There is a great documentary on YouTube on the subject of the engines and United Launce Alliance's work on buying them from Russia to be fitted to launch vehicles. The Russians were doing things with their engines which Americans thought impossible until they were demonstrated first-hand. This video has those initial tests towards the end of the file.
As John Carmack supports the open-source community, he released the source code (not the game assets) into the wild as an open source project. I myself have downloaded, compiled, and played the game using this code and it works well. There is even integrated support for the original version of the Rift inside. While he was unable to release all of the code for the game due to patent issues (lookup Carmack's Reverse), the game is completely playable on homemade Rift units at this time. Once Oculus releases the offical SDK for the Rift, it will be a short time before I or another member of the open-source community takes care of the problem. Just lookup a fork on GitHub called Doom-3-BFG-VR and I will be there doing anything I can to help. Please, to anyone planning on playing Doom 3 like this, purchase the game and copy the assets rather than finding nefarious ways of finding them. Support awesomeness such as id Software and its remaining founder. -- Big shout out to John Carmack for the foresight to allow gamers the ability to again enjoy a game which is otherwise, past its prime. For the record, Quake 3 has also been released as well so expect to see MANY mods for both franchises very shortly and again, thank you Mr. Carmack.
An ex that wants to know what you've been up to, your grocery mega-mart so they can sell you want you don't know you need yet, that fellow on the phone with a funny accent (anyone smell vodka) who says he's from your credit card company and know's you're on vacation pumping gas in your pretty, new GM vehicle so he must be for real but is now asking your pin number so he can prove he's speaking to the right person, your dear old uncle Sam who just wants to check up on you, or your boss who swears that he saw you at the club but can't say anything because he shouldn't have been there either and while he now has proof of where you were, is driving the '12 model with newly activated service. But hey, I'm outraged that they are going to track me only when I discontinue service. They shouldn't have told me this because now it's gonna take a senator or three, several committees, and many hours of CSPAN to make me feel better that they are only tracking me always, and only with my knowledge and permission. Poor poor guppies.
Wow, they are tracking people after they cancel they cancel the service. I couldn't be more furious. This is an outrage! Say... I wonder if people are even aware they everything they do is being tracked by somebody else, uploaded through the air freely with an encryption that may or may not yet have been broken and if if not, is being stored "securely" until another party wants to buy the harmless "sanitized" data. Damn guppies, cell phones are bad enough but now people are driving in a machine that is constantly spewing everything you do and see for the whole world to know, that is if they haven't already uploaded it themselves to Facebook or tweeted it to a bunch or people who really don't care about what they are doing except that one lone friend who isn't a real friend at all, or a person for that matter. Just another machine aggregating data for whomever has the money for these harmless bits of ones and zeros.
I agree, I work at a major retailer and seriously think that management needs to step in and ask employees to be less biased. I was shopping for a PS2 to replace my old broken one and on the way to the cash register, I took shit from two employees telling me that Xbox is better because it has a faster processor... Let's not get into that right now but all I did was say thanks and walked away. And to think, I work with these morons.
Anandtech has some great articles about how they started and what they used over their few years of existance. You really shouldn't start to big though. Maybe start with a decent database backend and a couple of web servers. http://www.anandtech.com/it/
Most of you forgot about the one cost that is hard to escape. Electricity is something you are going to be paying much more for with a homebuilt DVR. A Sempron based computer will probably draw ~250 watts of power on idle plus make loads of noise and not be very pretty. A Tivo draws under 100 watts, has a very quiet fan and looks great among DVD players, DBS receivers, Playstations, Xboxs, and amps. That comes out to almost $10 difference a month where I live in just extra cost to power that homebuilt DVR.
Do yourself a favor and just pay the monthly Tivo fee. You will end up paying about the same in monthly fees just to operate the two systems but the Tivo has a much lower initial investment, looks better, easier to use, and takes a whole 10 minutes to setup. That doesn't apply to people who are constantly archiving shows to DVD in which case a DVR would be easier but even on Tivo, it isn't difficult. I just hookup my MiniDV camcorder to the Tivo for that 1 or 2 shows a month I want copied and route that signal directly to my Firewire port (as opposed to copying to tape and then back out) and that directly to DVD (burning the disc out of Tivo in realtime). Try it sometime.
there was a drive some time ago that had 7 (+- a few) laser beams hitting the disc to get fast read times with a slow moving disc. While there are a few still in use today, most users have moved on as these drives had poor compatibility with copy protected games.
you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
we are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world
-tyler durden, fight club
seriously though, i have felt the same way my whole life. i have always been the different one in all my classes cause it "seems" that i know a little of everything, except for what i need to know. i could spit out countless facts on the civil war, except for the dates of the battles (who cares of the day, time, and what washington had for breakfast, except to researchers, that information has little to do with us, teachers need to teach the significance of historic events, instead of the minute details that mean nothing, how can we learn about the past if we stop caring from hearing the same old details for 13 years of school then 4 years of college).
I would do great the first couple of weeks until I passed everybody else up and started reading ahead, finished the book, and started reading other material (the librarians knew me very well). Best thing I can say is just follow Tyler Durden for now in understanding that you are not special and just conform with everybody else. Do your best in school and STFU!
Cell phone are subject to bandwidth limits too. Each of their towers can only handle so many calls before it is saturated. During certain parts of the day, my phone constantly gives "Network busy. Try Call Later." I do agree with the bandwidth problem with VoIP networks. Cringley didn't write about the issue of where are you going to get this much bandwidth. Or what about the issue of reselling your bandwidth and your customer service agreement from your providers? Before you start getting all excited about Linux routers and VoIP, think about the bigger issues.
While working at Best Buy,I was trying to fix a customers computer, a shitty little "Com-pact" computer that wouldn't power on at all. I took apart the front of the case, realized that it was the surface mount push button switch that needed to be replaced. I called the nearest Radioshack and asked the sales guy for just that, a "surface mount, normally-open, momentary pushbutton switch" which I know they carry but needed to see if there were any in stock. Any way, the punch line goes something like this.
Me : Do you have [above] switches in stock?
RS : No we don't carry anything like that.
Me: I know you carry them, just look at the shelf in front of you and they should be in a pullout drawer on the lower left side.
RS : No sir, we don't carry ANY electronic pieces.
Me : Ok........ Is there anybody there who know anything about electronics?
RS : No sir, this is a computer store.
Me : Ok. [Hung up]
In the end, I printed up a list of Radioshack parts from their website and sent my customer there with possible switches circled with a Sharpie. They brought back a large red pushbutton I installed in the Com-pact using telephone cable I soldered onto the mainboard
I totally agree with this. Think of the ways they could have produced power from this. piezo-electric with the vibrations and stomping on the ground (which would probably absorb some of the shock anyway), stirling (or whatever creates changes energy between the heat difference) due to the foot getting hot (which may cool it down some), the swatch thing (a swinging weight with attached magnet to charge a capacitor). You know what really would have been badass. If they added bluetooth capability between it and a pda so you can track your workouts wirelessly. Then create a bluetooth heart rate monitor with a watch that would intergrate the entire system. You could modify your step and check your heart rate at the same time. I should start working on the patent...
Windows, Mac, Linux - All have their qwerks
on
Is Windows Worth $45?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Is $45 too much to ask for Windows? No, you do get a decent operating system. Does Microsoft overcharge for its product knowing that they could charge a fraction of that and still make an excellent product? Yes, Microsoft will make a profit anyway. People are always bashing Microsoft and its Windows line of operating systems due to the old blue screens of death every 5 minutes and security flaws up the ying-yang. When you finally pull your head out of your ass, you will realize that Windows doesn't crash anywhere near as much as it used to. Windows 95, 98, and ME were originally built on 16-bit DOS technology but times changed and Windows XP shows how much better things can be. I remember back when I couldn't even use a decent (keyword) webbrowser on my Macintosh without the common "Error Type -11". As for the security flaws, yes, there are a lot but when you are on top, everybody attacks you from the bottom. There are a lot of Windows computers out there and most of the losers that exploit the flaws in Windows are Windows users themselves (why else would they know how to exploit some minute memory buffer or something like that) so it makes sense that there are a lot more Windows viruses. Besides, I paid $99 for a Windows XP Home upgrade in 2001 and so far, it looks like I won't have to pay it again until 2006 when Longhorn comes out. Why did I even bother upgrading, cause Best Buy gave $200 of free stuff when you bought Windows but it was still worth the cost. Apple on the other hand charges people $129 a year (10, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3) for 129 patches to their operating system that should have been there in the first place. Yes a few new features have come out that I love (expose for one), but $129 dollars is a rip off, let alone having to pay it once a year. Don't argue that you don't HAVE to upgrade cause you do. Shortly after Panther came out, they released a Panther only upgrade for Safari which includes several SECURITY fixes. So yeah they were quick about releasing a patch but require that you upgrade your computer to get it. Linux finally is yes, free, but costs more time than anything else. As a desktop platform it is maturing but still lags behind in funtionalty from comercial operation systems. I hate having to recompile the kernel for a simple update, driver, or to change little things. Yes, it is nice that you have that power but for a single desktop computer user whose time is money, you are better off forking over those $45 to Microsoft and letting the Windows Update run it's course, which if more people did, most would rarely get attacked. As a server or in a beowulf cluster, Linux is excellent. Why pay thousands of dollars for copies of the same operating system when you can download Linux, get one system setup how you like it and then image the rest which is great for a cluster or even a computer lab of web browsers or word processors. As for a server, install Linux without the GUI, choose the servers you need, install, configure, and almost forget. My Linux server has been on for over 100 days and I haven't even seen it since I installed RedHat 9 over 200 days ago. Check out the proof at http://www.eyesorerock.com/phpSysInfo Why the downtime at all? Linux's fatal flaw common to all computers, power failure and the UPS was about 2 minutes short of the power being restored. In the end, each operating system has it's advantages. Is $45 too much to ask for a fairly stable OS that is being very much actively developed? I say no. Now yes $299 is a complete ripoff for XP Pro New User and Microsoft should burn for the price of Office and the frequency of new versions of it too. MacOSX is a great operating system but no, $129 is just too much to spend a year for what really amounts to a patch. Linux is great for a server, cluster, routers, and specialty boxes but until drivers are easy to compile and install and there aren't a billion different, oldly named packages (emacs, LaTex, pine, pico, libc, gcc, g++, top, squid, to name the well known ones that all Linux users should know by heart their first d
Who cares? Every company tries to track their sales so they have a better idea where the advertising dollars should be spent. That boils down to more profits for them and better prices for you. Amazon.com does the same thing and so does every other retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufactor, and website out there. So what if there is a name for BudNET? Every major retailer does it. "Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands." Frankly, you need to live back before computers were around cause now EVERYTHING is tracked. They used to use pens and paper but now it is thrown in a database. I can go to work right now and, with the right information, pull up everything you have purchased there. At the end of the day, our computers process that information and break down what people are buying, when, why, how much, what accessories they get for that item, and then display it in easy to read charts of what we could do to improve our sales. The next day, we know what to push to maximize our margins.
IBM and other compaines that make patents are trying to protect what they spend millions of dollars creating in attempts to sell and license the technology. Problem is that a lot of compaines are patenting very broad ideas without any innovation. Wouldn't it be great to have a PDA built into a cell phone? Let's patent the idea and wait till somebody creates the device, then sue the shit out of them for copying our IP. I believe that there was a slashdot article on the subject not too long ago. The patent office needs to see those cases where there are ideas without innovation and refuse to issue the patent untill something of value comes out.
I tried to go download the updated version of Safari and guess what! It requires MacOS Panther! I already tried installing Panther on my Mac and it just gives me an error. Turns out that Panther is not compatable with my Macintosh. Apple forces you to upgrade the damn OS every single year at the low cost of $129. I bet that the next iPod software version will require Panther too. This isn't the first time that I've ranted about Apple forcing you to upgrade but it will be my last. I am not going to be ordering a new Powerbook 12" when the income tax arrives, my iPod will be formatted to PC soon, and my G3 will be running Linux by tommarow. I thought Jobs wanted freedom from the hordes of inline computer geeks but he plays Big Brother to the Mac users that loyally follow his lead.
I find that cable reception is generally very poor at best. Even when you go digital cable, most of the lower channels still come in as analog so they don't look all that great. With DirecTV, all of the channels are digital so there is never a problem with that. As for the satellite signal always going out, yes it does go out in heavy rain but my cable box goes out for no reason at all. It just says "Service will be available shortly". If there is a major problem with DirecTV, you can bet that it will be cleared up real quick cause the whole nation is waiting. With a local cable service, it may only be a small neighborhood and they can afford to take their time. As for the internet, Roadrunner is the best way to go in my area. It is only $45 a month for 3mbps while DSL is like $35 a month for 384kpbs. Which would you choose with 5 people in the house on 8 different computers, all downloading different shit, and occasional Lan parties all connected to the net?) I say for TV go to DirecTV, internet, go cable unless there is a decent offering in your area. My local cable provider is Time Warner Cable in the South Texas Rio Grande Valley region.
I would have to say that your best option would be to invest in the system
Think about it
1) The computer crashes.
2) PortabilityWill you be able to use this everywhere? You probably aren't going to take computers with you if you travel for competitions, and if you do that takes up your setup time.
3) Lag, you need real time conferencing behind the stage and can't wait even for a second of lag time if something goes wrong.
4) InterferenceMost people in the audience probably have a cell phone which operates very close to the 802.11b standard of 2.4ghz. You would quite possibly lose signal in that event, and even if just for a momment, you would have to wait till it was over, reconnect the Wifi signal, and restart the voice program.
Wouldn't it suck if suddenly the system went down? You would have no time to troubleshoot. I was in my high school theatre team and we used a system from Telex. It was awesome. Didn't matter how much noise was around you cause you could hear the voices with no problem and no lag. Just flip on the power unit and plug in. Could even connect multiple units together for cases when you didn't want cables everywhere. We never had a single instance of failure. Do yourself a favor and buy a real system.
No not in the store. Call 1888Bestbuy and select the option for Best Buy PartSearch. You tell them the model of the notebook and what you need, give them a while to look and they will probably find it. I have ordered several off items from there and they have come through every time.
While it is possible to have many of the features installed in your home for a fraction of the price, most people, probably including yourself wouldn't know where to begin. Pluto is a simple to use/install system that takes care of all the hard stuff for the end user. Yes your can have Freevo/Myth but will it intergrate with your phone system, yes, but you must install a voice modem, pray for drivers, recompile kernel, write software, do some voodoo and have a half ass system. No, Pluto isn't for these die hard geeks out there but most of you geeks probably can't afford this stuff anyway. You probably wouldn't even care about it if it was based on any other OS but because it is a Linux based core, you are whinning that it is too expensive or finding any other flaws to cut it down. I am a Windows user. I like Macs. I have 2 linux boxes running my home/webserver. Would I buy a Pluto? No. Not now. In the future, maybe. But for now, I am looking into what the system has to offer and am already looking for ways to implement this into my own system.
My Tivo has a 40watt power supply so at 8cents a k/W, we spend less than 3 dollars a month. I was trying to turn an older computer into a Tivo like device using Myth, then Freevo, but when Best Buy had an ad for a Phillips branded Tivo for $99 and 5 dollars a month for service, I couldn't resist. Nothing beats the real thing. Almost, other than the fact that I can't network the Phillips Tivo (USB is disabled), it is a great device, the quality is EXCELLENT and when I do want to copy a show, my DV camera can be hooked up in a few seconds for a decent looking rip, much better than any PVR PCI card on the market.
It isn't that there is call home software installed on the computer. Something like Microsoft Outlook could have triggered the alarm. It was set to connect with the outlook server automagicaly. When it did, it set off a red flag because a computer accessed a protect server/port on the intranet from the internet. It came from AOL because when the computer connected to the internet through AOL, Outlook began to connect to the server. WF just had to give info of when and what ip and then AOL can look in their logs and see which one of their users was on that ip and that time.
Most schools thrive on education grants from the government and other organization to help them fund programs. When a grant is received, it is to be spent on a particular field. I just granduated from a South Texas school (Los Fresnos High School, just north of Brownsville, west of South Padre) a couple years ago. The year before I started there, they had no technology on campus, there were 486s that were not connected to anything but power. We received a very large grant and bought countless computers, switches, routers, servers (Linux back then), and had the entire campus hardwired. The Brownsville school district gets grants extremely fast and have done everything except to hand out notebooks but since many students already have computer at home, and every class room has a computer or to plus a computer lab per grade. There is no need for notebooks. I think that before we continue spend the amount of money that we do anywhere in the country on computers for school, we should decide what they should really be used for.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a great documentary on YouTube on the subject of the engines and United Launce Alliance's work on buying them from Russia to be fitted to launch vehicles. The Russians were doing things with their engines which Americans thought impossible until they were demonstrated first-hand. This video has those initial tests towards the end of the file.
The Engines That Came in From The Cold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As John Carmack supports the open-source community, he released the source code (not the game assets) into the wild as an open source project. I myself have downloaded, compiled, and played the game using this code and it works well. There is even integrated support for the original version of the Rift inside. While he was unable to release all of the code for the game due to patent issues (lookup Carmack's Reverse), the game is completely playable on homemade Rift units at this time. Once Oculus releases the offical SDK for the Rift, it will be a short time before I or another member of the open-source community takes care of the problem. Just lookup a fork on GitHub called Doom-3-BFG-VR and I will be there doing anything I can to help.
Please, to anyone planning on playing Doom 3 like this, purchase the game and copy the assets rather than finding nefarious ways of finding them. Support awesomeness such as id Software and its remaining founder.
--
Big shout out to John Carmack for the foresight to allow gamers the ability to again enjoy a game which is otherwise, past its prime. For the record, Quake 3 has also been released as well so expect to see MANY mods for both franchises very shortly and again, thank you Mr. Carmack.
IMPLICIT permission. guppies.
011000110110110001100101011101100110010101110010 01100111011010010111001001101100 anyways?
An ex that wants to know what you've been up to, your grocery mega-mart so they can sell you want you don't know you need yet, that fellow on the phone with a funny accent (anyone smell vodka) who says he's from your credit card company and know's you're on vacation pumping gas in your pretty, new GM vehicle so he must be for real but is now asking your pin number so he can prove he's speaking to the right person, your dear old uncle Sam who just wants to check up on you, or your boss who swears that he saw you at the club but can't say anything because he shouldn't have been there either and while he now has proof of where you were, is driving the '12 model with newly activated service.
But hey, I'm outraged that they are going to track me only when I discontinue service. They shouldn't have told me this because now it's gonna take a senator or three, several committees, and many hours of CSPAN to make me feel better that they are only tracking me always, and only with my knowledge and permission. Poor poor guppies.
People's cowardness, or their stupidity...
Wow, they are tracking people after they cancel they cancel the service. I couldn't be more furious. This is an outrage! Say... I wonder if people are even aware they everything they do is being tracked by somebody else, uploaded through the air freely with an encryption that may or may not yet have been broken and if if not, is being stored "securely" until another party wants to buy the harmless "sanitized" data. Damn guppies, cell phones are bad enough but now people are driving in a machine that is constantly spewing everything you do and see for the whole world to know, that is if they haven't already uploaded it themselves to Facebook or tweeted it to a bunch or people who really don't care about what they are doing except that one lone friend who isn't a real friend at all, or a person for that matter. Just another machine aggregating data for whomever has the money for these harmless bits of ones and zeros.
I agree, I work at a major retailer and seriously think that management needs to step in and ask employees to be less biased. I was shopping for a PS2 to replace my old broken one and on the way to the cash register, I took shit from two employees telling me that Xbox is better because it has a faster processor... Let's not get into that right now but all I did was say thanks and walked away. And to think, I work with these morons.
Anandtech has some great articles about how they started and what they used over their few years of existance. You really shouldn't start to big though. Maybe start with a decent database backend and a couple of web servers. http://www.anandtech.com/it/
Most of you forgot about the one cost that is hard to escape. Electricity is something you are going to be paying much more for with a homebuilt DVR. A Sempron based computer will probably draw ~250 watts of power on idle plus make loads of noise and not be very pretty. A Tivo draws under 100 watts, has a very quiet fan and looks great among DVD players, DBS receivers, Playstations, Xboxs, and amps. That comes out to almost $10 difference a month where I live in just extra cost to power that homebuilt DVR.
.09(Avg Cost Kilowatt = $9.72
150(Watt difference) * 24(Hours/day) * 30(Days/Month) / 1000(Find Kilowatts/hour) *
Do yourself a favor and just pay the monthly Tivo fee. You will end up paying about the same in monthly fees just to operate the two systems but the Tivo has a much lower initial investment, looks better, easier to use, and takes a whole 10 minutes to setup. That doesn't apply to people who are constantly archiving shows to DVD in which case a DVR would be easier but even on Tivo, it isn't difficult. I just hookup my MiniDV camcorder to the Tivo for that 1 or 2 shows a month I want copied and route that signal directly to my Firewire port (as opposed to copying to tape and then back out) and that directly to DVD (burning the disc out of Tivo in realtime). Try it sometime.
1) Yes ...network stores you!
2) Ohh, ahh.
3)
there was a drive some time ago that had 7 (+- a few) laser beams hitting the disc to get fast read times with a slow moving disc. While there are a few still in use today, most users have moved on as these drives had poor compatibility with copy protected games.
you are not special.
you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
we are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world
-tyler durden, fight club
seriously though, i have felt the same way my whole life. i have always been the different one in all my classes cause it "seems" that i know a little of everything, except for what i need to know. i could spit out countless facts on the civil war, except for the dates of the battles (who cares of the day, time, and what washington had for breakfast, except to researchers, that information has little to do with us, teachers need to teach the significance of historic events, instead of the minute details that mean nothing, how can we learn about the past if we stop caring from hearing the same old details for 13 years of school then 4 years of college).
I would do great the first couple of weeks until I passed everybody else up and started reading ahead, finished the book, and started reading other material (the librarians knew me very well). Best thing I can say is just follow Tyler Durden for now in understanding that you are not special and just conform with everybody else. Do your best in school and STFU!
Cell phone are subject to bandwidth limits too. Each of their towers can only handle so many calls before it is saturated. During certain parts of the day, my phone constantly gives "Network busy. Try Call Later."
I do agree with the bandwidth problem with VoIP networks. Cringley didn't write about the issue of where are you going to get this much bandwidth. Or what about the issue of reselling your bandwidth and your customer service agreement from your providers? Before you start getting all excited about Linux routers and VoIP, think about the bigger issues.
While working at Best Buy,I was trying to fix a customers computer, a shitty little "Com-pact" computer that wouldn't power on at all. I took apart the front of the case, realized that it was the surface mount push button switch that needed to be replaced. I called the nearest Radioshack and asked the sales guy for just that, a "surface mount, normally-open, momentary pushbutton switch" which I know they carry but needed to see if there were any in stock.
Any way, the punch line goes something like this.
Me : Do you have [above] switches in stock?
RS : No we don't carry anything like that.
Me: I know you carry them, just look at the shelf in front of you and they should be in a pullout drawer on the lower left side.
RS : No sir, we don't carry ANY electronic pieces.
Me : Ok........ Is there anybody there who know anything about electronics?
RS : No sir, this is a computer store.
Me : Ok. [Hung up]
In the end, I printed up a list of Radioshack parts from their website and sent my customer there with possible switches circled with a Sharpie. They brought back a large red pushbutton I installed in the Com-pact using telephone cable I soldered onto the mainboard
I totally agree with this. Think of the ways they could have produced power from this. piezo-electric with the vibrations and stomping on the ground (which would probably absorb some of the shock anyway), stirling (or whatever creates changes energy between the heat difference) due to the foot getting hot (which may cool it down some), the swatch thing (a swinging weight with attached magnet to charge a capacitor).
You know what really would have been badass. If they added bluetooth capability between it and a pda so you can track your workouts wirelessly. Then create a bluetooth heart rate monitor with a watch that would intergrate the entire system. You could modify your step and check your heart rate at the same time. I should start working on the patent...
Is $45 too much to ask for Windows? No, you do get a decent operating system. Does Microsoft overcharge for its product knowing that they could charge a fraction of that and still make an excellent product? Yes, Microsoft will make a profit anyway.
People are always bashing Microsoft and its Windows line of operating systems due to the old blue screens of death every 5 minutes and security flaws up the ying-yang. When you finally pull your head out of your ass, you will realize that Windows doesn't crash anywhere near as much as it used to. Windows 95, 98, and ME were originally built on 16-bit DOS technology but times changed and Windows XP shows how much better things can be. I remember back when I couldn't even use a decent (keyword) webbrowser on my Macintosh without the common "Error Type -11". As for the security flaws, yes, there are a lot but when you are on top, everybody attacks you from the bottom. There are a lot of Windows computers out there and most of the losers that exploit the flaws in Windows are Windows users themselves (why else would they know how to exploit some minute memory buffer or something like that) so it makes sense that there are a lot more Windows viruses. Besides, I paid $99 for a Windows XP Home upgrade in 2001 and so far, it looks like I won't have to pay it again until 2006 when Longhorn comes out. Why did I even bother upgrading, cause Best Buy gave $200 of free stuff when you bought Windows but it was still worth the cost.
Apple on the other hand charges people $129 a year (10, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3) for 129 patches to their operating system that should have been there in the first place. Yes a few new features have come out that I love (expose for one), but $129 dollars is a rip off, let alone having to pay it once a year. Don't argue that you don't HAVE to upgrade cause you do. Shortly after Panther came out, they released a Panther only upgrade for Safari which includes several SECURITY fixes. So yeah they were quick about releasing a patch but require that you upgrade your computer to get it.
Linux finally is yes, free, but costs more time than anything else. As a desktop platform it is maturing but still lags behind in funtionalty from comercial operation systems. I hate having to recompile the kernel for a simple update, driver, or to change little things. Yes, it is nice that you have that power but for a single desktop computer user whose time is money, you are better off forking over those $45 to Microsoft and letting the Windows Update run it's course, which if more people did, most would rarely get attacked. As a server or in a beowulf cluster, Linux is excellent. Why pay thousands of dollars for copies of the same operating system when you can download Linux, get one system setup how you like it and then image the rest which is great for a cluster or even a computer lab of web browsers or word processors. As for a server, install Linux without the GUI, choose the servers you need, install, configure, and almost forget. My Linux server has been on for over 100 days and I haven't even seen it since I installed RedHat 9 over 200 days ago. Check out the proof at http://www.eyesorerock.com/phpSysInfo Why the downtime at all? Linux's fatal flaw common to all computers, power failure and the UPS was about 2 minutes short of the power being restored.
In the end, each operating system has it's advantages. Is $45 too much to ask for a fairly stable OS that is being very much actively developed? I say no. Now yes $299 is a complete ripoff for XP Pro New User and Microsoft should burn for the price of Office and the frequency of new versions of it too. MacOSX is a great operating system but no, $129 is just too much to spend a year for what really amounts to a patch. Linux is great for a server, cluster, routers, and specialty boxes but until drivers are easy to compile and install and there aren't a billion different, oldly named packages (emacs, LaTex, pine, pico, libc, gcc, g++, top, squid, to name the well known ones that all Linux users should know by heart their first d
Who cares?
Every company tries to track their sales so they have a better idea where the advertising dollars should be spent. That boils down to more profits for them and better prices for you. Amazon.com does the same thing and so does every other retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufactor, and website out there. So what if there is a name for BudNET? Every major retailer does it.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands." Frankly, you need to live back before computers were around cause now EVERYTHING is tracked. They used to use pens and paper but now it is thrown in a database. I can go to work right now and, with the right information, pull up everything you have purchased there. At the end of the day, our computers process that information and break down what people are buying, when, why, how much, what accessories they get for that item, and then display it in easy to read charts of what we could do to improve our sales. The next day, we know what to push to maximize our margins.
IBM and other compaines that make patents are trying to protect what they spend millions of dollars creating in attempts to sell and license the technology.
Problem is that a lot of compaines are patenting very broad ideas without any innovation. Wouldn't it be great to have a PDA built into a cell phone? Let's patent the idea and wait till somebody creates the device, then sue the shit out of them for copying our IP. I believe that there was a slashdot article on the subject not too long ago.
The patent office needs to see those cases where there are ideas without innovation and refuse to issue the patent untill something of value comes out.
I tried to go download the updated version of Safari and guess what! It requires MacOS Panther! I already tried installing Panther on my Mac and it just gives me an error. Turns out that Panther is not compatable with my Macintosh. Apple forces you to upgrade the damn OS every single year at the low cost of $129. I bet that the next iPod software version will require Panther too. This isn't the first time that I've ranted about Apple forcing you to upgrade but it will be my last. I am not going to be ordering a new Powerbook 12" when the income tax arrives, my iPod will be formatted to PC soon, and my G3 will be running Linux by tommarow. I thought Jobs wanted freedom from the hordes of inline computer geeks but he plays Big Brother to the Mac users that loyally follow his lead.
I find that cable reception is generally very poor at best. Even when you go digital cable, most of the lower channels still come in as analog so they don't look all that great. With DirecTV, all of the channels are digital so there is never a problem with that. As for the satellite signal always going out, yes it does go out in heavy rain but my cable box goes out for no reason at all. It just says "Service will be available shortly". If there is a major problem with DirecTV, you can bet that it will be cleared up real quick cause the whole nation is waiting. With a local cable service, it may only be a small neighborhood and they can afford to take their time. As for the internet, Roadrunner is the best way to go in my area. It is only $45 a month for 3mbps while DSL is like $35 a month for 384kpbs. Which would you choose with 5 people in the house on 8 different computers, all downloading different shit, and occasional Lan parties all connected to the net?) I say for TV go to DirecTV, internet, go cable unless there is a decent offering in your area. My local cable provider is Time Warner Cable in the South Texas Rio Grande Valley region.
I would have to say that your best option would be to invest in the system
Think about it
1) The computer crashes.
2) PortabilityWill you be able to use this everywhere? You probably aren't going to take computers with you if you travel for competitions, and if you do that takes up your setup time.
3) Lag, you need real time conferencing behind the stage and can't wait even for a second of lag time if something goes wrong.
4) InterferenceMost people in the audience probably have a cell phone which operates very close to the 802.11b standard of 2.4ghz. You would quite possibly lose signal in that event, and even if just for a momment, you would have to wait till it was over, reconnect the Wifi signal, and restart the voice program.
Wouldn't it suck if suddenly the system went down? You would have no time to troubleshoot. I was in my high school theatre team and we used a system from Telex. It was awesome. Didn't matter how much noise was around you cause you could hear the voices with no problem and no lag. Just flip on the power unit and plug in. Could even connect multiple units together for cases when you didn't want cables everywhere. We never had a single instance of failure. Do yourself a favor and buy a real system.
No not in the store. Call 1888Bestbuy and select the option for Best Buy PartSearch. You tell them the model of the notebook and what you need, give them a while to look and they will probably find it. I have ordered several off items from there and they have come through every time.
While it is possible to have many of the features installed in your home for a fraction of the price, most people, probably including yourself wouldn't know where to begin. Pluto is a simple to use/install system that takes care of all the hard stuff for the end user. Yes your can have Freevo/Myth but will it intergrate with your phone system, yes, but you must install a voice modem, pray for drivers, recompile kernel, write software, do some voodoo and have a half ass system.
No, Pluto isn't for these die hard geeks out there but most of you geeks probably can't afford this stuff anyway. You probably wouldn't even care about it if it was based on any other OS but because it is a Linux based core, you are whinning that it is too expensive or finding any other flaws to cut it down. I am a Windows user. I like Macs. I have 2 linux boxes running my home/webserver. Would I buy a Pluto? No. Not now. In the future, maybe. But for now, I am looking into what the system has to offer and am already looking for ways to implement this into my own system.
My Tivo has a 40watt power supply so at 8cents a k/W, we spend less than 3 dollars a month. I was trying to turn an older computer into a Tivo like device using Myth, then Freevo, but when Best Buy had an ad for a Phillips branded Tivo for $99 and 5 dollars a month for service, I couldn't resist. Nothing beats the real thing. Almost, other than the fact that I can't network the Phillips Tivo (USB is disabled), it is a great device, the quality is EXCELLENT and when I do want to copy a show, my DV camera can be hooked up in a few seconds for a decent looking rip, much better than any PVR PCI card on the market.
It isn't that there is call home software installed on the computer. Something like Microsoft Outlook could have triggered the alarm. It was set to connect with the outlook server automagicaly. When it did, it set off a red flag because a computer accessed a protect server/port on the intranet from the internet. It came from AOL because when the computer connected to the internet through AOL, Outlook began to connect to the server. WF just had to give info of when and what ip and then AOL can look in their logs and see which one of their users was on that ip and that time.
Most schools thrive on education grants from the government and other organization to help them fund programs. When a grant is received, it is to be spent on a particular field. I just granduated from a South Texas school (Los Fresnos High School, just north of Brownsville, west of South Padre) a couple years ago. The year before I started there, they had no technology on campus, there were 486s that were not connected to anything but power. We received a very large grant and bought countless computers, switches, routers, servers (Linux back then), and had the entire campus hardwired. The Brownsville school district gets grants extremely fast and have done everything except to hand out notebooks but since many students already have computer at home, and every class room has a computer or to plus a computer lab per grade. There is no need for notebooks.
I think that before we continue spend the amount of money that we do anywhere in the country on computers for school, we should decide what they should really be used for.