Yep, when I search, I want what I searched for, and not porn (unless I'm searching for porn). When I search for warez, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for crackz, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for appz, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for roms, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for anime, I shouldn't find *only* porn...
Dammit, why do they assume just because I'm a pirate, I'm a sex-crazed maniac.
Odd, I notice that my mid-tower is very warm to the touch, while the old K6-2 300 wasn't that bad at all. The K7 is very warm, with a hotter ambient air temp in the case and more airflow.
OTOH, I'm wondering if your P/S or other component was running hot. When I upgraded to my "new" system, the old system donated a lot of parts, and the CD-drive/Hard Drive, although replaced, were newer (although the 40 gig HDD in the new machine is also a significant source of heat, IMHO). Also, APCI will reduce the temperature, although I have APCI turned off in my own machine (I'm trying to track down a minor stability bug). In systems I sell, APCI is turned on, and yet I notice the heat, even with the smaller hard drives and generic (8 meg) AGP vid cards (5400 rpm, 20 gig IDE).
OTOH, monitors seem to be running at the same/simular temperatures over the years, at least for their relative sizes. My old amber monitor (9") runs just as hot as the newer 15" monitor I have.
1 lb heatsink jokes aside, the P4 runs cooler then the Athlon. Hell, with the default Athlon OEM heatsink, 1+ ghz CPUs have no problem hitting 50+C. The slot athlon is rated to 70C, the socketed athlon is rated to 95C, which is only 5C short of boiling. My home CPU (K7 1133), with OEM heatsink and only one case fan has hit temps of 71C. (Yes, I'm shopping for another heatsink, I just kept the OEM heatsink on because that's what we sell to our customers, and I'm curious about the temp.)
On the other hand, the P3 @ 1.13 Ghz (and the P4 @1.5 Ghz) have a max temperature rating of 72C, which probably means its normal operating temperature is a tad cooler.
Now the difference in temperature measurements probably means that the actual temp vs the measured temp of the pentiums are more accurate, rather then the underreporting I suspect the K7's temp measurement reports. The pentium has its temperature measured by an internal diode. The K7 goes by max case surface temperature of the cpu. I'm guessing that the K7 method of temperature reporting will lead to a lower then real temperature then the P4's method of temperature reporting.
So, if heat is an issue, or if there is a lot of computers in a room and AC might be an issue, then there might be a reason to go with the P4. Of course, the ignores the fact that RDRAM is supposed to run hot, and I'm too busy/lazy atm to look up the total heat output of a P4 + RDRAM solution vs K7 + DDR-SDRAM solution. Anyways, now since the P4 is switching to to DDR-SDRAM, that is no longer an issue. Intel traditionally has had a better chipset then AMD's 3rd party solution, at least in the opinion of many people in the technical community. This is another factor in favor of Intel. Also, the K7 doesn't beat the P4 in *all* benchmarks. There are some benchmarks where the P4 will beat the K7. So even though the K7 is a great chip for the money, I could see using the P4 for a computer devoted to a specialized app if the time saved was worth the extra price of the P4.
There is also brand loyalty, and service/supplier agreements that lock a company into dealing with intel-only products. If a company is getting great technical support from an intel-only supplier, I cannot see any reason to change, great technical support is worth the extra cash.
Of course, "intel" and "pentium" are household names, everyone keeps asking me who "AMD" is and what they do. And the P4 has a higher mhz rating which makes the idiots flock to it.
From the consumer side, intel is hurting. I work in a shop that has switched over to selling only AMD, based on AMD's price. Sure, we can and will custom order Pentium CPU's, but after we show the customer the price difference between the P4 and the K7, they have all switched over to the K7. Intel still has a stronger market in multi-processor solutions, but the release of the Athlon MP (as well as the fact that all K7's, Athlon or Duron, support a dual processor configuration) and the availability of a dual-processor motherboard will change that, especially when the other motherboard manufacturers release their motherboards and the prices lower to a more reasonable level. AMD has a different SMP solution then Intel, and I believe that AMD's version will convince shops to switch over to the Athlon MP, as long as AMD markets a dual-processor configuration successfully, and can keep up with the demand.
Okay, I'm done playing devil's advocate. Last Pentium CPU I've owned was a P100. I'm quite happy with my Athlon, even if it is a portable heater.
Well, considering that the fan subs should happen way before any commercial entity in the US attempts an English translation (and probably mangles it in the process), I'm guessing this is going to lead to another gig of hard drive space being used up. *Sigh* That's the true curse of anime. My old 16 gig hard drive would have been adequit if I only stuck to mp3s, but this anime stuff has my 40 gig running scared.
Btw, Tenchi isn't the hard one to explain. I agree with the poster who went with Ranma, although, in a pinch, Evangelion sounds totally screwed up too (psychotic angels, anyone?).
There is already a trojan out there that installs the dnetc client to your machine, and spreads via poorly-protected windows shares. I disinfected a machine last week with that virus.
Now the virus I would write, if I ever decided to be 1337, would be one that simply removes one card from microsoft solitaire...:)
I have 5 gigs of music myself, non-repeating (it isn't too hard to find, actually). However, here's the real hard drive killer: video.
I'm into anime (yahoo), and my full/almost full collections of Ranma (TV Seasons 1 - 5 + OAV), Tenchi, O!MG, Lodoss, Evangelion, Lain, and the like are currently killing my 40 gig hard drive. Some of the full length movies (fan-dubbed) can run to half a gig alone. That will quickly kill alot of hard drives.
OTOH, I'm seriously considering 3 40/80 gig hard drives and IDE RAID 5 for my next system.:)
Write your congressman. I want to see using a Microsoft server being treated as an act of criminal negligence, like drunk driving.
Haven't we all had enough of this bullspit?
I hope you *are* being sarcastic. From the article:
...the self-spreading program infects servers using unpatched versions of Microsoft's Internet Information Server...
More reading has revealed that a patch for the security hole has been out for slightly over a month when this hit. Any well-updated system is immune to this bug.
However, we all know that its the fault of the IIS server, and not the fault of system admins failing to patch their own systems, right? I mean, at least with linux, its so secure you don't ever have to worry about patching security holes.:P (And yep, now I'm being sarcastic.)
RAID 5 is so ubersexy, but unfortunately, its also uber-expensive, especially when compared with IDE RAID 0/1 setups (for those of us who love redundancy, but don't need the speed of scsi and don't want to pay the money for large scsi drives).
So, unless I find a cheap RAID 5 solution, I'm going RAID 1.
All advanced civilizations who aren't bent on world conquest start building SDI's and then selling them off for some extra cash to afford higher luxeries for their citizens while their space ship journeys to alpha centauri.
No, no, there is a difference between "I don't understand what he was saying" and "-1 flamebait"
Just to err on the side of Star Trek, Fermat's Last Theorem has no simple proof, the solution that exists is about 150 pages long, and is too complex for the 17th century.
There are some who suspect that Fermat has deluded himself into thinking he had a simple proof. However, there is a small chance of him having an elegant proof that we haven't found yet.
Maybe, at a grade school level, math hasn't changed in 100 years, but mathematics have. New developements happen in cutting-edge mathmatics every year. Sure, you may say, it doesn't matter if the high-end stuff changes, since the school system will teach the same low-end stuff each year. *Wrong* I remember, when I was in High School about 5 years ago, taking IB Calc, the teacher mentioning that they had never even had the option of Calc in high school, and Calculus is as old as Mr. Isaac Newton himself.
Science is changing every year, man discovered the existance of DNA only half a century ago, has been in space for only a little over 3 decades, and is still working on understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.
Economics, and Psycology is still undergoing rapid changes, as people try to understand those fields.
And you are just naive if you believe that the English language hasn't changed in 100 years. Sure, the language hasn't changed *that* much, but the style of writing, the format of books, and the use of applied skills in life (such as writing good emails) has changed.
In history, well, in my lifetime, I've seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe/Soviet Union, the handover of HK to the Chinese, the creation of several countries, war in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda, and this nation try twice to impliment star wars. I'm guessing at least one of these events will have some effect on the years to come.
As for having the dumbest kids in the world, what poll is this? I thought the US was ranked somewhere 5-10, and the spread, amoung the higher-ranking countries, wasn't that much. Heck, out of the many countries in the world, that isn't bad. (Oh, yes, they started teaching statistics in schools awhile back, see how useful it is?) So, taking a semi-useful, yet probably at least slightly flawed measure of intelligence, and having our kids score in the top ten, makes me feel pretty good.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for your grandparents. But do you think that one room schoolhouse will work well for your kids? Farmers need a good grasp of mathmatics and a decent grasp of science to survive (a farm is a business, and with animals, plants, disease, fertilizers, pesticides, animal husbandry, and different plant strains, a good farmer needs to know science). It might have been possible 100 years ago to learn some of that from their parents, and the rest of it from school. But this is the modern world, and our kids will need to know how to use computers. The world grew more complicated. 100 years ago Russia still was a backwards monarchy. Nobody cared what they did. China was almost entirely shut off from the world. Now both of them are nuclear powers. What didn't matter a century ago matters today.
Yes, Dune wasn't 100% accurate, but it was a good adaptation, especially for a sci-fi novel. There are a lot worse books->movie conversions out there, such as "The Postman" (where they removed over 2/3rds of the book, and dammit, I liked AI machines). Then there are the truly horrible written fiction->movies out there, which I can't recall off the top of my head, due to a mental block. I'm sure a few slashdotters out there could reply with a horrifying list.
AFAIK, the most faithful adaptation from book->movie was probably "2001", which changed some pretty big details (it was a moon of Saturn originally, not Jupiter), but kept the main ideas intact.
Every time I read a good novel, and think it would make a spiffy movie, I remember what happened in the past, and am therefore content with imagining what traekis look like, rather then seeing them on the big screen.
Of course, I'm a tad rusty on prices, but that should be pretty accurate. And if he's talented enough to make the hole and wire it up, then he's probably talented enough to repair it.
I wouldn't assume that the average phone/cable company employees are too dumb to lay fiber. I've seen wiring jobs by the telco, and they quickly approach a degree of complication that I don't want to mess with. I've also seen the tools used by telco employees, which seem to have a level of sophistication that monkeys would be unable to use.
Its like assuming that since I can use the new iMac at home, those network admins in the back room must not require that much training. Hell, its just a computer, you turn it on or off, what more do you need to know.:)
Odd, Zonealarm (at least the free version) can block servers? AFAIK, zone alarm just allows/denys programs to create an internet connection and to allow a program to accept incoming internet connections.
Therefore, I use zone alarm not as a firewall, but as a free (beer) way of making sure programs don't "phone home" without my permission.
Anyways, please reply how Zone Alarm can block DHCP....
I don't have a P4 handy, but looking at the actual chip on an Athlon, and comparing it to an actual chip on, say, an ancient 286 (my first 'puter, I still have the parts) one is definately larger then the other, and it isn't the Athlon that is larger...
Actually, I think HAL killing the crew of the space ship was a lack of morals, instead of a set of misplaced morals. Assume that HAL was incapable of lying, through either not being programmed with the capability, or else having implicit instructions not to lie. Also assume that HAL was never programmed with the 1st law, or was programmed with a flawed instance of the first law. Both assumptions are reasonable. I don't see why someone would program in a set of lying subroutines into a program designed to run a ship, since we want the astronauts to be told the truth about the ship's sensor information, how much fuel is in the tank, etc. HAL couldn't have a strict first law, due to the fact that it might have to sacrifice one member of the crew to save the rest.
So, the gov't comes along and tells HAL to lie, although probably not in those words, since HAL doesn't know what a lie is. Maybe it was worded that HAL couldn't let the astronauts find out the information. So, HAL being a learning entity, starts to worry about the humans asking it for the information, and "knows" that he can't tell them when they ask. So, it looks at the possible solutions, say 1) Shut down, 2) Kill the crew, etc... If it shut's down, there is nobody to control the ship, and thus the mission is in danger. If the crew is dead, then they can't ask for the information, and HAL probably is allowed actions that result in the death of one or more crew members, to "save" the mission. Its just that nobody ever told HAL to keep at least one crew member alive. So, part of the mission is the "don't lie" command given with a high priority (something along the lines of "must be obeyed to complete the mission), and the astronaut's lives have a slightly lower permission. In short, HAL was buggy.
Sorry folks, but carbon-based biology has nothing to do with the future of intelligence. It might be nice to believe that a group of cells randomly firing electrical signals at one another can create a sentient being, but such thoughts are naive. Sure, each individual cell might be alive, but it doesn't mean that a group of dumb cells working together would make an intelligent being. Its like believing that since one rock is dumb, a mountain would be bright.
Unfortunately, some people look at the behavior of h. sapiens and shout "intelligence!" Sure, it may appear that h. sapiens is intelligent, but only with a short examination. A human may pass a Turing test, but even though the human proved that he or she is indistinguisable from an intelligent entity, it doesn't mean anything, because I feel that I can make up any arbritrary decision I like so I can declare that a being that is indistinguishable from a sentient entity is still not sentient.:)
Seriously though, the so called "intelligent" h. sapiens owes its "intelligence" to a group of electrical impulses and a few simple chemical reactions among the many millions of cells that makes up the creatures "brain". With a powerful computer, we could simulate the reaction of chemical/electrical impulses of h. sapiens, but no one 'cept an undergraduate would be foolish enough to call such a simulation "intelligent". It can be argued that h. sapiens runs mainly on instinct and conditioned responses, its very clear that humans seem uncapable of long-term thinking, a sign of intelligence, and are thus doomed to ruin their habitat through environmental neglect and ever more damaging wars.
So remember, humans aren't intelligent, they only think they are.
It wouldn't be hard to build a battery recharging device that runs off barometric pressure or changes in temperature, although it would require a very low voltage device. There are a few very rare "perpetual motion" clocks in history that used this mechanism to get enough energy to tick until their gears wore out (or, more likely, were take apart for various reasons.)
Of course, this device seems to draw a lot more current.
A box is only a dinosaur if (a) you let it be, (b) you are worshipping gates and thus need the latest and greatest hardware to run the latest and greatest software from Redmond (with some of the old bugs fixed and new bugs just waiting to be found), or (c) are a gamer and like pretty pictures.
I have an old K6-2 300 with 32 megs of ram and 16 gigs of hdd space that I find quite useful for webpage design, gaming (I don't need the latest games), playing mp3s, and browsing the net. So don't give me that crap that your box is useless.
This thread reminded me of an interesting anecdote.
Once, I installed ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery, a Roguelike) on a Linux (RH 6.2), Win98SE, DOS 6.22, and a Win3.11 machine (triple boot). The machine was an old 486 80mhz with 32 megs of memory.
As a normal user (not root) ADOM crashed so bad that it destroyed linux's ext2 partition, forcing a wipe and reinstall of linux. Of course it didn't do it right away, but after a random period of time after the game started.
Under win98 it also had the habit of crashing after awhile, but didn't destroy the file system.
Under DOS, it would crash, but the file system was okay upon reboot.
With win3.11 running on top of the DOS installation, it ran perfectly, without a problem.
Now the same binary was used for win3.11/DOS/win98SE. Win3.11 was installed in the same partition as DOS 6.22. Linux (of course) had its own binary.
To add to the confusion, it runs stable on two other win98SE computers (both K6-2's).
Anyways, it gave me an interesting perspective on "stability" of certain OSes.
Mod me down if you want...
on
Star In A Jar
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· Score: 4
...but I think any job where you get to blow up stuff with the forces equivalant to a star exploding is great.
Maybe I should go into astrophysics. Sure, sysadmining gives you godlike control over users, but astrophysics allow you to play with the power of suns.
Slashdot Mirror
[Insert Tongue Into Cheek]
Yep, when I search, I want what I searched for, and not porn (unless I'm searching for porn). When I search for warez, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for crackz, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for appz, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for roms, I shouldn't find porn, when I search for anime, I shouldn't find *only* porn...
Dammit, why do they assume just because I'm a pirate, I'm a sex-crazed maniac.
Odd, I notice that my mid-tower is very warm to the touch, while the old K6-2 300 wasn't that bad at all. The K7 is very warm, with a hotter ambient air temp in the case and more airflow.
OTOH, I'm wondering if your P/S or other component was running hot. When I upgraded to my "new" system, the old system donated a lot of parts, and the CD-drive/Hard Drive, although replaced, were newer (although the 40 gig HDD in the new machine is also a significant source of heat, IMHO). Also, APCI will reduce the temperature, although I have APCI turned off in my own machine (I'm trying to track down a minor stability bug). In systems I sell, APCI is turned on, and yet I notice the heat, even with the smaller hard drives and generic (8 meg) AGP vid cards (5400 rpm, 20 gig IDE).
OTOH, monitors seem to be running at the same/simular temperatures over the years, at least for their relative sizes. My old amber monitor (9") runs just as hot as the newer 15" monitor I have.
1 lb heatsink jokes aside, the P4 runs cooler then the Athlon. Hell, with the default Athlon OEM heatsink, 1+ ghz CPUs have no problem hitting 50+C. The slot athlon is rated to 70C, the socketed athlon is rated to 95C, which is only 5C short of boiling. My home CPU (K7 1133), with OEM heatsink and only one case fan has hit temps of 71C. (Yes, I'm shopping for another heatsink, I just kept the OEM heatsink on because that's what we sell to our customers, and I'm curious about the temp.)
On the other hand, the P3 @ 1.13 Ghz (and the P4 @1.5 Ghz) have a max temperature rating of 72C, which probably means its normal operating temperature is a tad cooler.
Now the difference in temperature measurements probably means that the actual temp vs the measured temp of the pentiums are more accurate, rather then the underreporting I suspect the K7's temp measurement reports. The pentium has its temperature measured by an internal diode. The K7 goes by max case surface temperature of the cpu. I'm guessing that the K7 method of temperature reporting will lead to a lower then real temperature then the P4's method of temperature reporting.
So, if heat is an issue, or if there is a lot of computers in a room and AC might be an issue, then there might be a reason to go with the P4. Of course, the ignores the fact that RDRAM is supposed to run hot, and I'm too busy/lazy atm to look up the total heat output of a P4 + RDRAM solution vs K7 + DDR-SDRAM solution. Anyways, now since the P4 is switching to to DDR-SDRAM, that is no longer an issue. Intel traditionally has had a better chipset then AMD's 3rd party solution, at least in the opinion of many people in the technical community. This is another factor in favor of Intel. Also, the K7 doesn't beat the P4 in *all* benchmarks. There are some benchmarks where the P4 will beat the K7. So even though the K7 is a great chip for the money, I could see using the P4 for a computer devoted to a specialized app if the time saved was worth the extra price of the P4.
There is also brand loyalty, and service/supplier agreements that lock a company into dealing with intel-only products. If a company is getting great technical support from an intel-only supplier, I cannot see any reason to change, great technical support is worth the extra cash.
Of course, "intel" and "pentium" are household names, everyone keeps asking me who "AMD" is and what they do. And the P4 has a higher mhz rating which makes the idiots flock to it.
From the consumer side, intel is hurting. I work in a shop that has switched over to selling only AMD, based on AMD's price. Sure, we can and will custom order Pentium CPU's, but after we show the customer the price difference between the P4 and the K7, they have all switched over to the K7. Intel still has a stronger market in multi-processor solutions, but the release of the Athlon MP (as well as the fact that all K7's, Athlon or Duron, support a dual processor configuration) and the availability of a dual-processor motherboard will change that, especially when the other motherboard manufacturers release their motherboards and the prices lower to a more reasonable level. AMD has a different SMP solution then Intel, and I believe that AMD's version will convince shops to switch over to the Athlon MP, as long as AMD markets a dual-processor configuration successfully, and can keep up with the demand.
Okay, I'm done playing devil's advocate. Last Pentium CPU I've owned was a P100. I'm quite happy with my Athlon, even if it is a portable heater.
References: Processor Electrical Specifications - Gotta credit my sources for the temperature ratings.
Well, considering that the fan subs should happen way before any commercial entity in the US attempts an English translation (and probably mangles it in the process), I'm guessing this is going to lead to another gig of hard drive space being used up. *Sigh* That's the true curse of anime. My old 16 gig hard drive would have been adequit if I only stuck to mp3s, but this anime stuff has my 40 gig running scared.
Btw, Tenchi isn't the hard one to explain. I agree with the poster who went with Ranma, although, in a pinch, Evangelion sounds totally screwed up too (psychotic angels, anyone?).
There is already a trojan out there that installs the dnetc client to your machine, and spreads via poorly-protected windows shares. I disinfected a machine last week with that virus.
Now the virus I would write, if I ever decided to be 1337, would be one that simply removes one card from microsoft solitaire... :)
I have 5 gigs of music myself, non-repeating (it isn't too hard to find, actually). However, here's the real hard drive killer: video.
I'm into anime (yahoo), and my full/almost full collections of Ranma (TV Seasons 1 - 5 + OAV), Tenchi, O!MG, Lodoss, Evangelion, Lain, and the like are currently killing my 40 gig hard drive. Some of the full length movies (fan-dubbed) can run to half a gig alone. That will quickly kill alot of hard drives.
OTOH, I'm seriously considering 3 40/80 gig hard drives and IDE RAID 5 for my next system. :)
Write your congressman. I want to see using a Microsoft server being treated as an act of criminal negligence, like drunk driving.
Haven't we all had enough of this bullspit?
I hope you *are* being sarcastic. From the article:
More reading has revealed that a patch for the security hole has been out for slightly over a month when this hit. Any well-updated system is immune to this bug.
However, we all know that its the fault of the IIS server, and not the fault of system admins failing to patch their own systems, right? I mean, at least with linux, its so secure you don't ever have to worry about patching security holes. :P (And yep, now I'm being sarcastic.)
There is also VNC, just like PC-Anywhere, 'cept its free, and works on many platforms.
RAID 5 is so ubersexy, but unfortunately, its also uber-expensive, especially when compared with IDE RAID 0/1 setups (for those of us who love redundancy, but don't need the speed of scsi and don't want to pay the money for large scsi drives).
So, unless I find a cheap RAID 5 solution, I'm going RAID 1.
All advanced civilizations who aren't bent on world conquest start building SDI's and then selling them off for some extra cash to afford higher luxeries for their citizens while their space ship journeys to alpha centauri.
No, no, there is a difference between "I don't understand what he was saying" and "-1 flamebait"
Just to err on the side of Star Trek, Fermat's Last Theorem has no simple proof, the solution that exists is about 150 pages long, and is too complex for the 17th century.
There are some who suspect that Fermat has deluded himself into thinking he had a simple proof. However, there is a small chance of him having an elegant proof that we haven't found yet.
Oh, yes, I read that link...
Your comment gave me a wonderful burst of insight, which I will state as follows:
Dasunt's Law - Everything inside a computer will evolve to a state where it requires active cooling.
1st Corollary - Computers will replace furnaces as a source of heating in the home.
2nd Corollary - Within ten years, computers will come with air conditioning, and will require ducting to the outside.
3rd Corollary - The richest man in the world in the next century won't make his fortune from software, but from the sale of electricity.
Maybe, at a grade school level, math hasn't changed in 100 years, but mathematics have. New developements happen in cutting-edge mathmatics every year. Sure, you may say, it doesn't matter if the high-end stuff changes, since the school system will teach the same low-end stuff each year. *Wrong* I remember, when I was in High School about 5 years ago, taking IB Calc, the teacher mentioning that they had never even had the option of Calc in high school, and Calculus is as old as Mr. Isaac Newton himself.
Science is changing every year, man discovered the existance of DNA only half a century ago, has been in space for only a little over 3 decades, and is still working on understanding the fundamental nature of the universe.
Economics, and Psycology is still undergoing rapid changes, as people try to understand those fields.
And you are just naive if you believe that the English language hasn't changed in 100 years. Sure, the language hasn't changed *that* much, but the style of writing, the format of books, and the use of applied skills in life (such as writing good emails) has changed.
In history, well, in my lifetime, I've seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe/Soviet Union, the handover of HK to the Chinese, the creation of several countries, war in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda, and this nation try twice to impliment star wars. I'm guessing at least one of these events will have some effect on the years to come.
As for having the dumbest kids in the world, what poll is this? I thought the US was ranked somewhere 5-10, and the spread, amoung the higher-ranking countries, wasn't that much. Heck, out of the many countries in the world, that isn't bad. (Oh, yes, they started teaching statistics in schools awhile back, see how useful it is?) So, taking a semi-useful, yet probably at least slightly flawed measure of intelligence, and having our kids score in the top ten, makes me feel pretty good.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for your grandparents. But do you think that one room schoolhouse will work well for your kids? Farmers need a good grasp of mathmatics and a decent grasp of science to survive (a farm is a business, and with animals, plants, disease, fertilizers, pesticides, animal husbandry, and different plant strains, a good farmer needs to know science). It might have been possible 100 years ago to learn some of that from their parents, and the rest of it from school. But this is the modern world, and our kids will need to know how to use computers. The world grew more complicated. 100 years ago Russia still was a backwards monarchy. Nobody cared what they did. China was almost entirely shut off from the world. Now both of them are nuclear powers. What didn't matter a century ago matters today.
Yes, Dune wasn't 100% accurate, but it was a good adaptation, especially for a sci-fi novel. There are a lot worse books->movie conversions out there, such as "The Postman" (where they removed over 2/3rds of the book, and dammit, I liked AI machines). Then there are the truly horrible written fiction->movies out there, which I can't recall off the top of my head, due to a mental block. I'm sure a few slashdotters out there could reply with a horrifying list.
AFAIK, the most faithful adaptation from book->movie was probably "2001", which changed some pretty big details (it was a moon of Saturn originally, not Jupiter), but kept the main ideas intact.
Every time I read a good novel, and think it would make a spiffy movie, I remember what happened in the past, and am therefore content with imagining what traekis look like, rather then seeing them on the big screen.
*sigh*
Oh well, just my $1.02
Off the top of my head...
Of course, I'm a tad rusty on prices, but that should be pretty accurate. And if he's talented enough to make the hole and wire it up, then he's probably talented enough to repair it.
I wouldn't assume that the average phone/cable company employees are too dumb to lay fiber. I've seen wiring jobs by the telco, and they quickly approach a degree of complication that I don't want to mess with. I've also seen the tools used by telco employees, which seem to have a level of sophistication that monkeys would be unable to use.
Its like assuming that since I can use the new iMac at home, those network admins in the back room must not require that much training. Hell, its just a computer, you turn it on or off, what more do you need to know. :)
Odd, Zonealarm (at least the free version) can block servers? AFAIK, zone alarm just allows/denys programs to create an internet connection and to allow a program to accept incoming internet connections.
Therefore, I use zone alarm not as a firewall, but as a free (beer) way of making sure programs don't "phone home" without my permission.
Anyways, please reply how Zone Alarm can block DHCP....
I don't have a P4 handy, but looking at the actual chip on an Athlon, and comparing it to an actual chip on, say, an ancient 286 (my first 'puter, I still have the parts) one is definately larger then the other, and it isn't the Athlon that is larger...
Actually, I think HAL killing the crew of the space ship was a lack of morals, instead of a set of misplaced morals. Assume that HAL was incapable of lying, through either not being programmed with the capability, or else having implicit instructions not to lie. Also assume that HAL was never programmed with the 1st law, or was programmed with a flawed instance of the first law. Both assumptions are reasonable. I don't see why someone would program in a set of lying subroutines into a program designed to run a ship, since we want the astronauts to be told the truth about the ship's sensor information, how much fuel is in the tank, etc. HAL couldn't have a strict first law, due to the fact that it might have to sacrifice one member of the crew to save the rest.
So, the gov't comes along and tells HAL to lie, although probably not in those words, since HAL doesn't know what a lie is. Maybe it was worded that HAL couldn't let the astronauts find out the information. So, HAL being a learning entity, starts to worry about the humans asking it for the information, and "knows" that he can't tell them when they ask. So, it looks at the possible solutions, say 1) Shut down, 2) Kill the crew, etc... If it shut's down, there is nobody to control the ship, and thus the mission is in danger. If the crew is dead, then they can't ask for the information, and HAL probably is allowed actions that result in the death of one or more crew members, to "save" the mission. Its just that nobody ever told HAL to keep at least one crew member alive. So, part of the mission is the "don't lie" command given with a high priority (something along the lines of "must be obeyed to complete the mission), and the astronaut's lives have a slightly lower permission. In short, HAL was buggy.
Sorry folks, but carbon-based biology has nothing to do with the future of intelligence. It might be nice to believe that a group of cells randomly firing electrical signals at one another can create a sentient being, but such thoughts are naive. Sure, each individual cell might be alive, but it doesn't mean that a group of dumb cells working together would make an intelligent being. Its like believing that since one rock is dumb, a mountain would be bright.
Unfortunately, some people look at the behavior of h. sapiens and shout "intelligence!" Sure, it may appear that h. sapiens is intelligent, but only with a short examination. A human may pass a Turing test, but even though the human proved that he or she is indistinguisable from an intelligent entity, it doesn't mean anything, because I feel that I can make up any arbritrary decision I like so I can declare that a being that is indistinguishable from a sentient entity is still not sentient. :)
Seriously though, the so called "intelligent" h. sapiens owes its "intelligence" to a group of electrical impulses and a few simple chemical reactions among the many millions of cells that makes up the creatures "brain". With a powerful computer, we could simulate the reaction of chemical/electrical impulses of h. sapiens, but no one 'cept an undergraduate would be foolish enough to call such a simulation "intelligent". It can be argued that h. sapiens runs mainly on instinct and conditioned responses, its very clear that humans seem uncapable of long-term thinking, a sign of intelligence, and are thus doomed to ruin their habitat through environmental neglect and ever more damaging wars.
So remember, humans aren't intelligent, they only think they are.
It wouldn't be hard to build a battery recharging device that runs off barometric pressure or changes in temperature, although it would require a very low voltage device. There are a few very rare "perpetual motion" clocks in history that used this mechanism to get enough energy to tick until their gears wore out (or, more likely, were take apart for various reasons.)
Of course, this device seems to draw a lot more current.
Weren't "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns" unfaithful remakes of Boris Karloff (sp?) films? I think that predates video games.
Oh, useless bit of trivia - "Black Sabbath" got their name from the title of another film Boris starred in.
A box is only a dinosaur if (a) you let it be, (b) you are worshipping gates and thus need the latest and greatest hardware to run the latest and greatest software from Redmond (with some of the old bugs fixed and new bugs just waiting to be found), or (c) are a gamer and like pretty pictures.
I have an old K6-2 300 with 32 megs of ram and 16 gigs of hdd space that I find quite useful for webpage design, gaming (I don't need the latest games), playing mp3s, and browsing the net. So don't give me that crap that your box is useless.
This thread reminded me of an interesting anecdote.
Once, I installed ADOM (Ancient Domains of Mystery, a Roguelike) on a Linux (RH 6.2), Win98SE, DOS 6.22, and a Win3.11 machine (triple boot). The machine was an old 486 80mhz with 32 megs of memory.
As a normal user (not root) ADOM crashed so bad that it destroyed linux's ext2 partition, forcing a wipe and reinstall of linux. Of course it didn't do it right away, but after a random period of time after the game started.
Under win98 it also had the habit of crashing after awhile, but didn't destroy the file system.
Under DOS, it would crash, but the file system was okay upon reboot.
With win3.11 running on top of the DOS installation, it ran perfectly, without a problem.
Now the same binary was used for win3.11/DOS/win98SE. Win3.11 was installed in the same partition as DOS 6.22. Linux (of course) had its own binary.
To add to the confusion, it runs stable on two other win98SE computers (both K6-2's).
Anyways, it gave me an interesting perspective on "stability" of certain OSes.
Maybe I should go into astrophysics. Sure, sysadmining gives you godlike control over users, but astrophysics allow you to play with the power of suns.