I don't know about finding information, but I have a cheap ($5) converter from the regular (large) keyboard plug to the PS/2 in my hand right now. Therefore, you have 2 possibilities:
1 - ship a converter (like the above, but get a bulk discount from manufacturer) with your unit, much like mouse manufacturers ship a ps/2 -> serial or usb -> ps/2 converter for their hardware. Added bonus of having your keypad work with BOTH the regular and PS/2 plugs
2 - dissect the PS/2 converter mentioned above and learn from it. I don't imagine how it could be that different. Maybe it's as simple as mapping the wires. The converter's only an inch long, so I'm guessing it doesn't have much in there. Then again, I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know.
Keep in mind, of course, that their careers will take them to see hardware that is beyond what you might be able to show them. Teach them how to narrow down the focus of their problems, and how to deal with the unexpected.
In other words, don't teach solely with textbooks. Use real-world examples. See if you can give labs where you create a problem, and they try to fix it. Teach them how to teach themselves new things - give them enough to get started, and try to hone their instincts to be able to isolate causes, not just symptoms of the problems.
Also teach them that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. Too many technicians get so caught up when they don't know an answer that they begin to blame problems on totally unrelated things (ie: I can't connect to the database. It must be that damned Linux box on the network causing the problems - and yes, I've heard this one). Teach them how to research their issues. After all, the wisest of people don't have all the answers, but rather they know where to look or who to ask to find them.
If I had moderator privileges, I'd moderate this as insightful. That's probably how the darned thing works.
Now the catch is - what's to prevent a movie pirate from removing the magnet? All you need is a screwdriver, right? Cheap way to get a permanent movie; it'd probably cost about $5 to "rent", versus the $20-odd to purchase. Maybe someone would even turn around and sell the "fixed" tapes on the street.
I guess it's a neat idea in a way in the case of a video store which doesn't want to bother collecting video tapes from rentals, but isn't it correct that this could have a harmful effect on the environment?
I guess it's nice to have the video tape to keep when you rent a movie, but in my case I rent a lot more movies than I record stuff, so I'd end up with lots and lots of extra video tapes. So from my perspective, I paid extra for these tapes (since after all, the extra costs will be passed on to the consumer) which I don't need, which I will likely just throw out.
On the other hand, if I like the movie I can shelf it for a little while and then watch it again, perhaps a couple of months/years later when I'm interested. In this case, it's kind of nice. I have no idea how it'll work, however.
Is it also possible that these tapes might become as famous as the free AOL floppies? Perhaps if companies in a marketing campaign were to distribute the movie trailers on videotape to you, and you'd end up with the free tape later, that'd be pretty cool. But then again - why not just use regular videotape in that case? Seeing this, it looks like the only market is rentals, where people want to keep the tape.
I don't know - if I'm interested, I can always rent it again. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay the extra $2 or $3 (CDN) to keep the tape in this case. I'd rather take my chances that if I want to see the movie again, I'll just go back to the store and rent it another night.
I don't think of this the same way as the DivX standard, though, because we're not ending up with useless coasters after we've watched our movie. At least the tape can be used, even if most people might not want or need it.
Either that, or an American Pie-like love experience with the table (or, help us all, the cue).
Then again, he might just be referring to some class about Newtonian mechanics (physics?), information which has since escaped his grey matter in lieu for more useful knowledge.
Actually, in my case it wasn't the microswitches. I thought it was, but it turned out that I just wore out the plastic piece that was making the buttons go back up.
In other words, I wore it out in that the buttons wouldn't pop back up again because the "spring" had become too flexible:)
One, a new Logitech optical wheel mouse has, if I remember correctly, a 5-year warranty. I just bought one - don't remember if it was 3 or 5, but I think it was 5.
Second, how about just getting a new mouse pad? I don't mean to insult, but is there a chance that you're cleaning the mouse so much that the rollers are wearing down from YOU scraping them all the time? Keep the surface under your mouse clean, and you'll probably have better luck. It also wouldn't hurt to dust your desk off a little every week or so.
Finally, if you get an optical mouse you'll probably eliminate the roller problems. Admittedly, I've had the BUTTONS on a mouse wear out on me, but I can't say that I've ever seen a cable go. That's some strange stuff. Unless...
...get your work area inspected for static. Lose the wooly carpets and see if you can get yourself grounded. There's a good chance that your "cable problems" are caused by a discharge that perhaps you weren't aware of. I'm not an expert, but I don't expect this stuff to be particularly resilient when it comes to electric shocks.
In any case, if you're consistently killing your mice, you really should check out the above. I've never heard anyone have these kinds of problems. I would think that I'd have them - I write software for a living and spend my days behind the monitor, so I should go through them at least as fast as you.
Sometimes the simple solutions will work. I hope this helps. Good luck!
I'm not an astrochemist either, but IIRC from my Astronomy class some time ago, there's certain substances which have been established as being produced in a massive fusion or fission reaction, and they've figured out how that all works, including the ingredients (types of atoms) involved and the type of star that they occur in.
Granted, we continue to learn more and more about our Universe every day. There is no absolute proof that these isotopes can only come from a star, but given what we know, it's considered a near certainty. Otherwise, we'd need to find another environment which supports the conditions needed to produce the substance. So far, we only have stars.
Anyone have any information on this program that the parent post mentioned?
The reason I'm asking is because now it got me thinking. Humans are a pretty versatile species, having spread all over the planet. Most major natural disasters couldn't possibly destroy us all, although the extinction of all other life on the planet might make it close.
The interesting thing about this is that as a species, we've created ourselves an advantage over all of our predecessors. It seems that if it became absolutely necessary, we could probably move on to grow and harvest all of our food ourselves (or indoors, if need be). We've gained the ability to genetically modify crops, and it seems that we're coming close to being able to create sealed, self-contained environments.
Given the advancements we've made, (and I don't want to get cocky), but it looks promising that we'll be able to survive a major catastrophe like this through our own creative thinking.
Nowadays, it doesn't even seem so farfetched that some day in the future (perhaps in the 21st century even) we might colonize Mars, or somewhat less ambitiously, the Moon. Should a disaster happen, would we be destined to become cosmic Nomads, or would we settle down somewhere?
I suppose it's true. We are patriotic in a somewhat subdued way.
However we do notice that NASA (and likely the media) is pretty careful to only release photographs which include the arm in a position where you cannot see the Canadian flag painted on it. Perhaps that's why we Canadians seem so eager to remind you:)
The question would be, in this case, whether or not this can be considered part of the normal evolutionary process.
The article quotes one of the researchers saying that life has to adapt or die. In this case, does that indicate to us that the world is better for it in the end? The life that has adapted - perhaps it is stronger. Less affected by change in its environment.
Perhaps it's the very reason why human beings are able to colonize the majority of this planet. An amazing ability to adapt, brought in through the evolution caused by the nature of the universe itself. (repost - I forgot to log in)
Sorry - I guess I should have posted this interesting detail as well. A quote from here states:
The Mark 2 production version of the arrow, powered with two Avro Canada Iroquois turbo jet engines, would have been capable of achieving Mach 2 with full
military load..
Unfortunately only the prototype was developed, however it did have a successful test flight before the program (and everything related to it) was destroyed. Sounds pretty interesting, considering that flight occurred in 1958!
One example of Canadian engineering abilities might be found in some of the sites regarding the ill-fated Avro Arrow, like here and here. Some of the things achieved with this experimental craft have never been duplicated, and unfortunately the project was only destroyed due to political reasons. It could be said that while the U.S. does have great research abilities, in some areas the U.S. can learn from their Northern neighbours. After all, even NASA is still using the Canadian-made robotic arm on the space shuttle.
All of you who said that no matter what, data can't be erased, gave me an idea.
Unlimited storage.
That's right. Every time you need more disk space, simply delete something not used in a while, then overwrite it with a new file. Need that old file back? Great - have the filesystem automagically run a recovery on it. Put it into the kernel, and we've got blackholefs.
The end result is a bottomless pit of unlimited drive space:) Even more interesting is that the files you use the least may eventually become unrecoverable and forgotten over years, lessening the need to clear out your clutter. Files that you haven't used in a while might take a bit of time to come up, but you usually won't mind the wait. Stuff you use all the time will always be available. So how about it, kernel hackers? And my sig's appropriate this time around, too!
(and yes, I am joking, but if someone can think of a way to really do this them I'll REALLY be impressed!)
Since it's so small, it looks awfully useful. However, if only it had a 10/100 ethernet port, I'll bet that these would make great servers. Sure, they don't have any redundancy at all, but if you can probably shove a dozen or so (or I guess about 20 even) into 2U of rack space, it'd probably catch someone's attention.
Even better - if you need to work with it, just remove it from the rack, and there's its display, right in front of you.
Am I missing something here? Looks like they offer up to Celeron 766, 6GB hard drive and up to 256MB memory. Hell - doesn't sound too far off from a low-end server, except for all the redundant parts.
Ok - lame Dr. Evil impressions aside, where the heck is Napster going to get the cash for all this? Last I heard, nobody's really paying for the service just yet. Are there any VC-types in the game right now?
I wonder if the RIAA will bite. Anybody think that they stand to "lose" more than a billion to us? Er... I mean... the artists. Yeah. Will they be seeing this money?
I have an idea which seems like an extension of this. Maybe it's pointless, but then again maybe it's not.
Basically, I was wondering if it'd be possible for an organization to do away with the proprietary phone systems in place, instead having a server handling all inbound and outbound calls, plus voicemail and the like.
Ok, so far sounds like what the company has already, but instead, perhaps a Linux server with a bunch of voice modems, piping the phone conversations to the desktop computers of the employees. Calls out naturally get thrown out of the pool of available lines, calls in get redirected by extension to the appropriate user's IP address.
Do away with the phone, however, and replace with headset connected to soundcard, and some sort of "dialler" program, which basically connects you to one of the modems across the LAN on the server.
Using this system, couldn't companies just have their IS department handle the phones? I'd imagine this should decrease overhead (in personnel and in cabling, I guess). Probably increase security too, because it means that no one can use your phone on your desk unless they're logged in to your workstation. Forget long distance dialling codes - the server knows who you are already. Forget voicemail passwords - you're logged in already. Hell - launch your voicemail from the company intranet or groupware package (ie: outlook).
Is this sort of thing feasible, or am I missing something critical which is a showstopper?
I've been much in the same boat as you. I've known HTML but was keen on trying out some of the WYSIWYG editors out there, and I did. What I found was that all of them produced code that was incorrect, some with misplaced tags or other whatnot. Especially the problem of broken JavaScript or include tags whenever editing inside such an editor - what a headache!
I have come up with my own solution to the problem, however. My father manages the content of what has now become a rather large site (about 2 new articles per week over the last 2 years). It is indexed by a script that I've created in Perl. He uses Netscape Composer (the editor I found with the fewest issues). Out of the mess it creates, while indexing the documents I've got about a page's worth of regular expressions to fix the errors (basically, I added them as I encountered them) in tags and links, and finally copy the documents from their working directory into the "live" area.
It's pretty custom right now, so it won't be of much use to anyone else, but this script's been a lifesaver over the last while. It was written after I became extremely agitated over fixing all the stupid errors, added to the code I already had which ran through the directory tree to create the index pages used to navigate the site. Takes a couple minutes to run (the server's a P75), but I only run it once a week, and it works great!
Bring up an old controversy and the uneducated arrive in the masses, ready to absorb your advertisements.
Yep - we have the 800-odd pounds of lunar rocks which couldn't have been produced on Earth (no water/oxygen) which are being studied. We also have the reflectors put on the moon which lets us measure by laser its distance from us to within a few inches (IIRC).
Nevermind that the U.S. spent billions on the project and lost the original Apollo 13 crew in that launch test mishap, or the fact that they nearly lost the replacements forever. In any case, we know that we have had the ability to go into orbit - why would it be such a big stretch to believe that we've gone to the moon?
Perhaps these people don't believe that we go into orbit either. Or maybe we made a clone of Neil Armstrong before he launched himself into tiny chunks to show off the "landing". Gimme a break. There's no conspiracy here.
I also consider myself to be a fairly religious person. I've thought about this over and over, and I came to my own conclusion regarding this issue. Naturally you are free to your own opinion.
My opinion is this: that God gave man the choice and ability to do a great many things. We have the ability to help people, or to wage war on them. We have the ability to learn and better ourselves, or to live off the backs of others. In this particular instance, we are given the choice to lead our lives as God intended, or to try to create new life on our own. God obviously gave us the ability to make this choice. However, it is up to us to consider the consequences of our actions. How many lives can be created and then ruined if something goes wrong in the process, for example? There are many other examples of things that could go wrong.
The fact is, no matter how convinced we are that we have the process down, something could go wrong. We simply don't have all the variables. Hell - we can't even accurately predict the weather yet, or earthquakes. Do we really know what will happen generations down the line if there's a genetic defect that we've created?
In the end, I hope that we decide that we really aren't prepared to meet the consequences of these actions, and that we don't go ahead with human cloning. In my opinion this is something best left in God's hands.
Pardon the subject... (I was trying to be funny) in any case I think we might have a gene pool problem if too many people get cloned. The danger in cloning, I think, is that we might innovate ourselves out of existence. Cloning an organ for transplant is one thing (that could save lives and I'm divided on the ethics of it). Cloning an entire life can have serious consequences, and I really don't think that we should be so naive that we've thought of everything to the point where it's a safe thing to do.
Besides - what's so wrong with the old-fashioned way of making humans?
Why not just pick up on where MAPS and ORBS left off. They give a pretty good (arguably, I know) service in marking open mail relays and email addresses used by spammers.
Why not use similar technologies for web sites? Just maintain a list of IPs, domains and specific URLs which should be filtered? What SHOULD happen, though, is some sort of categorization and rating system. In other words, under category "sex" you might have a rating of "1" for partially nude/suggestive pictures and "10" for explicit stuff. The service would have to provide guidelines as to how to rate the URLs.
Taking this example further, one would implement a Slashdot-like moderating system to give URLs "negative karma", where the administrators of the networks using the filtering system have the opportunity to place their votes on which stuff they want hidden most.
On the user's end, the network admins could have the ability to screen based on category and rating (like, filter category Sex with negative karma above 4), and the ability to override the rating of a particular site if they feel that it was marked unfairly (or get user complaints about a bad filter).
This system will obviously be very dependent on good guidelines and good participation on the part of the network admins. Obviously a free system wouldn't be able to afford to have full-time staff finding stuff to filter, but the good part about this is the list would be dynamic. Perhaps the database could be automagically downloaded weekly from a central repository in a cron job somewhere, giving the network the latest and greatest of the filters. Again, the overrides the admin put in place at the user's end would take effect, so any updates to the overridden site's rating will be ignored.
Firstly, please be very careful. I agree totally with the above posts in that you shouldn't be running something like this unattended. A lawnmower with blades can be a dangerous device if it goes where it isn't meant to (like onto a road), or if it runs over something and turns it into a projectile (like a golf ball). Remotely, I don't think that you can account for these possibilities. More importantly, you could be held accountable for anything the robot does while you're not watching (even if it runs over a neighbour's garden, or their cat). Just something to think about, FYI.
The geek in me, however, has thought about the same idea. I think it's a neat idea and I've always wanted to try it myself. One of my ideas was to lay out a "track" of sorts - a wire through which runs some low current which you can perhaps have the robot follow, perhaps by detecting the magnetic fields or something. Maybe I'm f.o.s. since I have no idea how to implement this (I'm only a programmer - no electronics experience), but Lego Mindstorms gave me this idea when the book encouraged me to try to build a robot that follows a black line on the floor. In this case, of course, you use the optical sensor to have the robot turn one way if it sees black, and the other way as it sees white. The end result is a robot which jerkily makes its way round the oval they provide on a poster-sized sheet.
So instead of trying to use radio positioning or precise measurements, maybe there's a way to lay out a track that it can follow. A bit of work, but if done properly you'll only need to do it once, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry - my bad. I did indeed misunderstand the posting when I first read it. Thanks!
I don't know about finding information, but I have a cheap ($5) converter from the regular (large) keyboard plug to the PS/2 in my hand right now. Therefore, you have 2 possibilities:
1 - ship a converter (like the above, but get a bulk discount from manufacturer) with your unit, much like mouse manufacturers ship a ps/2 -> serial or usb -> ps/2 converter for their hardware. Added bonus of having your keypad work with BOTH the regular and PS/2 plugs
2 - dissect the PS/2 converter mentioned above and learn from it. I don't imagine how it could be that different. Maybe it's as simple as mapping the wires. The converter's only an inch long, so I'm guessing it doesn't have much in there. Then again, I'm not a hardware person, so I don't know.
Twilight 3D claims to have an SDK which will save you 7570 man-hours of coding time, which is a multi-plaform multimedia framework and 3D engine.
Crystal Space is a free 3D engine which is supported on multiple platforms, or
Flight Gear is around for those who'd like to code a Flight Sim of some sort.
All of the above are noted for their portable API and I've been following their progress for some time now. I hope this helps.
Keep in mind, of course, that their careers will take them to see hardware that is beyond what you might be able to show them. Teach them how to narrow down the focus of their problems, and how to deal with the unexpected.
In other words, don't teach solely with textbooks. Use real-world examples. See if you can give labs where you create a problem, and they try to fix it. Teach them how to teach themselves new things - give them enough to get started, and try to hone their instincts to be able to isolate causes, not just symptoms of the problems.
Also teach them that "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. Too many technicians get so caught up when they don't know an answer that they begin to blame problems on totally unrelated things (ie: I can't connect to the database. It must be that damned Linux box on the network causing the problems - and yes, I've heard this one). Teach them how to research their issues. After all, the wisest of people don't have all the answers, but rather they know where to look or who to ask to find them.
If I had moderator privileges, I'd moderate this as insightful. That's probably how the darned thing works.
Now the catch is - what's to prevent a movie pirate from removing the magnet? All you need is a screwdriver, right? Cheap way to get a permanent movie; it'd probably cost about $5 to "rent", versus the $20-odd to purchase. Maybe someone would even turn around and sell the "fixed" tapes on the street.
I guess it's a neat idea in a way in the case of a video store which doesn't want to bother collecting video tapes from rentals, but isn't it correct that this could have a harmful effect on the environment?
I guess it's nice to have the video tape to keep when you rent a movie, but in my case I rent a lot more movies than I record stuff, so I'd end up with lots and lots of extra video tapes. So from my perspective, I paid extra for these tapes (since after all, the extra costs will be passed on to the consumer) which I don't need, which I will likely just throw out.
On the other hand, if I like the movie I can shelf it for a little while and then watch it again, perhaps a couple of months/years later when I'm interested. In this case, it's kind of nice. I have no idea how it'll work, however.
Is it also possible that these tapes might become as famous as the free AOL floppies? Perhaps if companies in a marketing campaign were to distribute the movie trailers on videotape to you, and you'd end up with the free tape later, that'd be pretty cool. But then again - why not just use regular videotape in that case? Seeing this, it looks like the only market is rentals, where people want to keep the tape.
I don't know - if I'm interested, I can always rent it again. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay the extra $2 or $3 (CDN) to keep the tape in this case. I'd rather take my chances that if I want to see the movie again, I'll just go back to the store and rent it another night.
I don't think of this the same way as the DivX standard, though, because we're not ending up with useless coasters after we've watched our movie. At least the tape can be used, even if most people might not want or need it.
Either that, or an American Pie-like love experience with the table (or, help us all, the cue).
Then again, he might just be referring to some class about Newtonian mechanics (physics?), information which has since escaped his grey matter in lieu for more useful knowledge.
Actually, in my case it wasn't the microswitches. I thought it was, but it turned out that I just wore out the plastic piece that was making the buttons go back up.
:)
In other words, I wore it out in that the buttons wouldn't pop back up again because the "spring" had become too flexible
One, a new Logitech optical wheel mouse has, if I remember correctly, a 5-year warranty. I just bought one - don't remember if it was 3 or 5, but I think it was 5.
Second, how about just getting a new mouse pad? I don't mean to insult, but is there a chance that you're cleaning the mouse so much that the rollers are wearing down from YOU scraping them all the time? Keep the surface under your mouse clean, and you'll probably have better luck. It also wouldn't hurt to dust your desk off a little every week or so.
Finally, if you get an optical mouse you'll probably eliminate the roller problems. Admittedly, I've had the BUTTONS on a mouse wear out on me, but I can't say that I've ever seen a cable go. That's some strange stuff. Unless...
...get your work area inspected for static. Lose the wooly carpets and see if you can get yourself grounded. There's a good chance that your "cable problems" are caused by a discharge that perhaps you weren't aware of. I'm not an expert, but I don't expect this stuff to be particularly resilient when it comes to electric shocks.
In any case, if you're consistently killing your mice, you really should check out the above. I've never heard anyone have these kinds of problems. I would think that I'd have them - I write software for a living and spend my days behind the monitor, so I should go through them at least as fast as you.
Sometimes the simple solutions will work. I hope this helps. Good luck!
I'm not an astrochemist either, but IIRC from my Astronomy class some time ago, there's certain substances which have been established as being produced in a massive fusion or fission reaction, and they've figured out how that all works, including the ingredients (types of atoms) involved and the type of star that they occur in.
Granted, we continue to learn more and more about our Universe every day. There is no absolute proof that these isotopes can only come from a star, but given what we know, it's considered a near certainty. Otherwise, we'd need to find another environment which supports the conditions needed to produce the substance. So far, we only have stars.
Anyone have any information on this program that the parent post mentioned?
The reason I'm asking is because now it got me thinking. Humans are a pretty versatile species, having spread all over the planet. Most major natural disasters couldn't possibly destroy us all, although the extinction of all other life on the planet might make it close.
The interesting thing about this is that as a species, we've created ourselves an advantage over all of our predecessors. It seems that if it became absolutely necessary, we could probably move on to grow and harvest all of our food ourselves (or indoors, if need be). We've gained the ability to genetically modify crops, and it seems that we're coming close to being able to create sealed, self-contained environments.
Given the advancements we've made, (and I don't want to get cocky), but it looks promising that we'll be able to survive a major catastrophe like this through our own creative thinking.
Nowadays, it doesn't even seem so farfetched that some day in the future (perhaps in the 21st century even) we might colonize Mars, or somewhat less ambitiously, the Moon. Should a disaster happen, would we be destined to become cosmic Nomads, or would we settle down somewhere?
I suppose it's true. We are patriotic in a somewhat subdued way.
:)
However we do notice that NASA (and likely the media) is pretty careful to only release photographs which include the arm in a position where you cannot see the Canadian flag painted on it. Perhaps that's why we Canadians seem so eager to remind you
Good point, though. Touché on your part.
The question would be, in this case, whether or not this can be considered part of the normal evolutionary process.
The article quotes one of the researchers saying that life has to adapt or die. In this case, does that indicate to us that the world is better for it in the end? The life that has adapted - perhaps it is stronger. Less affected by change in its environment.
Perhaps it's the very reason why human beings are able to colonize the majority of this planet. An amazing ability to adapt, brought in through the evolution caused by the nature of the universe itself. (repost - I forgot to log in)
Sorry - I guess I should have posted this interesting detail as well. A quote from here states:
.
The Mark 2 production version of the arrow, powered with two Avro Canada Iroquois turbo jet engines, would have been capable of achieving Mach 2 with full military load.
Unfortunately only the prototype was developed, however it did have a successful test flight before the program (and everything related to it) was destroyed. Sounds pretty interesting, considering that flight occurred in 1958!
One example of Canadian engineering abilities might be found in some of the sites regarding the ill-fated Avro Arrow, like here and here. Some of the things achieved with this experimental craft have never been duplicated, and unfortunately the project was only destroyed due to political reasons. It could be said that while the U.S. does have great research abilities, in some areas the U.S. can learn from their Northern neighbours. After all, even NASA is still using the Canadian-made robotic arm on the space shuttle.
All of you who said that no matter what, data can't be erased, gave me an idea.
:) Even more interesting is that the files you use the least may eventually become unrecoverable and forgotten over years, lessening the need to clear out your clutter. Files that you haven't used in a while might take a bit of time to come up, but you usually won't mind the wait. Stuff you use all the time will always be available. So how about it, kernel hackers? And my sig's appropriate this time around, too!
Unlimited storage.
That's right. Every time you need more disk space, simply delete something not used in a while, then overwrite it with a new file. Need that old file back? Great - have the filesystem automagically run a recovery on it. Put it into the kernel, and we've got blackholefs.
The end result is a bottomless pit of unlimited drive space
(and yes, I am joking, but if someone can think of a way to really do this them I'll REALLY be impressed!)
Since it's so small, it looks awfully useful. However, if only it had a 10/100 ethernet port, I'll bet that these would make great servers. Sure, they don't have any redundancy at all, but if you can probably shove a dozen or so (or I guess about 20 even) into 2U of rack space, it'd probably catch someone's attention.
Even better - if you need to work with it, just remove it from the rack, and there's its display, right in front of you.
Am I missing something here? Looks like they offer up to Celeron 766, 6GB hard drive and up to 256MB memory. Hell - doesn't sound too far off from a low-end server, except for all the redundant parts.
when you could have...
...one million?
(pinky to mouth)
Ok - lame Dr. Evil impressions aside, where the heck is Napster going to get the cash for all this? Last I heard, nobody's really paying for the service just yet. Are there any VC-types in the game right now?
I wonder if the RIAA will bite. Anybody think that they stand to "lose" more than a billion to us? Er... I mean... the artists. Yeah. Will they be seeing this money?
I have an idea which seems like an extension of this. Maybe it's pointless, but then again maybe it's not.
Basically, I was wondering if it'd be possible for an organization to do away with the proprietary phone systems in place, instead having a server handling all inbound and outbound calls, plus voicemail and the like.
Ok, so far sounds like what the company has already, but instead, perhaps a Linux server with a bunch of voice modems, piping the phone conversations to the desktop computers of the employees. Calls out naturally get thrown out of the pool of available lines, calls in get redirected by extension to the appropriate user's IP address.
Do away with the phone, however, and replace with headset connected to soundcard, and some sort of "dialler" program, which basically connects you to one of the modems across the LAN on the server.
Using this system, couldn't companies just have their IS department handle the phones? I'd imagine this should decrease overhead (in personnel and in cabling, I guess). Probably increase security too, because it means that no one can use your phone on your desk unless they're logged in to your workstation. Forget long distance dialling codes - the server knows who you are already. Forget voicemail passwords - you're logged in already. Hell - launch your voicemail from the company intranet or groupware package (ie: outlook).
Is this sort of thing feasible, or am I missing something critical which is a showstopper?
I've been much in the same boat as you. I've known HTML but was keen on trying out some of the WYSIWYG editors out there, and I did. What I found was that all of them produced code that was incorrect, some with misplaced tags or other whatnot. Especially the problem of broken JavaScript or include tags whenever editing inside such an editor - what a headache!
I have come up with my own solution to the problem, however. My father manages the content of what has now become a rather large site (about 2 new articles per week over the last 2 years). It is indexed by a script that I've created in Perl. He uses Netscape Composer (the editor I found with the fewest issues). Out of the mess it creates, while indexing the documents I've got about a page's worth of regular expressions to fix the errors (basically, I added them as I encountered them) in tags and links, and finally copy the documents from their working directory into the "live" area.
It's pretty custom right now, so it won't be of much use to anyone else, but this script's been a lifesaver over the last while. It was written after I became extremely agitated over fixing all the stupid errors, added to the code I already had which ran through the directory tree to create the index pages used to navigate the site. Takes a couple minutes to run (the server's a P75), but I only run it once a week, and it works great!
Bring up an old controversy and the uneducated arrive in the masses, ready to absorb your advertisements.
Yep - we have the 800-odd pounds of lunar rocks which couldn't have been produced on Earth (no water/oxygen) which are being studied. We also have the reflectors put on the moon which lets us measure by laser its distance from us to within a few inches (IIRC).
Nevermind that the U.S. spent billions on the project and lost the original Apollo 13 crew in that launch test mishap, or the fact that they nearly lost the replacements forever. In any case, we know that we have had the ability to go into orbit - why would it be such a big stretch to believe that we've gone to the moon?
Perhaps these people don't believe that we go into orbit either. Or maybe we made a clone of Neil Armstrong before he launched himself into tiny chunks to show off the "landing". Gimme a break. There's no conspiracy here.
I also consider myself to be a fairly religious person. I've thought about this over and over, and I came to my own conclusion regarding this issue. Naturally you are free to your own opinion.
My opinion is this: that God gave man the choice and ability to do a great many things. We have the ability to help people, or to wage war on them. We have the ability to learn and better ourselves, or to live off the backs of others. In this particular instance, we are given the choice to lead our lives as God intended, or to try to create new life on our own. God obviously gave us the ability to make this choice. However, it is up to us to consider the consequences of our actions. How many lives can be created and then ruined if something goes wrong in the process, for example? There are many other examples of things that could go wrong.
The fact is, no matter how convinced we are that we have the process down, something could go wrong. We simply don't have all the variables. Hell - we can't even accurately predict the weather yet, or earthquakes. Do we really know what will happen generations down the line if there's a genetic defect that we've created?
In the end, I hope that we decide that we really aren't prepared to meet the consequences of these actions, and that we don't go ahead with human cloning. In my opinion this is something best left in God's hands.
Pardon the subject... (I was trying to be funny) in any case I think we might have a gene pool problem if too many people get cloned. The danger in cloning, I think, is that we might innovate ourselves out of existence. Cloning an organ for transplant is one thing (that could save lives and I'm divided on the ethics of it). Cloning an entire life can have serious consequences, and I really don't think that we should be so naive that we've thought of everything to the point where it's a safe thing to do.
Besides - what's so wrong with the old-fashioned way of making humans?
Why not just pick up on where MAPS and ORBS left off. They give a pretty good (arguably, I know) service in marking open mail relays and email addresses used by spammers.
Why not use similar technologies for web sites? Just maintain a list of IPs, domains and specific URLs which should be filtered? What SHOULD happen, though, is some sort of categorization and rating system. In other words, under category "sex" you might have a rating of "1" for partially nude/suggestive pictures and "10" for explicit stuff. The service would have to provide guidelines as to how to rate the URLs.
Taking this example further, one would implement a Slashdot-like moderating system to give URLs "negative karma", where the administrators of the networks using the filtering system have the opportunity to place their votes on which stuff they want hidden most.
On the user's end, the network admins could have the ability to screen based on category and rating (like, filter category Sex with negative karma above 4), and the ability to override the rating of a particular site if they feel that it was marked unfairly (or get user complaints about a bad filter).
This system will obviously be very dependent on good guidelines and good participation on the part of the network admins. Obviously a free system wouldn't be able to afford to have full-time staff finding stuff to filter, but the good part about this is the list would be dynamic. Perhaps the database could be automagically downloaded weekly from a central repository in a cron job somewhere, giving the network the latest and greatest of the filters. Again, the overrides the admin put in place at the user's end would take effect, so any updates to the overridden site's rating will be ignored.
Firstly, please be very careful. I agree totally with the above posts in that you shouldn't be running something like this unattended. A lawnmower with blades can be a dangerous device if it goes where it isn't meant to (like onto a road), or if it runs over something and turns it into a projectile (like a golf ball). Remotely, I don't think that you can account for these possibilities. More importantly, you could be held accountable for anything the robot does while you're not watching (even if it runs over a neighbour's garden, or their cat). Just something to think about, FYI.
The geek in me, however, has thought about the same idea. I think it's a neat idea and I've always wanted to try it myself. One of my ideas was to lay out a "track" of sorts - a wire through which runs some low current which you can perhaps have the robot follow, perhaps by detecting the magnetic fields or something. Maybe I'm f.o.s. since I have no idea how to implement this (I'm only a programmer - no electronics experience), but Lego Mindstorms gave me this idea when the book encouraged me to try to build a robot that follows a black line on the floor. In this case, of course, you use the optical sensor to have the robot turn one way if it sees black, and the other way as it sees white. The end result is a robot which jerkily makes its way round the oval they provide on a poster-sized sheet.
So instead of trying to use radio positioning or precise measurements, maybe there's a way to lay out a track that it can follow. A bit of work, but if done properly you'll only need to do it once, right?