It is quite possible to purchase a computer system that does not depend on Microsoft products. It is not, however, possible to purchase a car that does not run on gasoline or diesel fuel. If Microsoft quits selling products in Europe, someone else will take their place.
Actually i'd say gasoline is windows, diesel is mac OS, and linux would be bio-diesel. (bio-diesel being non-fossil based, and so is way different, or something) Oh sure, you can buy a Dell(Ford) and it'll probably run on gasoline (windows).
But if you buy a computer from Dell, you can wipe the OS and install a new one. And in terms of infrastructure, I'm betting that the EU would be unable to instantly switch away from gasol.. er, windows. But, If they wanted to, they could (see also: Sweden).
Pro-Test is "a UK based group with the aim of promoting and supporting scientific research and debate including animal based research" (and will take donations via pay-pal). They've a list of issues they DO support but note that this does not include "animal testing for cosmetic purposes".
Oh man, a standard Linux base? What a crazy idea! We could call it Linux Standards Base. Dell could then support anything that claims to support LSB 3.0 which would quickly have distros moving to actually/follow/ the LSB. This would be great, as LSB would finally have some support, and I could finally stop digging around the filesystem on Red Hat to find something that isn't where I'm used to on Debian. (What, no/etc/apt/ directory?:P) Why wouldn't this work? LSB may have some implementation issues, but I think the concept is solid. Or is this a stupid idea?
In all honestly, an "ask slashdot" is one way for 'unusual recruiting'. I'm sure I'm not the only the only one who thought at some point "ooh, where do you work, cos now I/know/ you're hiring, and at least one person there reads/...." So exactly do you guys do? 'High level IT consulting' sounds like a lot more fun than, say, help-desking, or the reformat-reinstall grind that I hear goes on. So reply with an email/website and prepare to get inundated w/ cv's. And ask yourself if this follows: 'if he's checking/. on a saturday night, and most people check/. while at work...'
But seriously, you're asking quite a few things. My real question for you is do you know who you're looking for? Do you know what you want? What're the ambitions of said hiring drive? If you're trying to have rejected candidates leave with a good impression, sorry, but thats just how it is (Some people even hate Google). But bring recruiters/promoters in-house to the PR dept, and use them together to raise the company's profile.
FTFA... "The Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans for men and women, which will be available this northern autumn..." Sorry I'm not cultured enough to know what 'northern autumn' is, but the article makes it sound like not quite yet.
Far too late to get mod points, but honestly, since nothing i support is 'industrial strength', my answer is 'Frys. Hows that adage go? You want something done right, do it yourself. 'course I've always see it more as "If you do it yourself, you can't blame someone else when things go wrong.
But I'm sure the part will be there post-haste, since I'm the one driving to and from. Surely I can't be the only one that actually relies on frys to have generic versions of stuff? Hell, lately, I've been getting 0805sm stuff from them... (yeah, its a bit pricey) but whats next day shipping when Frys is there and back in a hour or two depending on traffic.
For serious geeking out, there are numerous ncurses-based im clients: naim, pork, centericq among others.
Using screen, not only can you be online all the time, but you can also retrieve messages sent to you while you are 'away' from any computer you can log into. Start a conversation, switch computers, and continue exactly where you left off.
my friends and I picked up donkey conga last week (the bongo drums games). For the side scroller game, the instructions are/in game/. Your started off, and a bubble pops up w/ hands clapping, the another bubble pops up showing you what next. Its quick and easy and is a great intro to the game.
Since before the announcement, the source Darwin has been avaliable to download, and actually has an x86 install cd for download.
The source is licensed via the APSL which is free software compatible, but not GPL compatible.
Licensing aside, its the kernel that sits between the bios and the 'osx' part on top.
Its open source, and even if it wasn't; they couldn't make it impossible to run osx on top of a custom kernel. Oh sure, they could make it really hard, but as Microsoft learned with the XBox, as the movie studios with DeCSS, as DRM cds' learned from a simple sharpie... It WILL be hacked.
The difference is that Apple won't have to provide support. If I call up apple and ask for help as to why it won't work; why it keeps crashing? not their problem.
Whether you develop on an actual x86-apple or on an hacked-what-used-to-be-win-xp box, higher level programs should definitely work, and many lower level ones should. This is what they get by moving to x86. Tons more developers. Almost perfect windows emulation. Better Linux (face it, lots of stuff for 'linux' is really for x86) compatibility.
I'm not sure about them having perfect windows emulation tho... that can be attributed to the death of OS/2. But from Windows emulation, they will get people who develop/from/ osx, and anybody whose done enough cross-platform java knows that it isn't. Which means cross-platform apps will start to look better in osx (although it can be argued that they already do).
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Which will be five years coming.
* Cheats were not officially released by Rockstar Games. They were discovered by edisoncarter from GTA Forums by wiring the PS2 controller up to the PC's parallel port and trying numerous combinations at high speed. Needless to say, this is not recommended for people to try at home, since it also requires special software to make this work.
------------- but i'm more interested in the actual hardware. anyone find something about the hardware used?
it definitely looks like a db-25 parallel port; from the 'bitty picture, im guessing the white things on the top of the board are said relays, with the parallel port set to ECP or EPP, or even full bi-direction. But the real question is my understanding of the playstation controllers is that they speak a serial-uart communications to the ps2. Wouldn't it more elegant to rig up serial-out from a computer to the ps2?
When stuff is broken, attitude being why should I spend my time figuring something out, if its written, in big red letters, "Don't press the big red button."
The other reason is for non-consumer level gear. A Linksys router I would fully expect to be plug and play. A high-end Cisco router? perhaps not. A 3rd party microcontroller dev-kit? I had to look up the datasheet for the power regulator they used to find out what kind of power it wanted. At which point there aren't as many manuals written at which point its not really an answer.
Its 3.5 grand for a copy w/ a 12 month support contract!?!
Not to sound cheap (cos I am), but um, thats a bit of an investment for what sounds like etheral w/ tcpdump on windows. Anyone with experience w/ Airopeek mind sharing all the cool stuff it can do?
While a specific display isn't cited, most of the porta-console displays will take an RCA input (at least my PsOne screen does). Some of the nicer ones will take s-video.
The solution to the ugly bit in the front?
As a slashdotter, take that screen apart and remount it on custom hardware, everworkable wood or a very slick custom fiberglass mount. Fiberglass is surprisingly workable with smaller sizes. As long as your reworking it, the RCA input can probably be made nicer.
If that sounds like too much effort, you could always unscrew it, cut off the plastic bit and the connector, and just leave the parts required for the screen to work.
My problem is I want to flip the horizontal orientation of the display, so its a mirror image. I have yet to find an easy solution to that.
Now if only the hacker community could put together a convention of sorts to tell us about neat toys like this, they could call it deft-con or something like that; then cheesy hardware site employees could attend and say its for work (tax-deductible trip to vegas?)C'mon Wired, its only DEFCON12, you'd hope that converage of that event would be their leading story.
Hmm... the linked article (i almost read it) didn't mention such an idea, only that the gun was tested in las vegas.
Printing text and color figures for a text book I'm writing.
Assuming you'd leave the actual publishing to a commercial printing facility, I'd say go with a new one - it sounds like you'll be using it as a heavy duty inkjet.
How long does it need to last?
Is forever an option?
Its possible, but as with most tech hardware, wait a while and better ones are released. Maybe not as quickly as, say, processors, but things still get old. You can, however keep a new one for a solid 5 years.
How much are you willing to pay for disposables? (mainly ink & paper) I'd prefer to buy something that is cheap on toner but has good output (600dpi or better). Paper comes for free from my office;)
Be sure to calculate the cost per page as your metric, amortized over the expected lifespan of the printer (say, 5 years).
Interface? USB vs. lpt vs. Ethernet?
Ethernet would be best but I have no aversion to setting up a print server. Ethernet + Postscript would be ideal for my Linux machines.. I'd say any worthwhile laser printer will support postscript, but depending on your usage, usb may do just fine.
on (among other things):
What do you want it for?
How long does it need to last?
How much are you willing to pay for disposables?
(mainly ink & paper)
Interface? USB vs. lpt vs. Ethernet?
Now if only they had hooked it up to a really distracting flashing bunch of LEDs...
Then, as its so cheap and easy to manufacture, they could start putting them into everything... like cellphone antennas and stickers and such... Then you could sell them at the cell phone booths at mall for $20.
The purpose of giant shows like these has waned in the high tech sector.
With the advent of the internet, their main purpose, free t-shirts can be had for the price of a witty slogan. Since the target audience is on the more technical side, those who care can get more off the website.
Companies can hold their own release parties if they so desire to launch products.
Slashdot Mirror
import sys
m = '01000010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01001111 01110110 01100001 01101100 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100101 00101110'.split(' ')
for s in m:
i = 0;
for b in s:
i = (i << 1) + int(b)
sys.stdout.write("%s"% chr(i))
print
http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml
Pro-Test is "a UK based group with the aim of promoting and supporting scientific research and debate including animal based research" (and will take donations via pay-pal). They've a list of issues they DO support but note that this does not include "animal testing for cosmetic purposes".
Oh man, a standard Linux base? What a crazy idea! We could call it Linux Standards Base. Dell could then support anything that claims to support LSB 3.0 which would quickly have distros moving to actually /follow/ the LSB. This would be great, as LSB would finally have some support, and I could finally stop digging around the filesystem on Red Hat to find something that isn't where I'm used to on Debian. (What, no /etc/apt/ directory? :P) Why wouldn't this work? LSB may have some implementation issues, but I think the concept is solid. Or is this a stupid idea?
In all honestly, an "ask slashdot" is one way for 'unusual recruiting'. I'm sure I'm not the only the only one who thought at some point "ooh, where do you work, cos now I /know/ you're hiring, and at least one person there reads /. ..." So exactly do you guys do? 'High level IT consulting' sounds like a lot more fun than, say, help-desking, or the reformat-reinstall grind that I hear goes on. So reply with an email/website and prepare to get inundated w/ cv's. And ask yourself if this follows: 'if he's checking /. on a saturday night, and most people check /. while at work...'
But seriously, you're asking quite a few things. My real question for you is do you know who you're looking for? Do you know what you want? What're the ambitions of said hiring drive? If you're trying to have rejected candidates leave with a good impression, sorry, but thats just how it is (Some people even hate Google). But bring recruiters/promoters in-house to the PR dept, and use them together to raise the company's profile.
what, you mean like h, j, k, and l?
or do you mean the ever more popular w-asd setup?
FTFA... "The Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans for men and women, which will be available this northern autumn..."
Sorry I'm not cultured enough to know what 'northern autumn' is, but the article makes it sound like not quite yet.
Far too late to get mod points, but honestly, since nothing i support is 'industrial strength', my answer is 'Frys. Hows that adage go? You want something done right, do it yourself. 'course I've always see it more as "If you do it yourself, you can't blame someone else when things go wrong.
But I'm sure the part will be there post-haste, since I'm the one driving to and from. Surely I can't be the only one that actually relies on frys to have generic versions of stuff? Hell, lately, I've been getting 0805sm stuff from them... (yeah, its a bit pricey) but whats next day shipping when Frys is there and back in a hour or two depending on traffic.
Go Screen!
http://video.google.com/
my friends and I picked up donkey conga last week (the bongo drums games). For the side scroller game, the instructions are /in game/. Your started off, and a bubble pops up w/ hands clapping, the another bubble pops up showing you what next. Its quick and easy and is a great intro to the game.
End result: 'Nintendo gets it.'
Since before the announcement, the source Darwin has been avaliable to download, and actually has an x86 install cd for download.
The source is licensed via the APSL which is free software compatible, but not GPL compatible. Licensing aside, its the kernel that sits between the bios and the 'osx' part on top.
Its open source, and even if it wasn't; they couldn't make it impossible to run osx on top of a custom kernel. Oh sure, they could make it really hard, but as Microsoft learned with the XBox, as the movie studios with DeCSS, as DRM cds' learned from a simple sharpie... It WILL be hacked.
The difference is that Apple won't have to provide support. If I call up apple and ask for help as to why it won't work; why it keeps crashing? not their problem.
Whether you develop on an actual x86-apple or on an hacked-what-used-to-be-win-xp box, higher level programs should definitely work, and many lower level ones should. This is what they get by moving to x86. Tons more developers. Almost perfect windows emulation. Better Linux (face it, lots of stuff for 'linux' is really for x86) compatibility.
I'm not sure about them having perfect windows emulation tho... that can be attributed to the death of OS/2. But from Windows emulation, they will get people who develop /from/ osx, and anybody whose done enough cross-platform java knows that it isn't. Which means cross-platform apps will start to look better in osx (although it can be argued that they already do).
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Which will be five years coming.
so hosting a site could be a problem, but how about something like greasemonkey on firefox to do it locally? would that get around the restriction?
Ahhahahahaha.
that is all
* Cheats were not officially released by Rockstar Games. They were discovered by edisoncarter from GTA Forums by wiring the PS2 controller up to the PC's parallel port and trying numerous combinations at high speed. Needless to say, this is not recommended for people to try at home, since it also requires special software to make this work.
-------------
but i'm more interested in the actual hardware. anyone find something about the hardware used?
it definitely looks like a db-25 parallel port; from the 'bitty picture, im guessing the white things on the top of the board are said relays, with the parallel port set to ECP or EPP, or even full bi-direction. But the real question is my understanding of the playstation controllers is that they speak a serial-uart communications to the ps2. Wouldn't it more elegant to rig up serial-out from a computer to the ps2?
the guy that made physics/science fun for me was Tom Lehrer. So heres something he did related to physics
When stuff is broken, attitude being why should I spend my time figuring something out, if its written, in big red letters, "Don't press the big red button."
/.!
The other reason is for non-consumer level gear. A Linksys router I would fully expect to be plug and play. A high-end Cisco router? perhaps not.
A 3rd party microcontroller dev-kit? I had to look up the datasheet for the power regulator they used to find out what kind of power it wanted. At which point there aren't as many manuals written at which point its not really an answer.
take that,
from the article:
List of things you need to get started:
* TWO (or more) Nintendo DS Units
* A WiFi card of some kind
* AiroPeek NX software package
AiroPeek NX?
hmm... sounds interesting... *click* *click*
Its 3.5 grand for a copy w/ a 12 month support contract!?!
Not to sound cheap (cos I am), but um, thats a bit of an investment for what sounds like etheral w/ tcpdump on windows.
Anyone with experience w/ Airopeek mind sharing all the cool stuff it can do?
While a specific display isn't cited, most of the porta-console displays will take an RCA input (at least my PsOne screen does). Some of the nicer ones will take s-video. The solution to the ugly bit in the front? As a slashdotter, take that screen apart and remount it on custom hardware, everworkable wood or a very slick custom fiberglass mount. Fiberglass is surprisingly workable with smaller sizes. As long as your reworking it, the RCA input can probably be made nicer. If that sounds like too much effort, you could always unscrew it, cut off the plastic bit and the connector, and just leave the parts required for the screen to work. My problem is I want to flip the horizontal orientation of the display, so its a mirror image. I have yet to find an easy solution to that.
Now if only the hacker community could put together a convention of sorts to tell us about neat toys like this, they could call it deft-con or something like that; then cheesy hardware site employees could attend and say its for work (tax-deductible trip to vegas?)C'mon Wired, its only DEFCON12, you'd hope that converage of that event would be their leading story.
f con-05.html
a ges/bluesniper.zip
Hmm... the linked article (i almost read it) didn't mention such an idea, only that the gun was tested in las vegas.
This was in the (/. linked) tomshardware coverage of defcon 12
on this page http://www.tomshardware.com/business/200408021/de
and a video http://www.tomshardware.com/business/200408021/im
What do you want it for?
;)
Printing text and color figures for a text book I'm writing.
Assuming you'd leave the actual publishing to a commercial printing facility, I'd say go with a new one - it sounds like you'll be using it as a heavy duty inkjet.
How long does it need to last?
Is forever an option?
Its possible, but as with most tech hardware, wait a while and better ones are released. Maybe not as quickly as, say, processors, but things still get old. You can, however keep a new one for a solid 5 years.
How much are you willing to pay for disposables? (mainly ink & paper)
I'd prefer to buy something that is cheap on toner but has good output (600dpi or better). Paper comes for free from my office
Be sure to calculate the cost per page as your metric, amortized over the expected lifespan of the printer (say, 5 years).
Interface? USB vs. lpt vs. Ethernet?
Ethernet would be best but I have no aversion to setting up a print server. Ethernet + Postscript would be ideal for my Linux machines..
I'd say any worthwhile laser printer will support postscript, but depending on your usage, usb may do just fine.
on (among other things):
What do you want it for?
How long does it need to last?
How much are you willing to pay for disposables?
(mainly ink & paper)
Interface? USB vs. lpt vs. Ethernet?
Now if only they had hooked it up to a really distracting flashing bunch of LEDs...
Then, as its so cheap and easy to manufacture, they could start putting them into everything... like cellphone antennas and stickers and such...
Then you could sell them at the cell phone booths at mall for $20.
gee.
The purpose of giant shows like these has waned in the high tech sector.
With the advent of the internet, their main purpose, free t-shirts can be had for the price of a witty slogan. Since the target audience is on the more technical side, those who care can get more off the website.
Companies can hold their own release parties if they so desire to launch products.
Witness Comdex being canceled this year.