This question was also asked by the Myth Busters on the Discovery channel, in episode 2 And their discoveries came to the same conclusions as the PEI, that cell phones do not causes explosions, but that static electricity, especially that built up by entering and exiting the vehical while pumping up, was the cause of many gas station fires.
I used to work as a telemarketer in the past (Don't mod me down because I needed a job...) and I've learned a few tricks to beat telemarketers.
Do Not Call Lists: All telemarketing centers have a Do Not Call list. Two of them in fact. The first is required by law for the center to remove you from their calling list if you say the words "Put me on your do not call list" This information is entered by the telemarketer into the system and your name is then removed from the system for that Company.
In many cases, A center will have multiple Companies that they do calling for. Requesting to be placed on the "Coperate Do Not Call List" will not only remove you from the list the telemarketer is calling for, but also any other company that the center does any telemarketing for at that time and in the future. That will help in making sure that the center does not call again in the future (Next time, try asking the telemarketer who they actually work for, usually it's not the one they're calling on behalf of.)
As Well, in the United States, you as a consumer are protected by the "Telephone Consumer's Protection Act" (TCPA), which requires the telemarketer to give you the company name and telephone number where you can reach them. If they fail to do so at the end of the call (IE, if they think you hang up, and just don't say it even to dead air), then you have the right to sue the company for up to $10,000. Not all states fall under the same rules, so check out here for more info on it
Some states also have what's call a no rebutal law, which should prevent the telemarketer from rebuting you (ie. saying "I understand your hesitation but..."), when you say "No" they have to end the call there. Check out your state laws to find out if you fall in this category as well.
Obviously l33t speak is something that's easy for the student to fall into if they do it constantly while on the computer. The one thing that should have been a dead stop to this though, is a little thing that came out some number of years ago called "Spell Check"!
I mean really, why on earth would somebody hand in a report/homework to the teacher without first running a spell checker on the work first hand. Personally I know that I would never hand in work that I had done without running it through the spell check at least twice, and having it reveiwed by somebody else. For the simple reason that I know that my spelling and grammer is... err... are horrible.
It boils down to one of two things, students not alert enough to use a spell checker, or even have someone review the work, or there has been a massive failure of the spell checker programs nation wide (probably a result of too much trying to figure out the meaning behind the l33t speak)
Unfortunately, to myself, it is not all that surprizing that MicroSoft is not going to patch Office 97 to correct the security hole. With my experience it's either buy the latest greatest from Microsoft, or be stuck with the older bugs. Essentially updating to Office 2K makes little difference as it won't be long before more bugs are found within that software to exploit, by which point Microsoft will have released their next version and no longer supporting 2K.
This kind of treatment for customers is fundamently wrong when it comes to customer service, while excellent business strategy. A company should support a product when customer's have taken the time and money to purchase it. Rather than tell them they're out of luck and need to purchase the latest version to get any support. Such customer service would not last long now, were it not for the fact that MS already has the customer base and usage that customer's can't afford to just give if up. And insted must abid by their ways.
Not only that, I think that it may also give larger companies who use 3D graphics design frequently, an incentive to switch to linux. Lower operating cost = greater profits.
Further steps like this will certianly bring Linux into more business environments.
That and just the oppisite as well too, with Blender becoming a free tool for everybody to use, we may see the rise of more 3D graphics in the future, heralding who knows what just yet.
Hopefully this will be a tend of things to come. Esentially this will allow for more users in the future, on more platforms. It even allows the possibility of selling the compiled project with the helpful additions from the OpenSource communitity, with the exception of making sure that the source is still available (under GPL).
That was done. It didn't help any. Infact I constantly deleted the entire classpath out of AUTOEXEC.BAT And then unset the classpath variable and verified it was unset.. rebooted (or ran autoexec.bat) and it ended up being set again. And I made sure that in AUTOEXEC.BAT there were no calls to any other batch files that might have set it. As I said, that was part of the iscolated problems. The only way I could get it to work properly for most things was to unset the classpath, and then set the classpath at the command line on top of it.
I have a dual boot machine at home, one partition Windows 98, the other Slackware 8.0. Today I downloaded and installed the new Java SDK 1.4.0-rc on both systems. And while I think that some iscolated windows difficulties causes my oppinion to be rather biased, I found the install much easier going on Linux.
However I will note that, while the Java Web Start was installed on Windows, I didn't find any version of it for linux. And the downside to the Web Start I found is that it constantly wanted to download and install a new version of Java Runtime Environment 1.3.x everytime I lauched an application. And then after the download, and installed, I'm prompted to reboot the computer. After rebooting and trying to launch again, it again starts to download JRE 1.3.x and through the whole cycle all over again.
As well, with my windows install I found I was constantly having difficulties getting it to use the default classpath (ie, no environment variable set for CLASSPATH). I ended up having to resort to specifying the classpath at the command line. And no matter how much I tried, I could no manage to get Swing to work properly.
However on the other hand, the Linux install was rather straight forward, with a few simple steps: Change download to executable; Run it; move the extracted directory to a shared path (as su); add the java/bin directory to the search path; and finally add the java/man directory to the search paths for man.
The windows installer was straight forward, though the above problems still hampered me.
could lead to a request for damages in excess of $100 million
Is this Cornell's way of raising money? Well, I suppose it's a little easier than baking 100 million muffins and cookies.
But what interests me is exactly what type of "damages" were actually done. And why wait 6 years before saying anything? Maybe it just took them that long to get inside the box itself. Anywho, enough insulting. It just seems to me that it would be rather difficult to prove that 1) The idea was taken in the first place and 2) That it really caused $100Million in damages, since Cornell seems as strong to me now as it did 10 years ago.
Please excuse the rambling, it's almost 7 in the morning and I'm still at work from yesterday, what a long night....
Yes, however. Take for example somebody who is completely blind and needs to have all their cones replaced. Some people who are color blind have this condition of seeing in black and white. Though not many.
In anycase, I'll wait for a zooming feature before I get anything like that done.
Based on the location within the eye that the surgery would need to take place, it seems to me that the surgery could acctually cause more problems than it fixes. Apart from that, it would be interesting to see what kind of images the brain would actually produce from the implant (no pun intended). Would it mean people being able to see again, albeit in black and white?
As far as I'm concerned this shouldn't even be an issue with Cell phones. I think that phones should be kept phones. If someone is really that interested in portable web. Then use a PDA.
Yes, I'll be one of the first to admit that cell phones are wonderfull. But I use mine as a phone. Not a game consol, not as a web browser, or day planner... And yes, I think PDA's are good for a day planner, and even limited web browsing and gaming. But really, do we need to be playing Doom, or the latest, greatest, Quake game on our cell phones? Do you really need to use Yahoo! after getting talking with your mother from the bus?
For me, there is such a thing as too many features. Web browsers on cell phones is one such case.
How can it be said that recint, past 50 years, "inventions" and advancements aren't as significant as a septic tank? The problem is that the artical looks at things to generally. Just looking at computers alone you can so many changes to... life really, that have been done in the past 50 years. Just look around you and try to find something that computers haven't effected in some way. Your desk? computers in manufacturing, and probably in the shipment and advertising and selling of it. Your TV... well just look at your TV now and what it would have been 50 years ago.
Perhaps it's true the they're not so much inventions but improvements on things. But that doesn't make them any less significant.
Distros have added more than ample programs/utilities. And Mandrake is one of the main ones that do this. Now some people do use many of the aplications that it has available. And of course, if you don't want it, just remove it. But as another option, which was recintly a discussion on LNO, there is LFS(Linuxfromscratch). LFS is basicly a "distroless" linux, that you build yourself. They have manuals/books that lead you through the process. The only requirment is that you do currently have a linux distro on your machine so that you have the resources available to build it. At the very least, it is an excellent learning tool, and most, you have your own custom built Linux with only what you want/need on it.
If you remove all the functionality from a linux kernel, is it still a linux kernel?
I'd say that the question you should be asking is "what is the smallest kernel which will do what I want?"
I agree with this statement. A stripped down, unfunctional linux kernel is not much different than a stripped down Windows, or Mac kernel. What is the point of stripping down a linux kernel, tearing all the guts and usefullness out of it, just to say that it's a linux kernel.
I don't mean for this to come out as flamebate, but some Linux users just use it to say that it's not windows (To a degree, I'm one of them). But when you attempt to make such a small and reduced kernel that doens't support anything. It doesn't matter if you call it Windows, Linux, BSD, or Gaggle Blobs, it still doesn't do anything.
My point is this: There is a difference between a small and functional Kernel, and a small kernel that is just a waste of space anyways.
I agree, without having something like a glove to use for a 3 dimenional area, a 3D desktop just won't work. I can already see that one of the main problems would be the "intuitive" interface. Say perhaps you just want to move the mouse out of the way, or want to get a something lower on the Y axis, 2D, easy, just move the mouse, but if you did this with the cub, or their file manage. Then in most cases the desktop will "intuitively know" that you're actually tryin to flip the cube, or scroll the window. The complication gets even worse in 1st person view. Are you trying to gets something behind this app? Are you trying to swivle your view of the screen to look around the desk top. In first person view, you would definately need to have the VR goggles and gloves.
While it's a nice idea. Right now the technology needed for it just doesn't exsist, or isn't readily available.
Yes, I remember that game all too well. The Commodore PET was my very first computer. And when I had it, it didn't have a tape recorder. So I had to type in all the games by hand every time I turned on the computer. I can remember typing Hitch Hikers out by hand, trying to fix all the errors I had made. I wish I knew where my source code was for that (and all the other games I had). I wouldn't mind going through it and looking at it again. But they are probably gone to the dump with the PET (I had a bad habbit of taking it apart, and every time I did, it never went back to gether the same way, until it just didn't work anymore hehe)
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This question was also asked by the Myth Busters on the Discovery channel, in episode 2 And their discoveries came to the same conclusions as the PEI, that cell phones do not causes explosions, but that static electricity, especially that built up by entering and exiting the vehical while pumping up, was the cause of many gas station fires.
Here's a link to The Screen Savers (on Tech TV) that has some information about what Adrian had to say when he called in live to speak with Leo.
I don't know how well the Pentium 4's are compatible with hardware honey combs.
It would be interesting to see if the heat generated by the CPU/etc killed the ants.
And I thought the keyboards on a standard laptop were hard enough to use. That is just PDA sized, and as such, means thumb usage for the keyboard.
No, as far as I'm concerned laptops can't get much/any smaller now as it is, otherwise they stop being feasable for actual usage other than as a PDA.
Apparently this isn't a dupe because the other post links to a different article.
I used to work as a telemarketer in the past (Don't mod me down because I needed a job...) and I've learned a few tricks to beat telemarketers.
Do Not Call Lists: All telemarketing centers have a Do Not Call list. Two of them in fact. The first is required by law for the center to remove you from their calling list if you say the words "Put me on your do not call list" This information is entered by the telemarketer into the system and your name is then removed from the system for that Company.
In many cases, A center will have multiple Companies that they do calling for. Requesting to be placed on the "Coperate Do Not Call List" will not only remove you from the list the telemarketer is calling for, but also any other company that the center does any telemarketing for at that time and in the future. That will help in making sure that the center does not call again in the future (Next time, try asking the telemarketer who they actually work for, usually it's not the one they're calling on behalf of.)
As Well, in the United States, you as a consumer are protected by the "Telephone Consumer's Protection Act" (TCPA), which requires the telemarketer to give you the company name and telephone number where you can reach them. If they fail to do so at the end of the call (IE, if they think you hang up, and just don't say it even to dead air), then you have the right to sue the company for up to $10,000. Not all states fall under the same rules, so check out here for more info on it
Some states also have what's call a no rebutal law, which should prevent the telemarketer from rebuting you (ie. saying "I understand your hesitation but..."), when you say "No" they have to end the call there. Check out your state laws to find out if you fall in this category as well.
Obviously l33t speak is something that's easy for the student to fall into if they do it constantly while on the computer. The one thing that should have been a dead stop to this though, is a little thing that came out some number of years ago called "Spell Check"!
I mean really, why on earth would somebody hand in a report/homework to the teacher without first running a spell checker on the work first hand. Personally I know that I would never hand in work that I had done without running it through the spell check at least twice, and having it reveiwed by somebody else. For the simple reason that I know that my spelling and grammer is... err... are horrible.
It boils down to one of two things, students not alert enough to use a spell checker, or even have someone review the work, or there has been a massive failure of the spell checker programs nation wide (probably a result of too much trying to figure out the meaning behind the l33t speak)
Unfortunately, to myself, it is not all that surprizing that MicroSoft is not going to patch Office 97 to correct the security hole. With my experience it's either buy the latest greatest from Microsoft, or be stuck with the older bugs. Essentially updating to Office 2K makes little difference as it won't be long before more bugs are found within that software to exploit, by which point Microsoft will have released their next version and no longer supporting 2K.
This kind of treatment for customers is fundamently wrong when it comes to customer service, while excellent business strategy. A company should support a product when customer's have taken the time and money to purchase it. Rather than tell them they're out of luck and need to purchase the latest version to get any support. Such customer service would not last long now, were it not for the fact that MS already has the customer base and usage that customer's can't afford to just give if up. And insted must abid by their ways.
Not only that, I think that it may also give larger companies who use 3D graphics design frequently, an incentive to switch to linux. Lower operating cost = greater profits.
Further steps like this will certianly bring Linux into more business environments.
That and just the oppisite as well too, with Blender becoming a free tool for everybody to use, we may see the rise of more 3D graphics in the future, heralding who knows what just yet.
Hopefully this will be a tend of things to come. Esentially this will allow for more users in the future, on more platforms. It even allows the possibility of selling the compiled project with the helpful additions from the OpenSource communitity, with the exception of making sure that the source is still available (under GPL).
That was done. It didn't help any. Infact I constantly deleted the entire classpath out of AUTOEXEC.BAT And then unset the classpath variable and verified it was unset.. rebooted (or ran autoexec.bat) and it ended up being set again. And I made sure that in AUTOEXEC.BAT there were no calls to any other batch files that might have set it. As I said, that was part of the iscolated problems. The only way I could get it to work properly for most things was to unset the classpath, and then set the classpath at the command line on top of it.
I have a dual boot machine at home, one partition Windows 98, the other Slackware 8.0. Today I downloaded and installed the new Java SDK 1.4.0-rc on both systems. And while I think that some iscolated windows difficulties causes my oppinion to be rather biased, I found the install much easier going on Linux.
However I will note that, while the Java Web Start was installed on Windows, I didn't find any version of it for linux. And the downside to the Web Start I found is that it constantly wanted to download and install a new version of Java Runtime Environment 1.3.x everytime I lauched an application. And then after the download, and installed, I'm prompted to reboot the computer. After rebooting and trying to launch again, it again starts to download JRE 1.3.x and through the whole cycle all over again.
As well, with my windows install I found I was constantly having difficulties getting it to use the default classpath (ie, no environment variable set for CLASSPATH). I ended up having to resort to specifying the classpath at the command line. And no matter how much I tried, I could no manage to get Swing to work properly.
However on the other hand, the Linux install was rather straight forward, with a few simple steps: Change download to executable; Run it; move the extracted directory to a shared path (as su); add the java/bin directory to the search path; and finally add the java/man directory to the search paths for man.
The windows installer was straight forward, though the above problems still hampered me.
Is this Cornell's way of raising money? Well, I suppose it's a little easier than baking 100 million muffins and cookies.
But what interests me is exactly what type of "damages" were actually done. And why wait 6 years before saying anything? Maybe it just took them that long to get inside the box itself. Anywho, enough insulting. It just seems to me that it would be rather difficult to prove that 1) The idea was taken in the first place and 2) That it really caused $100Million in damages, since Cornell seems as strong to me now as it did 10 years ago.
Please excuse the rambling, it's almost 7 in the morning and I'm still at work from yesterday, what a long night....
Yes, however. Take for example somebody who is completely blind and needs to have all their cones replaced. Some people who are color blind have this condition of seeing in black and white. Though not many.
In anycase, I'll wait for a zooming feature before I get anything like that done.
Based on the location within the eye that the surgery would need to take place, it seems to me that the surgery could acctually cause more problems than it fixes. Apart from that, it would be interesting to see what kind of images the brain would actually produce from the implant (no pun intended). Would it mean people being able to see again, albeit in black and white?
As far as I'm concerned this shouldn't even be an issue with Cell phones. I think that phones should be kept phones. If someone is really that interested in portable web. Then use a PDA.
Yes, I'll be one of the first to admit that cell phones are wonderfull. But I use mine as a phone. Not a game consol, not as a web browser, or day planner... And yes, I think PDA's are good for a day planner, and even limited web browsing and gaming. But really, do we need to be playing Doom, or the latest, greatest, Quake game on our cell phones? Do you really need to use Yahoo! after getting talking with your mother from the bus?
For me, there is such a thing as too many features. Web browsers on cell phones is one such case.
How can it be said that recint, past 50 years, "inventions" and advancements aren't as significant as a septic tank? The problem is that the artical looks at things to generally. Just looking at computers alone you can so many changes to... life really, that have been done in the past 50 years. Just look around you and try to find something that computers haven't effected in some way. Your desk? computers in manufacturing, and probably in the shipment and advertising and selling of it. Your TV... well just look at your TV now and what it would have been 50 years ago. Perhaps it's true the they're not so much inventions but improvements on things. But that doesn't make them any less significant.
I'd say that the question you should be asking is "what is the smallest kernel which will do what I want?"
I agree with this statement. A stripped down, unfunctional linux kernel is not much different than a stripped down Windows, or Mac kernel. What is the point of stripping down a linux kernel, tearing all the guts and usefullness out of it, just to say that it's a linux kernel.
I don't mean for this to come out as flamebate, but some Linux users just use it to say that it's not windows (To a degree, I'm one of them). But when you attempt to make such a small and reduced kernel that doens't support anything. It doesn't matter if you call it Windows, Linux, BSD, or Gaggle Blobs, it still doesn't do anything.
My point is this: There is a difference between a small and functional Kernel, and a small kernel that is just a waste of space anyways.
I agree, without having something like a glove to use for a 3 dimenional area, a 3D desktop just won't work. I can already see that one of the main problems would be the "intuitive" interface. Say perhaps you just want to move the mouse out of the way, or want to get a something lower on the Y axis, 2D, easy, just move the mouse, but if you did this with the cub, or their file manage. Then in most cases the desktop will "intuitively know" that you're actually tryin to flip the cube, or scroll the window. The complication gets even worse in 1st person view. Are you trying to gets something behind this app? Are you trying to swivle your view of the screen to look around the desk top. In first person view, you would definately need to have the VR goggles and gloves. While it's a nice idea. Right now the technology needed for it just doesn't exsist, or isn't readily available.
Yes, I remember that game all too well. The Commodore PET was my very first computer. And when I had it, it didn't have a tape recorder. So I had to type in all the games by hand every time I turned on the computer. I can remember typing Hitch Hikers out by hand, trying to fix all the errors I had made. I wish I knew where my source code was for that (and all the other games I had). I wouldn't mind going through it and looking at it again. But they are probably gone to the dump with the PET (I had a bad habbit of taking it apart, and every time I did, it never went back to gether the same way, until it just didn't work anymore hehe)