Running lots of power out of a residential address actually requires more than just an amp. It also requires an environmental inspection - otherwise 300 watts is really the max power one can run on most hf bands.
Not to mention at 1500 watts - even on a well grounded system that kind of power is very likely to get into all kinds of recievers in the local vicinity - not just bpl.
its not so much of a far leap from radio controlled walking/driving/rollerskating to transfering that control to a computer to do that same thing. You definately have to have the basics down first.
To me in the information age paying for a tv set license is not all that unlike having to pay a license to read books (ie even if its free - like in a library) every year.
Also - in Japan they make you pay a tv license for watching NHK.
I used to work at Stream and I supported a variety of applications to do things like ocr, document layout etc (and I got paid like 9$ an hour to do so...).
Anyhow one day I got a call from a customer at WallMart who was having trouble ocring a document that was made in word (she told me this right at the begining). The problem was the program wasn't picking up text inside grid like cells. I found later on the OCR app was marking all the grids as artifacts (ie pictures that can't be captured). I then made the mistake of asking if they could just get the word document and make that into a pdf if it would be a better work flow.
Turns out the only reason they bought this ocr application was to move word documents from a machine across the room. Reason? They couldn't email the document from one computer to another, the computer's floppy drive was locked down, the computers usb port was locked down. So someone had the brilliant idea to spend thousands of dollars on an ocr application, print the document out, capture the document on another machine, which made it into a pdf, where they would take acrobat and save it as a word doc and correct any mistakes. Yes Wallmart's wonderful IT department is saving them money and time.
I'm not kidding in the slightest - I swear on a stack of bibles this is really what she told me.
Some applications rely on a very specific backend - especially vertical market apps that rely on a very specific namespace, stored procedures and even connection.
There are a whole series of apps that rely heavily on MSSQL Server 2000 as an example.
Thats what I never could get btw (with these solderless mod chips) - were geeks - we should know how to solder - once its in its in and there's no question about how good its electrical contact is.
When 128MB is low-end, there's a problem somewhere.
I dunno - when you consider that cards like the 6800 are able to create graphics equivalent to the kind multi-million dollar super computers were able to do 10-15 years ago I think its a small price to pay.
This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC.
Ever price a dumb terminal new? You'll find that 400$ Dell running XP is cheaper. A relatively modern VT-520 costs as much as 500$ new.
Even if you don't want something that just does text expect to spend 700+ on a terminal that can do citrix, wts, text, and X.
Steam has its advantages. For instance recently when I bought a new computer all I did was sign on and it installed all the software I had registered - and it took less time then installing it off cd. Plus I got the counter-strike source beta for free off it. And I'll have HL2 long before anyone has the cd version of it.
One of the things here though is when it comes to setting up things in general on Windows its generally the same for each version.
Networks for example - right click on network neighborhood/my network places and clicking on properties takes you into the network control panel - yes there is some variation to the actual control panel - but at most you'll have to learn two different ways of doing it.
Take changing the screen resolution - every singe version of Windows (except Windows 3.1/NT 3.1x) its exactly the same - right click on the desktop click on properties.
If you want to install a new driver its exactly the same process on each of those versions of windows as well.
People on here make it sound like library conflicts and software conflicts are a problem every windows admin struggles with - I can tell you this is definately not the case - it does happen sure, but its more often then not the exception not the rule.
And when it comes to supporting Windows (which I do actually) - in general you don't have to worry about what patches/service packs are installed unless the issue becomes a system issue. Most issues are going to be related to setup and configuration.
it's not much of a performance hit. An old Dual P-III 866 can easily handle 10 users on diskless LTSP terminals and still have enough performance to get users mentioning how "responsive" it is.
One thing I've run into is Gnome font anti-aliasing - why you say? It slows down dumb terminals (stand alone x-servers) big time - especially those that don't support xtt. Never mind users using the system over some broadband link - where in Mozilla can take quite literally 15-30 seconds to do a page down on a website like slashdot.
Oh sure you can run the gnome font properties, but it always reverts back to full anti-aliasing after a few minutes - even in the same session.
Its bugs like that (which I've reported - but no-one has fixed - because who doesn't want anti-aliasing right?) - that can really slow down an implimentation and personally I think (unless someone has a solution) its sometimes better to stick it out with Windows Terminal Services.
One of the reasons someone might use this plugin however is because they are stuck using vertical market applications that use this software. I know in working in support javascript and activex are nearly essential to use any of the tools they give us - and that almost always means using IE only.
I have only had three "blue screens" on my wife's XP box, but the number of times that it spontaneously reboots (especially when using not-so-quick-switch)... it is mindboggling.
Speaking as someone who works on windows machines all day doing tech support for end users (on verticle market database frontends) I can honestly 90% of all bluescreens are caused by hardware problems or buggy device drivers.
I've had buggy device drivers kernel panic my linux box too - so its not just a windows thing.
I honestly can't remember the last time either my work pc (which runs Windows 2000) or my home pc which runs XP bluescreened.
I don't get this - I have three machines (one of them has the original XP installed on it the day it came out - and its never been formatted) and all three of them installed XP SP2 just fine - that a 100% sucess rate.
Plus if you don't like its firewall - turn it off. Simple as that.
Why can't we talk about redhat or debian upgrades that have hosed machines past the point of salvagability? It does happen!
Actually voice over the moon with the right conditions is done all the time. Somewhere I have some recordings on the 2m band where this was done - and you can clearly make out the audio.
Does this mean that we can finally get rid of annoying antenna connector types such as RP-SMA and RP-TNC that were originally devised just to make it a pain in the ass to switch out factory antennas? I'd much rather be able to mix and match antennas and cables that can be easily found at local HAM shops.
Thats precisly why there are over 900 specs for antenna connectors used on part 15 wireless devices. So you can't do that easily.
Actually Part 97 specifically talks about rules for spread spectrum operations,
http://www.sss-mag.com/hamss.html which basically state no more than 100 watts (and 100 watts is pretty leathal on 2.4ghz btw - thats where water resonates)
That whole 1500 watts thing is a huge misconception. To run that much power typically you need 220vac, also many bands prohibit anymore than 200 watts (30 meters and 60 meters are good examples). Never mind you'd be interfering with everyone in the neighborhood.
I agree - that way I could quit my job, sign up for the do-not call list and then sign up for every free whatever I can think of and wait for the checks to roll in.
This is something that actually goes back father than this. When the Amiga 1200 came out in 93 many demo authors said the same thing. After all the A1200 has 2 MEGS of chip ram (where the standard machine of the scene - the A500 only had 512K) and was as much as 8 times quicker than the 8 MHz A500. Thing is the A1200 was 14MHz and really pales in comparision to today's machines.
The 1200 meant the same thing it does today - with better hardware programmers, music and graphics people can focus far more on design than was ever possible.
Also I dispute the sprite scaling thing - a lot of that stuff was actually documented by Commodore. Along with playing fields, and copper bars even. A lot of this documentation is what made the Amiga such an awsome gaming machine from day one (late 1985).
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Running lots of power out of a residential address actually requires more than just an amp. It also requires an environmental inspection - otherwise 300 watts is really the max power one can run on most hf bands.
Not to mention at 1500 watts - even on a well grounded system that kind of power is very likely to get into all kinds of recievers in the local vicinity - not just bpl.
its not so much of a far leap from radio controlled walking/driving/rollerskating to transfering that control to a computer to do that same thing. You definately have to have the basics down first.
To me in the information age paying for a tv set license is not all that unlike having to pay a license to read books (ie even if its free - like in a library) every year.
Also - in Japan they make you pay a tv license for watching NHK.
Well when you tell the world that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and they don't have any what else do you call that?
And you can't blame it all on faulty intelligence, because it was the administration that was making up the intelligence.
I used to work at Stream and I supported a variety of applications to do things like ocr, document layout etc (and I got paid like 9$ an hour to do so...).
Anyhow one day I got a call from a customer at WallMart who was having trouble ocring a document that was made in word (she told me this right at the begining). The problem was the program wasn't picking up text inside grid like cells. I found later on the OCR app was marking all the grids as artifacts (ie pictures that can't be captured). I then made the mistake of asking if they could just get the word document and make that into a pdf if it would be a better work flow.
Turns out the only reason they bought this ocr application was to move word documents from a machine across the room. Reason? They couldn't email the document from one computer to another, the computer's floppy drive was locked down, the computers usb port was locked down. So someone had the brilliant idea to spend thousands of dollars on an ocr application, print the document out, capture the document on another machine, which made it into a pdf, where they would take acrobat and save it as a word doc and correct any mistakes. Yes Wallmart's wonderful IT department is saving them money and time.
I'm not kidding in the slightest - I swear on a stack of bibles this is really what she told me.
I wonder if they'll stick to the words in the first movie: "Heaven knows we'll all meet up again in Spaceballs 2 the Quest for More Money"
Some applications rely on a very specific backend - especially vertical market apps that rely on a very specific namespace, stored procedures and even connection.
There are a whole series of apps that rely heavily on MSSQL Server 2000 as an example.
Why not just solder the thing in place?
Thats what I never could get btw (with these solderless mod chips) - were geeks - we should know how to solder - once its in its in and there's no question about how good its electrical contact is.
I think this is an ATI issue - my friend had the exact same problem on his ATI Raedon 9700 with two CRT's.
In his case only the primary display had no latency.
Oddly enough (not to play fanboy here) this is not an issue on the 6800GT I have.
When 128MB is low-end, there's a problem somewhere.
I dunno - when you consider that cards like the 6800 are able to create graphics equivalent to the kind multi-million dollar super computers were able to do 10-15 years ago I think its a small price to pay.
This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC.
Ever price a dumb terminal new? You'll find that 400$ Dell running XP is cheaper. A relatively modern VT-520 costs as much as 500$ new.
Even if you don't want something that just does text expect to spend 700+ on a terminal that can do citrix, wts, text, and X.
Also - VT100 looks like a TRS-80.
Steam has its advantages. For instance recently when I bought a new computer all I did was sign on and it installed all the software I had registered - and it took less time then installing it off cd. Plus I got the counter-strike source beta for free off it. And I'll have HL2 long before anyone has the cd version of it.
:)
Thats why I use and like it
One of the things here though is when it comes to setting up things in general on Windows its generally the same for each version.
Networks for example - right click on network neighborhood/my network places and clicking on properties takes you into the network control panel - yes there is some variation to the actual control panel - but at most you'll have to learn two different ways of doing it.
Take changing the screen resolution - every singe version of Windows (except Windows 3.1/NT 3.1x) its exactly the same - right click on the desktop click on properties.
If you want to install a new driver its exactly the same process on each of those versions of windows as well.
People on here make it sound like library conflicts and software conflicts are a problem every windows admin struggles with - I can tell you this is definately not the case - it does happen sure, but its more often then not the exception not the rule.
And when it comes to supporting Windows (which I do actually) - in general you don't have to worry about what patches/service packs are installed unless the issue becomes a system issue. Most issues are going to be related to setup and configuration.
Cool - where can I find the documentation to make all those font settings stick?
I can set it once it seems but after like 15-20 minutes it will revert to some default.
it's not much of a performance hit. An old Dual P-III 866 can easily handle 10 users on diskless LTSP terminals and still have enough performance to get users mentioning how "responsive" it is.
One thing I've run into is Gnome font anti-aliasing - why you say? It slows down dumb terminals (stand alone x-servers) big time - especially those that don't support xtt. Never mind users using the system over some broadband link - where in Mozilla can take quite literally 15-30 seconds to do a page down on a website like slashdot.
Oh sure you can run the gnome font properties, but it always reverts back to full anti-aliasing after a few minutes - even in the same session.
Its bugs like that (which I've reported - but no-one has fixed - because who doesn't want anti-aliasing right?) - that can really slow down an implimentation and personally I think (unless someone has a solution) its sometimes better to stick it out with Windows Terminal Services.
To get you started :) http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/demo/tg93/sp aceballs.dms
One of the reasons someone might use this plugin however is because they are stuck using vertical market applications that use this software. I know in working in support javascript and activex are nearly essential to use any of the tools they give us - and that almost always means using IE only.
I have only had three "blue screens" on my wife's XP box, but the number of times that it spontaneously reboots (especially when using not-so-quick-switch)... it is mindboggling.
Speaking as someone who works on windows machines all day doing tech support for end users (on verticle market database frontends) I can honestly 90% of all bluescreens are caused by hardware problems or buggy device drivers.
I've had buggy device drivers kernel panic my linux box too - so its not just a windows thing.
I honestly can't remember the last time either my work pc (which runs Windows 2000) or my home pc which runs XP bluescreened.
I don't get this - I have three machines (one of them has the original XP installed on it the day it came out - and its never been formatted) and all three of them installed XP SP2 just fine - that a 100% sucess rate.
Plus if you don't like its firewall - turn it off. Simple as that.
Why can't we talk about redhat or debian upgrades that have hosed machines past the point of salvagability? It does happen!
If you increase a tv tube's anode past its specification (like 35,000 volts, when it requires 25,000 volts) it will emit xray's.
Actually voice over the moon with the right conditions is done all the time. Somewhere I have some recordings on the 2m band where this was done - and you can clearly make out the audio.
Does this mean that we can finally get rid of annoying antenna connector types such as RP-SMA and RP-TNC that were originally devised just to make it a pain in the ass to switch out factory antennas? I'd much rather be able to mix and match antennas and cables that can be easily found at local HAM shops.
Thats precisly why there are over 900 specs for antenna connectors used on part 15 wireless devices. So you can't do that easily.
Actually Part 97 specifically talks about rules for spread spectrum operations,
http://www.sss-mag.com/hamss.html which basically state no more than 100 watts (and 100 watts is pretty leathal on 2.4ghz btw - thats where water resonates)
That whole 1500 watts thing is a huge misconception. To run that much power typically you need 220vac, also many bands prohibit anymore than 200 watts (30 meters and 60 meters are good examples). Never mind you'd be interfering with everyone in the neighborhood.
I agree - that way I could quit my job, sign up for the do-not call list and then sign up for every free whatever I can think of and wait for the checks to roll in.
This is something that actually goes back father than this. When the Amiga 1200 came out in 93 many demo authors said the same thing. After all the A1200 has 2 MEGS of chip ram (where the standard machine of the scene - the A500 only had 512K) and was as much as 8 times quicker than the 8 MHz A500. Thing is the A1200 was 14MHz and really pales in comparision to today's machines.
The 1200 meant the same thing it does today - with better hardware programmers, music and graphics people can focus far more on design than was ever possible.
Also I dispute the sprite scaling thing - a lot of that stuff was actually documented by Commodore. Along with playing fields, and copper bars even. A lot of this documentation is what made the Amiga such an awsome gaming machine from day one (late 1985).