Ive said this time and time again to people. When they ask me "Oh, you're a computer science major, do I need to upgrade my computer?"
After supressing the urge to repeat my 'comp sci != IT != retail' rant, I ask them what they do with thier computer. The fact is unless you are compiling, doing a lot of graphics work (3-d modeling, not pics from you digital camera), or running the hottest bad king shit FPS uberGame of the week, YOU DONT NEED A TOP OF THE LINE SYSTEM.
Proof by example:
My uncle/aunt. Living in a rural part of ohio, they have phones and power, but no sewer or cable. The got a dirt cheap 450mhz generic wintel. They use it to type letters, send email, and do some banking all via *cringe* AOL. I would utterly slaughter that computer, but for them they simply dont need anything faster, and wont for at least another decade.
The author of this article. As a journalist he would need a word processor, the internet (for research), and an interface to the article submission system (assuming they even use one).
My parents. A little more savvy than most people their age, but still the only upgrades that they have needed to thier 500mhz Gateway were peripherals, a good scanner, a digital camera, and a fax/copier/scanner. In a year or so I can see them needing a new hard disk and/or a CD-R because of the massive amount of data that theyve collected that could stand to be backed up and/or moved off site (documents, picutres, finances,etc)
Me. I do some programming on my own machine, some graphics editing (photo retouches in photoshop, mostly practice for my day job at the photo lab), and the occasional FPS or RPG gaming session. My recent video and sound upgrades were only done becuase I was offered a good deal on a trickle down upgrade (friend got latest and greatest, i got something better than what i had).
Im hesitant to push this idea because if it wasn't for the 'ooh new shiny and fast' attitude that pushed people like this to make sales, I would be paying a lot more for my next hardware upgrade. Dont blame us grunts, we don't like working to give you worthless upgrades any more than you like to have to constantly learn new things.
keep poking your test leads into the can, you should find another dry pair for the Telco to, ahem, 'lease' to you.
i dont suppose you have any sort of cable (ie co-axial) connection running down those poles do you? might be able to get a dry line there and convince an old BNC'd ethernet card to shove data down it.
also remeasure your distance. is he two miles straight down the road or two miles across a field and thru the woods?
looks around im sure ive seen some people using microwave, wi-fi, laser, and radio over those distances jsut in case your DSL doesnt go.
I used to set aside some cash so I could buy a new CD every 2 weeks or so. No big deal in high school, a bit harder to do as a college freshman. This year, I just can't justify paying $15 for a CD even once a month where Ive heard maybe one track on the radio or just heard that xxxx is a good band. If one of my friends has the CD for me to sample, why pay for it, I'll just bum it for a day and rip it open as well as making another half dozen copies for my other friends.
I don't use p2p. I don't trust others with acess to my computer with possible breakable software, yet I don't want to leech and not share back.
If I knew that most of my $10-$20 was getting back to the artists (you know, the people that MAKE the music) Id start buying again. Maybe Metallica should realize that its not the p2p's that are causing them to not make money, but the record contracts. The contracts that a band like that has (well, had until Newsted left) the power to renegotiate or entirely ignore.
I love buying CDs at concerts, I just heard the band tear up the stage so I know the music is good. With the smaller shows at clubs and bars, I usually even get the CD right off of one of the band members. Not surprisingly, when asked most of the small local bands love the idea of me ripping/copying thier CD then sahring it with friends a few hundred miles away. They dont care that they wont get the cash, jsut that people enjoy thier music.
As usual, the Proles get fucked.
Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!
on
Saddam's Inbox Hacked
·
· Score: 1
I thought the base economic system in America was capitalism and that 'our' governments economic arms (FTC, FDIC, Treasury, etc.) existed to ensure that American buinesses could buy and sell as freely as possible, while still maintaining economic stability.
Iraq is an impoverished oil produciing nation, every American will bitch about the price of gasoline. It seems to me that a much more viable and peacable alternative to war would be for Bush and Hussein to pull thier heads out of thier asses and let the buisnessmen of thier nations work together and improve the lives of the people on both sides.
I applaud the buisnessmen who are defying the trade sanctions with Iraq. They are the people who truly stand for freedom and open-ness.
does this remind anyone of the ATT switch crash from back in the late 80's early 90s(???). Where one switch failing kept passing the bad code and/or load on down the line until the whole network took a shit.
Please corraborate/deny this similarity. It was before my time.
For all you ferriners this is why american schools suck. Teachers are more concerned (perhaps its the politicians and the wannabe politicians in the school administration) with how to teach using the newest toys rather than how to teach with what they know and more importantly what to teach.
In high school (but a few years ago) I had a great physics teacher that used whatever she needed to use to teach us. We were doing some speed and sounds based experimentation and for the recording hardware she had there were existing drivers for the science lab macs that were a good 4 - 5 years old, so thats what we used. No one gave two shits that it was on a Mac, we were there to learn physics and my teacher was there to teach it, not press her personal preferences for OS during class time.
On the contrary, in my calculus class the teacher tried to use computers and teach a large group of non-technical people to program thier calculators (ti-83 was the standard) to do the calc for them. Now i can see this as being a good thing to save us the tedium of solving a more basic problem as part of a new problem to isolate the concepts of the new material. However, we lost a full 3 DAYS of class time fucking with the calculators which would have been better spent teaching us. Now I really didnt mind sitting in the corner taking 15 minutes to poke the program in then playing nibbles or drugwar for the next 2.5 classes...
My point is that there is no reason for you to change the technological base of a class/cirriculum UNLESS that change will help to illustrate a concept and teach your students. If there was some whiz-bang hot shit program or hardware that was linux only, then by all means please put it in place, but make damn sure it works without fail. A student having to make up a lab or stay late because you had to go dink with someing in/etc or recompile a kernel defeats the purpose of using the new toys.
I didn't really learn to drive in adverse conditions until I got my '65 Lincoln Contiental. I got it as a daily driver, in the middle of an icy ohio winter. After driving her for years, I learned how to brake properly in slick conditions WITHOUT ABS, that I damn well better have my seatbelt on or the steering wheel was going thru my chest, and rear-wheel drive is fun and safer if you know how to handle it. I actually have some difficulty driving newer cars, such as my beater ('87 Buick), and the '95+ cars most of my friends drive.
The computerization and saftey systems are good for drivers that are used to them. There have been a few times when I would have preferred to speed up and slide a little to avoid a situation rather than braking, but because of traction control systems I couldn't.
The gist of this is that I'd like to see some means for a driver who would prefer not to have all the electronic crap to turn it off. Wether its a big red button or a tiny keyswitch buried in some hard to reach corner of the engine compartment. Make it clear that your new toys are there to supplement driver skills not substitute.
Try and get your ass off campus. Make friends with locals and commuter students. Several of my best friends are commuters. Its great because: 1) they know the hassles of college (unlike non-collegiate townies) 2) will kiss your ass to hang out in your dorm away from thier home 3) if they have thier own place its party central 4) if they live with parents its a chance for you to get some home cooking once in a while 5) they know where there is good shit to do that others might not know of. 6) a place to crash when you absolutely can not stand to be on campus any more (it'll happen) 7) locals can get local library cards while campus dwellers cant, useful when term papers are due 8) (for Americans) they know what places dont check ID for uhhh liquid refreshments
Not to say that campus dwellers arent cool, but locals/commuters are valuable associates.
a few years back i downloaded all the rainbow books (at 28K, that was a big deal) and perused them.
has the government discontinued or updated that series? it had some good info on securing large scale computer systems such as those in big buisness and the banks as well as infrastructure control systems.
The sumbitters comment proposes the hypothetical situation that a site was submitted which had no reason to be censored.
There is obviously some form of sumbitting, reviewing, then posting to the block list (hey just like slashdot stories!). So why couldnt there be just as simple method for withdrawing a name from a list?
For example: Say an ISP offers thier users some webspace. Most use it for perfectly non-censorable things. But theres one person that ruins it all, posts some kiddie porn and gets the whole ISPs web domain blocked (for this example im assuming the Aussie censorship comittee does NOT contact providers about this before hand). The ISP should be able to then do a self-audit, remove the offending material and go to the censors and get removed from the list proving that the specific reason for blocking thier domain has been corrected.
This method is still a hassle, and its still censorship, but it allows the law to do EXACTLY what it is supposed to do and limit collateral damage in the name of 'decency'.
for 34 cents i can send pages across the country in about 3 days. theyre usually cheaper than ups/fedex. 50 cents for a postal money order vs my banks $3 money orders.
Just a WAG here, but with all of the metals, plastics, and other materials in the case the water would soon become tainted with conductive substances. This effect wouldl likely be exacerbated by the heating of the water by the components.
Im not taking a stance on whether or not the inking will upset the balance.
In the event that it does, would a clear coat of paint/acrylic that has the same density as the ink smoothed flat over the printing work? Think of using putty to fill in a bumpy piece of wood, or filling in potholes. The clear cote should fill in the low spots where there is less ink (lower weight areas) and not stick to the high spots.
Re:Extrodinary claims require extrodinary proof...
on
The Magic Box Hoax
·
· Score: 1
"If anyone shows you a "magic box" but won't let you touch it, change the setup of the demonstration, or suggest other ways to test it, RUN !"
should continue on to say "..run over and press every button imaginable and see waht happens!"
"... NOAA is keeping the device turned off except for just ten minutes every six hours, in order to conserve its solar-charged battery power."
batteries can be insulated to minimize the effects of the cold. this shouldnt be a particularly high draw device, its concievable that the batteries could last through a winter.
I understand the importance of writing my rep's but i belive Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) said some thing to the effect of "Dont we elect these people so we can sit back and mow the lawn and have a BBQ?". What this means is that while we should be aware of what our government is doing, we elect representatives to handle these decisions on our behalf.
The current problems with the SSSCA and DCMA represent a greater failing of the system. The representatives are no longer representing anyone but themselves and thier sources of money and power.
why not try a web based solution. stream video and sound to and from a webserver running on each of the systems. like the "watch me sit on my ass" webcams everyone has up now. its not an elegant solution but it may work.
Is it possible that IE and Netscape are trying to change the standard rahter than using the standard?
Both companies have thier own flavors of 'features' and standards. If a company develops something that becomes a standard that gets adopted by the W3C then, that company has a lead in the browser wars.
On a side note, the browser wars seem to have paralleled the cold war. It used to be IE vs. Netscape, now its IE in the lead, Netscape still a large power, and previously ignored smaller browsers making themseleves known. All with one org (w3c) trying to tie them together.
AOL certainly has the means to distribute red hat and they know how to cater to computer users. both could be very good for redhat.
aol CDs are EVERYWHERE, every stop at wal mart i grab a dozen or so for coasters and frisbees. imagine if redhat were like that. instead of d/ling the new distro, you just grab it on your way out of the grocery.
i know AOL is dumbed down and simple, but they may be able to streamline redhat and make it as simple to use as aol which would allow aol user types to switch to redhat.
Good luck to you. Several associates and myself have all had problems using old HD's, even IDE, in newer PCs. The ones that stand out are 386 salvage, a Maxtor 345MB and a hefty 40mb seagate. The BIOS seems to find them ok but windows and at least one flavor of linux had a fit when we got to the OS load.
Damn I wish i got that seagate to work, it was only 40MB but it was still good (worked on the 286 it was pulled out of) and was built like a brick shithouse.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1: Build a time machine
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
A time machine? Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.
What happenes when 802.11g is no longer king shit of the wireless ethernet options?
Gunna tear up the floor to change it?
Ive said this time and time again to people.
When they ask me "Oh, you're a computer science major, do I need to upgrade my computer?"
After supressing the urge to repeat my 'comp sci != IT != retail' rant, I ask them what they do with thier computer. The fact is unless you are compiling, doing a lot of graphics work (3-d modeling, not pics from you digital camera), or running the hottest bad king shit FPS uberGame of the week, YOU DONT NEED A TOP OF THE LINE SYSTEM.
Proof by example:
My uncle/aunt. Living in a rural part of ohio, they have phones and power, but no sewer or cable. The got a dirt cheap 450mhz generic wintel. They use it to type letters, send email, and do some banking all via *cringe* AOL. I would utterly slaughter that computer, but for them they simply dont need anything faster, and wont for at least another decade.
The author of this article. As a journalist he would need a word processor, the internet (for research), and an interface to the article submission system (assuming they even use one).
My parents. A little more savvy than most people their age, but still the only upgrades that they have needed to thier 500mhz Gateway were peripherals, a good scanner, a digital camera, and a fax/copier/scanner. In a year or so I can see them needing a new hard disk and/or a CD-R because of the massive amount of data that theyve collected that could stand to be backed up and/or moved off site (documents, picutres, finances,etc)
Me. I do some programming on my own machine, some graphics editing (photo retouches in photoshop, mostly practice for my day job at the photo lab), and the occasional FPS or RPG gaming session. My recent video and sound upgrades were only done becuase I was offered a good deal on a trickle down upgrade (friend got latest and greatest, i got something better than what i had).
Im hesitant to push this idea because if it wasn't for the 'ooh new shiny and fast' attitude that pushed people like this to make sales, I would be paying a lot more for my next hardware upgrade. Dont blame us grunts, we don't like working to give you worthless upgrades any more than you like to have to constantly learn new things.
keep poking your test leads into the can, you should find another dry pair for the Telco to, ahem, 'lease' to you.
i dont suppose you have any sort of cable (ie co-axial) connection running down those poles do you? might be able to get a dry line there and convince an old BNC'd ethernet card to shove data down it.
also remeasure your distance. is he two miles straight down the road or two miles across a field and thru the woods?
looks around im sure ive seen some people using microwave, wi-fi, laser, and radio over those distances jsut in case your DSL doesnt go.
yea im sure this post helped you a lot.
I concur with both the OP and the AC that posted.
I used to set aside some cash so I could buy a new CD every 2 weeks or so. No big deal in high school, a bit harder to do as a college freshman. This year, I just can't justify paying $15 for a CD even once a month where Ive heard maybe one track on the radio or just heard that xxxx is a good band. If one of my friends has the CD for me to sample, why pay for it, I'll just bum it for a day and rip it open as well as making another half dozen copies for my other friends.
I don't use p2p. I don't trust others with acess to my computer with possible breakable software, yet I don't want to leech and not share back.
If I knew that most of my $10-$20 was getting back to the artists (you know, the people that MAKE the music) Id start buying again. Maybe Metallica should realize that its not the p2p's that are causing them to not make money, but the record contracts. The contracts that a band like that has (well, had until Newsted left) the power to renegotiate or entirely ignore.
I love buying CDs at concerts, I just heard the band tear up the stage so I know the music is good. With the smaller shows at clubs and bars, I usually even get the CD right off of one of the band members. Not surprisingly, when asked most of the small local bands love the idea of me ripping/copying thier CD then sahring it with friends a few hundred miles away. They dont care that they wont get the cash, jsut that people enjoy thier music.
As usual, the Proles get fucked.
I thought the base economic system in America was capitalism and that 'our' governments economic arms (FTC, FDIC, Treasury, etc.) existed to ensure that American buinesses could buy and sell as freely as possible, while still maintaining economic stability.
Iraq is an impoverished oil produciing nation, every American will bitch about the price of gasoline. It seems to me that a much more viable and peacable alternative to war would be for Bush and Hussein to pull thier heads out of thier asses and let the buisnessmen of thier nations work together and improve the lives of the people on both sides.
I applaud the buisnessmen who are defying the trade sanctions with Iraq. They are the people who truly stand for freedom and open-ness.
does this remind anyone of the ATT switch crash from back in the late 80's early 90s(???). Where one switch failing kept passing the bad code and/or load on down the line until the whole network took a shit.
Please corraborate/deny this similarity. It was before my time.
For all you ferriners this is why american schools suck. Teachers are more concerned (perhaps its the politicians and the wannabe politicians in the school administration) with how to teach using the newest toys rather than how to teach with what they know and more importantly what to teach.
/etc or recompile a kernel defeats the purpose of using the new toys.
In high school (but a few years ago) I had a great physics teacher that used whatever she needed to use to teach us. We were doing some speed and sounds based experimentation and for the recording hardware she had there were existing drivers for the science lab macs that were a good 4 - 5 years old, so thats what we used. No one gave two shits that it was on a Mac, we were there to learn physics and my teacher was there to teach it, not press her personal preferences for OS during class time.
On the contrary, in my calculus class the teacher tried to use computers and teach a large group of non-technical people to program thier calculators (ti-83 was the standard) to do the calc for them. Now i can see this as being a good thing to save us the tedium of solving a more basic problem as part of a new problem to isolate the concepts of the new material. However, we lost a full 3 DAYS of class time fucking with the calculators which would have been better spent teaching us. Now I really didnt mind sitting in the corner taking 15 minutes to poke the program in then playing nibbles or drugwar for the next 2.5 classes...
My point is that there is no reason for you to change the technological base of a class/cirriculum UNLESS that change will help to illustrate a concept and teach your students. If there was some whiz-bang hot shit program or hardware that was linux only, then by all means please put it in place, but make damn sure it works without fail. A student having to make up a lab or stay late because you had to go dink with someing in
I didn't really learn to drive in adverse conditions until I got my '65 Lincoln Contiental. I got it as a daily driver, in the middle of an icy ohio winter. After driving her for years, I learned how to brake properly in slick conditions WITHOUT ABS, that I damn well better have my seatbelt on or the steering wheel was going thru my chest, and rear-wheel drive is fun and safer if you know how to handle it. I actually have some difficulty driving newer cars, such as my beater ('87 Buick), and the '95+ cars most of my friends drive.
The computerization and saftey systems are good for drivers that are used to them. There have been a few times when I would have preferred to speed up and slide a little to avoid a situation rather than braking, but because of traction control systems I couldn't.
The gist of this is that I'd like to see some means for a driver who would prefer not to have all the electronic crap to turn it off. Wether its a big red button or a tiny keyswitch buried in some hard to reach corner of the engine compartment. Make it clear that your new toys are there to supplement driver skills not substitute.
Try and get your ass off campus. Make friends with locals and commuter students. Several of my best friends are commuters. Its great because:
1) they know the hassles of college (unlike non-collegiate townies)
2) will kiss your ass to hang out in your dorm away from thier home
3) if they have thier own place its party central
4) if they live with parents its a chance for you to get some home cooking once in a while
5) they know where there is good shit to do that others might not know of.
6) a place to crash when you absolutely can not stand to be on campus any more (it'll happen)
7) locals can get local library cards while campus dwellers cant, useful when term papers are due
8) (for Americans) they know what places dont check ID for uhhh liquid refreshments
Not to say that campus dwellers arent cool, but locals/commuters are valuable associates.
a few years back i downloaded all the rainbow books (at 28K, that was a big deal) and perused them.
has the government discontinued or updated that series? it had some good info on securing large scale computer systems such as those in big buisness and the banks as well as infrastructure control systems.
The sumbitters comment proposes the hypothetical situation that a site was submitted which had no reason to be censored.
There is obviously some form of sumbitting, reviewing, then posting to the block list (hey just like slashdot stories!). So why couldnt there be just as simple method for withdrawing a name from a list?
For example:
Say an ISP offers thier users some webspace. Most use it for perfectly non-censorable things. But theres one person that ruins it all, posts some kiddie porn and gets the whole ISPs web domain blocked (for this example im assuming the Aussie censorship comittee does NOT contact providers about this before hand). The ISP should be able to then do a self-audit, remove the offending material and go to the censors and get removed from the list proving that the specific reason for blocking thier domain has been corrected.
This method is still a hassle, and its still censorship, but it allows the law to do EXACTLY what it is supposed to do and limit collateral damage in the name of 'decency'.
Whats wrong with the US post office?
for 34 cents i can send pages across the country in about 3 days. theyre usually cheaper than ups/fedex. 50 cents for a postal money order vs my banks $3 money orders.
Just a WAG here, but with all of the metals, plastics, and other materials in the case the water would soon become tainted with conductive substances. This effect wouldl likely be exacerbated by the heating of the water by the components.
Im not taking a stance on whether or not the inking will upset the balance.
In the event that it does, would a clear coat of paint/acrylic that has the same density as the ink smoothed flat over the printing work? Think of using putty to fill in a bumpy piece of wood, or filling in potholes. The clear cote should fill in the low spots where there is less ink (lower weight areas) and not stick to the high spots.
"If anyone shows you a "magic box" but won't let you touch it, change the setup of the demonstration, or suggest other ways to test it, RUN !" should continue on to say "..run over and press every button imaginable and see waht happens!"
"What, you're going to take pictures in total darkness? That's a bright idea :-)"
hahahha, good point, but what about the aurora borealis (or is it corealis)?
yes it did.
"... NOAA is keeping the device turned off except for just ten minutes every six hours, in order to conserve its solar-charged battery power."
batteries can be insulated to minimize the effects of the cold. this shouldnt be a particularly high draw device, its concievable that the batteries could last through a winter.
"..to visit family in Europe..."
Ever occur to you that the submitter might not be a native English speaker?
no only did the author submit his own article, but another site is saved from slashdotting.
sorry for the offtopic, but im taking a break from coding like ingrid.
I understand the importance of writing my rep's but i belive Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) said some thing to the effect of "Dont we elect these people so we can sit back and mow the lawn and have a BBQ?". What this means is that while we should be aware of what our government is doing, we elect representatives to handle these decisions on our behalf.
The current problems with the SSSCA and DCMA represent a greater failing of the system. The representatives are no longer representing anyone but themselves and thier sources of money and power.
why not try a web based solution. stream video and sound to and from a webserver running on each of the systems. like the "watch me sit on my ass" webcams everyone has up now. its not an elegant solution but it may work.
Is it possible that IE and Netscape are trying to change the standard rahter than using the standard?
Both companies have thier own flavors of 'features' and standards. If a company develops something that becomes a standard that gets adopted by the W3C then, that company has a lead in the browser wars.
On a side note, the browser wars seem to have paralleled the cold war. It used to be IE vs. Netscape, now its IE in the lead, Netscape still a large power, and previously ignored smaller browsers making themseleves known. All with one org (w3c) trying to tie them together.
AOL certainly has the means to distribute red hat and they know how to cater to computer users. both could be very good for redhat.
aol CDs are EVERYWHERE, every stop at wal mart i grab a dozen or so for coasters and frisbees. imagine if redhat were like that. instead of d/ling the new distro, you just grab it on your way out of the grocery.
i know AOL is dumbed down and simple, but they may be able to streamline redhat and make it as simple to use as aol which would allow aol user types to switch to redhat.
Good luck to you. Several associates and myself have all had problems using old HD's, even IDE, in newer PCs. The ones that stand out are 386 salvage, a Maxtor 345MB and a hefty 40mb seagate. The BIOS seems to find them ok but windows and at least one flavor of linux had a fit when we got to the OS load.
Damn I wish i got that seagate to work, it was only 40MB but it was still good (worked on the 286 it was pulled out of) and was built like a brick shithouse.