Yepp. That was my first Computer. A true handheld. I bought it when everybody else had a C64. The reason I bought it was that it would run 120 hours on batteries minimum and it had everthing a computer needed back then. You can fit the thing into every pocket. I even got myself a datasette interface and could load and save stuff on tape. Really cool. There where a whole load of books on Sharp PC machinecoding and all that. You could control single LCD display Pixels and do little grafics with them. I remember one guy squeezing a chess programm into 1,2k(!!). THAT was a cool computer back then and it still is now. I bought the PC 1403 with 32 KB RAM in the early 90s and that one got me into the whole PC and Web craze. I've still got it, with 'cash register roll printer' interface and all in a nice and neat custom wooden suitcase. It's way cool and still beats my Palm in batterytime. Infact, I've lost data on my Palm due to power shortage twice allready, but I never lost data on a Sharp PC.
I don't know about the IT industry in general, but as far as I can see SCO has made nothing but a fool of itself. Even with those people who aren't Linux fanatics. I've been registred with Caldera as a customer for years and ever since that huge, over the top designed super-glossy flyer came in the mail, along with United Linux 1.0 CDs with all kinds of hand-out gadgets making a big boohay about how Caldera was now SCO Group and all that, I started doubting that this company was going the right way. Especially after they offered to change the test version of 'their' United Linux (which was done almost 100% by SuSE) into a licensed version for 650$. Nobody in the industry with more than 2 braincells and even the slightest insight into OSS has since then taken SCO Group for granted. After the recent months of exitement - which were almost exclusively limited to exited geek-only discussions about in which way SCO would damage Linux Services amoungst the people of trade - everyone I know of has marked off this SCO issue as resolved. Apart from SCO sometimes still being good for the one or other joke at the watercooler it's all just business as usual, with this SCO farce becoming a part of the long list of corporate IT history footnotes.
When will the Euro and the Dollar freeze parity? And before you start ranting or laughing, think about it. I say in 20 years from now the latest we'll have a unified currency across the western hemispere. At least the western hemispere.
Hush Technologies Epia M 10000 Mini ITX System Flashy silver TFT Display with Sound (Sony or Samsung) Classic Cherry Keyboard (no Multimedia Crapkeys!) Logitech Dual Optical Mouse Linux (Debian Woody R1) Fluxbox with well configured, crap free right-click menu and 4 to 6 desktops Kwrite (latest) KMail (latest + maybe a deluxe Backend: well configured Exim with spamfilter gets mail for all users) well configured Thunderbird with good theme, radial menu, tab extras + Flash MX Plugin well configured OpenOffice 1.1 (+ Fonts) Gimp 1.3 Turboprint (www.turboprint.de) Gabber X-Chat Realplayer O gle DVD Player XMMS Oggripper (www.thekompany.com) Konsole or well configured Eterm well configured GKrellm Kohan:IS (www.transgaming.com) Frozenbubble Armagetron or GLTron Heroes of Might and Magic III or Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri for the hardcore long-night gamers Accounts for all users with access to the system in each ones favourite style-flavour and 4-6 virtual desktops. Plus half an hour of show and tell for each. The system also should have ssh2 running for your quick remote help in emergencies.
Note that a proper professional configuration and instruction is worth a hundred times more to a normal user than the latest gadget in soft or hardware! If your people really mean something to you give them a well configured system!!! And can't stress this enough. This of course is easiyer achieved on a Linux system. Check out the stuff, fiddle with it yourself and when you feel safe do a nice setup for your folks. Tell, show and prove them that they've got the latest and greatest what softwaretechnology has to offer, with reference grade quality usability. Don't forget: Configuration and Setup is King! The system I buillt kicks any standard WinXP system up and down the street in speed, accessability, safety and ease of use! And exept for Turboprint Deluxe, Heroes and Alpha Centauri all the software is free!
...being one of the current software fashions? This would be a point in that case I guess. Mind you, XML is good. Especially because it's such an extremely picky data format. It's the only way to go for flexible document formats and all that, imho. But XML to shove grafics around a 2D space? Come on, give me a break. No, guys, nice try, but that guy with his XFree replacement called 'Y' a few days ago was much more promising. Next.
Every now and then IBM manages to pull a trick that places them where they are 'loved' the most and are liked to be seen as being in the right place. Reference grade quality IT engineering and products. Be it the portable PS/2s with plasma screen, the PS/2 Note (iirc the 1st Notebook), the Thinkpad series, the microdrive and now this. They never try to go over the top. There is nothing really exceptionally spectacular about their ideas, but they allways manage to implement them in a way that it becomes a benchmark in functionality, is a reference for quality and has a price that people who can afford it are willing to pay and those who can't wish they could afford it. It's interresting the way IBM is an IT company that people are actually refering to as a 'traditional' one.
Makes stuff like that Mickeysoft company attempting to project 'cool' image even so much more silly.
I actually would buy one of these, even if it where just for the heck of it.:-) But *only* with SGI Linux on it. The box may look cool but that Irix GUI is easily the most crappy looking UI every concieved by a human or non-human mind.
New MP architecture. Cool. Can't have enough of that. Runs multiple OSes? So what? Do they really think that any application scenario I need MP for leaves me hanging with the question wether I use Linux, Irix or LoseXP? If I'm gonna get myself a 4 CPU workstation I'm shure as hell *not* gonna waste it buy running Mickeysoft next to Linux or Zeta. No friggin way. If I get myself an MP system it's for reference grade industry strength Ooomph requirements. With me that would be either serious 3D/NLE/Compositing with Software that costs more than the entire hardware or some kind of bizar server requirements I'm dealing with just now, which are barely met with 2 3GHz Xeons, 1,5Gig of RAM and a Rocketdrive with a RAID 'backend'. Who with more than 2 braincells would waste that with either redundant (MacOS/Linux) or crappy (guess) multiple OSes weighing down on the same system? Me definitely not. The architectures flexibility shure will be handy, but I doubt it will make inroads by running multiple OSes. When it comes to usable MP computing the ball is in the entire *nix half of the field anyway. No friggin way is M$ gonna make it here, new Intel MP 'Vanderbuilt' multi-OS architecture or not.
I've had *very* bad expierience with Lamy fountain pens. I like their style and their look and feel but I've had so many fountain pens from LAMY and *all* of them have gone blotty and leaking after a certain period of time. Stear clear! Though I gave my wife an LAMY ink ballpoint with autoretracting clip. Pellets are pricey but the pen is actually quite good. Someone mentioned the Pentel and Pilot gel-pens. I'm currently using these and the writing feel they have is one of the best. They come in bazillions of colors (white or bronze glitter on black carton looks ways cool!) but need a little drying time. One of my favourites is a japanese Pentel calligraphy pellet fountain brush! Notes with that one look *really* cool. Pentel is a japanese company, they dig that kind of stuff.:-) It's not what you'd want for long or very quick notes on small space though. If you want a fountain pen Mont Blanc is top of the line but *very* pricey. Parker Fountain pens with refiller/built-in-converters (those without pellets) are good and should be easily available in the US. Apart from LAMY - which you can get converters for so you don't need any pellets anymore - there is two other german manufacturers of fountain pens, Geha and Pelican. Pelican is something like the Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen of fountain pens, depending on the price region you pick. You can get converters for them too. Saves you costly pelleted ink. But for true geekness *do* check the Cross, or better even, Fisher preshurized ball-points, those the NASA uses since the Apollo missions. They write under water and over head and, guess what, in zero gravity too.:-) The standard american Cross pen body sucks big time though. The brass plating whears of and turns into a green oxidized muck after a time and the whole thing has a really chinzy tin feeling about it. And the clip is like nothing more than stapled on. Get the german short version, (Fisher sells them along with their standard lenght post-modern-euro-techno-aluminium variant) It's of stainless steel and the long cap extends it to full pen length when stuck on the back end. And folded it fits into a PDA sized Filofax. The preshurized pellets/mines should be the same format as in Cross though. But check that. Also by now you can get preshurized pellets/mines in standard ballpoint format to fit your favorite pen body. In germany that is. Don't know about the US. I've only got 2 US pens, Cross preshurized NASA ballpoint (crappy pen, good mine/pellet) and a classy Parker fountain pen with built in rubber-squishy converter (that ones ok but I expect th rubber to get brittle sometime).
Bottom Line Sumary: Good priceworthy affordable Fountain Pen: Pelikan with extra or built-in refiller/converter. Good 'cheapo' Ballpoint: Pentel or Pilot Gel or Standard Ballpoint with NASA/Fisher preshurized pellet/mine. Geek Ballpoint: Fisher NASA Pocket Ballpoint
Good luck.
BTW: It could be german spelling: 'Fischer'. Don't know exactly...
The Psion Netbook was way ahead of it's time when it came out. 10hrs. + battery time under full load, 640 by 480 color display, fully Java compliant, built in Webbrowser, built in IDE for C/C++, Java and the Epoc PL (name?), word processor, spreadsheet and so on. It walked all over any other PDA and Notebook back then. It was exceptionally expensive, but it ruled. It's a shame they waste such a well balanced system that's custom built to fit the Epoc OS on WinCE. The bright side: The last stashes of old Netbooks may get cheaper now.:-)
One guy says war is the only way to fix things. Thats utter rubbish. War is the only way to fix things *in this current system*, which isn't capitalisim, but more a pseudo capitalisim. If this system were to work right, we'd need a stronger degrading of moneyvalue than inflation offers. The way it is now, all goods if not sold lose value, only money increases in amount more than it loses by inflation. That's what has to be _corrected_. Not changed or overthrown completely, but corrected.
Then further on: Productivity has something like quadrupled in the last 100 years. Actually my very job is to increase productivity by an average of 20% in the information shifting business - I do lot's of data migration automation and stuff. While my job is just to find methods to cope with the plain pointless information overload (lucky me it's there) there is one thing that has to be done to cope with massively increased productivity: Robot taxes. That's right: Robots paying taxes. The other one is a society problem: We need to grasp the value of services and custom craftsmanship again. Which actually *does* have a real value. Actually OSS is all about moving Software development away from a 'childs game' to engineering to real solid traditional craftmanship. Just like the plumber that fixes your pipes when they've rotted after 20 years of use. You could do it yourself, but you pay the expierienced guy 'cause he does it faster and you've got less fuss. And Pipes and Putty are the least you pay for. Usually.
World Problem Solution (TM), Bottom Line: 1.) Turbine Tax and improved Money Rot for money just lying at the bank and not fed back into he money cycle. Yes folks, we've got to much of it and to few are getting more and more just by leaving the most universal good on the shelf. That is *NOT* the concept of capitalisim. Trust me.
2.) Robot Taxes. Robots paying taxes. It's really that simple. Make that Microtaxes, if that makes you feel better. BTW: Count computers doing automated tasks (and not acting as books or TVs or stuff) as robots.
3.) Society shifting to a 98% service orientation. And a 98% self-employed society, where required tasks can be dealt with in a flexible manner. At least Germany still has a long way to go in both of these.
The metre is defined in terms of the speed of light,...
Wrong. The meter is defined by the distance from the Equator to the North Pole (divided 10 000 000).
So seeth the beauty of the metric system:
1000 Meters == one _Kilo_meter one tenth of a meter == one _Deci_meter one hundredth of a meter == one _Centi_meter 1 gram == one cube centimeter of water 1 _Kilo_gramm == 1000 cube centimeters of water == one Liter.... and so on. Get the picture?
Now how many feet to a mile was there again? And what was that with Gallons and Pints? Not to speak of those bizar 72 and 96 dpi that have spread all over the world... (grrrr.)
Coming to think of it: Flying to the moon is quite a stunt. Flying to the moon using the imperial system is even more extraordinary astonishing. I remember Neil Armstrong explaining the depth of the moon dust in fractions of an inch.
Me actually wonders that you americans don't have something like 387,56 Cents to a Dollar or so.:-)))
BTW: I think we europeans have Mr. Napoleon to thank for this. Continental europeans that is. The British are a totally different issue. They got Napoleon at Waterloo and now look what they have from it: They have to live with the imperial system for all eternity.:-)
This guy seems to know what he's talking about and as far as I can tell he's got a proof of concept to show allready. Along with solid research and design.
I wouldn't be to fast at hand with bashing this guy - he lists all the other XFree replacements and for some like Berlin/Fresco he can clearly state why they failed and what you have to aviod to not fail the same way. And he also acknowleges XFrees benefits and sees no point in overthrowing them.
Keep an eye on this project, this could be something really interessting.
Slot, Socket, Boardfrequency, Memory Type, CPU Bitcount and CPU Class... Bit by bit (no pun intended) vendors are establishing a true real life randomness of standards. A shure sign that computers are becoming a comodity. Soon we'll see the same with operating systems.
What I like about this is that one can be ashured that VIA doesn't try to reinvent the wheel and just builds in stuff that tried, true and cheap and focuses on pushing the size limits without trying to push current perfomance limits at the same time, maintaining a sane price. Enough people have noticed that 1 GHz works fine for 99,9% of the jobs and VIA offers them an appropriate deal. Wouldn't be suprised if this kind of stuff would turn out to be the next-gen standard workstation.
Not enough sex, eh? ;-)
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'll eagerly read it, regardless, but I wonder -- has Stephenson learned to write:
a) an ending b) a sex scene that doesn't make one cringe
At least with sex scenes, he could just leave them out since he's so obviously uncomfortable writing them.
Stephenson uncomfortable writing a sex scene? We talking 'bout the same author? I find his sex scenes- at least the one in Cryptonomicon - classic at worst. I nearly laughed my head of. And if *you* cringe at his sex scenes, you should maybe come to think that that could be what he intended for *readers* that are uncomfortable with sex scenes. At least that sex scene made me horny *and* laugh at the same time. Quite good a writing if you ask me. '...imperial pint of semen...' - I'll *never* forget that one. Absolutely classic. LOL!
Stephenson == very educated avantgardistic writing
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I really like Stephenson. He's the current living benchmark for literature imho. He writes witty, educated, phantasy rich, thoughtfull and, in ways, seriously esotherical without losing it. He is consequently ignored by the 'big' literature critics - allways a clear sign of quality - and still manages to fascinate and grip the fun reader and the thoughfull one alike. Personally, I'm looking forward to this new one from him.
Nothing new here. No? I remember seeing the first Transputers on my very first Cebit visit sometime in the early 90s. The Transputer workstations would crunch full screen fractal grafics in seconds, which was an amazing feat back then. Just plain *everybody* was convinced they would put the then ruling Amiga to rest or - also a popular theory back then - would be adapted by Commodore. There is this Transputing PL Ocam that, as far as I can tell, makes Java, C# and all the rest look like kiddiecrap. Everyone who I know who knows Ocam says it rules and usually also has the skills to prove it. The overall concept - very much like the one Sun is talking about now - was to stick in a CPU, or 2 or 10 and make the box faster with nearly no decline in perfomance/processor ratio. It actually did work that way.
Transputers never made it though, to expensive and the required software developement was to esotheric back then. It would be really nice to see this concept rise again. Maybe now they actually would be affordable.
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Yepp. That was my first Computer. A true handheld. I bought it when everybody else had a C64. The reason I bought it was that it would run 120 hours on batteries minimum and it had everthing a computer needed back then. You can fit the thing into every pocket. I even got myself a datasette interface and could load and save stuff on tape. Really cool. There where a whole load of books on Sharp PC machinecoding and all that. You could control single LCD display Pixels and do little grafics with them. I remember one guy squeezing a chess programm into 1,2k(!!). THAT was a cool computer back then and it still is now. I bought the PC 1403 with 32 KB RAM in the early 90s and that one got me into the whole PC and Web craze. I've still got it, with 'cash register roll printer' interface and all in a nice and neat custom wooden suitcase. It's way cool and still beats my Palm in batterytime. Infact, I've lost data on my Palm due to power shortage twice allready, but I never lost data on a Sharp PC.
I don't know about the IT industry in general, but as far as I can see SCO has made nothing but a fool of itself. Even with those people who aren't Linux fanatics. I've been registred with Caldera as a customer for years and ever since that huge, over the top designed super-glossy flyer came in the mail, along with United Linux 1.0 CDs with all kinds of hand-out gadgets making a big boohay about how Caldera was now SCO Group and all that, I started doubting that this company was going the right way. Especially after they offered to change the test version of 'their' United Linux (which was done almost 100% by SuSE) into a licensed version for 650$. Nobody in the industry with more than 2 braincells and even the slightest insight into OSS has since then taken SCO Group for granted.
After the recent months of exitement - which were almost exclusively limited to exited geek-only discussions about in which way SCO would damage Linux Services amoungst the people of trade - everyone I know of has marked off this SCO issue as resolved. Apart from SCO sometimes still being good for the one or other joke at the watercooler it's all just business as usual, with this SCO farce becoming a part of the long list of corporate IT history footnotes.
How is something like this even close to being legal?
It isn't. No?
And I thought only german names for authorities where obnoxious.
So, when will the USA switch to Euro?
When will the Euro and the Dollar freeze parity?
And before you start ranting or laughing, think about it.
I say in 20 years from now the latest we'll have a unified currency across the western hemispere. At least the western hemispere.
Hush Technologies Epia M 10000 Mini ITX System
O gle DVD Player
Flashy silver TFT Display with Sound (Sony or Samsung)
Classic Cherry Keyboard (no Multimedia Crapkeys!)
Logitech Dual Optical Mouse
Linux (Debian Woody R1)
Fluxbox with well configured, crap free right-click menu and 4 to 6 desktops
Kwrite (latest)
KMail (latest + maybe a deluxe Backend: well configured Exim with spamfilter gets mail for all users)
well configured Thunderbird with good theme, radial menu, tab extras + Flash MX Plugin
well configured OpenOffice 1.1 (+ Fonts)
Gimp 1.3
Turboprint (www.turboprint.de)
Gabber
X-Chat
Realplayer
XMMS
Oggripper (www.thekompany.com)
Konsole or well configured Eterm
well configured GKrellm
Kohan:IS (www.transgaming.com)
Frozenbubble
Armagetron or GLTron
Heroes of Might and Magic III or Sid Meyers Alpha Centauri for the hardcore long-night gamers
Accounts for all users with access to the system in each ones favourite style-flavour and 4-6 virtual desktops. Plus half an hour of show and tell for each.
The system also should have ssh2 running for your quick remote help in emergencies.
Note that a proper professional configuration and instruction is worth a hundred times more to a normal user than the latest gadget in soft or hardware!
If your people really mean something to you give them a well configured system!!! And can't stress this enough. This of course is easiyer achieved on a Linux system. Check out the stuff, fiddle with it yourself and when you feel safe do a nice setup for your folks. Tell, show and prove them that they've got the latest and greatest what softwaretechnology has to offer, with reference grade quality usability. Don't forget: Configuration and Setup is King!
The system I buillt kicks any standard WinXP system up and down the street in speed, accessability, safety and ease of use! And exept for Turboprint Deluxe, Heroes and Alpha Centauri all the software is free!
Whatcha smokin'?
...being one of the current software fashions? This would be a point in that case I guess.
Mind you, XML is good. Especially because it's such an extremely picky data format. It's the only way to go for flexible document formats and all that, imho. But XML to shove grafics around a 2D space?
Come on, give me a break.
No, guys, nice try, but that guy with his XFree replacement called 'Y' a few days ago was much more promising.
Next.
Every now and then IBM manages to pull a trick that places them where they are 'loved' the most and are liked to be seen as being in the right place. Reference grade quality IT engineering and products. Be it the portable PS/2s with plasma screen, the PS/2 Note (iirc the 1st Notebook), the Thinkpad series, the microdrive and now this. They never try to go over the top. There is nothing really exceptionally spectacular about their ideas, but they allways manage to implement them in a way that it becomes a benchmark in functionality, is a reference for quality and has a price that people who can afford it are willing to pay and those who can't wish they could afford it. It's interresting the way IBM is an IT company that people are actually refering to as a 'traditional' one.
Makes stuff like that Mickeysoft company attempting to project 'cool' image even so much more silly.
I actually would buy one of these, even if it where just for the heck of it. :-)
But *only* with SGI Linux on it. The box may look cool but that Irix GUI is easily the most crappy looking UI every concieved by a human or non-human mind.
New MP architecture. Cool. Can't have enough of that.
Runs multiple OSes? So what?
Do they really think that any application scenario I need MP for leaves me hanging with the question wether I use Linux, Irix or LoseXP? If I'm gonna get myself a 4 CPU workstation I'm shure as hell *not* gonna waste it buy running Mickeysoft next to Linux or Zeta. No friggin way. If I get myself an MP system it's for reference grade industry strength Ooomph requirements. With me that would be either serious 3D/NLE/Compositing with Software that costs more than the entire hardware or some kind of bizar server requirements I'm dealing with just now, which are barely met with 2 3GHz Xeons, 1,5Gig of RAM and a Rocketdrive with a RAID 'backend'.
Who with more than 2 braincells would waste that with either redundant (MacOS/Linux) or crappy (guess) multiple OSes weighing down on the same system? Me definitely not. The architectures flexibility shure will be handy, but I doubt it will make inroads by running multiple OSes. When it comes to usable MP computing the ball is in the entire *nix half of the field anyway. No friggin way is M$ gonna make it here, new Intel MP 'Vanderbuilt' multi-OS architecture or not.
I've had *very* bad expierience with Lamy fountain pens. I like their style and their look and feel but I've had so many fountain pens from LAMY and *all* of them have gone blotty and leaking after a certain period of time. Stear clear! Though I gave my wife an LAMY ink ballpoint with autoretracting clip. Pellets are pricey but the pen is actually quite good. :-) It's not what you'd want for long or very quick notes on small space though. :-) The standard american Cross pen body sucks big time though. The brass plating whears of and turns into a green oxidized muck after a time and the whole thing has a really chinzy tin feeling about it. And the clip is like nothing more than stapled on.
Someone mentioned the Pentel and Pilot gel-pens. I'm currently using these and the writing feel they have is one of the best. They come in bazillions of colors (white or bronze glitter on black carton looks ways cool!) but need a little drying time. One of my favourites is a japanese Pentel calligraphy pellet fountain brush! Notes with that one look *really* cool. Pentel is a japanese company, they dig that kind of stuff.
If you want a fountain pen Mont Blanc is top of the line but *very* pricey.
Parker Fountain pens with refiller/built-in-converters (those without pellets) are good and should be easily available in the US.
Apart from LAMY - which you can get converters for so you don't need any pellets anymore - there is two other german manufacturers of fountain pens, Geha and Pelican. Pelican is something like the Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen of fountain pens, depending on the price region you pick. You can get converters for them too. Saves you costly pelleted ink.
But for true geekness *do* check the Cross, or better even, Fisher preshurized ball-points, those the NASA uses since the Apollo missions. They write under water and over head and, guess what, in zero gravity too.
Get the german short version, (Fisher sells them along with their standard lenght post-modern-euro-techno-aluminium variant)
It's of stainless steel and the long cap extends it to full pen length when stuck on the back end. And folded it fits into a PDA sized Filofax. The preshurized pellets/mines should be the same format as in Cross though. But check that. Also by now you can get preshurized pellets/mines in standard ballpoint format to fit your favorite pen body. In germany that is. Don't know about the US. I've only got 2 US pens, Cross preshurized NASA ballpoint (crappy pen, good mine/pellet) and a classy Parker fountain pen with built in rubber-squishy converter (that ones ok but I expect th rubber to get brittle sometime).
Bottom Line Sumary:
Good priceworthy affordable Fountain Pen: Pelikan with extra or built-in refiller/converter.
Good 'cheapo' Ballpoint: Pentel or Pilot Gel or Standard Ballpoint with NASA/Fisher preshurized pellet/mine.
Geek Ballpoint: Fisher NASA Pocket Ballpoint
Good luck.
BTW: It could be german spelling: 'Fischer'. Don't know exactly...
The Psion Netbook was way ahead of it's time when it came out. 10hrs. + battery time under full load, 640 by 480 color display, fully Java compliant, built in Webbrowser, built in IDE for C/C++, Java and the Epoc PL (name?), word processor, spreadsheet and so on. It walked all over any other PDA and Notebook back then. It was exceptionally expensive, but it ruled. :-)
It's a shame they waste such a well balanced system that's custom built to fit the Epoc OS on WinCE.
The bright side: The last stashes of old Netbooks may get cheaper now.
*Hologram of Kanada Invasion Plan (don't ask, watch the movie) starts malfunctioning, with random noise and Sadam Hussein pictures poping up*
Redneck General (completely outraged, yelling):"That has to be this fucking Windows 98. Get me this Bill Gates."
*instantly doors fly open, two natonal guards drag in a south park syle nerd clearly recognizable as Bill Gates and bring him before the General*
General (yelling): "YOU said that Windows 98 would be better and that it would get me on the web faster."
Gates (defensive, with soothing marketing tone of voice):"But it IS better! Over 4 million of our customers..."
*BLAM!*
(General shoots Bill Gates through the head with is Deagle)
...a few days ago.
One guy says war is the only way to fix things.
Thats utter rubbish. War is the only way to fix things *in this current system*, which isn't capitalisim, but more a pseudo capitalisim. If this system were to work right, we'd need a stronger degrading of moneyvalue than inflation offers.
The way it is now, all goods if not sold lose value, only money increases in amount more than it loses by inflation. That's what has to be _corrected_. Not changed or overthrown completely, but corrected.
Then further on:
Productivity has something like quadrupled in the last 100 years. Actually my very job is to increase productivity by an average of 20% in the information shifting business - I do lot's of data migration automation and stuff. While my job is just to find methods to cope with the plain pointless information overload (lucky me it's there) there is one thing that has to be done to cope with massively increased productivity:
Robot taxes. That's right: Robots paying taxes.
The other one is a society problem: We need to grasp the value of services and custom craftsmanship again. Which actually *does* have a real value. Actually OSS is all about moving Software development away from a 'childs game' to engineering to real solid traditional craftmanship. Just like the plumber that fixes your pipes when they've rotted after 20 years of use. You could do it yourself, but you pay the expierienced guy 'cause he does it faster and you've got less fuss. And Pipes and Putty are the least you pay for. Usually.
World Problem Solution (TM), Bottom Line:
1.) Turbine Tax and improved Money Rot for money just lying at the bank and not fed back into he money cycle. Yes folks, we've got to much of it and to few are getting more and more just by leaving the most universal good on the shelf. That is *NOT* the concept of capitalisim. Trust me.
2.) Robot Taxes. Robots paying taxes. It's really that simple. Make that Microtaxes, if that makes you feel better. BTW: Count computers doing automated tasks (and not acting as books or TVs or stuff) as robots.
3.) Society shifting to a 98% service orientation. And a 98% self-employed society, where required tasks can be dealt with in a flexible manner.
At least Germany still has a long way to go in both of these.
As I said: My 2 Eurocents.
The metre is defined in terms of the speed of light,...
:-)))
:-)
Wrong. The meter is defined by the distance from the Equator to the North Pole (divided 10 000 000).
So seeth the beauty of the metric system:
1000 Meters == one _Kilo_meter
one tenth of a meter == one _Deci_meter
one hundredth of a meter == one _Centi_meter
1 gram == one cube centimeter of water
1 _Kilo_gramm == 1000 cube centimeters of water == one Liter....
and so on. Get the picture?
Now how many feet to a mile was there again?
And what was that with Gallons and Pints?
Not to speak of those bizar 72 and 96 dpi that have spread all over the world... (grrrr.)
Coming to think of it: Flying to the moon is quite a stunt.
Flying to the moon using the imperial system is even more extraordinary astonishing. I remember Neil Armstrong explaining the depth of the moon dust in fractions of an inch.
Me actually wonders that you americans don't have something like 387,56 Cents to a Dollar or so.
BTW: I think we europeans have Mr. Napoleon to thank for this. Continental europeans that is. The British are a totally different issue. They got Napoleon at Waterloo and now look what they have from it: They have to live with the imperial system for all eternity.
This guy seems to know what he's talking about and as far as I can tell he's got a proof of concept to show allready. Along with solid research and design.
I wouldn't be to fast at hand with bashing this guy - he lists all the other XFree replacements and for some like Berlin/Fresco he can clearly state why they failed and what you have to aviod to not fail the same way. And he also acknowleges XFrees benefits and sees no point in overthrowing them.
Keep an eye on this project, this could be something really interessting.
Slot, Socket, Boardfrequency, Memory Type, CPU Bitcount and CPU Class...
Bit by bit (no pun intended) vendors are establishing a true real life randomness of standards. A shure sign that computers are becoming a comodity. Soon we'll see the same with operating systems.
We took DOS for granted 15 years ago. Thank God we don't anymore!
..the Fonts look a little mangled, no?
SCNR
What I like about this is that one can be ashured that VIA doesn't try to reinvent the wheel and just builds in stuff that tried, true and cheap and focuses on pushing the size limits without trying to push current perfomance limits at the same time, maintaining a sane price.
Enough people have noticed that 1 GHz works fine for 99,9% of the jobs and VIA offers them an appropriate deal.
Wouldn't be suprised if this kind of stuff would turn out to be the next-gen standard workstation.
I'll eagerly read it, regardless, but I wonder -- has Stephenson learned to write:
a) an ending
b) a sex scene that doesn't make one cringe
At least with sex scenes, he could just leave them out since he's so obviously uncomfortable writing them.
Stephenson uncomfortable writing a sex scene? We talking 'bout the same author?
I find his sex scenes- at least the one in Cryptonomicon - classic at worst. I nearly laughed my head of. And if *you* cringe at his sex scenes, you should maybe come to think that that could be what he intended for *readers* that are uncomfortable with sex scenes.
At least that sex scene made me horny *and* laugh at the same time. Quite good a writing if you ask me.
'...imperial pint of semen...' - I'll *never* forget that one. Absolutely classic. LOL!
I really like Stephenson. He's the current living benchmark for literature imho. He writes witty, educated, phantasy rich, thoughtfull and, in ways, seriously esotherical without losing it.
He is consequently ignored by the 'big' literature critics - allways a clear sign of quality - and still manages to fascinate and grip the fun reader and the thoughfull one alike.
Personally, I'm looking forward to this new one from him.
Nothing new here. No?
I remember seeing the first Transputers on my very first Cebit visit sometime in the early 90s. The Transputer workstations would crunch full screen fractal grafics in seconds, which was an amazing feat back then. Just plain *everybody* was convinced they would put the then ruling Amiga to rest or - also a popular theory back then - would be adapted by Commodore. There is this Transputing PL Ocam that, as far as I can tell, makes Java, C# and all the rest look like kiddiecrap. Everyone who I know who knows Ocam says it rules and usually also has the skills to prove it.
The overall concept - very much like the one Sun is talking about now - was to stick in a CPU, or 2 or 10 and make the box faster with nearly no decline in perfomance/processor ratio. It actually did work that way.
Transputers never made it though, to expensive and the required software developement was to esotheric back then. It would be really nice to see this concept rise again. Maybe now they actually would be affordable.