You forgot the most obvious reason Apple would do this at a loss:
If Johnny grows up using a Mac in school, what kind of computer/OS is he likely to purchase after school? What kind of computer is he going to convince mom and dad to buy, so it's compatible with the files he brings home from school?
Are you allowed to "burn" that methanol, or activate any heat-generating, chemical reacting devices?
From my experience, airlines are quick to panic about things that "sound" dangerous (and lately it's probably good to err on the side of conservatism). I guess however, that the market for these would be large enough that the manufacturers can lobby the airlines to prove their safety.
Who says it has to be the "only" power source in the laptop? Why couldn't you also have a Li-Ion battery and an AC charger as other power options, and swap as the need fits.
I'm sure that the airlines would have an issue with me using a methane-powered device on an airplane... so plug in the Li-Ion. Or, you run out of methane... plug in the AC and Li-Ion for recharging at the same time. It's just as easy as carrying around a spare battery like a lot of people do already.
Yes, $_ is what you're panicing about (the individual contents of the box called PANDORA).
I didn't include the "sub panic(arg){}", due to lack of sig space... didn't think it was necessary to get the point across.
q:]
Re:Man, where's the "%" key...?
on
Virtual Keyboard
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but it's not something I use often enough to touch type... To tell the truth I usually have to look at numbers themselves, or take a couple stabs at them and be quick on the backspace key (except 9 and 0, and maybe 3 and 4, which I have a better "hit" rate at because of #$() ). % was just an example.
I wonder what it would type if you lifted your hand to pick your nose...? q:] (just kidding!!!!)
MadCow.
Man, where's the "%" key...?
on
Virtual Keyboard
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Great... if you can FULLY touch-type. What about the other 99.995% of us that can't?
Sure, I can type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard... until I need to use some weird character that I don't use 400 times a day...
I guess you could roll out a printed keyboard to use if you had to... I can just see someone carring around a dirty napkin with a keyboard scrawled on it now... q:]
Reminds me of the part in Douglas Adams' HHGTTG about the planet where God left "his final message to his creation" (sorry, can't remember the name):
They were so concerned about the planetary mass erosion caused by countless tourists that you had to "get receipts" when you used the lavatory, and any difference between what you brought/took away was "surgically removed" from your body. q:]
Hope it wouldn't come to that, but in large enough scales, it definately would be a concern.
The Difference Engine was a book by Gibson AND Sterling... not just Gibson.
And, if you read it, I'm sure you'll agree that the style is actually much more Sterling than Gibson. I find Sterling much "dryer" than Gibson (in their descriptive terms), although also very interesting.
The Casino industry is probably the most advanced in the business of surveilence... the average Vegas casino probably approaches the scale you're talking about already, however they probably don't archive indefinately.
However, any information I've seen shows them to still be mostly analog capture for any storage, or at least digital-to-analog conversion for storage.
Although they probably won't talk about their security systems, they'd be a great resource.
>> 1. zipping a file compresses it but it is not a technology primarily designed to protect copyright.
Unless he uses the "password" option when compressing the file. This is standard in most ZIP programs these days. He could use a password that could be distributed separately, and not directly "said" to be the password.
>> Imagine if, instead of being locked down all day, the US prison population was educated. Classes all day, homework all night. Give them job skills.
Then I'd get my ass arrested to get a free education. Seriously. Why struggle to work while going to school, so you can pay the bills, when you could sit in jail for free and get a free education?
I completely understand that you don't have the money, time or resources to pursue these guys, but I hope you're not naieve enough to believe that negative feedback will really accomplish anything lasting!
Sure, it makes THAT user name fairly useless for further auctions, but it takes about 2 minutes to get another email address, and a new Ebay account to go with it. These people will simply move on to defraud the next guy.
Hey, it's not an easy situation, and I have no easy answers either, but if/when I'm defrauded, even for $5, I'll make sure to pursue as much action as I possibly can. $5 to you and me may be the world to the next guy he screws over.
However, these days, it might be as simple as mailing the guy an envelope of talcum powder. q:] (JUST A JOKE!!! Please do NOT DO THIS!!!)
I'll sell you and each of your friends a bridge that they can call their own for the meer sum of $25 each.
After I've defrauded you on this, you won't feel the need to pursue it personally, because after all it's only $25. This is great, because I can now go and defraud the next guy, and eventually become a millionaire.
The point is, "these losses weren't too important" just don't cut it. You have some sort of responsibility to ensure that these people don't f**k over other people too. If everyone just rolls over because it's too much hassle, they'll never stop because it's profitable.
Please, for OUR sake, do NOT forget about these types of things, and pursue them as hard as possible, no matter how trivial $25 or whatever seems to you.
>> Yeah, the security pundits will tell me 'you should be patching 10 secs after the patch comes out regardless of severity'
And you trust Microsoft patches explicitly? Did you learn nothing from "Windows NT Service Pack 1", and "Windows NT Service Pack 5"? When they release a patch, it sometimes causes more problems than it solves! (yes, these are much larger and more complicated than the general security update, but the point is the same).
Although I agree that securing known exploits is extremely important, you can sometimes be doing as much harm as good in the process. I don't want to patch a hole just to find out that my system now locks up 18 times a day due to incompatibility with driver X...
Having sample source code is a good way to evaluate the security risk for your specific situation, and determine if you need to blindly patch and hope, or if you can afford to wait a few days to see if there's any problem reports with the patch.
You're correct... on a single-processor machine. Seti@home is not multi-threaded (unless you're running the screen saver graphics too, which are on a separate thread).
It is using basically all of one processor's time, but none of the others. When my computer is "idling" with just Seti running, it's at exactly 50% CPU usage.
Thanks for the info... however I'm still interested how "high" of a clock speed the motherboard itself will support (multipliers, etc).
All Tyan lists is "supports two Athlon MP processors"... no frequency range, like most other motherboards out there. It'd be great if I can drop in two 4ghz processors next year when the next bloatware OS slows my system to a crawl!
However, back in the real world, I'm now ripping MP3's (at 12x speed+), running Seti@home at full speed (realtime priority, just for fun), surfing the web, and running Komodo/Mozilla, and still only running at 70% CPU usage... it's not like I need more power right now! q:]
1: "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a survey..."
you: "Sure, hold on a second, I'll be right back" (put phone next to stereo playing Cindi Lauper, for about an hour).
2: "May I speak to the man of the house?"
you: "Define 'man'..." (rant and rave about sexual discrimination until they hang up)
3: "I'd like to offer you a free..."
you: "Where is it made? Does it contain asbestos? Is it compatible with Linux? Were any animals harmed during it's manufacture? How much does it cost anyways? What do you mean free? Oh, sorry, I can't afford free."
4: "Hi, is this Mr. _____?"
you: "Sorry, he died this morning.... (boo hoo...)"
5: "We're going to be in your neighborhood..."
you: "Can you help me with something first... I gotta finish this math homework before I do anything else... What's the cube root of 42? How do you calculate the inverse tangent for triangle A?"
You get the point... it's amazing fun actually, you don't have to make any sense either! Annoy them enough, waste their time, they'll never call again, and be less apt to annoy your neighbors! If everyone used up their time, telemarketing would cease to be profitable, and would then stop happening!
It always happens... you jump in and build your dream system, and immediately it's out of date. Oh well, a duallie 1.2ghzMP isn't anything to laugh at! Glad to hear that the TigerMP supports the new chip speeds out of the box, anyone know how high it will go?
A few notes on the TigerMP though: VERY picky on RAM, very picky on how it's seated (read: install memory before board is in your case, so you can wedge it in on a flat surface!), but since getting past that, it's been ROCK solid! Beautiful system I must say!
I'm sure it's popped up already in your mind, but make sure that if they do sell the domain, that there's some sort of provision to provide a link to your "new" domain name (for at least 6 months), so that your customers can still find you.
I'd state a real-estate size (say, 30x300 pixels), placed at the TOP of the page, saying something like "Looking for Hillside Consultants? We've Moved to www.wearerichnow.com". This way, you don't annoy your existing customers that are accustomed to finding you at your old location.
I believe that by 'disc cam in cage', they mean some sort of gyro device. By spinning a mass (within a cage for safety), you can rotate the robot the other direction.
This type of device (although not a Lego one...) is used to orient many things in space, including the Hubble space telescope.
As for pushing off walls... you got me there. Anyone have photo links to this thing?
Actually, you can even use plain-old T-Birds in SMP configuration, quite successfully.
If you check out comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (I think), theres many people discussing this, and many are quite happy with their dual-T-Bird Tiger and Thunder setups.
Personally, I use the 1.2Ghz MP processors, because I would hope that they're "absolutely" stable, as required for the server sector (where they're aimed). For home use, I'm sure the non-MP processors are fine.
If they don't need real-time uploads, there's a lot of "cheap" consumer-level products that can create digital video of sufficient quality (between their current phone and real video).
Personally, I use a $200 Kodak camera (MC3) to shoot video while skydiving... it's not as good as a video camera, but more than enough for use in these situations. Going into the $500+ market, you'd get even better quality. (for samples, see: My Skydiving Weblog )
Sure, it'd be a pain to upload video manually after shooting, but you could still do it on your satellite phone, and it'd be better quality.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the most obvious reason Apple would do this at a loss:
If Johnny grows up using a Mac in school, what kind of computer/OS is he likely to purchase after school? What kind of computer is he going to convince mom and dad to buy, so it's compatible with the files he brings home from school?
MadCow.
Are you allowed to "burn" that methanol, or activate any heat-generating, chemical reacting devices?
From my experience, airlines are quick to panic about things that "sound" dangerous (and lately it's probably good to err on the side of conservatism). I guess however, that the market for these would be large enough that the manufacturers can lobby the airlines to prove their safety.
MadCow.
Who says it has to be the "only" power source in the laptop? Why couldn't you also have a Li-Ion battery and an AC charger as other power options, and swap as the need fits.
I'm sure that the airlines would have an issue with me using a methane-powered device on an airplane... so plug in the Li-Ion. Or, you run out of methane... plug in the AC and Li-Ion for recharging at the same time. It's just as easy as carrying around a spare battery like a lot of people do already.
MadCow.
Yes, $_ is what you're panicing about (the individual contents of the box called PANDORA).
I didn't include the "sub panic(arg){}", due to lack of sig space... didn't think it was necessary to get the point across.
q:]
Yeah, but it's not something I use often enough to touch type... To tell the truth I usually have to look at numbers themselves, or take a couple stabs at them and be quick on the backspace key (except 9 and 0, and maybe 3 and 4, which I have a better "hit" rate at because of #$() ). % was just an example.
I wonder what it would type if you lifted your hand to pick your nose...? q:] (just kidding!!!!)
MadCow.
Great... if you can FULLY touch-type. What about the other 99.995% of us that can't?
Sure, I can type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard... until I need to use some weird character that I don't use 400 times a day...
I guess you could roll out a printed keyboard to use if you had to... I can just see someone carring around a dirty napkin with a keyboard scrawled on it now... q:]
MadCow.
Reminds me of the part in Douglas Adams' HHGTTG about the planet where God left "his final message to his creation" (sorry, can't remember the name):
They were so concerned about the planetary mass erosion caused by countless tourists that you had to "get receipts" when you used the lavatory, and any difference between what you brought/took away was "surgically removed" from your body. q:]
Hope it wouldn't come to that, but in large enough scales, it definately would be a concern.
MadCow.
The only problem you'll really run into is trying to make it a boot drive. I don't know of any BIOS's that have "FireWire" as a boot option.
However, you may be able to use a Linux Boot Disk with the FireWire driver on it... it would take some work, but it may be possible.
Just a thought,
MadCow.
The Difference Engine was a book by Gibson AND Sterling... not just Gibson.
And, if you read it, I'm sure you'll agree that the style is actually much more Sterling than Gibson. I find Sterling much "dryer" than Gibson (in their descriptive terms), although also very interesting.
MadCow.
The Casino industry is probably the most advanced in the business of surveilence... the average Vegas casino probably approaches the scale you're talking about already, however they probably don't archive indefinately.
However, any information I've seen shows them to still be mostly analog capture for any storage, or at least digital-to-analog conversion for storage.
Although they probably won't talk about their security systems, they'd be a great resource.
MadCow.
Unless he uses the "password" option when compressing the file. This is standard in most ZIP programs these days. He could use a password that could be distributed separately, and not directly "said" to be the password.
MadCow.
Then I'd get my ass arrested to get a free education. Seriously. Why struggle to work while going to school, so you can pay the bills, when you could sit in jail for free and get a free education?
MadCow
Do you really want the security guard to see your huge hardon every day as you get scanned, because you have a thing for women with handcuffs?
Maybe you're homophobic, and the guard is looking a little too closely at your scans...
Really, that's TOO invasive for my tastes, no matter HOW you look at it.
You wanna know the detail is shows? Go look at the link he provided, there's images.
MadCow.
I completely understand that you don't have the money, time or resources to pursue these guys, but I hope you're not naieve enough to believe that negative feedback will really accomplish anything lasting!
Sure, it makes THAT user name fairly useless for further auctions, but it takes about 2 minutes to get another email address, and a new Ebay account to go with it. These people will simply move on to defraud the next guy.
Hey, it's not an easy situation, and I have no easy answers either, but if/when I'm defrauded, even for $5, I'll make sure to pursue as much action as I possibly can. $5 to you and me may be the world to the next guy he screws over.
However, these days, it might be as simple as mailing the guy an envelope of talcum powder. q:] (JUST A JOKE!!! Please do NOT DO THIS!!!)
MadCow.
I'll sell you and each of your friends a bridge that they can call their own for the meer sum of $25 each.
After I've defrauded you on this, you won't feel the need to pursue it personally, because after all it's only $25. This is great, because I can now go and defraud the next guy, and eventually become a millionaire.
The point is, "these losses weren't too important" just don't cut it. You have some sort of responsibility to ensure that these people don't f**k over other people too. If everyone just rolls over because it's too much hassle, they'll never stop because it's profitable.
Please, for OUR sake, do NOT forget about these types of things, and pursue them as hard as possible, no matter how trivial $25 or whatever seems to you.
Thanks,
MadCow.
And you trust Microsoft patches explicitly? Did you learn nothing from "Windows NT Service Pack 1", and "Windows NT Service Pack 5"? When they release a patch, it sometimes causes more problems than it solves! (yes, these are much larger and more complicated than the general security update, but the point is the same).
Although I agree that securing known exploits is extremely important, you can sometimes be doing as much harm as good in the process. I don't want to patch a hole just to find out that my system now locks up 18 times a day due to incompatibility with driver X...
Having sample source code is a good way to evaluate the security risk for your specific situation, and determine if you need to blindly patch and hope, or if you can afford to wait a few days to see if there's any problem reports with the patch.
Biased-ly yours,
MadCow.
So, what do they do for customers who aren't using an OS that Outlook is available for?
Not only are they forcing you to use Outlook, they're forcing you to use Windows. (I believe it's available for Mac too, yeah...).
MadCow.
You're correct... on a single-processor machine. Seti@home is not multi-threaded (unless you're running the screen saver graphics too, which are on a separate thread).
It is using basically all of one processor's time, but none of the others. When my computer is "idling" with just Seti running, it's at exactly 50% CPU usage.
MadCow.
Thanks for the info... however I'm still interested how "high" of a clock speed the motherboard itself will support (multipliers, etc).
All Tyan lists is "supports two Athlon MP processors"... no frequency range, like most other motherboards out there. It'd be great if I can drop in two 4ghz processors next year when the next bloatware OS slows my system to a crawl!
However, back in the real world, I'm now ripping MP3's (at 12x speed+), running Seti@home at full speed (realtime priority, just for fun), surfing the web, and running Komodo/Mozilla, and still only running at 70% CPU usage... it's not like I need more power right now! q:]
MadCow.
Well, if you're bored, anyways:
1: "I'd like to ask you a few questions for a survey..."
you: "Sure, hold on a second, I'll be right back" (put phone next to stereo playing Cindi Lauper, for about an hour).
2: "May I speak to the man of the house?"
you: "Define 'man'..." (rant and rave about sexual discrimination until they hang up)
3: "I'd like to offer you a free..."
you: "Where is it made? Does it contain asbestos? Is it compatible with Linux? Were any animals harmed during it's manufacture? How much does it cost anyways? What do you mean free? Oh, sorry, I can't afford free."
4: "Hi, is this Mr. _____?"
you: "Sorry, he died this morning.... (boo hoo...)"
5: "We're going to be in your neighborhood..."
you: "Can you help me with something first... I gotta finish this math homework before I do anything else... What's the cube root of 42? How do you calculate the inverse tangent for triangle A?"
You get the point... it's amazing fun actually, you don't have to make any sense either! Annoy them enough, waste their time, they'll never call again, and be less apt to annoy your neighbors! If everyone used up their time, telemarketing would cease to be profitable, and would then stop happening!
MadCow.
It always happens... you jump in and build your dream system, and immediately it's out of date. Oh well, a duallie 1.2ghzMP isn't anything to laugh at! Glad to hear that the TigerMP supports the new chip speeds out of the box, anyone know how high it will go?
A few notes on the TigerMP though: VERY picky on RAM, very picky on how it's seated (read: install memory before board is in your case, so you can wedge it in on a flat surface!), but since getting past that, it's been ROCK solid! Beautiful system I must say!
MadCow... always 500mhz behind the curve.
I'm sure it's popped up already in your mind, but make sure that if they do sell the domain, that there's some sort of provision to provide a link to your "new" domain name (for at least 6 months), so that your customers can still find you.
I'd state a real-estate size (say, 30x300 pixels), placed at the TOP of the page, saying something like "Looking for Hillside Consultants? We've Moved to www.wearerichnow.com". This way, you don't annoy your existing customers that are accustomed to finding you at your old location.
MadCow.
I believe that by 'disc cam in cage', they mean some sort of gyro device. By spinning a mass (within a cage for safety), you can rotate the robot the other direction.
This type of device (although not a Lego one...) is used to orient many things in space, including the Hubble space telescope.
As for pushing off walls... you got me there. Anyone have photo links to this thing?
MadCow
Actually, you can even use plain-old T-Birds in SMP configuration, quite successfully.
If you check out comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (I think), theres many people discussing this, and many are quite happy with their dual-T-Bird Tiger and Thunder setups.
Personally, I use the 1.2Ghz MP processors, because I would hope that they're "absolutely" stable, as required for the server sector (where they're aimed). For home use, I'm sure the non-MP processors are fine.
MadCow.
Personally, I use a $200 Kodak camera (MC3) to shoot video while skydiving... it's not as good as a video camera, but more than enough for use in these situations. Going into the $500+ market, you'd get even better quality. (for samples, see: My Skydiving Weblog )
Sure, it'd be a pain to upload video manually after shooting, but you could still do it on your satellite phone, and it'd be better quality.
MadCow