Here is a story about a handspring powernapping module that will help you take cat-naps and pull you out at the exact time necessary to do the most good. It's supposed to be based on Nasa research.
The site vcdhelp.com is a good site that lists just about every dvd player with it's ability to play stuff from different regions. Just about every player has a "region hack" that allows a different region to be selected.
It seems most of my need for CD's was because of windows - Linux never seems to need CD's more than once.
So for windows, I found that CDSpace works great. (it's awesome for laptops)
It's an application that creates a virtual CDrom drive. Your hardware cdrom becomes your E: drive and a virtual cdrom appears as your D: drive. When you first get a game cd, etc.. just pop it in your E: drive and scan it in. Then you "insert" the scanned CD image into your virtual D: drive and the system recognizes it just like a regular CD was inserted. It will autoplay and everything.
There are a couple of options to take into account various media types. Regular cd images are just encoded directly. Music CD's can be encoded or converted to different sound types. Game CD's are encoded with extra error information so that the copy protection scheme still works (I've never had a game cd fail to work). You can also add compression so that the image on disk is smaller.
So I use my CD's one time - to scan them in - then put them away. Then I insert the image in the virtual cd drive when necessary. Oh, and I got a 60gb drive - then space was never a problem.
An easy way on the main page to scroll back through previous stories.
This could be as simple as an "Older stories..." link or as "complicated" as separators between days and something like a "Monday's stories" link.
If I miss a day or two, I always have to fiddle with the slashboxes to scroll back through the stories. This is a simple UI fix and would greatly increase usability.
I bought a sony str-de5xx receiver a while back because it supported my vague requirements of dolby digital and renamable inputs. I returned it a couple days later because of the LOUSY LOUSY s/n ratio on the headphone port. Even with a digital source the noise floor was way above the signal at low or no volume levels.
I ended up ebay'ing a sony ES receiver and it was significantly better (though it was around $450 or so, which kind of blew my budget). Love it though - but the two-way remote is an ergonomic atrocity.
If you have applications in the embedded world, then you probably have a market. They won't care about the cost. A compiler is a non-recurring cost. Linux is also non-recurring. In the embedded world, lots of software *is* a recurring cost: operating systems, protocols, webservers, etc...
Walking around work, I'm amazed how many people have poor ergonomic setups.
And if you're small in stature, you're probably always fighting with averages. I had a friend that was so small, she couldn't sit on a bus and have her feet touch the floor.
You'll probably *always* have to adjust things for your size - maybe even with a 17" monitor setup.
Sounds like you really need to lower your desk down towards your keyboard. Your keyboard should probably be a little over your lap so your elbows are at a right angle and your forearms are parallel to the floor when typing. Your eye level should be right about level with the top of the viewing area. Also make sure you're sitting square and looking straight on at the monitor - I'm amazed at how many people look one way and type another...
As a customer, I can see no logic in your reasoning.
USB is already used in the mac keyboard and mouse. If adding USB2 is only marginally more expensive and provides access to more devices, I don't see *any* reason not to add it.
As a matter of fact, not providing USB2 functionality might decrease market share.
I think the main advantage of a cashless society is that it can reduce violence.
In the past, there were lots of situations where people needed to carry large amounts of cash. These people were then in danger of physical violence from people who wanted that money. Nowadays, the only people in danger are people around ATM's (and the people who fill them)
Also, a lot of break-ins and robberies probably don't occur anymore. Now lots of normal businesses don't need huge amounts of cash.
I wonder about supermakets that give cash-back on your atm card - I wonder if they break even or not?
Another facet to this is the insurance industry. I think having insurance has made other crimes less of a big deal. For instace, car theft. In the past, you were out of luck (In a lot of countries, you still are). But here if your car gets stolen, you're stunned, but a check comes in the mail and you get over it.
Customer purchases product with "strings attached".
Product has to be "activated" with the company to use it.
Customer is forever beholden to the company in the future to continue using that product.
Ok, usually this is at reinstall time, but in the Microsoft case, it may occur during upgrades.
In the www.audible.com case, it's a grave scenario - the company cannot *provide* activation for some period, so people cannot access their content for sometime.
This could also happen with Microsoft. There are plenty of other scenarios with Microsoft however. Take a look at some of their licensing terms. What if Microsoft decides that the new computer you buy isn't an "upgrade" but a whole new machine? Not now, but maybe 5 years from now.
What about the ability to resell a machine?
etc...
I say it again, the customer is forever beholden to the company in the future to continue using that product that they purchased. They are laying the groundwork to change your computer into a "service" that they provide, for a small monthly fee. However, this service is the foundation for many other things - applications that you depend on for your livelihood, media content, all kinds of stuff.
huh? You mean product activation? I wasn't aware
that was a bad thing. I mean all you guys keep
toting that you buy software and music, so this
isn't a problem, right? Unless of course you've
been lying. (sorry, not intended towards you
Polo). I think that it's a good move, helps to
cut down on the rampant piracy. Since apparently
> 1/2 the piracy is casual "hey, can I borrow
that CD?" this helps to significantly reduce the
amount of casual piracy.
Yes, product activation. I despise it. It is not in my best interests as a consumer, and it will proliferate with Microsoft's muscle.
I will give you a perfect example. I belong to Audible.com. This is a service where you pay a monthly fee and can purchase a certain number of audio books each month. When you sign up, you "activate" a player - whether it be a desktop player (windows media) or a portable player (diamond rio 500).
Well, now their website is down and my new PC can't be authorized because their website is down. Look at it. I'm not free to use content I've paid for!!
I just upgraded my little brother's windows laptop (a dell lattitide) with memory from crucial.com (highly recommended after several several returns of Fry's memory). 256mb was $49. (128m is about $35)
Too bad my vaio's not on the list (same old sony crap). But I'm running linux so it's not that big a deal to run 32m.
I actually think the problem nowadays is that many intel machines (desktops) can only take 512mb.
The problem with microsoft is that the product is now more interesting, so that's when they decided to trojan in the registration thing.
This is a very good topic, but I couldn't help chuckling. I was thinking about how this story had to make it through the slashdot submission queue in much the same way as code submissions make it through to oss project code bases.
I've always wondered if energy put into optimizing the code development process would be amplified in the code developed using the process.
I mean, if there was an easy way to submit fixes, and also an easy way to view the fixes against the code to see what they would look like, and an easy way to apply them, would this happen faster (or be more likely to happen in the first place?)
The same thing would go for source control and bug tracking. Would effort into these "infrastructure" tools carry over into more/better code in lots of other areas?
Well, cnn seems to use akamai for lots of it's content, so that should help distrubute the load quite well. (their website claims over 11,000 servers)
During high-load situations like these - many web objects come out of semi-local cache, probably at your ISP, and the response times are usually low.
I learned from last job, use of CDN's (content distribution networks) can drastically increase the load a site can take. At first I was not sold on them because they were essentially "very expensive bandwidth", but the bigwigs didr some negotiations, and they came out at closer to the same price as the ISP bandwidth costs (with our volumes). (of course, you can get charged double/extra for some requests, so ymmv)
One thing to mention though is that using CDN's increases the amount of DNS lookups necessary. Akamai has this wierd 3-level dns lookup scheme.
I wonder how the DNS heirarchy fared during all this...
Re:The views of a Muslim in NY
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
note: at first I thought this comment applied to the "The views of a Muslim in NY" comment (and was pretty imflammatory). But there's a comment in between that's been modded up and back down that kind of disappeared from view. The nesting doesn't make it clear.
Slashdot Mirror
Duh, logic error. I should have stated: for some A, then B. For some cases of leprosy, then you cannot feel pain.
Lack of pain can allow bodily damage to go unnoticed and lead to loss of limb and/or life.
However I believe many problems with leprosy are actually the result of feeling no pain.
There's a book about this: "Pain: the gift nobody wants" by Paul Brand I believe.
Here's a description I found
If you can't feel pain, you have leprosy. Then you can hurt yourself and you'll never notice
the damage.
Here is a story about a handspring powernapping module that will help you take cat-naps and pull you out at the exact time necessary to do the most good. It's supposed to be based on Nasa research.
The site vcdhelp.com is a good site that lists just about every dvd player with it's ability to play stuff from different regions. Just about every player has a "region hack" that allows a different region to be selected.
Here it is. I've been looking at this one since it's inexpensive and small (and has good battery life)
With notebooks like this, why would you buy a portable dvd player?
It seems most of my need for CD's was because of windows - Linux never seems to need CD's more than once.
So for windows, I found that CDSpace works great. (it's awesome for laptops)
It's an application that creates a virtual CDrom drive. Your hardware cdrom becomes your E: drive and a virtual cdrom appears as your D: drive. When you first get a game cd, etc.. just pop it in your E: drive and scan it in. Then you "insert" the scanned CD image into your virtual D: drive and the system recognizes it just like a regular CD was inserted. It will autoplay and everything.
There are a couple of options to take into account various media types. Regular cd images are just encoded directly. Music CD's can be encoded or converted to different sound types. Game CD's are encoded with extra error information so that the copy protection scheme still works (I've never had a game cd fail to work). You can also add compression so that the image on disk is smaller.
So I use my CD's one time - to scan them in - then put them away. Then I insert the image in the virtual cd drive when necessary. Oh, and I got a 60gb drive - then space was never a problem.
An easy way on the main page to scroll back through previous stories.
This could be as simple as an "Older stories..." link or as "complicated" as separators between days and something like a "Monday's stories" link.
If I miss a day or two, I always have to fiddle with the slashboxes to scroll back through the stories. This is a simple UI fix and would greatly increase usability.
Extreme Networks supports ssh2 on all their switches.
(disclaimer: I work for them)
I've been using Xemacs for a long time.
Could someone with experience explain the difference between Xemacs and gnu emacs??
I bought a sony str-de5xx receiver a while back because it supported my vague requirements of dolby digital and renamable inputs. I returned it a couple days later because of the LOUSY LOUSY s/n ratio on the headphone port. Even with a digital source the noise floor was way above the signal at low or no volume levels.
I ended up ebay'ing a sony ES receiver and it was significantly better (though it was around $450 or so, which kind of blew my budget). Love it though - but the two-way remote is an ergonomic atrocity.
If you have applications in the embedded world, then you probably have a market. They won't care about the cost. A compiler is a non-recurring cost. Linux is also non-recurring. In the embedded world, lots of software *is* a recurring cost: operating systems, protocols, webservers, etc...
Now why isn't purify ported to Linux...
Walking around work, I'm amazed how many people have poor ergonomic setups.
And if you're small in stature, you're probably always fighting with averages. I had a friend that was so small, she couldn't sit on a bus and have her feet touch the floor.
You'll probably *always* have to adjust things for your size - maybe even with a 17" monitor setup.
Sounds like you really need to lower your desk down towards your keyboard. Your keyboard should probably be a little over your lap so your elbows are at a right angle and your forearms are parallel to the floor when typing. Your eye level should be right about level with the top of the viewing area. Also make sure you're sitting square and looking straight on at the monitor - I'm amazed at how many people look one way and type another...
what about sampling?
could I sample portions of seven notes of a "melody"?
As a customer, I can see no logic in your reasoning.
USB is already used in the mac keyboard and mouse. If adding USB2 is only marginally more expensive and provides access to more devices, I don't see *any* reason not to add it.
As a matter of fact, not providing USB2 functionality might decrease market share.
How does this apply to:
open-relay abuse spam
I would think it would abolish it (for U.S. citizens)
I think the main advantage of a cashless society is that it can reduce violence.
In the past, there were lots of situations where people needed to carry large amounts of cash. These people were then in danger of physical violence from people who wanted that money. Nowadays, the only people in danger are people around ATM's (and the people who fill them)
Also, a lot of break-ins and robberies probably don't occur anymore. Now lots of normal businesses don't need huge amounts of cash.
I wonder about supermakets that give cash-back on your atm card - I wonder if they break even or not?
Another facet to this is the insurance industry. I think having insurance has made other crimes less of a big deal. For instace, car theft. In the past, you were out of luck (In a lot of countries, you still are). But here if your car gets stolen, you're stunned, but a check comes in the mail and you get over it.
Well, duh.
Customer purchases product with "strings attached".
Product has to be "activated" with the company to use it.
Customer is forever beholden to the company in the future to continue using that product.
Ok, usually this is at reinstall time, but in the Microsoft case, it may occur during upgrades.
In the www.audible.com case, it's a grave scenario - the company cannot *provide* activation for some period, so people cannot access their content for sometime.
This could also happen with Microsoft. There are plenty of other scenarios with Microsoft however. Take a look at some of their licensing terms. What if Microsoft decides that the new computer you buy isn't an "upgrade" but a whole new machine? Not now, but maybe 5 years from now.
What about the ability to resell a machine?
etc...
I say it again, the customer is forever beholden to the company in the future to continue using that product that they purchased. They are laying the groundwork to change your computer into a "service" that they provide, for a small monthly fee. However, this service is the foundation for many other things - applications that you depend on for your livelihood, media content, all kinds of stuff.
If they will eventually be prior art for other algorithms...
Yes, product activation. I despise it. It is not in my best interests as a consumer, and it will proliferate with Microsoft's muscle.
I will give you a perfect example. I belong to Audible.com. This is a service where you pay a monthly fee and can purchase a certain number of audio books each month. When you sign up, you "activate" a player - whether it be a desktop player (windows media) or a portable player (diamond rio 500).
Well, now their website is down and my new PC can't be authorized because their website is down. Look at it. I'm not free to use content I've paid for!!
This is unjust.
I just upgraded my little brother's windows laptop (a dell lattitide) with memory from crucial.com (highly recommended after several several returns of Fry's memory). 256mb was $49. (128m is about $35)
Too bad my vaio's not on the list (same old sony crap). But I'm running linux so it's not that big a deal to run 32m.
I actually think the problem nowadays is that many intel machines (desktops) can only take 512mb.
The problem with microsoft is that the product is now more interesting, so that's when they decided to trojan in the registration thing.
What if instead there was a "frequent fryer program". Would people be complaining or would they be outraged because their information wasn't merged?
Sometimes when I'm in Fry's I wished there was a "gold member" short line. (especially in returns)
This is a very good topic, but I couldn't help chuckling. I was thinking about how this story had to make it through the slashdot submission queue in much the same way as code submissions make it through to oss project code bases.
I've always wondered if energy put into optimizing the code development process would be amplified in the code developed using the process.
I mean, if there was an easy way to submit fixes, and also an easy way to view the fixes against the code to see what they would look like, and an easy way to apply them, would this happen faster (or be more likely to happen in the first place?)
The same thing would go for source control and bug tracking. Would effort into these "infrastructure" tools carry over into more/better code in lots of other areas?
Well, cnn seems to use akamai for lots of it's content, so that should help distrubute the load quite well. (their website claims over 11,000 servers)
During high-load situations like these - many web objects come out of semi-local cache, probably at your ISP, and the response times are usually low.
I learned from last job, use of CDN's (content distribution networks) can drastically increase the load a site can take. At first I was not sold on them because they were essentially "very expensive bandwidth", but the bigwigs didr some negotiations, and they came out at closer to the same price as the ISP bandwidth costs (with our volumes). (of course, you can get charged double/extra for some requests, so ymmv)
One thing to mention though is that using CDN's increases the amount of DNS lookups necessary. Akamai has this wierd 3-level dns lookup scheme.
I wonder how the DNS heirarchy fared during all this...
note: at first I thought this comment applied to the "The views of a Muslim in NY" comment (and was pretty imflammatory). But there's a comment in between that's been modded up and back down that kind of disappeared from view. The nesting doesn't make it clear.