I am sick and tired of the whole "When life begins?" debate. News Flash...It began about 4.5 BILLION years ago. That little genetic code in each of your cells has been reproducing since then. Countless generations of life forms and individuals have come and gone but that code sequence remains. If it had ever stopped you would not exist. Get some perspective. You can trace your ancestory right back to pond scum or something like it. Life is a continuim. We have to thrash these ethical issues out but it important to remember that there is no clear demarq in the sequence of life and we have to make life and death decisions as part of existence.
On a shelf 10 feet away is an old King+ which was an Apple II+ clone like the Franklin. Still runs and I had recently been clearing some bench space to fire it up. Z80 card and memory card on-board. (friction mounted.. no screws)
It seems rather apt actually since the "Odyssey" is about Ulysses spending 20 years going every direction but the correct one to get to his destination.
You miss the point. Huge is meaningless. Is it Bigger than BIG?? I think these models are great. They allow people to wrap their minds around concepts of distance that are otherwise incomprehensible. Can you actually say that you can really comprehend light-years of distance and relate it to your own existence? It was interesting to note the comment that the model still has the next star at 65,000 miles away. It is a big universe. Every conceptual aid helps. Try envisioning the distance to the edge of the universe. That's huge.:)
Also: Is it still made and available at all? Been there, done that. What a nightmare. Found one though. Only took 3 weeks of screwing around and tele-hell. Now I recommend buying that extra drive.
After having been in the business of supporting small business clients for many years, I have been troubled by the situation I see developing. I usually recommend some kind of tape backup as it provides by far the greatest level of redundancy. However, as time goes on, technology changes. Many little shops don't see the need to change such expensive items as backup devices every couple of years but the actual products disappear. There are lots of small companies and individuals out there who have religiously saved off-site backup tapes. If they have a fire, they will still have the tapes but the drive or the software to read them has vanished. This will come back to haunt us. I have seen a few companies go through a near-death experience that was only saved by a good back up. I don't have a good solution to this.
Our consulting firm found that the in-house software that Onstream packaged with the drive tended to cause lots of crashes but if you used Veritas (Seagate) Backup Exec, they worked very well. Then they suddenly disappeared and left a real gap in the market. They are apparently still in existence but the distributors got burned and don't seem to want to handle them until Onstream gets their act together.
You've got it half right. Jesse Helms thinks international law should not apply to the US but that US law should apply to all other nations. Witness his part in the "Helms-Burton" law that punishes companies or individuals of other nations for trading with Cuba. Just a bit hypocritical.
Mature technology. Books will not disappear for the simple reason that they have an excellent user interface that is over 1,000 years old. We are constantly impressed by what is new and sometimes fail to appreciate good mature design. The book took a long time to reach its present form instead of scrolls or separate sheets. Books are cheap, extremely durable, portable and don't require power. Electronic equivalents have a very long way to go.
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Of course, you can't discuss the Universe and being small without considering this:r tex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vo
I am sick and tired of the whole "When life begins?" debate. News Flash...It began about 4.5 BILLION years ago. That little genetic code in each of your cells has been reproducing since then. Countless generations of life forms and individuals have come and gone but that code sequence remains. If it had ever stopped you would not exist. Get some perspective. You can trace your ancestory right back to pond scum or something like it. Life is a continuim. We have to thrash these ethical issues out but it important to remember that there is no clear demarq in the sequence of life and we have to make life and death decisions as part of existence.
On a shelf 10 feet away is an old King+ which was an Apple II+ clone like the Franklin. Still runs and I had recently been clearing some bench space to fire it up. Z80 card and memory card on-board. (friction mounted.. no screws)
It seems rather apt actually since the "Odyssey" is about Ulysses spending 20 years going every direction but the correct one to get to his destination.
You miss the point. Huge is meaningless. Is it Bigger than BIG?? I think these models are great. They allow people to wrap their minds around concepts of distance that are otherwise incomprehensible. Can you actually say that you can really comprehend light-years of distance and relate it to your own existence? It was interesting to note the comment that the model still has the next star at 65,000 miles away. It is a big universe. Every conceptual aid helps. Try envisioning the distance to the edge of the universe. That's huge. :)
Also: Is it still made and available at all? Been there, done that. What a nightmare. Found one though. Only took 3 weeks of screwing around and tele-hell. Now I recommend buying that extra drive.
After having been in the business of supporting small business clients for many years, I have been troubled by the situation I see developing. I usually recommend some kind of tape backup as it provides by far the greatest level of redundancy. However, as time goes on, technology changes. Many little shops don't see the need to change such expensive items as backup devices every couple of years but the actual products disappear. There are lots of small companies and individuals out there who have religiously saved off-site backup tapes. If they have a fire, they will still have the tapes but the drive or the software to read them has vanished. This will come back to haunt us. I have seen a few companies go through a near-death experience that was only saved by a good back up. I don't have a good solution to this.
Our consulting firm found that the in-house software that Onstream packaged with the drive tended to cause lots of crashes but if you used Veritas (Seagate) Backup Exec, they worked very well. Then they suddenly disappeared and left a real gap in the market. They are apparently still in existence but the distributors got burned and don't seem to want to handle them until Onstream gets their act together.
You've got it half right. Jesse Helms thinks international law should not apply to the US but that US law should apply to all other nations. Witness his part in the "Helms-Burton" law that punishes companies or individuals of other nations for trading with Cuba. Just a bit hypocritical.
Mature technology. Books will not disappear for the simple reason that they have an excellent user interface that is over 1,000 years old. We are constantly impressed by what is new and sometimes fail to appreciate good mature design. The book took a long time to reach its present form instead of scrolls or separate sheets. Books are cheap, extremely durable, portable and don't require power. Electronic equivalents have a very long way to go.