice to help us preserve that freedom.
Case in point: That stupid moron kid who stole the Cessna 172 and crashed it into a bank in Florida. All he accomplished was broke out a few windows, destroyed a beautiful little airplane, caused a media circus.... and raised the overall IQ of the human race slightly when he removed himself from the gene pool.
:-(
Small airplanes pose less risk to the public than cars and motorcycles do. They can't carry much more weight that the pilot and passenegers or can do much damage to anything.. a car can inflict much greater collision damage due to its weight, and Timothy McVeigh proved to the world that a rental truck can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction. A small airplane (an aluminum one anyway) is basically made of thick "Reynolds Wrap" aluminum foil. It crumples to bits when it hits anything. Large airliners are a genuine risk because of their massive weight and the enormous amount of fuel they carry. We all know about that now
All the wear, pitting, and erosion that Pioneer 10 has sustained are probably over now. The asteroid belt and the severe conditions of Jupiter have already been experienced. Now, Pioneer is in the vacuum of space where the average spatial density of molecules is one trillionth the density of the best vacuum we can draw on Earth. We expect Pioneer to last an indeterminate period of time, probably outlasting its home planet, the Earth. In 5 billion years, the Sun will become a red giant, expand, envelop the orbit of the Earth, and consume it. Pioneer will still be out there in interstellar space. Erosional processes in the interstellar environment are largely unknown, but are very likely less efficient than erosion within the solar system, where a characteristic erosion rate, due largely to micrometeoritic pitting, is of the order of 1 Angstrom/yr. Thus a plate etched to a depth ~ 0.01 cm should survive recognizable at least to as distance ~ 10 parsecs, and most probably to 100 parsecs. Accordingly, Pioneer 10 and any etched metal message aboard it are likely to survive for much longer periods than any of the works of Man on Earth.
Read that last sentence again. Pioneer 10 is likely to become one of the longest lasting things that mankind has ever created. Think deeply.... that is one heavy-duty accomplishment. We should leave it out there just for that reason.
Nope, that one was #1697, let's see if this one crosses the 1700 mark.....
will this story make in the hall of fame?
Maybe.... It's about to pass 1700 responses posted as I post this one.
The number of replies posted to this story is about to pass 1700. Is that a Slashdot record?
The amount of ammonium hydroxide needed would be pretyt small. Heck, it's still used in propane powered refrigerators for camping trailers and RV's. I had a 35' camping trailer just a few years ago that had one, so not *all* adsorption refrigerators are out of production... just ones for standard in-home use. The amount of gasoline you carry onboard in the fuel tank poses a vastly greater safety hazard.
Why not simply use an adsorption type "refrigeration" (ammonium hydroxide & water) system to cool the air/fuel intake charge to make it more dense and get some more efficiency out of the internal combustion engine? The waste heat going out the exhaust and radiator could run the adsorption-cycle cooling system.
I predict that in the long run, there will end up being only main three families of processor chips. Intel, SPARC, and POWER. The rest will fade into obscurity.
It's just a furthur example of poor continuity.
Someone should mod the parent up to "Insightful".
That's the one ;-D
Anybody ever stop to think that maybe if MS is allowed to continue their usual behavior without punishment, that it won't be long until the rest of the market (the joe sixpacks who don't read /.) eventually get tired enough of them that a real demand for alternatives will begin grow and help fuel a rebound in the econmomy for software development?
...industry organizations would be immune from antitrust prosecution.
WTF? So that's the crux of what they really want to get out of this.
I have actually paid for three different copies myself (6.1, 6.3, 7.1) and felt like I got a good deal just due to the convenience of getting all the cdroms and books.
I too am about to replace Exchange/Outlook with Domino/Notes for a ~500 user network. I really wanted to use Linux servers, so that I can get some more life out of the Compaq Proliants I already have, but alas... there is NO ANTIVIRUS software (like GroupShield) in existance for Domino-on-Linux, so I'm going to deploy it on an RS6000 running AIX.
b) Inertia -- "this has always worked before, and I don't like change"
Businesses are about to suddenly be rudely awakened to the fact that even if they stick with a pure Microsoft platform, they are going to be forced to change anyway, because MS is not making any money off existing installed Windows, they need to keep on selling over and over and over to the same customers.... They've now adopted a trend in most upgrades to their products that tie it to a forced upgrade of another as well. MS shops might think you only need to upgrade an application, but you'll end up have to upgrade the client operating systems, the server operating systems, and then re-buy all their CALs (client access licenses) too. Case in point: Suppose you're an MS Exchange shop and you've been running 5.0 for a few years because the bean counters said you have to get 5-7 years out of the expensive email system you bought only just a few years ago. The current product is Exchange 2000, but it will only run on Windows 2000 Server, not NT4, which is your shop's core NOS. So that means you have to upgrade (1) your server O/S PLUS (2) your Exchange server software PLUS (3) all your Exchange CALs PLUS (4) all your NT4 CALs upgrade to W2K Server CALs PLUS (5) if you want to use the new kerb-based authentication you have to upgrade the workstation O/S as well... in essence you have to repurchase your entire NOS infrastructure software just to upgrade your email software!!!. Talk about tying products together.....and you may ask,"If the Exch 5.0 system is still working fine and doing the job you need, why upgrade?", well if you want antivirus protection in the MS Exchange system (and nowadays, that is an *absolute MUST-HAVE*), you'll find that the main antivirus vendors have announced end-of-life of their support for Exch 5.0 Server already, with plans real soon now to end-of-life their support for 5.5 already announced. This is premature forced obsolescence of existing products , and is not only being done my MS, but others as well. All these corporate MS installations are going to have to change one way or another, and with the threat of BSA audits crammed down their throats, you'd be surprised just how many CIOs have had enough of feeding the perpetually hungry MS marketing monster. Once apon a time not too long ago, you used to be able to get 5-10 years of service life out of an expensive IT infrastructure investment. Nowadays, you're being forced to buy it all over again every 18-24 months and even the bean counters all over corporate America who were the biggest fans of MS software are sick of it too, especially now that the economy has taken a downturn. Linux and free open source stuff is much more appearing to them, especially since they've also learned the hard way that "vendor-supported turnkey apps" are a farce, that they can no longer get adequate support from the vendors they bought the stuff from a couple years ago... if those vendors are even still in business anymore. It is once again making sense to keep some development staff in house, since you don't have to worry so much that Programmer Joe that works for you will write a mission critical app, then bail out and leave you in a heartbeat to take another job at some dot-com outfit. Management knows that IT jobs are getting harder to find and they are once again willing to trust they'll be able to retain adequate in-house programming staff. That's what I've seen unfold in this business over the past 10-12 months anyway.
That's funny.... I, and most folks in my particular line of work (sysadmins who work for various state and local govts) consider MS to be the toy operating systems, at best they are "consumer-grade", not "commercial-grade" due to the lack of stability, arbitrary and capricious "upgrades" and dubious bugfixes that tend to wreak havoc with already installed apps, forced premature obsolescence... and an exhasperating void where security should be present.
I used to think AIX was a lame flavor of Unix... until after I'd been the sysadmin for 5 years for a govt organization that runs a mixture of AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, *BSD, and NT. I used to prefer Solaris, but now AIX is my favorite. It's the most stable by far, and performance is top notch for the hardware it runs upon. True, it's got its quirks and wierdnesses, but they all do. You just get used to them over time. The AIX LVM/JFS and memory management is the finest of all.
Brain Wave is one of my all time favorite classic sci-fi tales, right up there with Alfred Bester's The Stars, My Destination. The concept of an intelligence-dampening field floating thru space was such a truly mind-blowing concept for a story.
a old osborne,
Cool, one of my former co-workers still has an original Osborne that boots and runs.