Currently long distance calls to US pots lines are $0.05 per minute.
Not to promote or trash VoIP or promote Qwest, but why would I want intermittent connections of VoIP when land-line POTS companies offer the same deal? Qwest does $0.05/min for any state-to-state call at any time, and I don't pay a monthly fee (auto-billed CC). I also don't have to turn on my computer to make the phone call.
Note that I have no affiliation whatsoever with Qwest, I'm just trying to make a point that I've never had connections of the same quality of POTS with any "over IP" voice connection. The only exception would be my Cisco IP phone at work, but that isn't hopping across the country's routers, either..
IRS. Taxes. Everyone in the US pays taxes, right? Since more and more people are doing their taxes electronically, does this mean that we'll have to have a Passport ID to submit these taxes electronically?
Ahh yes, but you forgot to mention the coolest feature of the Tele Aid system for the Mercedes Benz - the cool "launch the missiles" button!
For those who haven't seen one of these yet, there is basically a little clear plastic trap door on the ceiling control cluster that has a red button behind it. You press the plastic door (with that oh-so-satisfying-Mercedes-quality click/spring action), which causes it to pop open, revealing the red button. Press the button and it lights up red and calls for help. When you first get the car and need to activate the service, it is always lit red. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that it just reminds me so much of the cold war era movies where they'd have buttons like this for launching the missles.
On*Star just has that silly little blue button. Booorrrrinnnngg;-)
I'd really argue that the corporate IT departments don't care as long as it runs their MS Outlook / Lotus Notes / MS Word / MS Excel / etc...
In the corporations that I've been in, they know the difference between SPARC and Windows. Quite frankly, they wouldn't have a problem going AMD / NexGen / Cyrix (whatever) if it wasn't that they were stuck by someone's decision to buy only Compaq or Dell or insert-bigname-brand-here
What bothers me more is that I just bought a new Dell Dimension 4400 recently, and found that the machine has only 1 RS232 port on the back! Ok, so I have a relatively useless Winmodem built into the machine (don't need it; but do these things even take up a COM port?), but I DO have a few RS232 devices lying around like a Palm Pilot, Blackberry, a REAL modem (USRobotics v.Everything), Firecracker interface, ad-nauseum.
So if the argument is the interrupts, etc.. the lack of ISA slots eliminates most of the IRQ problems, no? I believe PCI and USB only swallow one each.
Dammit, every time I try to dig up some old videos of Genesis (the prog-rock band), I end up getting mostly hits for this "Neon Genesis Evangelist" thing! Couldn't they pick a better name? Heck, at the same time, I'm also getting some album by Bustah Rhymes! Why can't anyone be original anymore? Heck, the fact that most of the hits also are tied to popular music (I guess the show has "music videos"), so I'll even get a correct hit (Genesis and say "I Can't Dance"), but it's this darn crazy Anime stuff!
After looking at some of the system pictures on their page, like that one [trailing-edge.com], you can feel lucky you were not working in the IT field 30 years ago.
Heck, I wouldn't mind all those buttons. What I'm MORE afraid about is the fact that most modern PCs ship with Windows these days, and many of them don't include reset buttons anymore!
Yes, but at the same time, I was in Japan when the X-box was released. It wasn't flying off the shelves. You could actually go to the store the next day and casually take one off the shelf if you wanted to.
Though they DID have a special translucent version for the Japanese release....
No matter, I'm still more than satisfied with my Dreamcast!
If I heard that comment, I'd probably blow a fuse. The fact that I had created a nifty little routine in the past that is now covered by a patent that somebody else owns makes it their idea? Just because I didn't feel the need to patent it?
I guess it isn't quite the context he intended, but I'd still get upset regardless...
could you imagine seeing that box at your neighborhood software store?
Actually, better yet was the magazine ad for Softporn adventure.. it featured 3 "nude" women in a hot tub with champaigne glasses and the bubbles coming just over the line-of-profanity. Interesting fact is that one woman was (I believe) Ken Williams' assistant, one was his wife, Roberta Williams (i.e. the creator of Kings Quest and many others), and the other, I forget. You can see the ad here. Roberta is the one on the far right.
These phones may be cool, but Japan still has us beat for mobile phones.
The phones out in Japan have large color screens, and the latest generation have cameras built in to them so you can take a picture and email it to someone! I believe you can also take stills and transmit them to the person on the other end of the call (something like once every 7 seconds). Also, take the train.. everyone is sitting there doing email (in Kanji none-the-less!). Still have yet to see that here as widespread as it is there.
And I thought I was so cool when I bought my new phone a few months ago..
Well, I gave up on this show a season or two ago, but since they're finally driving a stake through it, I might remember to check out the last episode. This show has gone so far downhill it isn't even funny.
I don't think Mulder will help much, it is purely for the nostalgia of the show.
Personally, I think the series effectively ended when Mulder figured out what happened to his sister. After that, it was never that amazing..
Zip chip? I've still got a 5MHz Rocket Chip in my//e. I always wondered who where the lucky people who had the 10MHz version (if it ever was sold, that is). Probably one of the best investments I ever made on my ][, besides the Sider 20MB drive.
What I'd like to see is a complete Apple ][ on a single chip.
Actually, I believe the Mac LC's//e board was built around a single-chip ][. Here is a picture. I might be wrong, but I believe the surrounding chips are simply interfaces to the disk drives and Macintosh.
I agree. I'm still using my Palm III that I bought in early 1998 because I haven't found a good reason to upgrade yet. The only thing that I've recently considered is getting more than the 2MB of memory because Vindigo keeps eating up more and more of it (it's almost at 1MB!!). Unfortunately, my model has the original memory board, so upgrading is limited to a motherboard swap, it seems.
I gave up finally on the X-Files with the season that ended in 2001. I was a devoted fan for many years, but after Mulder initially left, things just never made sense anymore... ok, not that many things made "sense", but you could tell that due to Duchovney's inability to decide if he was going to be a movie star or a television star, the writers had to keep making fix after fix to the story continuity.
With the season that ended in 2001, it was obvious that way too many patches had been applied to the story continuity, and with the season finale, I simply gave up. The show just sucked at this point. Heck, my sister and I decided that when something sucked real bad, we would simply call it "X-files bad".
I do feel bad for the show and Duchovney. He is a very likeable actor, however, he has been severely typecasted (see the last two or three movies he's been in) and I don't think he can really shake that off. I don't even know if Gillian Anderson can make the break, but she probably has a better chance.
Anyway, R.I.P... you were once the finest bit of programming on television, but lately you just can't cut it.
FUD. I've used IE and Outlook Express for Solaris (a UNIX platform!) and neither required root to install or operate. They're not ignorant to how a UNIX system works, you know.
For me, sometimes I only want to load vi (227,732 bytes) for a quick fix instead of the enormous vim binary (2,347,476 bytes). Not a big deal with fast hardware, but you sometimes see the difference... just a habit, really..
I think its great that the non-Windows world is getting a C# compiler, however, it doesn't guarantee that we'll be fine in the future.
When you compile a C# application, you have a choice of compiling to the CLR bytecode, or to a native EXE. True, many apps from Microsoft will be written in C# in the near future, but they'll all be compiled into native code. Any 3rd party apps that get compiled will probably be built to native simply for the speed. Why would you want to want to build into bytecode when you can build it natively? Why release two separate binaries?
Of course, once Miguel's C# compiler catches up with the still-haven't-seen-it Microsoft C# compiler, Bill & Co. will definately come out with a way to extend it either by libraries or functionality that will leave Miguel in a constant state of catch-up.
Again, I appreciate the work, but I would be very surprised if it isn't simply "trying to catch our own tail".
Only a few more days...
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 2, Informative
It will be interesting to see what Apple has in store for us on Monday at the Mac Expo. Apparently the rumor mill has been reporting the large purchase of flat panel displays by Apple (read: flat panel iMac?), a large purchasing of G5 chips (read: faster boxen) and the recent trademarking of the term "GigaWire" (new FireWire standard?).
As for the G5 chips, Apple seems to like to offer 3 speeds of processor. Supposedly Apple will offer 1.2, 1.5 and 1.8GHz speeds. If the production of 1.8 chips doesn't work out very well, then they might make the 1.5 the high end and make a 1.0 the low end.
Still, whatever comes out is my next computer purchase:-)
Re:Look at your times again
on
WinXP Security Flaw
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The consideration of the dates is correct in that the OS was released before the "5 week report". However, consider if the bug was found just days before the release. Can you imagine the cost of replacing the existing copies? All the CDs shipped to stores would have to be essentially trashed and repackaged. Not only that, but the delay would get picked up by media in a negative light. Though I'm sure Microsoft has some lovely PR people who could ease the pain, but it wouldn't be a good start for such a flagship product.
Note I didn't mention OEM installations; they can delay by another day or two, and besides, its only a new HD image they have to write out.. unless the OEM already packaged the boxen, then it is a bit different...
Thinking of that woman with the AOL disks, it makes me think about my AOL collection: a pre-release AOL 1.0 5.25" floppy disk for the Apple ][.
Back in the day, AOL was once called AppleLink. I used to beta test for them, and one day they sent me a letter and two new disks for the new renamed service.
"We're renaming AppleLink to America Online..."
Thus, I have two floppys for the Apple ][ that say America Online, and an accompanying letter. I think I even keep it in the original mailing package.
I've figured that I'll keep it around and one day I'll sell it on eBay or something. Just curious what that would draw...
I think it has more to do with the fact that GAIM is a project that people really want. Not to say that people don't want the CVS interface, but with the popularity of instant messaging these days, a good AIM-like client for multiple platforms has a definate market.
Sure, there's other IM clients and protocols out there, but AOL's IM is certainly the king (from what I see). From past experience with some of these open source clients (read: haven't touched 'em in several months), I found that GAIM was probably several (if not more) steps ahead of the competition.
I think in the end it really comes down to how much of a demand among "geeks" the program has. With the CVS extension mentioned, it certainly is a good tool to have, but it is a Windows product; GAIM is more Linux/UNIX which tends to draw a larger geek crowd. If you were to compare Windows to UNIX users, you would find considerably more people with serious programming skill on the UNIX side. These are the people who would pick up and develop these projects.
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Not to promote or trash VoIP or promote Qwest, but why would I want intermittent connections of VoIP when land-line POTS companies offer the same deal? Qwest does $0.05/min for any state-to-state call at any time, and I don't pay a monthly fee (auto-billed CC). I also don't have to turn on my computer to make the phone call.
Note that I have no affiliation whatsoever with Qwest, I'm just trying to make a point that I've never had connections of the same quality of POTS with any "over IP" voice connection. The only exception would be my Cisco IP phone at work, but that isn't hopping across the country's routers, either..
Well, I believe you first need to give a large donation to Bill Clinton's campaign fund..
Oh wait, they dug the guy up afterwards, didn't they?
Take it from there.
For those who haven't seen one of these yet, there is basically a little clear plastic trap door on the ceiling control cluster that has a red button behind it. You press the plastic door (with that oh-so-satisfying-Mercedes-quality click/spring action), which causes it to pop open, revealing the red button. Press the button and it lights up red and calls for help. When you first get the car and need to activate the service, it is always lit red. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that it just reminds me so much of the cold war era movies where they'd have buttons like this for launching the missles.
On*Star just has that silly little blue button. Booorrrrinnnngg
Oh well.. I'm done now.. thanks
In the corporations that I've been in, they know the difference between SPARC and Windows. Quite frankly, they wouldn't have a problem going AMD / NexGen / Cyrix (whatever) if it wasn't that they were stuck by someone's decision to buy only Compaq or Dell or insert-bigname-brand-here
So if the argument is the interrupts, etc.. the lack of ISA slots eliminates most of the IRQ problems, no? I believe PCI and USB only swallow one each.
Oh, my hardware-fu is fading these days...
Ok, I'm done now. Thanks for listening!
Heck, I wouldn't mind all those buttons. What I'm MORE afraid about is the fact that most modern PCs ship with Windows these days, and many of them don't include reset buttons anymore!
Yes, but at the same time, I was in Japan when the X-box was released. It wasn't flying off the shelves. You could actually go to the store the next day and casually take one off the shelf if you wanted to.
Though they DID have a special translucent version for the Japanese release....
No matter, I'm still more than satisfied with my Dreamcast!
I guess it isn't quite the context he intended, but I'd still get upset regardless...
Actually, better yet was the magazine ad for Softporn adventure.. it featured 3 "nude" women in a hot tub with champaigne glasses and the bubbles coming just over the line-of-profanity. Interesting fact is that one woman was (I believe) Ken Williams' assistant, one was his wife, Roberta Williams (i.e. the creator of Kings Quest and many others), and the other, I forget. You can see the ad here. Roberta is the one on the far right.
The phones out in Japan have large color screens, and the latest generation have cameras built in to them so you can take a picture and email it to someone! I believe you can also take stills and transmit them to the person on the other end of the call (something like once every 7 seconds). Also, take the train.. everyone is sitting there doing email (in Kanji none-the-less!). Still have yet to see that here as widespread as it is there.
And I thought I was so cool when I bought my new phone a few months ago..
Well, I gave up on this show a season or two ago, but since they're finally driving a stake through it, I might remember to check out the last episode. This show has gone so far downhill it isn't even funny.
I don't think Mulder will help much, it is purely for the nostalgia of the show.
Personally, I think the series effectively ended when Mulder figured out what happened to his sister. After that, it was never that amazing..
Zip chip? I've still got a 5MHz Rocket Chip in my //e. I always wondered who where the lucky people who had the 10MHz version (if it ever was sold, that is). Probably one of the best investments I ever made on my ][, besides the Sider 20MB drive.
Actually, I believe the Mac LC's
I agree. I'm still using my Palm III that I bought in early 1998 because I haven't found a good reason to upgrade yet. The only thing that I've recently considered is getting more than the 2MB of memory because Vindigo keeps eating up more and more of it (it's almost at 1MB!!). Unfortunately, my model has the original memory board, so upgrading is limited to a motherboard swap, it seems.
With the season that ended in 2001, it was obvious that way too many patches had been applied to the story continuity, and with the season finale, I simply gave up. The show just sucked at this point. Heck, my sister and I decided that when something sucked real bad, we would simply call it "X-files bad".
I do feel bad for the show and Duchovney. He is a very likeable actor, however, he has been severely typecasted (see the last two or three movies he's been in) and I don't think he can really shake that off. I don't even know if Gillian Anderson can make the break, but she probably has a better chance.
Anyway, R.I.P.
Re: bloat.
FUD. I've used IE and Outlook Express for Solaris (a UNIX platform!) and neither required root to install or operate. They're not ignorant to how a UNIX system works, you know.
For me, sometimes I only want to load vi (227,732 bytes) for a quick fix instead of the enormous vim binary (2,347,476 bytes). Not a big deal with fast hardware, but you sometimes see the difference... just a habit, really..
If an asteroid hits your part of the town, then DUCK AND COVER...
When you compile a C# application, you have a choice of compiling to the CLR bytecode, or to a native EXE. True, many apps from Microsoft will be written in C# in the near future, but they'll all be compiled into native code. Any 3rd party apps that get compiled will probably be built to native simply for the speed. Why would you want to want to build into bytecode when you can build it natively? Why release two separate binaries?
Of course, once Miguel's C# compiler catches up with the still-haven't-seen-it Microsoft C# compiler, Bill & Co. will definately come out with a way to extend it either by libraries or functionality that will leave Miguel in a constant state of catch-up.
Again, I appreciate the work, but I would be very surprised if it isn't simply "trying to catch our own tail".
As for the G5 chips, Apple seems to like to offer 3 speeds of processor. Supposedly Apple will offer 1.2, 1.5 and 1.8GHz speeds. If the production of 1.8 chips doesn't work out very well, then they might make the 1.5 the high end and make a 1.0 the low end.
Still, whatever comes out is my next computer purchase
The consideration of the dates is correct in that the OS was released before the "5 week report". However, consider if the bug was found just days before the release. Can you imagine the cost of replacing the existing copies? All the CDs shipped to stores would have to be essentially trashed and repackaged. Not only that, but the delay would get picked up by media in a negative light. Though I'm sure Microsoft has some lovely PR people who could ease the pain, but it wouldn't be a good start for such a flagship product.
Note I didn't mention OEM installations; they can delay by another day or two, and besides, its only a new HD image they have to write out.. unless the OEM already packaged the boxen, then it is a bit different...
Back in the day, AOL was once called AppleLink. I used to beta test for them, and one day they sent me a letter and two new disks for the new renamed service.
"We're renaming AppleLink to America Online..."
Thus, I have two floppys for the Apple ][ that say America Online, and an accompanying letter. I think I even keep it in the original mailing package.
I've figured that I'll keep it around and one day I'll sell it on eBay or something. Just curious what that would draw...
Oh well...
Sure, there's other IM clients and protocols out there, but AOL's IM is certainly the king (from what I see). From past experience with some of these open source clients (read: haven't touched 'em in several months), I found that GAIM was probably several (if not more) steps ahead of the competition.
I think in the end it really comes down to how much of a demand among "geeks" the program has. With the CVS extension mentioned, it certainly is a good tool to have, but it is a Windows product; GAIM is more Linux/UNIX which tends to draw a larger geek crowd. If you were to compare Windows to UNIX users, you would find considerably more people with serious programming skill on the UNIX side. These are the people who would pick up and develop these projects.