Home Theatre: You can *start* the movie whenever you want. If someone shows up late then you can pause the movie and explain what s/he missed.
Theatre: You have to make it to the show about 10 mins. early and wait in line to buy your ticket. Then you have to deal with finding a good place to sit. If it's a premiere then you're pretty much sunk unless you get there an hour early. This is if you are going by yourself. If you are going with a group then you must wait until Bob shows up but he wasn't *entirely* sure that he could make it because he might have to work late and he left his cell at home so there's no way for him to call to confirm so you wait outside in the cold trying to decide if you should pick up an extra ticket for him because hey, what if he's just stuck in traffic? I mean, it's possible. But hey, it's Bob - remember how he ditched you for that baseball game because he "didn't feel like being social" and you ended up getting stuck with that extra ticket? Screw him! Man, I hope I didn't miss the previews...
If you want to say that the new x86 Macs running OSX will hurt the Linux Desktop "Market Share" then you might be right. For every hard-core linux fanatic there are probably about 10 casual linux desktop users that might switch to OS X.
Development wise I think that it will be a different story. Kernel hackers are going to keep hacking the linux kernel because, as far as open kernels go, it's got the best game in town.
Application developers will probably pay a bit closer attention to cross-platform compatibility which will *grow* the Apple/Linux desktop app space.
I don't own a Mac and I haven't actually had the chance to poke around inside of one but isn't there a lot of overlap in OSS application software?
I can appreciate the gee-whiz factor involved in this - who *wouldn't* want to take a ride in a spaceship?
What I'm asking is this: besides being a *very* expensive roller coaster, what practical applications does this have right now? It would be great if there were somewhere for us to *go* other than up and then down.
The good news is that if/when we can live on another planet we'll know how to get there.
I can see a market for commercial launch vehicles. As a matter of fact, I ended up losing a bunch of money in a company that claimed that they were going to do exactly that (E-Prime Aerospace). The ability to put a satellite in orbit w/o going through the government would open up all sorts of interesting things in the telecom arena.
From the tech side of things I can totally see why it's exciting - hopefully you'll get a piece of that action some day!
I wonder if either of these companies have thought about the possibilities of putting a resort on the moon...
This is obviously pretty cool stuff - two private enterprises working on passenger flights to outer space. The one question that I have is why? I mean, yeah - the OMG factor is there but where are they going? Do they just plan to fly out of the atmosphere and then land? Did someone colonize the moon when I wasn't looking? Besides bragging rights, what are they really hoping to gain from this?
I learned that schools in my area (Southwestern TN) generally pay about 80% of what you would make in the real world.
Where did you work? I used to work at State Tech (before it became SWCC or whatever it is now). They paid $6/hr tax-free + tuition. After a year I got an internship at FredEx making $11/hr + tuition + books.
How about just getting filesystems to be relational? Replace the ancient 1960s-era hierarchical inode database that underlies filesystems with a modern relational one. Then distributed databases can provide a more consistent platform for all our distributed apps.
I think that this is what Microsoft was trying to do with WinFS. The only problem would be that the RDBMS that replaced the FAT would be an embedded version of SQL Server.
...is when the company fires the only *smart* IT guy and does not find a replacement or replaces him/her with someone that has no idea what they are doing. This could lead to the new guy futzing things up and having the PHB launch an investigation on the guy that they canned.
I have witnessed too many executives that do not listen to their technical people. In addition to creating bad products/services this behavior also tends to lead to massive employee disgruntlement. Technical people are hired for what they know - they are not simply button-pushing monkeys.
But who's going to read all those logs? If there are 1 million people online at any given point of time, you're going to need about 1 million people reading logs. The task would be overwhelming.
This is the point that I bring up whenever people start freaking out about the government spying on us. With all of the cell phone taps, packet sniffing, chat monitoring, etc it would take forever to filter them all out for terrorist activity.
Mod parent up.
I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD.
I can see it now - the FBI will get high-level characters in EQ2 and WoW so that they can look for terrorists in-game.
Social Security, as it is now, will not survive the baby boomers retiring.
That's why I want to re-release "The Big Chill" with some "bonus footage" - subliminal messages in the beginning of the film that encourage Baby Boomers to kill themselves.
If I remember correctly from my CAP (Civil Air Patrol) days, 121.5 is the "test" emergency freq while 121.6 is the actual "live" freq. (Any cadets reading this, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a LONG time).
Most aircraft are fitted with a small transmitter (about the size of a pack of cigarettes) that will start squaking on certian conditions. Sometimes a hard landing would be enough to set one off.
Back in the day (late 80's), SAR (Search and Rescue) teams used a device called an L-per which was basically a reciever mounted on a large hand-held directional antenna. The operator would go to the appoximate location of the crash, determine which direction the signal was coming from and then move about a mile in a perpendicular direction. The op would take another reading and repeat the process one more time, triangulating the position of the downed aircraft.
Of course now they probably have fancy-schmancy wiz-bag computers to do all of that for them.
Any other CAP members out there?
C/FO Martin Dinstuhl (Ret.) Alpha Flight Commander, 144th Air Rescue & Recovery Squadron TN Wing
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I'm gonna go to the patent office RIGHT NOW and patent "Using computers to do stuff".
Who's with me?
"Fungeneering" - my new favorite word!
"I'm a fungeneer!"
At my last job we did not have a receptionist - we had a Director of First Impressions.
btw: I'm looking for a job as a Chief Software Imagineer - anyone hiring?
...buy MSFT? I mean, if they're THAT powerful then NOTHING can stop them, right?
I'm really glad to know that I'm not the only one that had issues with performance.
I thought that *I* was doing something wrong!
Does that mean that my personal information is my IP?
Jeez I'm old...
Home Theatre: You can *start* the movie whenever you want. If someone shows up late then you can pause the movie and explain what s/he missed.
Theatre: You have to make it to the show about 10 mins. early and wait in line to buy your ticket. Then you have to deal with finding a good place to sit. If it's a premiere then you're pretty much sunk unless you get there an hour early. This is if you are going by yourself. If you are going with a group then you must wait until Bob shows up but he wasn't *entirely* sure that he could make it because he might have to work late and he left his cell at home so there's no way for him to call to confirm so you wait outside in the cold trying to decide if you should pick up an extra ticket for him because hey, what if he's just stuck in traffic? I mean, it's possible. But hey, it's Bob - remember how he ditched you for that baseball game because he "didn't feel like being social" and you ended up getting stuck with that extra ticket? Screw him! Man, I hope I didn't miss the previews...
If you want to say that the new x86 Macs running OSX will hurt the Linux Desktop "Market Share" then you might be right. For every hard-core linux fanatic there are probably about 10 casual linux desktop users that might switch to OS X.
Development wise I think that it will be a different story. Kernel hackers are going to keep hacking the linux kernel because, as far as open kernels go, it's got the best game in town.
Application developers will probably pay a bit closer attention to cross-platform compatibility which will *grow* the Apple/Linux desktop app space.
I don't own a Mac and I haven't actually had the chance to poke around inside of one but isn't there a lot of overlap in OSS application software?
I can appreciate the gee-whiz factor involved in this - who *wouldn't* want to take a ride in a spaceship?
What I'm asking is this: besides being a *very* expensive roller coaster, what practical applications does this have right now? It would be great if there were somewhere for us to *go* other than up and then down.
The good news is that if/when we can live on another planet we'll know how to get there.
I can see a market for commercial launch vehicles. As a matter of fact, I ended up losing a bunch of money in a company that claimed that they were going to do exactly that (E-Prime Aerospace). The ability to put a satellite in orbit w/o going through the government would open up all sorts of interesting things in the telecom arena.
From the tech side of things I can totally see why it's exciting - hopefully you'll get a piece of that action some day!
I wonder if either of these companies have thought about the possibilities of putting a resort on the moon...
This is obviously pretty cool stuff - two private enterprises working on passenger flights to outer space. The one question that I have is why? I mean, yeah - the OMG factor is there but where are they going? Do they just plan to fly out of the atmosphere and then land? Did someone colonize the moon when I wasn't looking? Besides bragging rights, what are they really hoping to gain from this?
I learned that schools in my area (Southwestern TN) generally pay about 80% of what you would make in the real world.
Where did you work? I used to work at State Tech (before it became SWCC or whatever it is now). They paid $6/hr tax-free + tuition. After a year I got an internship at FredEx making $11/hr + tuition + books.
How about just getting filesystems to be relational? Replace the ancient 1960s-era hierarchical inode database that underlies filesystems with a modern relational one. Then distributed databases can provide a more consistent platform for all our distributed apps.
I think that this is what Microsoft was trying to do with WinFS. The only problem would be that the RDBMS that replaced the FAT would be an embedded version of SQL Server.
Of course this would be *great* for p2p apps!
Nope!
I went to the Rolling roadshow premiere of the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre a few years ago.
The movie was shown on the grounds of the abandoned state mental hospital where part of the film was shot.
The best part was the Q&A session with R. Lee Ermy afterwards.
Either him, or David Cronenburg.
What?? While we're at it, let's throw Darren Aronofsky into the ring as well.
I can see it now - "SABER TO SABER!"
...is when the company fires the only *smart* IT guy and does not find a replacement or replaces him/her with someone that has no idea what they are doing. This could lead to the new guy futzing things up and having the PHB launch an investigation on the guy that they canned.
Anyone ever have that happen to them?
I agree.
Problems arise when the CEO *thinks* that (s)he knows everything that there is to know about technology and insists that you do things their way.
I'd like to re-iterate one bullet point:
Listens
I have witnessed too many executives that do not listen to their technical people. In addition to creating bad products/services this behavior also tends to lead to massive employee disgruntlement.
Technical people are hired for what they know - they are not simply button-pushing monkeys.
Does this mean that the US has a shot at reclaiming the international Starcraft top spot?
Although I am an average-to-good C/C++ programmer, GUI still confuses me for the most part (I always have to refer back to the API, is that normal?).
Who wastes time memorizing an API when the docs are available online?
Going back to the docs is pretty normal for me (unless it's something that I've done millions of times before).
But who's going to read all those logs? If there are 1 million people online at any given point of time, you're going to need about 1 million people reading logs. The task would be overwhelming.
This is the point that I bring up whenever people start freaking out about the government spying on us. With all of the cell phone taps, packet sniffing, chat monitoring, etc it would take forever to filter them all out for terrorist activity.
Mod parent up.
I'd like to see how they plan on monitoring my mage as it talks to your cleric in some obscure, nearly impossible to reach (unless you're level 50) corner of our favorite MUD.
I can see it now - the FBI will get high-level characters in EQ2 and WoW so that they can look for terrorists in-game.
Social Security, as it is now, will not survive the baby boomers retiring.
That's why I want to re-release "The Big Chill" with some "bonus footage" - subliminal messages in the beginning of the film that encourage Baby Boomers to kill themselves.
If I remember correctly from my CAP (Civil Air Patrol) days, 121.5 is the "test" emergency freq while 121.6 is the actual "live" freq. (Any cadets reading this, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a LONG time).
Most aircraft are fitted with a small transmitter (about the size of a pack of cigarettes) that will start squaking on certian conditions. Sometimes a hard landing would be enough to set one off.
Back in the day (late 80's), SAR (Search and Rescue) teams used a device called an L-per which was basically a reciever mounted on a large hand-held directional antenna. The operator would go to the appoximate location of the crash, determine which direction the signal was coming from and then move about a mile in a perpendicular direction. The op would take another reading and repeat the process one more time, triangulating the position of the downed aircraft.
Of course now they probably have fancy-schmancy wiz-bag computers to do all of that for them.
Any other CAP members out there?
C/FO Martin Dinstuhl (Ret.)
Alpha Flight Commander, 144th Air Rescue & Recovery Squadron
TN Wing