Why can't they just keep using it until it breaks? From what I heard, the problem is that it's down a gyro or two and if it loses one more it breaks.
They might as well just keep using it past its projected lifespam; the Mars rovers have shown that sometimes things live far beyond their design life. Maybe it'll go another 10 years on the remaining gyros!
Why would the builder not let you run your own wire? It's YOUR house you're buying, right? It seems odd that you can't do what you want with your own property.
Was this actually in the contract? This is the sort of thing I'd try to get amended in the contract if I were purchasing a new construction custom home.
Don't forget that phones these days are tiny and have limited power. It's not like old days when you could pump 3 watts out of a big external antenna plugged into your bag phone, or car phone with a big box in the trunk.
That was the advantage of all those clunkers... Lots of talk power. You could be out in the wilderness and have loud and clear conversations. Of course, service cost a fortune back then...
I'm surprised they've kept the "Pentium" trademark so long. I mean, Pentium sorta implies the 5th generation, as in 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc... Shouldn't they have moved to Hexium by now?
Instead they stick with the Pentium number and keep incrementing a number after it. Either they're too lazy/cheap to come up with another product name, or they have something else in mind.
At least they didn't call the Opteron the "Pentium Opteron".
This is one reason I like UNIX; you can easily have a software repository in your home directory without messing up the rest of the system at all. And it follows you around on various UNIX systems if your home directory is networked. }:)
That same "firewire thing" allows for easy disk space upgrades. And I heard there was even a company that was going to produce external firewire drives that match the Mac Mini's look and can stack right under/over it. }:)
You can have a nice high stack of 7TB worth of chained firewire disk on your Mac Mini if you want (and can afford) it...
Satellite radio is a broadcast medium, which means one signal is sent down to a large area, and anyone in that area can receive the same signal without quality loss as the number of listeners goes up.
It can be compared to any other radio broadcast; just because you're listening to 99.9 RIAA-0wn5-j00 FM doesn't mean other people have a weaker signal or diminished sound quality.
Depends on what's serving the line. Typical circuit-switching telco equipment like DMS-100, *ESS and so on will handle rotary pulses, but other devices that serve lines, like VG248 boxes and other VoIP equipment may not recognize dial pulses.
Quite a few lines at work no longer pay attention to dial pulses, though I have yet to see one provided by Bellsouth that doesn't.
In 1986, my parents and I moved to a new house. That was the last time I ever had a rotary phone at home; I was 8. I saw them in a few places afterwards, but not many. As soon as the AT&T breakup happened, lots of cheap touch tone phones flooded the market and people upgraded.
Not at home, but I have one in my office at work. I found it in a cabinet and it was like finding gold; I had not seen or used one since I was about 8.
I took it into my office and put it on the secondary line. I also love the sound of its mechanical ringer when calls come in, and the comments I get when people see it there.
They're amazed when I tell them that yes, it works, and yes you can still dial with it on today's phone system.
Unfortunately, when the analog line it's on is replaced by a VG248 "fake analog" line, which is really VoIP with an adapter, the rotary dial pulses will no longer work. {:(
An era of backwards compatibility is slowly ending. Pulse dialing will slowly stop working on analog phone lines over the next few years or so...
Vinyl isn't low fidelity, it actually sounds pretty damn good. The problem is every time you play it, it sounds a little worse until eventually you can't stand it anymore.
Hell, even scratchy vinyl sounds better than a warbly low-bitrate MP3 file. }:)
I dunno, my love for Apple has been quenched considerably by their behavior in this matter.
I really hope Think Secret wins and puts Apple in their place. I hate to see big companies get their way in these harassing lawsuits just because they can afford better lawyers.
Besides, what damages could Apple possibly claim? If anything, Think Secret created an even BIGGER buzz over the Mac Mini than would have existed otherwise.
This doesn't make sense; they don't allow servers, but they don't seem to mind BitTorrent, which consumes a lot more upstream bandwidth than webservers.
I think they just put in the "no webservers" clauses so they have teeth to shut down abusers who post commercial websites and high bandwidth sites on the service. I know tons of people who run servers on ISP's that supposedly ban them and are never bothered about it.
Photos are hardly high bandwidth items. If only a small group of friends browses your photos regularly, a 384kbps link is just fine.
I like Bellsouth's service, they don't care what you do with your bandwidth as long as it's legal and non-commercial. In fact, one of their ad campaigns at one point for static IP even encouraged you to run a personal web server.
Unfortunately, they've shipped all their tech support out to India, so I don't respect them as much as I used to. I may switch if a better deal comes along.
When you run Windows, you've already put your system in the hands of MS anyway; trusting their patches is like letting a few more rapists into the house when there's already four or five inside.
This doesn't work in all situations. For instance, at a university where you have a system a large number of students can log into.
Kernel local root escalations don't affect MOST systems, but those few systems where a large number of arbritrary users can log into them to work on projects and such are highly vulnerable to them. Especially in an academic environment where a student might be tempted to try to crack root to peek at someone else's work.
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't they just keep using it until it breaks? From what I heard, the problem is that it's down a gyro or two and if it loses one more it breaks.
They might as well just keep using it past its projected lifespam; the Mars rovers have shown that sometimes things live far beyond their design life. Maybe it'll go another 10 years on the remaining gyros!
-Z
Why would the builder not let you run your own wire? It's YOUR house you're buying, right? It seems odd that you can't do what you want with your own property.
Was this actually in the contract? This is the sort of thing I'd try to get amended in the contract if I were purchasing a new construction custom home.
-Z
Don't forget that phones these days are tiny and have limited power. It's not like old days when you could pump 3 watts out of a big external antenna plugged into your bag phone, or car phone with a big box in the trunk.
That was the advantage of all those clunkers... Lots of talk power. You could be out in the wilderness and have loud and clear conversations. Of course, service cost a fortune back then...
-Z
Air pirates?
"It is I, Don Karnage, speaking to you with my voice! So nice of me to drop in!"
I've been burning CD's since 1997 at least, and this is the FIRST time I ever hear of a sharpie being able to damage a disc.
Are you sure this isn't something that just schlopped its way out of your ass? }:)
Seriously, I've written on hundreds of CDs with sharpies with nary a problem. Got a link or something that explains this further?
-Z
I'm surprised they've kept the "Pentium" trademark so long. I mean, Pentium sorta implies the 5th generation, as in 286, 386, 486, Pentium, etc... Shouldn't they have moved to Hexium by now?
Instead they stick with the Pentium number and keep incrementing a number after it. Either they're too lazy/cheap to come up with another product name, or they have something else in mind.
At least they didn't call the Opteron the "Pentium Opteron".
-Z
I actually would prefer if furries remained the realm of fantasy.
So many people hate other HUMANS who are different.. Imagine the hell that a real life "furry" would go through?
Remember that TV series "Gary the Rat"? I'm sure it would be about 500 times worse.
-Zorin the Lynx, but would rather stay human in real life. }:)
This is one reason I like UNIX; you can easily have a software repository in your home directory without messing up the rest of the system at all. And it follows you around on various UNIX systems if your home directory is networked. }:)
-Z
Definitely weather conditions, or varying power conditions (voltages sometiems swing up and down during the day as load changes)
A receiver tuned into a radio broadcast may affect the signal as it passes it, but it won't affect the transmitter in any way.
That same "firewire thing" allows for easy disk space upgrades. And I heard there was even a company that was going to produce external firewire drives that match the Mac Mini's look and can stack right under/over it. }:)
You can have a nice high stack of 7TB worth of chained firewire disk on your Mac Mini if you want (and can afford) it...
-Z
Satellite radio is a broadcast medium, which means one signal is sent down to a large area, and anyone in that area can receive the same signal without quality loss as the number of listeners goes up.
It can be compared to any other radio broadcast; just because you're listening to 99.9 RIAA-0wn5-j00 FM doesn't mean other people have a weaker signal or diminished sound quality.
-Z
Some of those old boom boxes, especially the Panasonic ones, were works of art.
They were just so awesome looking compared to anything that's on the market today. All the shiny levers and knobs and buttons...
I never had a really cool one, though. Was too young and lacked the cash. {:(
-Z
Depends on what's serving the line. Typical circuit-switching telco equipment like DMS-100, *ESS and so on will handle rotary pulses, but other devices that serve lines, like VG248 boxes and other VoIP equipment may not recognize dial pulses.
Quite a few lines at work no longer pay attention to dial pulses, though I have yet to see one provided by Bellsouth that doesn't.
-Z
In 1986, my parents and I moved to a new house. That was the last time I ever had a rotary phone at home; I was 8. I saw them in a few places afterwards, but not many. As soon as the AT&T breakup happened, lots of cheap touch tone phones flooded the market and people upgraded.
-Z
Here's an old picture of my office with that phone in it. It sure looks out of place in a modern geek habitat. }:)
Der Phone
Not at home, but I have one in my office at work. I found it in a cabinet and it was like finding gold; I had not seen or used one since I was about 8.
I took it into my office and put it on the secondary line. I also love the sound of its mechanical ringer when calls come in, and the comments I get when people see it there.
They're amazed when I tell them that yes, it works, and yes you can still dial with it on today's phone system.
Unfortunately, when the analog line it's on is replaced by a VG248 "fake analog" line, which is really VoIP with an adapter, the rotary dial pulses will no longer work. {:(
An era of backwards compatibility is slowly ending. Pulse dialing will slowly stop working on analog phone lines over the next few years or so...
-Z
Vinyl isn't low fidelity, it actually sounds pretty damn good. The problem is every time you play it, it sounds a little worse until eventually you can't stand it anymore.
Hell, even scratchy vinyl sounds better than a warbly low-bitrate MP3 file. }:)
-Z
I dunno, my love for Apple has been quenched considerably by their behavior in this matter.
I really hope Think Secret wins and puts Apple in their place. I hate to see big companies get their way in these harassing lawsuits just because they can afford better lawyers.
Besides, what damages could Apple possibly claim? If anything, Think Secret created an even BIGGER buzz over the Mac Mini than would have existed otherwise.
-Z
This doesn't make sense; they don't allow servers, but they don't seem to mind BitTorrent, which consumes a lot more upstream bandwidth than webservers.
I think they just put in the "no webservers" clauses so they have teeth to shut down abusers who post commercial websites and high bandwidth sites on the service. I know tons of people who run servers on ISP's that supposedly ban them and are never bothered about it.
-Z
Photos are hardly high bandwidth items. If only a small group of friends browses your photos regularly, a 384kbps link is just fine.
I like Bellsouth's service, they don't care what you do with your bandwidth as long as it's legal and non-commercial. In fact, one of their ad campaigns at one point for static IP even encouraged you to run a personal web server.
Unfortunately, they've shipped all their tech support out to India, so I don't respect them as much as I used to. I may switch if a better deal comes along.
-Z
A RAID5 terabyte with only three physical disks. Anyone else being blown away by this? Holy crap. }:)
-Z
When you run Windows, you've already put your system in the hands of MS anyway; trusting their patches is like letting a few more rapists into the house when there's already four or five inside.
-Z
Are there any major websites that actually use ActiveX? I have yet to come across any.
My bank uses plain HTML forms and javascript, so does Bellsouth, the power company, the cable company, and other various sites I conduct business on.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an ActiveX control in my life, even back when I did use IE *shudder*...
-Z
Dude, it's called "proofreading". It really does make you look more intelligent. The fact that you are an EE doesn't excuse you from it....
-Z
This doesn't work in all situations. For instance, at a university where you have a system a large number of students can log into.
Kernel local root escalations don't affect MOST systems, but those few systems where a large number of arbritrary users can log into them to work on projects and such are highly vulnerable to them. Especially in an academic environment where a student might be tempted to try to crack root to peek at someone else's work.
-Z