Coming to NYC from just about anywhere else in the country will be a shock. I've got a friend from the mid-west who is basically Larry the Cable Guy and whenever I've talked with him about coming to NYC there seems to be a general concern (I'd almost say fear in his gut) of coming here. Too many people. Too busy. Too easy to get "run over" (hypothetically and literally) compared to the easy country roads of where he's from. Heck, I had the reverse culture shock going out there for the first time in my life for college.
But the key thing from what I just said is "too many people". In a city like New York, you can't have 8 million people PLUS visitors and not have that many cops. Sure, you did see one on every corner, but was that in Times Square? Financial District? Some other tourist area? As well, some of those might just be the parking meter or traffic staff which typically don't carry a weapon, only a billy club, radio and maybe handcuffs / zip-ties at best.
Not saying it doesn't look like a police state, but as someone who has spent most of his life on this side of the country, I'd say it doesn't really bother you and when something bad does happen, you're glad there are these patrols around to respond quickly. A city the size of NYC would fall into chaos if they weren't there. In general the police aren't here to mess with you and they've got bigger things to worry about. When I was in high school, I remember drinking a beer on the sidewalk and asking a cop a question and there was no problem (yes, that would be underage btw). They're just doing their job but when the order comes to preserve order, they need to be tough because the city is a tough place. Heck, the city is safer now than it has been in many decades.
Unfortunately, that's a documented way to get fired.
It isn't that I couldn't as I certainly know how to do it a few different ways, it's just that defeating any mechanisms put in place by the company will result in discipline or termination. And for an obituary, I don't find that justified:-)
I remember talking with someone at an "art museum" (read: an old worn down to the point of being dangerously condemned ex-paper plant) noting how the town's power problems could be solved by somehow tapping the energy of the freight trains that would rumble by.
For some reason, I guess this guy figured there was no degenerative effect on the freight train by capturing its power or like it just comes for free. It has to come from somewhere.
Not entirely related to TFA, but felt like making a rant.
But what about the average cost of a UNIX workstation or server was traditionally much higher than a white box x86 PC?
Go back to 1997 when I was working at a firm that had a huge deployment of Sun workstations and servers globally. The SparcStation 20's or Ultra 1's on peoples' desk easily ran several thousand dollars (I think my Ultra 1 167MHz box without Creator 3D or fancy stuff like that ran nearly $15k). Don't even talk about the servers. Now compare that to some Compaq PC for $3000?
(yes, I know you can build a PC for cheaper but large organizations that do cause these trends tend to use vendor suppliers that charge a LOT more for this stuff than you could at best buy)
I was hoping that this is going to do one of two things:
1. Dump (from an economics perspective) WebOS devices on the market with the side effect of generating interest and developers on WebOS. Then, introduce new WebOS devices for the sudden influx of applications that appear.
2. Completely bail-out.
Unfortunately, I think if people convert these things to Android, #2 is more or less inevitable. I do think that WebOS is a real fine piece of work, but Palm screwed up early on with their developer relations (a good example here). I do hope something along the lines of #1 does happen, though...
I recently pulled my old Apple ][+ and//e out of storage and set it up on my workbench in the basement. The three shoeboxes of floppy disks were kept on a shelf in a living space (rather than attic), so they appeared to be fine.
Turned it on and it all worked. Surprisingly, the disks I've tried are still working perfectly as far as I can tell.
I don't know what I'll do with this equipment in another 30 years, but it was satisfying to hear my wife exclaim "wow! I forgot how primitive those things looked!" when she saw the green monochrome display and fixed font. Now will my kid be impressed in a few years? Who knows.
Apologies or whatever, the point is that everyone is getting nagged to upgrade to FF5 now. Personally, I see that it says "oh, TACO and some other plugin isn't going to work until they upgrade".
That same message has been appearing for over a week now. As such, I'm not touching FF5.
If FF doesn't learn from this and realize that they need to be a bit better about this, I'll probably just switch to Chrome full time.
I've actually got a similar problem with gmail that is kind of annoying. I have had my address with them since 2004 (when you still needed to be invited to get an account) and scored my first.last name.
Apparently there is someone out there with the same name but decided to be firstlast instead (probably because I took the dot) and I'm guessing they're fine with using it as a login. However, all email that goes to firstlast ends up going into my inbox.
I was good for a while pointing this out to some people (especially when he must have had a date and the girl emailed him to thank him afterwards), but realized that the missing dot is translated to my address which is either a good or bad thing.. not sure. I just ignore and delete firstlast's emails now.
Of course, we could come to a solution for this if gmail had some kind of support email address...
In the past I went through the effort of finding an old version of Windows 1.0, getting it running and playing with it for all of 20 minutes. Interesting to see what they had, what it did, etc. I still have a VM image somewhere with it in case I ever get bored again.
However, what I failed to do at the time was find any software that was actually written for Windows 1.0 that didn't come as part of the installation. Searching the internet for 'software for windows 1.0' (or the variety of phrases I thought of) mostly came up with v1.0 releases of software for Windows; i.e. software that could have been for Windows 95 (say), and it was their v1.0 release. Unfortunately, I didn't come across any sites that had any of that old software. As well, I'm not even what was ever even written for Windows 1.0.
Best I could tell, I've only heard that one or two applications were ever written for Windows 1.0, but I can't find the binaries on the internet. Though, I believe you could run Windows 2.0 sofware on 1.0 and vice-versa, at least to some extent. In Windows 3.0 they apparently changed things up enough to require rewrites.
Anyone ever find anything?
Actually, at a stop-and-shop near where I live, the self checkout is not the kind where you need to put things in the bag. You scan it and then put it on a belt that zips it down to where you can bag it.
The belt seems to have sensors that detect if something went by and doesn't care how you want to bag or not (reusable bags, anyone?). I've never had to wait for an assistant with this system. Shame I've not seen it anywhere else!
Yes, let's only pay the absolute minimum and thereby further dilute service standards.
Not sure I agree with this. I think this would be good simply because there is little in the way of price competition that I've seen lately. Sure, there are lower prices under certain situations, but otherwise the airlines are charging whatever the heck they darn well please. Oh, and shutting other companies out who try to offer cheaper service in some cases.
Case in point: Eos airlines, who offered business class only flights. They had excellent quality and service standards. However, they charged less than American Airlines and they did this by various methods including using less expensive airports (in London, they used Stanstead airport instead of the more expensive Heathrow). AA didn't like this, so they moved in to Stanstead, pushed out Eos, caused Eos to go bankrupt and then shortly after their victory pulled out of Stanstead themselves. Now if you want to fly to London on business class you're back to the more expensive (and lesser quality) American Airlines out of Heathrow.
So cheaper doesn't always mean lesser quality. However, it does motivate others to take action and sometimes it isn't in the best interest of the consumer.
I bet the first production hardware we see this in is the 2011 Mac Pro. Apple seems to get the lead time on these things nowadays so they can once again claim "we're the shiniest" for several weeks.
I'm still quite content with my E5462-based 2008 model, thanks:)
I'd imagine that there are a fair number of ethernet cards out there for 16-bit ISA that would work fine in an 8-bit ISA slot.
I was more of an Apple II -> Amiga person at the time of 8/16 ISA, but I read somewhere that a lot of 16-bit cards would auto-detect an 8-bit slot and downgrade; tried it with my Boca Super X VGA card and it worked (in conjunction with my A2500's A2286 board). Don't know if that trick worked everywhere, but I also never tried the 16-bit ISA ethernet card I have lying around, either.
The problem is that the nation's rail system effectively collapsed between the 1950's and early 1980's. There were literally hundreds of rail companies formed in the 1800's (much like the internet boom?) and while most of them went bankrupt shortly after being established, the ones that did survive into the 20th century eventually merged or collapsed altogether over the years until they finally were shot out back with the formation of ConRail.
What was learned from all this? Passenger rail doesn't turn a healthy enough profit to fund the operating costs of such a system. Freight, on the other hand, can and often does.
The only reason why we have Amtrak and the various commuter rail operations around the country is because the (federal and state) government funds those systems so they can exist. Yes, part of your taxes may be going to help keep a commuter rail system you may never even use, however, it is for the greater benefit of the state to do this because it allows the wealth generated in a large city (like NYC) to be spread out to communities that may be one hour away.
So high speed rail will either be very expensive or heavily funded by US taxpayer dollars. I'm sure it will most likely be the latter since the only advantages rail has over airlines is that you don't have to deal with the airport and is maybe 15% less expensive. If it is the same price or more expensive, it won't work.
Technically, Commodore didn't start development on the Amiga. It was started by a small business called Amiga, Inc. founded by some dentists who wanted to cash in on the video game craze of the time. Commodore only later purchased the company when they were looking for their next gen system and after Atari almost got their hands on it.
Might be slightly off here, but that is the general idea.
It used to be that you could read a specific date page. Great for catching up after not being on for a few days.
Now URLs such as http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?issue=20110123 no longer work. This is really annoying.
What I would REALLY like is if Facebook would do one fairly simple thing: email me a copy of any message I send to someone.
I sent feedback asking for this which I didn't get a response (not surprised). They already send you copies of the messages you receive, so why not let me complete my archive by sending me a copy of what I write to others?
Not a major technological difficulty, but would be nice.
Highly likely that Woz probably touched it, but less so for Jobs, I would think. I've read in historical accounts that they employed a sibling to stuff boards and also there's the 3rd founder Ronald Wayne who may still have been part of it at this point; I believe he left sometime in 1976. This is serial number 87 (?) and I believe they only produced about 200.
I would imagine that Jobs was probably out hustling, so that would be his lower chance. However, the letter would most likely have been typed and signed by him.
What I've never understood, is why? Why not just check on writing; and reading on removable drives?
When virus definitions are updated, it is possible that a file that was written in the past is now considered infected. As well, the file could have been written to the disk without the antivirus software's knowledge (could have not been loaded, killed/crashed, etc).
Still, I agree with you that most of the time we have already scanned the darn file..
Anything organic can be made into paper; even owls and tree huggers. Heck, I've got a swatch of blue paper over 15 years old that was made out of a pair of blue jeans thrown into the digester (but with the metal buttons and zipper cut out). It actually makes me a bit annoyed when people have signs for "printer paper" or "newspaper only". That's crap. It all goes into the same batch of nasty chemicals and made into a pulp. Heck, they probably threw a spruce tree in there (with birds nest) while they were at it.
Short of it is, paper industry is still huge. Everything is paper or cardboard. It costs a lot more to get the raw materials (read: trees and the re-forestation involved) than it does to take any and all paper products and recycle it.
Is there a reason they can't go above the artificial limit of 192 GB?
I've read that the only reason why they limit to 192GB is simply because there isn't any x64 hardware out there that supports more than 192GB. I think it is because of the chipsets, not necessarily the RAM sticks or number of slots.
In other words, Microsoft supports up to 192GB because that is the highest amount of memory that they have been able to test with.
I would assume that as soon as 256GB hardware becomes available, they might re-state that limitation.
Slashdot Mirror
But the key thing from what I just said is "too many people". In a city like New York, you can't have 8 million people PLUS visitors and not have that many cops. Sure, you did see one on every corner, but was that in Times Square? Financial District? Some other tourist area? As well, some of those might just be the parking meter or traffic staff which typically don't carry a weapon, only a billy club, radio and maybe handcuffs / zip-ties at best.
Not saying it doesn't look like a police state, but as someone who has spent most of his life on this side of the country, I'd say it doesn't really bother you and when something bad does happen, you're glad there are these patrols around to respond quickly. A city the size of NYC would fall into chaos if they weren't there. In general the police aren't here to mess with you and they've got bigger things to worry about. When I was in high school, I remember drinking a beer on the sidewalk and asking a cop a question and there was no problem (yes, that would be underage btw). They're just doing their job but when the order comes to preserve order, they need to be tough because the city is a tough place. Heck, the city is safer now than it has been in many decades.
It isn't that I couldn't as I certainly know how to do it a few different ways, it's just that defeating any mechanisms put in place by the company will result in discipline or termination. And for an obituary, I don't find that justified :-)
Spent 5 seconds to find one that isn't blocked by proxy servers:
Father of C and UNIX Dennis Ritchie passes away at age 70
For some reason, I guess this guy figured there was no degenerative effect on the freight train by capturing its power or like it just comes for free. It has to come from somewhere.
Not entirely related to TFA, but felt like making a rant.
Go back to 1997 when I was working at a firm that had a huge deployment of Sun workstations and servers globally. The SparcStation 20's or Ultra 1's on peoples' desk easily ran several thousand dollars (I think my Ultra 1 167MHz box without Creator 3D or fancy stuff like that ran nearly $15k). Don't even talk about the servers. Now compare that to some Compaq PC for $3000?
(yes, I know you can build a PC for cheaper but large organizations that do cause these trends tend to use vendor suppliers that charge a LOT more for this stuff than you could at best buy)
Unfortunately, I think if people convert these things to Android, #2 is more or less inevitable. I do think that WebOS is a real fine piece of work, but Palm screwed up early on with their developer relations (a good example here). I do hope something along the lines of #1 does happen, though...
"Jimmy! Go upstairs and clean your room!"
'MaaaaAAAAAAHHHH!!! I'm fighting off cyber terrr-ists!!!'
Turned it on and it all worked. Surprisingly, the disks I've tried are still working perfectly as far as I can tell.
I don't know what I'll do with this equipment in another 30 years, but it was satisfying to hear my wife exclaim "wow! I forgot how primitive those things looked!" when she saw the green monochrome display and fixed font. Now will my kid be impressed in a few years? Who knows.
That same message has been appearing for over a week now. As such, I'm not touching FF5.
If FF doesn't learn from this and realize that they need to be a bit better about this, I'll probably just switch to Chrome full time.
Apparently there is someone out there with the same name but decided to be firstlast instead (probably because I took the dot) and I'm guessing they're fine with using it as a login. However, all email that goes to firstlast ends up going into my inbox.
I was good for a while pointing this out to some people (especially when he must have had a date and the girl emailed him to thank him afterwards), but realized that the missing dot is translated to my address which is either a good or bad thing.. not sure. I just ignore and delete firstlast's emails now.
Of course, we could come to a solution for this if gmail had some kind of support email address...
In the past I went through the effort of finding an old version of Windows 1.0, getting it running and playing with it for all of 20 minutes. Interesting to see what they had, what it did, etc. I still have a VM image somewhere with it in case I ever get bored again. However, what I failed to do at the time was find any software that was actually written for Windows 1.0 that didn't come as part of the installation. Searching the internet for 'software for windows 1.0' (or the variety of phrases I thought of) mostly came up with v1.0 releases of software for Windows; i.e. software that could have been for Windows 95 (say), and it was their v1.0 release. Unfortunately, I didn't come across any sites that had any of that old software. As well, I'm not even what was ever even written for Windows 1.0. Best I could tell, I've only heard that one or two applications were ever written for Windows 1.0, but I can't find the binaries on the internet. Though, I believe you could run Windows 2.0 sofware on 1.0 and vice-versa, at least to some extent. In Windows 3.0 they apparently changed things up enough to require rewrites. Anyone ever find anything?
Actually, at a stop-and-shop near where I live, the self checkout is not the kind where you need to put things in the bag. You scan it and then put it on a belt that zips it down to where you can bag it. The belt seems to have sensors that detect if something went by and doesn't care how you want to bag or not (reusable bags, anyone?). I've never had to wait for an assistant with this system. Shame I've not seen it anywhere else!
Not sure I agree with this. I think this would be good simply because there is little in the way of price competition that I've seen lately. Sure, there are lower prices under certain situations, but otherwise the airlines are charging whatever the heck they darn well please. Oh, and shutting other companies out who try to offer cheaper service in some cases.
Case in point: Eos airlines, who offered business class only flights. They had excellent quality and service standards. However, they charged less than American Airlines and they did this by various methods including using less expensive airports (in London, they used Stanstead airport instead of the more expensive Heathrow). AA didn't like this, so they moved in to Stanstead, pushed out Eos, caused Eos to go bankrupt and then shortly after their victory pulled out of Stanstead themselves. Now if you want to fly to London on business class you're back to the more expensive (and lesser quality) American Airlines out of Heathrow.
So cheaper doesn't always mean lesser quality. However, it does motivate others to take action and sometimes it isn't in the best interest of the consumer.
I'm still quite content with my E5462-based 2008 model, thanks :)
And after all these years I was convinced that the moon was made of blue cheese...
I'd imagine that there are a fair number of ethernet cards out there for 16-bit ISA that would work fine in an 8-bit ISA slot. I was more of an Apple II -> Amiga person at the time of 8/16 ISA, but I read somewhere that a lot of 16-bit cards would auto-detect an 8-bit slot and downgrade; tried it with my Boca Super X VGA card and it worked (in conjunction with my A2500's A2286 board). Don't know if that trick worked everywhere, but I also never tried the 16-bit ISA ethernet card I have lying around, either.
The problem is that the nation's rail system effectively collapsed between the 1950's and early 1980's. There were literally hundreds of rail companies formed in the 1800's (much like the internet boom?) and while most of them went bankrupt shortly after being established, the ones that did survive into the 20th century eventually merged or collapsed altogether over the years until they finally were shot out back with the formation of ConRail. What was learned from all this? Passenger rail doesn't turn a healthy enough profit to fund the operating costs of such a system. Freight, on the other hand, can and often does. The only reason why we have Amtrak and the various commuter rail operations around the country is because the (federal and state) government funds those systems so they can exist. Yes, part of your taxes may be going to help keep a commuter rail system you may never even use, however, it is for the greater benefit of the state to do this because it allows the wealth generated in a large city (like NYC) to be spread out to communities that may be one hour away. So high speed rail will either be very expensive or heavily funded by US taxpayer dollars. I'm sure it will most likely be the latter since the only advantages rail has over airlines is that you don't have to deal with the airport and is maybe 15% less expensive. If it is the same price or more expensive, it won't work.
Might be slightly off here, but that is the general idea.
It used to be that you could read a specific date page. Great for catching up after not being on for a few days. Now URLs such as http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?issue=20110123 no longer work. This is really annoying.
So how will I know when I'm really "someone"?
I sent feedback asking for this which I didn't get a response (not surprised). They already send you copies of the messages you receive, so why not let me complete my archive by sending me a copy of what I write to others?
Not a major technological difficulty, but would be nice.
I would imagine that Jobs was probably out hustling, so that would be his lower chance. However, the letter would most likely have been typed and signed by him.
My semi-educated guess.
When virus definitions are updated, it is possible that a file that was written in the past is now considered infected. As well, the file could have been written to the disk without the antivirus software's knowledge (could have not been loaded, killed/crashed, etc).
Still, I agree with you that most of the time we have already scanned the darn file..
Anything organic can be made into paper; even owls and tree huggers. Heck, I've got a swatch of blue paper over 15 years old that was made out of a pair of blue jeans thrown into the digester (but with the metal buttons and zipper cut out). It actually makes me a bit annoyed when people have signs for "printer paper" or "newspaper only". That's crap. It all goes into the same batch of nasty chemicals and made into a pulp. Heck, they probably threw a spruce tree in there (with birds nest) while they were at it.
Short of it is, paper industry is still huge. Everything is paper or cardboard. It costs a lot more to get the raw materials (read: trees and the re-forestation involved) than it does to take any and all paper products and recycle it.
I've read that the only reason why they limit to 192GB is simply because there isn't any x64 hardware out there that supports more than 192GB. I think it is because of the chipsets, not necessarily the RAM sticks or number of slots.
In other words, Microsoft supports up to 192GB because that is the highest amount of memory that they have been able to test with.
I would assume that as soon as 256GB hardware becomes available, they might re-state that limitation.