I know, setup up a rendering/raytracing client, so those wanting to play around with making movies with CGI scenes have a way of getting things done sooner...
People who going around inventing new ways to generate rubbish should be force to do rubbish cleaning on the streets...
A cheap disposable phone will not have the same kind of range as a good quality cellphone (I assume), limiting its use in emergency situations (if you're in the wilderness, you should be packing radio equipment instead of relying on a cellphone to save your butt), and in a city, what's the point of a disposable cellphone that that can't receive? If you only make an occasional call that don't justify spending on a proper cellphone (which are pretty cheap anyway), you probably won't need an disposable one and just stick to using the public phone booth.
I'd think the molecules would probably do something like changing its shape in response to voltage...if you're thinking it's mayb a chemical process like in the human nerve system, I doubt that's the case - that'd be pretty slow
Actually, Microsoft as Shakespearean Tragedy would be most like Macbeth, with the US governemnt possibly playing the part of the English help, Birnam forest as an allusion to the Internet - not realised as a sign of danger until too late. Macduff as Linux? (a child not of woman born, say, the way it's collabarated development origin/unix -like yet written anew?) Lady Macbeth.....didn't one of Microsoft's big shots retired or something a while back? Duncan (the king that got murdered by Macbeth) as computer users being forced to use Windows (or some allusion about free software killed by commmercial software in the past, the new king Malcolme as the return of free software in the form of GNU) The witches as the evil lure of Wall Street (makes more sense if you have watched Roman Polansky's film adaptation, with Macduff meeting them at the end of the play - sign of ominious commercial perversion of Linux?:)
Or yes, Banquo as OS/2, once a friend, but killed by Macbeth....
Okay, sure sign I had too much ginseng, and overnight studying for exam has made me truly delirious!
Enterprise Resource Planning: What company, in their right mind, let information,that in the old days before computers would be placed in big steel safes, placed in a room with a sturdy metal door, be hosted by OTHER COMPANIES, in a location not under their control?
Graphics Software: You can't see this kind of service on the strength of some button generators - I assume we're talking something close to the power of Photoshop here, so there is only one question: how long does it take to send over a 1280x1024 jpeg, and what kind of processor power the server will need?
Productivity Applications: You might not need tech support for the buggy applications anymore, but how does one go about PRINTING things out? Provision for local networking to a print server? (and that doesn't require support?) A special print server/printer that connects to your ASP that sends the print jobs over? (the idea just sounds silly)
Now some extra ramblings: The only reason some companies will find saving using ASPs would be that they have a bloated, mismanaged IT department that sucks up more money than the ASPs would with monthly charges.
Why companies keep on trying to make the whole ASP thing work? What better way profit from software can you think of - develop once, then you get paid per user on a monthly basis, additional cost only from bugfix/more server and bandwidth/new features to compete with other ASPs
Except you have people who cannot for their lifes spend 5 seconds turning off sending HTML emails...
No browser should be set to send HTML emails by default, if the stupid user is too stupid to switch it off, he/her is too stupid to be needing the fancy stuff.
All those people who design bloated, image-ladden web sites with pointless Java programs obviously have not actually used the net much. People usually bitch about sites being too slow to load and don't have the stuff they were looking for, they don't stay away from a site with the information they want simply because it's not fancy-looking enough.
Speaking from personal experience, there were several occasions when I turned away from an online shopping place half way through an order because the damned thing loaded so slowly that my patience started running out and had the time to realise I might not want to buy the stuff just yet...
Longer loading time = more time to reverse an impulse buy
Keeping things a bit on topic: maybe with the dominance of IE we might finally be rid of that Netscape spawn of evil - the blink tag!:)
Okay, long shot...but if the f*cking French can get into Rugby World Cup final, stranger things can happen.
As someone has already pointed out, they're still looking for a molecule that will act as a switch, never mind implenting it in any practical way.
Even if we end up with individual memory cells 1 molecule big, we still need to design circuits on about the same scale, not much point having some ultra dense memory array when you don't have an efficient way of connecting to it...
I'm guessing it'll ve using some really low voltages, so shielding out interferance would be tricky.
Printing - all the benefits of an easy to use terminal disappears the moment people start needing to attach stuff to the thing. Here's an idea: if you have a fax machine (how common are those plain paper fax machines?), the server will dial your fax number to print your document...
I've played around with X over a modem, VNC over a modem, neither of them is fun.
The price works out okay - $120 a year is much less then the depreciation of a computer.
The best way is just to plug an old Pentium machine to the stereo, network everything together, and you can do whatever you want over telnet or remote X (or VNC over Windows). This way you can also have fancy animations running on your TV screen.
OT crap: Why don't the manufacturers put S-Video input into many TV sets? Even my 15-year old JVC set has it.
Also, get a second hand stereo unit for your computer would be money better spent than getting another fancy electronic gadget. There are a few pretty good magnetically shielded speakers around, and most small speakers won't affect the screen much if placed a reasonable distance away (20 cm or more)
Re: post on FM radio quality "sucks" - that's because most stations compress the dynamic range of the songs so the crappy radio in most cars can hear an "acceptable" sound. Tune in to a station not using compression (probably the clasical music stations) and you'll notice the difference, if your stereo costs as much as your computer to start with.
OT question: anyone know how to config X for a S3 Virge GX2 for display on a TV? I haven't managed to find any info yet on the net.
Psychologists make an interesting career out of studying intangibles. Many great things have come out of psychology. In the end, however, one is studying intangibles. As such, the field and the results derived from it can only be taken so seriously.
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
The paranoid in me think of the whole "human consciousness is merely an illusion of memes" as a new attempt to attack the whole framework of science - "See, even the scientists now admit that all thoughts are nothing more than the products of illusions". We really should legalise recreational drug use so the "tree hugging hippies" in the social science department have something more entertaining to do than spawning new crackpot theories.
Excuse my grumpiness, studying for an signal process paper exam with those fun fourier transforms and integrating fun fun random distributions make me want to charge up a 600V 500uF electrolyte and zap some moron claiming his/her LSD-induced crazy talk is as valid as the theory of evolution.
I wonder how hard it will be to build a double layer metal shell filled with dry ice or whatever other coolant used, completely covering the motherboard + PC cards. with all the cable connections connected to intermediate panel on one side of the box to ensure insulation. The heat sink on the CPU (and on whatever other components) would be coupled to the cooling system. The entire cavity would then be at the same temperature (perhaps a fan on the inside to disperse the air warmed up by the CPU), minimizing the chance for condensation.
This is just one of the many sad examples of how pathetic the "fashion" industry can be.
Take a look at some of those fashion shows on TV and you'll see more examples of people trying to cash in on the "hacker" phenomenon (really, hasn't the whole thing gone on for too long a while already?)
FYI: I first saw those bags at their store at one of the more expensive shopping malls in Hong Kong.
No, I didn't buy them - I'll stick to the Ralph Lauren backpacks thank you...:)
Aside: In reference to one of the posts - just exactly how far back do you have to go to draw the line between "old school" and 3l33t dUdes? (it just doesn't look right without 25x80 screen font...)
Maybe someone (I might, if sufficiently bored) should do a java program that displays Slashdot in "old school" ANSI... (If there's one around, tell me please?)
Speaking of hacking, just how well can a Linux PPP firewall box protect a win95 machine from the various "hacks" (e.g. ping flood?)?
Slashdot Mirror
I know, setup up a rendering/raytracing client, so those wanting to play around with making movies with CGI scenes have a way of getting things done sooner...
Here in New Zealand you can get a cellphone for about $140NZ ($80 US), that comes with $100 air time.
People who going around inventing new ways to generate rubbish should be force to do rubbish cleaning on the streets...
A cheap disposable phone will not have the same kind of range as a good quality cellphone (I assume), limiting its use in emergency situations (if you're in the wilderness, you should be packing radio equipment instead of relying on a cellphone to save your butt), and in a city, what's the point of a disposable cellphone that that can't receive? If you only make an occasional call that don't justify spending on a proper cellphone (which are pretty cheap anyway), you probably won't need an disposable one and just stick to using the public phone booth.
I'd think the molecules would probably do something like changing its shape in response to voltage...if you're thinking it's mayb a chemical process like in the human nerve system, I doubt that's the case - that'd be pretty slow
And does that include people who converts the old Prolinea 486's into a mini web server?
Nice thing about the Compaq/DEC desktops, they're slim enough to hide anywhere...
Those proprietory drive mounting brackets are a pain though, had to put the hard drive in with blue tack.
Actually, Microsoft as Shakespearean Tragedy would be most like Macbeth, with the US governemnt possibly playing the part of the English help, Birnam forest as an allusion to the Internet - not realised as a sign of danger until too late. Macduff as Linux? (a child not of woman born, say, the way it's collabarated development origin/unix -like yet written anew?) Lady Macbeth.....didn't one of Microsoft's big shots retired or something a while back? Duncan (the king that got murdered by Macbeth) as computer users being forced to use Windows (or some allusion about free software killed by commmercial software in the past, the new king Malcolme as the return of free software in the form of GNU) The witches as the evil lure of Wall Street (makes more sense if you have watched Roman Polansky's film adaptation, with Macduff meeting them at the end of the play - sign of ominious commercial perversion of Linux? :)
Or yes, Banquo as OS/2, once a friend, but killed by Macbeth....
Okay, sure sign I had too much ginseng, and overnight studying for exam has made me truly delirious!
First, on the article itself:
,that in the old days before computers would be placed in big steel safes, placed in a room with a sturdy metal door, be hosted by OTHER COMPANIES, in a location not under their control?
Enterprise Resource Planning:
What company, in their right mind, let information
Graphics Software:
You can't see this kind of service on the strength of some button generators - I assume we're talking something close to the power of Photoshop here, so there is only one question: how long does it take to send over a 1280x1024 jpeg, and what kind of processor power the server will need?
Productivity Applications:
You might not need tech support for the buggy applications anymore, but how does one go about PRINTING things out? Provision for local networking to a print server? (and that doesn't require support?) A special print server/printer that connects to your ASP that sends the print jobs over? (the idea just sounds silly)
Now some extra ramblings:
The only reason some companies will find saving using ASPs would be that they have a bloated, mismanaged IT department that sucks up more money than the ASPs would with monthly charges.
Why companies keep on trying to make the whole ASP thing work? What better way profit from software can you think of - develop once, then you get paid per user on a monthly basis, additional cost only from bugfix/more server and bandwidth/new features to compete with other ASPs
Except you have people who cannot for their lifes spend 5 seconds turning off sending HTML emails...
:)
No browser should be set to send HTML emails by default, if the stupid user is too stupid to switch it off, he/her is too stupid to be needing the fancy stuff.
All those people who design bloated, image-ladden web sites with pointless Java programs obviously have not actually used the net much. People usually bitch about sites being too slow to load and don't have the stuff they were looking for, they don't stay away from a site with the information they want simply because it's not fancy-looking enough.
Speaking from personal experience, there were several occasions when I turned away from an online shopping place half way through an order because the damned thing loaded so slowly that my patience started running out and had the time to realise I might not want to buy the stuff just yet...
Longer loading time = more time to reverse an impulse buy
Keeping things a bit on topic: maybe with the dominance of IE we might finally be rid of that Netscape spawn of evil - the blink tag!
Okay, long shot...but if the f*cking French can get into Rugby World Cup final, stranger things can happen.
As someone has already pointed out, they're still looking for a molecule that will act as a switch, never mind implenting it in any practical way.
Even if we end up with individual memory cells 1 molecule big, we still need to design circuits on about the same scale, not much point having some ultra dense memory array when you don't have an efficient way of connecting to it...
I'm guessing it'll ve using some really low voltages, so shielding out interferance would be tricky.
With a drive that big, we'll soon go back to the old days of "backing up data, insert CD-ROM 1 of 100..."
However for most home users, a CD or two should be enough to backup the system, and one can always download those pirated mp3s again, and again...
I see a few problems with the whole concept:
Printing - all the benefits of an easy to use terminal disappears the moment people start needing to attach stuff to the thing. Here's an idea: if you have a fax machine (how common are those plain paper fax machines?), the server will dial your fax number to print your document...
I've played around with X over a modem, VNC over a modem, neither of them is fun.
The price works out okay - $120 a year is much less then the depreciation of a computer.
That name better be a temporary title...
The best way is just to plug an old Pentium machine to the stereo, network everything together, and you can do whatever you want over telnet or remote X (or VNC over Windows). This way you can also have fancy animations running on your TV screen.
OT crap: Why don't the manufacturers put S-Video input into many TV sets? Even my 15-year old JVC set has it.
Also, get a second hand stereo unit for your computer would be money better spent than getting another fancy electronic gadget. There are a few pretty good magnetically shielded speakers around, and most small speakers won't affect the screen much if placed a reasonable distance away (20 cm or more)
Re: post on FM radio quality "sucks" - that's because most stations compress the dynamic range of the songs so the crappy radio in most cars can hear an "acceptable" sound. Tune in to a station not using compression (probably the clasical music stations) and you'll notice the difference, if your stereo costs as much as your computer to start with.
OT question: anyone know how to config X for a S3 Virge GX2 for display on a TV? I haven't managed to find any info yet on the net.
Psychologists make an interesting career out of studying intangibles. Many great things have come out of psychology. In the end, however, one is studying intangibles. As such, the field and the results derived from it can only be taken so seriously.
I always think that psychology is heading for obsolecenes - after all, many problems caused by an ego and id conflict can be neatly solved by Prozac (or plain old ethanol). The more progress we make in neurobiology, the less we need to rely on a tradition rooted in the last century.
The paranoid in me think of the whole "human consciousness is merely an illusion of memes" as a new attempt to attack the whole framework of science - "See, even the scientists now admit that all thoughts are nothing more than the products of illusions". We really should legalise recreational drug use so the "tree hugging hippies" in the social science department have something more entertaining to do than spawning new crackpot theories.
Excuse my grumpiness, studying for an signal process paper exam with those fun fourier transforms and integrating fun fun random distributions make me want to charge up a 600V 500uF electrolyte and zap some moron claiming his/her LSD-induced crazy talk is as valid as the theory of evolution.
I wonder how hard it will be to build a double layer metal shell filled with dry ice or whatever other coolant used, completely covering the motherboard + PC cards. with all the cable connections connected to intermediate panel on one side of the box to ensure insulation. The heat sink on the CPU (and on whatever other components) would be coupled to the cooling system. The entire cavity would then be at the same temperature (perhaps a fan on the inside to disperse the air warmed up by the CPU), minimizing the chance for condensation.
This is just one of the many sad examples of how pathetic the "fashion" industry can be.
:)
Take a look at some of those fashion shows on TV and you'll see more examples of people trying to cash in on the "hacker" phenomenon (really, hasn't the whole thing gone on for too long a while already?)
FYI: I first saw those bags at their store at one of the more expensive shopping malls in Hong Kong.
No, I didn't buy them - I'll stick to the Ralph Lauren backpacks thank you...
Aside: In reference to one of the posts - just exactly how far back do you have to go to draw the line between "old school" and 3l33t dUdes? (it just doesn't look right without 25x80 screen font...)
Maybe someone (I might, if sufficiently bored) should do a java program that displays Slashdot in "old school" ANSI... (If there's one around, tell me please?)
Speaking of hacking, just how well can a Linux PPP firewall box protect a win95 machine from the various "hacks" (e.g. ping flood?)?