http://www.pckeyboard.com/ Unicomp still makes and sells the Model M design for a base price of $50- and it's the same beast. Got one, want to get more.
They came with more HD space by far and ran on a little more CPU.
Running with compression on to fit everthing I needed on that spartan HD had an impact on things- made it like it had about 4-6 Mb of RAM. Couple this with a 386sx CPU...
That'd probably work- by accident. About like a Windows 1.0 system would. There's enough backwards compatibility there to support those the way they expect to enough to sort of run.
It's comparable to the time I wanted to see just how brutal an environment Windows 95 would install and still "run". I had this old narfy 386sx-16 "laptop" with 16Mb of RAM and 120Mb of HD. I installed it with compression out of the gate and the thing just went in there. It wasn't happy with me, but it was usable for very small values of "usable" and it ran stuff like Delphi if you were patient for very large values of "patient" as it swap-thrashed itself to death doing what I asked of it.
It still worked. I was impressed. Wasn't USEFUL, mind.
They have to reveal WHAT is infringed upon in order to file suit. Making public proclaimations about infringement without proof is a Lanham Act violation, as SCOX is about to find out.
"Nah, I just turned on all the flashy crap in XP, changed the background image, took some memory out of my box and clocked down the CPU. Then broke Media player. Works like a charm."
That's what IBM and the Seven Dwarfs were doing back in the day- and while it worked okay then, what we've got now works better and few will honestly want to go back to that stuff.
MS needs to come up with something that actually generates value to keep making money, to be honest. That X-Box thing not making them enough? Oh well... Shouldn't have strip-mined the market the way they've been doing for the last 10 or so years or more.
Considering that while VB's a nasty language, there's quite a bit of internal business applications written in it, without any easier route to get to something other than Windows with, it is a bar to migration to MacOS, Solaris, or Linux. IF they've done it right and haven't ran afoul of something MS has patented, this would be one less reason (And one of the biggies, really) for many businesses to stay with Microsoft with their latest upgrade cycle. It depends all on how many OCX components they've mixed into the thing to make their app work in that case- but most of that can be worked around.
If they don't speak up now, they can't sue for damages- only a stop of the use of their patents.
It's called Laches, and it means "delay" in legalese. It means they can certainly tell us what they have and get us to remove, but now that they've opened their mouth (via Ballmer's mouthing off) they can't really do much except get us to sidestep. Before too long, they're going to step off into Lanham Act territory like SCOX has done (if they've not already...). It's a rather dangerous game they're playing here- IBM and a few others won't tolerate much more of this BS without them putting up or shutting up.
The reality is, MS would have ALREADY sued for damages, etc. if they actually had any real beef to that crap Ballmer keeps spouting. I'm wondering if someone can make a Class Action of a Lanham Act suit...
It's fab turn. In order to actually catch up to Intel and possibly pass them they need to go to 45nm process parts and at least up the on-die cache memory (The MAIN reason Core Duos outpace AMD's parts is due to process size differences and the lower on-die memory that results from the same...). A new architecture would seriously do it, but the other things are more likely to bring them something.
If you're wondering, they taped these things out probably 6 or so months ago and they finally passed all the conformance, etc. on them. It takes a bit of time to see "new" R&D come out of a company doing chips.
Unless there is a real option for more than very select versions then there won't be anywhere near the sales of those systems. Dell offers Linux or no OS on select models because of Windows Licensing reasons. They've got special BIOS tags in the HP/Dell/etc. machines that make for "easier" installation of XP and Vista- and they have to have different BIOSes for the Linux/No OS boxes. Since the bulk of their line is Windows-Only, they've only made up and verified select models for the other option, which is why they don't seem to offer the configurations like they ought to.
The REAL reason Dell doesn't have as much of a demand for Linux systems is they don't offer as good a models in many cases- people just don't give them a second thought for server machines or desktops in many cases. Since they don't have a "demand", they don't realize that there's a real market so they don't offer machines to buy that're worth a damn, which stifles demand, and round and round we go...
It's a vicious circle that they and many other companies have gotten themselves into with keeping to mostly Windows.
To put this in perspective with what we already have in the way of commonly used thermoelectric materials, Bismuth Telluride weighs in at -287 microvolts per degree Kelvin for N-doped material and 87 microvolts per degree Kelvin for P-doped material.
What we're reading about is roughly 1/5th as efficient at doing thermoelectric effects as the most efficient stuff we have for P-doped material at the consumer level- which isn't really all that efficient, but is useful enough if you're needing cooling or thermoelectric generation in tight spaces that wouldn't accomodate other answers. The "wow" comes from it being the Thermoelectric equivalent of an OLED back when OLEDs were still more of a lab curiosity than a sort of fielded part of the time technology.
Brass tacks here: It's NEAT beyond words, but it's not the thing the article made it out to be. It's not even as good as the best we have in Peltier devices yet.
Making that conflation will backfire because you could make the SAME statement about Windows and MS Office.
They're going to probably avoid drawing attention to this- China going this way didn't make for the FUD people were afraid of (Well, I didn't see much of it...) because of the aforementioned problem with using it in this case.
Lacking a contract, the people received goods via a courier that was shipped in error.
Per my understanding of the laws, and while I'm NOT a Lawyer, it is not a requirement of an individual receiving a shipment in such an error to pay or return said items to the shipper as it's the shipper's responsibility to ensure that they don't do this sort of thing to themselves.
Retroactively charging the customers for these items constitutes credit fraud on Amazon's part as they can't insist upon payment if they screwed up like this- and charging people for these items without the approval of the customer will get them into no end of trouble.
It was a STUPID thing to pull on their part because if enough people contest the charges they'll catch hell from the banks underwriting the credit card loans (You're NOT supposed to be doing this sort of thing with your merchant account...) and people will now know that they can't trust Amazon for anything (If you're going to get retroactively charged without your consent and have to go through the hassle of getting the charges reversed, why even SHOP with them?). I know I'm not going to go and buy something from them if I can find a supplier that isn't waaay overpriced than their prices now- I can't trust them as far as I could pick up their wharehouse and throw it.
To be sure, it's a crappy thing to not pay for the stuff or return it- but crappy and what's legit are two totally differing things.
The only reason for them not providing real bandwidth everywhere in the country is because they will see less profit from it than with the urban areas. It's not that they won't make money rolling out broadband in rural areas- far from it. It's that they can clear 3-5 times as much or more from someone in a major city than in a farm town or on the farm.
They don't need subsidies. They never really did. What they need to get told to do is if it's not a dead loss, of which they need to honestly prove without magic bookkeeping, they have to provide service in the less lucrative areas- period.
Slashdot Mirror
USB Dongle with it's tip (antenna area) placed at the right depth within the wok...
It was Slashdotted in the past...
o n.net.nz/
The links to part of the sites covering it are:
http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
http://www.stanford.edu/~jstockdl/tmp/usbwifi.orc
Today's advice is brought to you by the words "swap" and "thrash"...
http://www.pckeyboard.com/ Unicomp still makes and sells the Model M design for a base price of $50- and it's the same beast. Got one, want to get more.
They came with more HD space by far and ran on a little more CPU.
Running with compression on to fit everthing I needed on that spartan HD had an impact on things- made it like
it had about 4-6 Mb of RAM.
Couple this with a 386sx CPU...
Not bad at all. Seems Win95 was a leaner OS than we gave credit for it...
You mean you actually GOT ME to run?
That'd probably work- by accident. About like a Windows 1.0 system would. There's enough backwards
compatibility there to support those the way they expect to enough to sort of run.
It's comparable to the time I wanted to see just how brutal an environment Windows 95 would install
and still "run". I had this old narfy 386sx-16 "laptop" with 16Mb of RAM and 120Mb of HD. I installed
it with compression out of the gate and the thing just went in there. It wasn't happy with me, but
it was usable for very small values of "usable" and it ran stuff like Delphi if you were patient for
very large values of "patient" as it swap-thrashed itself to death doing what I asked of it.
It still worked. I was impressed. Wasn't USEFUL, mind.
This falls under the same category.
They have to reveal WHAT is infringed upon in order to file suit. Making public proclaimations
about infringement without proof is a Lanham Act violation, as SCOX is about to find out.
One step at a time... Even IF I asserted the Citizen of Texas thing, there will be few that'd listen to me in D.C. if I just asserted that...
That's what IBM and the Seven Dwarfs were doing back in the day- and while it worked okay then, what we've got now works better and few will honestly want to go back to that stuff.
MS needs to come up with something that actually generates value to keep making money, to be honest. That X-Box thing not making them enough? Oh well... Shouldn't have strip-mined the market the way they've been doing for the last 10 or so years or more.
Considering that while VB's a nasty language, there's quite a bit of internal business
applications written in it, without any easier route to get to something other than Windows
with, it is a bar to migration to MacOS, Solaris, or Linux. IF they've done it right and
haven't ran afoul of something MS has patented, this would be one less reason (And one of
the biggies, really) for many businesses to stay with Microsoft with their latest upgrade
cycle. It depends all on how many OCX components they've mixed into the thing to make
their app work in that case- but most of that can be worked around.
If they don't speak up now, they can't sue for damages- only a stop of the use of their patents.
It's called Laches, and it means "delay" in legalese. It means they can certainly tell us what
they have and get us to remove, but now that they've opened their mouth (via Ballmer's mouthing off)
they can't really do much except get us to sidestep. Before too long, they're going to step off
into Lanham Act territory like SCOX has done (if they've not already...). It's a rather dangerous
game they're playing here- IBM and a few others won't tolerate much more of this BS without them
putting up or shutting up.
The reality is, MS would have ALREADY sued for damages, etc. if they actually had
any real beef to that crap Ballmer keeps spouting. I'm wondering if someone can make a Class Action
of a Lanham Act suit...
It's fab turn. In order to actually catch up to Intel and possibly pass them they need to go to 45nm
process parts and at least up the on-die cache memory (The MAIN reason Core Duos outpace AMD's parts
is due to process size differences and the lower on-die memory that results from the same...). A new
architecture would seriously do it, but the other things are more likely to bring them something.
If you're wondering, they taped these things out probably 6 or so months ago and they finally
passed all the conformance, etc. on them. It takes a bit of time to see "new" R&D come out
of a company doing chips.
Let me know where you live so I can buy one for myself- they can't seem to keep the damn things on the
shelves anywhere I've seen.
I call bullshit.
Unless there is a real option for more than very select versions then there won't be anywhere near the sales of those systems.
Dell offers Linux or no OS on select models because of Windows Licensing reasons. They've got special BIOS tags in the HP/Dell/etc. machines that make for "easier" installation of XP and Vista- and they have to have different BIOSes for the Linux/No OS boxes. Since the bulk of their line is Windows-Only, they've only made up and verified select models for the other option, which is why they don't seem to offer the configurations like they ought to.
The REAL reason Dell doesn't have as much of a demand for Linux systems is they don't offer as good a models in many cases- people just don't give them a second thought for server machines or desktops in many cases. Since they don't have a "demand", they don't realize that there's a real market so they don't offer machines to buy that're worth a damn, which stifles demand, and round and round we go...
It's a vicious circle that they and many other companies have gotten themselves into with keeping to mostly Windows.
Heh... I'm so freaking tired and out of it, I didn't even notice that you'd already quoted the values, etc.
Not enough caffene, not enough sleep. Time to go to bed.
Read: ZT == Seebeck Coefficients...
Needs must have SOME sleep before posting- but then, this IS Slashdot, right? >:-)
I believe I saw what might pass for Zt values given for the stuff in another article:
benzenedithiol: 8.7 microvolts/K
dibezenedithiol: 12.9 microvolts/K
tribenzenedithiol: 14.2 microvolts/K
To put this in perspective with what we already have in the way of commonly used thermoelectric materials, Bismuth Telluride weighs in at -287 microvolts per degree Kelvin for N-doped material and 87 microvolts per degree Kelvin for P-doped material.
What we're reading about is roughly 1/5th as efficient at doing thermoelectric effects as the most efficient stuff we have for P-doped material at the consumer level- which isn't really all that efficient, but is useful enough if you're needing cooling or thermoelectric generation in tight spaces that wouldn't accomodate other answers. The "wow" comes from it being the Thermoelectric equivalent of an OLED back when OLEDs were still more of a lab curiosity than a sort of fielded part of the time technology.
Brass tacks here: It's NEAT beyond words, but it's not the thing the article made it out to be. It's not even as good as the best we have in Peltier devices yet.
Making that conflation will backfire because you could make the SAME statement about Windows and MS Office.
They're going to probably avoid drawing attention to this- China going this way didn't make for the FUD
people were afraid of (Well, I didn't see much of it...) because of the aforementioned problem with using
it in this case.
Lacking a contract, the people received goods via a courier that was shipped in error.
Per my understanding of the laws, and while I'm NOT a Lawyer, it is not a requirement
of an individual receiving a shipment in such an error to pay or return said items to
the shipper as it's the shipper's responsibility to ensure that they don't do this
sort of thing to themselves.
Retroactively charging the customers for these items constitutes credit fraud on Amazon's
part as they can't insist upon payment if they screwed up like this- and charging people
for these items without the approval of the customer will get them into no end of trouble.
It was a STUPID thing to pull on their part because if enough people contest
the charges they'll catch hell from the banks underwriting the credit card loans (You're NOT
supposed to be doing this sort of thing with your merchant account...) and people will now
know that they can't trust Amazon for anything (If you're going to get retroactively charged
without your consent and have to go through the hassle of getting the charges reversed, why
even SHOP with them?). I know I'm not going to go and buy something from them if I can find
a supplier that isn't waaay overpriced than their prices now- I can't trust them as far as
I could pick up their wharehouse and throw it.
To be sure, it's a crappy thing to not pay for the stuff or return it- but crappy and what's
legit are two totally differing things.
The only reason for them not providing real bandwidth everywhere in the country is because they
will see less profit from it than with the urban areas. It's not that they won't make money
rolling out broadband in rural areas- far from it. It's that they can clear 3-5 times as much
or more from someone in a major city than in a farm town or on the farm.
They don't need subsidies. They never really did. What they need to get told to do is if it's
not a dead loss, of which they need to honestly prove without magic bookkeeping, they have to provide
service in the less lucrative areas- period.
They trade at NYSE under the WMT ticker symbol. They closed at 47.97 on Friday of last week.