IBM is not publicly acknowledging that they screwed up here.
That sounds like spin to me. If not outright lying.
I think it is neither spin nor lying, we have a specific word for it: stonewalling.
It does still suck though, and I would have hoped IBM would handle it better, maybe more like HP dealt with the SporeStore drives, er, I mean SureStore drives.
Remember that thing with the IBM hard drives ? I still don't know who to believe.
Where/what is is IBM's spin?
What happens after the credits?
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Review: K-PAX
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· Score: 3, Interesting
During the credits the theater turned up the lights, so I couldn't read them very well. Nor could I really tell what happened after the credits ended and they showed about 15 more seconds of someone (Bridges?) doing something.
What was it?
(The theater claimed it was a MD state law that they had to turn on the lights when people start leaving. I don't know how long they have been doing it, I hadn't seen new movies in MD for a while...and I may decide never to again!)
Computer games have fixed this somewhat...you can be a bit more vague or have battlefield "fog" - but the same issue remains...the typical wargamer has a hell of a lot more knowledge and control of his tactial situation then a real life commander..(at least back then...maybe not so much now)
I remember some of the older network sci-fi war games had some really interesting features similar to this. You did get perfect information, but it was time delayed, as were your orders. It was very hard to fight distant battles because it might take 8 turns to find out how a battle is going, and then another 8 turns to issue new orders to the units that (may) be left there.
It was kind of a cool feature because as you beat an enemy back to their home world you might have a production advantage (as your industrial base is expanding, or at least not contracting), but you are at an increasing information disadvantage.
Otherwise...the best tactical game i can recommend is Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War
I'm sure that is a wonderful game. I do want to plug a (now fairly old) nice real-time game. Total Annihilation, most for it's fine use of terrain. You can hide from arty behind hills, and many other somewhat realistic effects (as realistic as any game featuring huge robots has a right to be at least). Of corse that is mostly tactical, not strategic, but it is more interesting then just picking the types of units to make, and attempting to make an attack as fast as possible...
Anyway, want real strategy games? Try enlisting in officer school, they will let you play some very realistic war games. Of corse it does imply a career change that might be a little life limiting, but aren't you willing to make the sacrifice?
Please, please, please, learn how not to be bought by apple's marketing hoardes.
Yes the iPod has less storage, and costs more, but it also weighs less and is smaller, and I think runs longer. Deciding that makes it better doesn't mean someone has been "bought by marketing hordes", or is on crack, but that they value different things.
Is someone who buys a Miata for $22k rather then a Civic for $17 on crack? The Civic has slightly more horse power (IU think), and a better rep for reliability, oh and room for cargo. On the other hand the Miata is smaller and lighter, and has a better rep for fun.
Or maybe we should start telling folks who bought the SGI display rather then the half the price CRT that they are morons, after all the CRT has a tad bit more display area, and doesn't have that funky aspect ratio. Who cares that the SGI uses less power, frequently looks better, and takes almost no desk space...
Archos has a 20 GB model, it is larger, but I would assume it would be faster- (I can't see having a 7200 RPM drive on an mp3 player, but IMBR), and $100 cheaper (search the net for a better price) for 2x the storage.
I have a friend with one of those. He doesn't take it out running, or on walks or anything. I'm not sure if it is because it is too heavy, or if it doesn't fit in his pocket very well. The Mac one does look like it will fit, not sure about the weight, but the stats say it is light.
No, I was saying the upgrade from X to X.1 is free. It is free even if you don't have OSX. Once you get it you can toss the X.1 disk, and just use the OS9.2 disk. That is, if you don't have 9.2, and want it.
and needs more than 64MB. OK, I'm planning on buying new memory.
It's hard not too. Memory is dirt cheap these days. No, it is cheaper then good topsoil:-)
Grad student budgets: food is first.:)
I thought beer was first, then books, then ramen:-)
Oh, grad student. Sorry, that was the undergrad budget....
I have the older Rio. I think it was the first revision of thir first model. It sync's only with their software, and it needs a par port which I don't have on my Mac anyway.
Actually, that brings up my sole complaint regarding this device. It requires iTunes 2, which AFAIK only runs on OS X.
The iTunes2 FAQ says:
iTunes 2 works with all Apple systems that have built-in USB ports. iTunes 2 for Mac OS 9
requires Mac OS 9.0.4 or later; CD burning in Mac OS 9 requires Mac OS 9.1. Mac OS 9.2.1 is
highly recommended. iTunes 2 for Mac OS X is available for systems running Mac OS X
version 10.1.
So it looks like it will work under OS9. See page 5 of the iTunes2 FAQ.
P.S. the VA Apple store claims they will have an iPod this weekend for demoing (none for sale for ~4 weeks though).
P.P.S. you can get OS9.2 for free, ask for the OSX upgrade CD at your retailer (free), it comes with a full OS9.2 as well as the upgrade to OSX.
I feel that at some point the best thing to do is walk away from the old architecture and make a fresh start with a new one.
So did DEC (later Compaq) with the Alpha. It was pretty much the fastest single CPU for floating point over most of it's life span (sometimes a new CPU would come out and beat it, but normally there would be a new Alpha within a month or two to smash it). Similarly for integer performance, but not quite as well (for example the fastest P4 systems have been beating the dead bloated corpse of the Alpha for a while in integer, but still lose out in FP). If ditching the old in favor of the new works, why are we not running Alpha machines now?
Personally I hate the x86 instruction set. I really do. I also think AMD's choice of doing the x86-64 rather then Intel's choice of doing the iTanic is a great business choice, even though it dooms us to spend another decade with the crappy 8086 compatible instruction set. Gack.
Commodore did this when they went from the C-64 to the Amiga.
I'll spare the "look where it got them" bit, and just go for...nah, just look where it got them.
Of corse as a counter point we have the Mac and it's total incompatibility with the Apple II...unless you count sharing of the ImageWriter...
The trick, naturally, is to design a proper instruction set to begin with. Then you can extend and enhance it easily without having to break backward compatibility. Too bad Intel didn't realize that.
The SPARC and many other RISCs had a "seamless" 32 -> 64 bit transition mostly by doing two things.
They added 64bit load and 64 bit store instructions (existing load and store remained 32 bits). All the other stuff (register to register instructions) went to 64 bits.
Made large (incompatible!) changes to the supervisor mode. This only matters to the OS and boot loader, and Sun owned the dominant OS on the SPARC boxes, SGI owned the dominant OS on the MIPS boxes, and they made all the changes to the OS as needed.
There is no reason Intel/AMD couldn't make new 64 bit load and store instructions, and redefine all references to EBX (and the other 3 registers) to be 64 bits. That would work just fine.
The part that would suck is Intel and AMD do not own the OS, or even the bootloaders that runs on their CPUs! MS, and a handful of BIOS makers do. They would have to be convinced it is worth it to do anything.
NOTE: I'm not saying the x86 instruction set is anything close to well designed. It is a shambling horror, but extending it to 64 bits is not really harder then extending the SPARC to 64 bits. In fact if you look at what AMD did it is a pretty easy change (and I think the article is wrong, you can use the new 4 GPRs without having to do any 64 bit stuff, but the OS still needs to be changed to save and load the extra registers).
Intel merely decided the 32 bit to 64 bit change seemed like a good time to try to make a play for the high end market, and to do that with a new instruction set. That might have even been a good idea if they hadn't screwed it up enough that the itanimum earned the nickname the itanic...
I think you're confusing fixed wireless with satellite-based broadband, stripes.;-)
Actually I was just running down the list of things I think people want and saying "if you deliver these with wires, wireless, or avian carrier people will want it -- if you try to sell bandwidth just because of the way you provide it, people will not be so interested".
Not sure what you mean about "mandatory filters."
Stuff like some cablecos are doing "you can't get to port 25 except on our routers...nobody can get to port 80 at your home...".
Low price - I've seen WISP's post as low as $29 per month with a $99 install.
For 1Gbit/sec, or even 3-5Mbit/sec? No wonder nobody stays in that business long!:-)
Ding ding ding. That's where it all breaks down. So, you get more people, but now they *notice* the slowdown, so you get a fatter pipe, and you're back where you started. It's a lousy catch-22.
Bigger pipes tend to cost less per megabit/sec. Also I picked UUNET since I knew a price, they tend to be one of the more costly ISPs, so it may be possible to find a better deal. Also that is list price, you may be able to talk it down a bit.
That is the bind though, bandwidth costs. That's why being a DSL provider sucks too. If you get really really really big you can get peering from some ISPs, but you have to be, like, huge for that.
We might be able to simply offer the service to our existing customer base (maybe 200 subscribers, mostly dialup or web users), but, even then, what's it going to cost us? Best case -- we put a bunch of high-powered antennas on existing masts in the county (like some of the high ones out in centreville).
Wanna send me some mail if you get one in Fairfax, say close to GMU?
Point one of 'em back to the ISP (in merrifield, also conveniently near a big mast). Even if we get subscribers to pay for their own Cisco Aironet (or whatever it's called) equipment for their home, we've still got a lot of repeater-like equipment to buy, to say nothing of leasing the space on the towers (and hiring someone with insurance and bonding to climb up there).
I was kind of assuming people would pay for their own CPE (access point and/or PCMCIA cards). You may need to help them set them up (if there is some degree of aiming involved!). Hmmmm, merrifield? Is that the UUNET building? AboveNet? Can't be zephion...
Again, it all, basically, sucks
Yep.
BTW, I think I know you. UMCP, 1986-1990ish? Engineering geek? Hung out with Kurt, et. al.? SUPC? Very scary.
1987-1992, yes on eng geek, yes on Kurt (in fact I woked with him at UUNET until about 2000), no on SUPC though. Must be someone else:-)
I live in one of the most well-connected areas of the country, and probably in the world. UUNET, AOL, MAE-EAST, and countless others are located out here. My county also has one of the oldest Cable-TV plants in the country. I live in one of the fastest growing sections of the county, and our CO is both overburdened and too far from my house for DSL.
Heh, you must live just down the block from me (well 3k feet farther from the CO though).
So, let's say, for the moment, that a bunch of smart geeks running a non-profit ISP were to get together and start an 802.11-based fixed wireless service. How much, really, would that cost? Where would we get startup money? If we're going to serve 50, 100, or 1000 subscribers over a 2-10 Mbps connection, is it really resonable to have only a single T-1 on the back side? How do we afford a fatter pipe, if the subscribers are willing to pay half the cost for fewer services over cable?
The first problem is finding enough subscribers in an area small enough for you to serve. If you could find a geek cluster apartment, or townhome or some other sort of people hive that will really help. If you have no real funding you need to have all your subscribers lined up in advance because you won't be able to afford to buy your equipment and connectivity without income (or at least not for longer in advance then one credit card cycle or so...).
You need to put enough 802.11 stations around to cover your area, for an apartment you may be able to handle around 3 floors on one hub. If you need to cover more area you need to either have 902.11 stations that can route traffic across them, or connect the hubs another way (which will be very hard to do if you have non-subscribers in the way). You also have to power these things. This is mostly a one time charge (they may break over time and need replacement, or you may have to expand your area...).
Getting the link to your upstream provider will be costly. Most ISPs charge a lot more for the right to wholesale (resell bandwidth). Last I checked this was like $3k plus line charges per month from UUNET (note last I checked was like 5 years ago).
Will one T1 make people happy? Well I work in an office with a single T1 for around 50 people, and it isn't too bad. Slower then my personal 256K frame relay (I use to get that for free when I worked for UUNET) felt, but it wasn't bad. Better then my current dial up, sometimes better then my DSL use to be before the provider went chapter 11...
Some DSL providers use a 100 to one overcommit, but they have customers then tend to only browse, and they have a T3 so a few uberusers will not upset things too much. Ten people using the T1 will be the same kind of overcommit, but only if you are saying it is a 10Mbps service! If you advertise it more as a DSL competitor it won't feel as bad with 30 or so folks on it. Of corse 30 people will need at least $100 to break even on the T1, plus you have to pay the install cost and the 802.11 stations, and...
It'll only really work if you can find an area that can't get DSL since you will have to charge about the same, for about the same kind of effective bandwidth...
How much demand is there for fixed wireless? I've been considering starting a wireless ISP that would serve my local area, and I was thinking that no one would be willing to pay more money to switch from cable or DSL to wireless. This is what could have been the problem.
There is no real demand for fixed wireless over DSL or cable access. There is demand for high bandwidth, low latency, working service, fixed IP, no mandatory filters, easy set up, fast installs, and low price (clearly some of these things are more important to some people then others -- many don't care about fixed IP for example)
If you can offer a good set of those features people will be interested in it, whether it is DSL, fixed wireless, cable, or whatever. Very few people care what technology gives them what they want, most care that they get what they want!
Fixed wireless has an inherent advantage in "fast install" (you don't have to roll a truck and bury new wire), and maybe in more universal access (I'm just under 20K feet from my CO, and having trouble getting DSL now that Rhythms croaked).
As far as I am aware there are no vendors that offer an ssh-like encrypted login for network equipment.
As others have already said Cisco (some products), Juniper (all), and others. However it was not always this way. Cisco was utterly uninterested in ssh or krb telnet for most of the '90s (I worked for UUNET during most of that time, we did get to request features...). The first router (as far as I know) that did it was Ascend's GFR, and mostly just because it ran a Unix (BSD/OS?) on one board to do the control functions. Juniper was next (similar reason, FreeBSD on the control board). To this day I'm not sure if Cisco added it because people asked, or because people said "They already have it -- we'll buy one of those if you don't give it to us"...
Re:A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else
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Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 2
Is that how they're justifying the one-button mouse these days?
Forever. It is the same prinicpal, remove the choices few people use and most people will find the item easier to learn. Of corse a few people will find the thing useless, but if you do it right you gain more people then you lose.
If you look at the QuickTime "learn more" thing the three "real users" (Moby, "that guy from Smash Mouth", and Seal) all basically say "I'm dumb, and this was designed so even I can use it". Really. It's amazing what people will say about themselves:-)
Re:Technical Question ICO Firewaire transfers
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Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 2
The songs in my mp3 collection average out to right around 4MB each, encoded at 128kbps. The average album these days has, what, 12-14 songs on it? Well that's ~48-56MB, which could be sucked across a FireWire cable pretty damned quickly.
FYI, Apple seems to be using ~160Kbits/sec for their stats (which is fair since that is what iTunes uses by default...or maybe I just changed it).
Because Apple Records sued Apple Computer over trademark infringement, and settled when Apple Computer said it was in the Computer business, and would never go into the Music business!
That was settled a long time ago. Either when Apple came out with the IIgs, or a bit later when the made CD-ROMs standard on their "new" machines. They settled out of court with Apple records, payed a ton of money ($20mil?), and can now do whatever musical crap they want.
The sucess of this product relies on CD's ripped through iTunes, and the existence of this product means that Apple will have to fight any legal resrctions on ripping CDs that the RIAA may try to buy in congress. Therefore, I predict the RIAA will sue, to avoid having a big company lobby against them in congress, and offering a "legitimate" view (i.e. non-Napsterized) of how their bought-and-paid-for laws will restrict technology.
Could be, but Apple isn't special there. Other people make MP3 players and the like. Plus Apple is well liked in the music world, their laptops are very popular for running MIDI shows and the like, lots of artists own them. I'm not sure the RIAA wants to make Apple their next target.
After all, if someone can "hotsync" their 5GB of MP3's between their home computer and their work computer, that could be making an illegal copy, and the RIAA won't stand for that.
Technically you can't, it will only hotsync with one host, hotsync only sends MP3's to the iPod, and erases ones the iPod has and the host doesn't. Of corse you can run it in the non-auto mode and drag songs to/from it, or operate it like a normal FireWire drive. Once you do that though it is just a disk drive that happens to also play music. It doesn't violate any copyright law that a normal FW drive doesn't...
Re:Yeah, but can I drop it on the floor?
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Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 2
For now, hard-drive based players are bulky for a reason -- tiny laptop drives are FRAGILE and need to be protected! The spindles won't hold up to much abuse
Smaller drives tend to be more durable then larger ones. Less area to flex I guess. Laptops are frequently shoved in a backpack (they normally don't run inside a backpack for long though). IBM's microdrives are used in digital cameras, and take as much shock as this thing is likely too. In fact one of them survived when it's owner didn't (one photog who died when the 2nd WTC building collapsed had 3 cameras on him, both film cameras popped their backs and lost the film, the microdrive in his EOS-D30 made it, and so did the 30 or so exposed 35mm film cans; alas he did not)
As for the rest of it, yeah, Apple is competing with others, and the iPod is not a killer product. It has some interesting features, but lacks some others.
I'm sorry, but the easiest interface for ripping CD's is not, unlike what one may think, that of the mac : It's KDE's !!
Simple : clic on the CD icon of konqy and poof! you get a view with the songs in MP3, OGG or WAV format in their respective subdirs, with the names fetched from freedb. just copy what you want. everything is transparent to the user. It simply doesn't get easier than that.
I'm not so sure. Put an audio CD in my Mac and iTunes starts (unless it is already running) and rips the music into VBR MP3s, with the names from CDDB. Sounds a little simpler since I don't have to even look at a window let alone find the ones with the "right" format.
Note that that isn't the default, the default *also* plays the music, and I think is CBR. I had to click in four places to change it (open prefs, both new prefs, and "Ok").
It's too bad the Mac doesn't give me the option of doing OGGs though. I'm not sure if they really are better, but I like them better.
IMO this device is just a portable hard drive. Which is cool, btw, but it would have been infinity more useful if it had been a super-clever way to carry data around, and not an mp3 player, which in fact limits its potential (extreme) usefullness.
If you read the spec page you'll see it also acts as a firewire disk. However it costs about $100 more then LaCele's existing 5G FW drive, so it would be kinda over priced...
Re:A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else
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Apple releases iPod
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· Score: 3, Insightful
but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product
You mean other then the scroll pad, and the seriously small number of controls and options on it? (yes, cutting down on choice is a UI feature, and one that Apple is very good at)
Having it all go through iTunes is also a good UI choice (a no brainer for Apple of corse), you don't need to deal with another little lame MP3 manager (my most despised part of my Rio). Of corse once you have more then 5G of music you actually have to do work...
Still, not the product for me. I don't really need all that much music when I'm not already next to my laptop, or my car stereo...
Unfortunately, I'm not too sure on the specifics whic hallow this. Do the sattellites give bad readings which can be easily re-set to their true value, is some kind of interpretarion of multiple results possible (a kind of triangulation)?
From what I understand the low bits have some noise added to them. The noise is an encrypted stream, so a military GPS with the key can reproduce the noise and cancel it out.
Other GPSes have a few choices. If you sit in one place and avg together all the samples you get a value that converges on your real location (because the noise is more or less random, if it were fixed this wouldn't work, but something else would!). You can also use two GPSes, but I kind of forget exactly how this works. I *think* you keep one at a fixed point, and have it broadcast the delta between it's known position and the position that is being broadcast, your mobile GPS uses that delta to find the real location (this may only work if you are looking at the same satellites)
I went from digital to film too. But it was more about the image quality itself, not just the resolution. Colors are better - more accurate on film. Not to mention much more pleasing. Digital cameras have very low dynamic range compared to film - meaning shadow details are often subject to noise.
Depends on the camera, and the film. I like the color off of my Canon PS100 better then the color off of Kodak Gold. I like Kodak Portra 160NC, and Fuji Realia 100 a lot more then the PS100.
The color off of the Canon EOS-D30 is very nice, as nice as most films. Of corse at $2500 one would hope it looks good on print. I have heard very nice things about the Fuji S1 Pro's color, but other then that it is a dog of a camera (and also about $2000).
If you look at luminous landscapes he favorably compares the D30 with ciba printed slides (and he is a cibachrome master printer!). Even if it isn't really that good, it is quite nice.
Bottom line: if you really are serious about photography - forget digital cameras for now. If you take snapshots here and there and do not care much about quality, maybe digital is worth a look.
I am going to agree with that, almost. If you are spending over $2000 you can do very well with digital. Under $2000 film is giving you better quality (this year!). Digitals do still help you learn a lot in a very short time though.
I've read through the Tivo information/reviews, but one thing I wasn't sure was what happens when a show is interrupted by, say the President of the US, or something like the 9/11 events. Do these get recorded during the scheduled show time, or does Tivo skip them? I assume TiVo would continue to record the interrupted program if it runs late due to the interruption. I guess I am just interested in what happens in this situation. I personally would want to see whatever was important enough to interrupt the program.
TiVo has pretty much zero idea this is happening unless it is announced ahead of time soon enough to get into the guide data.
One of the things TiVo normally does is not re-record things that it has recorded in the last 28 days -- some exceptions apply, the big two are if you ask it to record an episode ("The Red Badge Of Gayness") rather then all episodes of a show ("South Park"), and suggestions don't count as recorded (except maybe if you watch them).
After the 9/11 thing TiVo sent out a patch that basically said that anything recorded that week can be re-recorded even within the 28-day rule. That let most of the stuff that was bumped a week or two get recorded anyway (that was nice because I just made a low priority wish list for first-run-only "Pilot" and caught the first episode of most shows that I could work into my schedule).
It is far from perfect here, the address this week threw everything off, I "fixed it" by setting a manual recording for a big block of time. Fortunitly I knew that one ahead of time and could plan for it.
It turns out that Seinfeld on some random channel that TiVo finds it on for me is now getting preempted by baseball, and worse yet the same episode is on another channel a few hours later, and is not being recorded because of the 28 day rule (which I swear is normally a really useful thing!). I ended up using the Recording History to find another show that is on at the same time that I would like to record (but less then Seinfeld), and bumped it's priority up. So now I get Northern Exposure, and a real Seinfeld later.
Apparently TiVo is working on a thing that can be slapped in the VBI that says "this show is running late" and some other stuff. If the networks choose to use it, and use it correctly that could help a lot. The UK apparently has one of these, and some stations don't use it right, so I'm not sure how it will work out here.
Of corse without TiVo I wouldn't even get Seinfeld, or Northern Exposure. They are on at bad times, plus I'm not always in the mood to watch them. So now TiVo gets them, and if I feel like watching them before they roll off my buffer (about a week) I get too.
Things like the presidents address are uncommon, but somewhat worse with TiVo since you get into the habit of ignoring schedules (since TiVo really does handle 99.8% of things well!).
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I think it is neither spin nor lying, we have a specific word for it: stonewalling.
It does still suck though, and I would have hoped IBM would handle it better, maybe more like HP dealt with the SporeStore drives, er, I mean SureStore drives.
Where/what is is IBM's spin?
During the credits the theater turned up the lights, so I couldn't read them very well. Nor could I really tell what happened after the credits ended and they showed about 15 more seconds of someone (Bridges?) doing something.
What was it?
(The theater claimed it was a MD state law that they had to turn on the lights when people start leaving. I don't know how long they have been doing it, I hadn't seen new movies in MD for a while...and I may decide never to again!)
I remember some of the older network sci-fi war games had some really interesting features similar to this. You did get perfect information, but it was time delayed, as were your orders. It was very hard to fight distant battles because it might take 8 turns to find out how a battle is going, and then another 8 turns to issue new orders to the units that (may) be left there.
It was kind of a cool feature because as you beat an enemy back to their home world you might have a production advantage (as your industrial base is expanding, or at least not contracting), but you are at an increasing information disadvantage.
I'm sure that is a wonderful game. I do want to plug a (now fairly old) nice real-time game. Total Annihilation, most for it's fine use of terrain. You can hide from arty behind hills, and many other somewhat realistic effects (as realistic as any game featuring huge robots has a right to be at least). Of corse that is mostly tactical, not strategic, but it is more interesting then just picking the types of units to make, and attempting to make an attack as fast as possible...
Anyway, want real strategy games? Try enlisting in officer school, they will let you play some very realistic war games. Of corse it does imply a career change that might be a little life limiting, but aren't you willing to make the sacrifice?
Ah, I missed that. I guess you didn't quote it, and I skimmed the parent too quick.
Yes the iPod has less storage, and costs more, but it also weighs less and is smaller, and I think runs longer. Deciding that makes it better doesn't mean someone has been "bought by marketing hordes", or is on crack, but that they value different things.
Is someone who buys a Miata for $22k rather then a Civic for $17 on crack? The Civic has slightly more horse power (IU think), and a better rep for reliability, oh and room for cargo. On the other hand the Miata is smaller and lighter, and has a better rep for fun.
Or maybe we should start telling folks who bought the SGI display rather then the half the price CRT that they are morons, after all the CRT has a tad bit more display area, and doesn't have that funky aspect ratio. Who cares that the SGI uses less power, frequently looks better, and takes almost no desk space...
I have a friend with one of those. He doesn't take it out running, or on walks or anything. I'm not sure if it is because it is too heavy, or if it doesn't fit in his pocket very well. The Mac one does look like it will fit, not sure about the weight, but the stats say it is light.
No, I was saying the upgrade from X to X.1 is free. It is free even if you don't have OSX. Once you get it you can toss the X.1 disk, and just use the OS9.2 disk. That is, if you don't have 9.2, and want it.
It's hard not too. Memory is dirt cheap these days. No, it is cheaper then good topsoil :-)
I thought beer was first, then books, then ramen :-)
Oh, grad student. Sorry, that was the undergrad budget....
I have the older Rio. I think it was the first revision of thir first model. It sync's only with their software, and it needs a par port which I don't have on my Mac anyway.
The iTunes2 FAQ says:
So it looks like it will work under OS9. See page 5 of the iTunes2 FAQ.
P.S. the VA Apple store claims they will have an iPod this weekend for demoing (none for sale for ~4 weeks though).
P.P.S. you can get OS9.2 for free, ask for the OSX upgrade CD at your retailer (free), it comes with a full OS9.2 as well as the upgrade to OSX.
So did DEC (later Compaq) with the Alpha. It was pretty much the fastest single CPU for floating point over most of it's life span (sometimes a new CPU would come out and beat it, but normally there would be a new Alpha within a month or two to smash it). Similarly for integer performance, but not quite as well (for example the fastest P4 systems have been beating the dead bloated corpse of the Alpha for a while in integer, but still lose out in FP). If ditching the old in favor of the new works, why are we not running Alpha machines now?
Personally I hate the x86 instruction set. I really do. I also think AMD's choice of doing the x86-64 rather then Intel's choice of doing the iTanic is a great business choice, even though it dooms us to spend another decade with the crappy 8086 compatible instruction set. Gack.
I'll spare the "look where it got them" bit, and just go for...nah, just look where it got them.
Of corse as a counter point we have the Mac and it's total incompatibility with the Apple II...unless you count sharing of the ImageWriter...
The SPARC and many other RISCs had a "seamless" 32 -> 64 bit transition mostly by doing two things.
There is no reason Intel/AMD couldn't make new 64 bit load and store instructions, and redefine all references to EBX (and the other 3 registers) to be 64 bits. That would work just fine.
The part that would suck is Intel and AMD do not own the OS, or even the bootloaders that runs on their CPUs! MS, and a handful of BIOS makers do. They would have to be convinced it is worth it to do anything.
NOTE: I'm not saying the x86 instruction set is anything close to well designed. It is a shambling horror, but extending it to 64 bits is not really harder then extending the SPARC to 64 bits. In fact if you look at what AMD did it is a pretty easy change (and I think the article is wrong, you can use the new 4 GPRs without having to do any 64 bit stuff, but the OS still needs to be changed to save and load the extra registers).
Intel merely decided the 32 bit to 64 bit change seemed like a good time to try to make a play for the high end market, and to do that with a new instruction set. That might have even been a good idea if they hadn't screwed it up enough that the itanimum earned the nickname the itanic...
Actually I was just running down the list of things I think people want and saying "if you deliver these with wires, wireless, or avian carrier people will want it -- if you try to sell bandwidth just because of the way you provide it, people will not be so interested".
Stuff like some cablecos are doing "you can't get to port 25 except on our routers...nobody can get to port 80 at your home...".
For 1Gbit/sec, or even 3-5Mbit/sec? No wonder nobody stays in that business long! :-)
So where can I buy it?
Bigger pipes tend to cost less per megabit/sec. Also I picked UUNET since I knew a price, they tend to be one of the more costly ISPs, so it may be possible to find a better deal. Also that is list price, you may be able to talk it down a bit.
That is the bind though, bandwidth costs. That's why being a DSL provider sucks too. If you get really really really big you can get peering from some ISPs, but you have to be, like, huge for that.
Wanna send me some mail if you get one in Fairfax, say close to GMU?
I was kind of assuming people would pay for their own CPE (access point and/or PCMCIA cards). You may need to help them set them up (if there is some degree of aiming involved!). Hmmmm, merrifield? Is that the UUNET building? AboveNet? Can't be zephion...
Yep.
1987-1992, yes on eng geek, yes on Kurt (in fact I woked with him at UUNET until about 2000), no on SUPC though. Must be someone else :-)
Heh, you must live just down the block from me (well 3k feet farther from the CO though).
The first problem is finding enough subscribers in an area small enough for you to serve. If you could find a geek cluster apartment, or townhome or some other sort of people hive that will really help. If you have no real funding you need to have all your subscribers lined up in advance because you won't be able to afford to buy your equipment and connectivity without income (or at least not for longer in advance then one credit card cycle or so...).
You need to put enough 802.11 stations around to cover your area, for an apartment you may be able to handle around 3 floors on one hub. If you need to cover more area you need to either have 902.11 stations that can route traffic across them, or connect the hubs another way (which will be very hard to do if you have non-subscribers in the way). You also have to power these things. This is mostly a one time charge (they may break over time and need replacement, or you may have to expand your area...).
Getting the link to your upstream provider will be costly. Most ISPs charge a lot more for the right to wholesale (resell bandwidth). Last I checked this was like $3k plus line charges per month from UUNET (note last I checked was like 5 years ago).
Will one T1 make people happy? Well I work in an office with a single T1 for around 50 people, and it isn't too bad. Slower then my personal 256K frame relay (I use to get that for free when I worked for UUNET) felt, but it wasn't bad. Better then my current dial up, sometimes better then my DSL use to be before the provider went chapter 11...
Some DSL providers use a 100 to one overcommit, but they have customers then tend to only browse, and they have a T3 so a few uberusers will not upset things too much. Ten people using the T1 will be the same kind of overcommit, but only if you are saying it is a 10Mbps service! If you advertise it more as a DSL competitor it won't feel as bad with 30 or so folks on it. Of corse 30 people will need at least $100 to break even on the T1, plus you have to pay the install cost and the 802.11 stations, and...
It'll only really work if you can find an area that can't get DSL since you will have to charge about the same, for about the same kind of effective bandwidth...
There is no real demand for fixed wireless over DSL or cable access. There is demand for high bandwidth, low latency, working service, fixed IP, no mandatory filters, easy set up, fast installs, and low price (clearly some of these things are more important to some people then others -- many don't care about fixed IP for example)
If you can offer a good set of those features people will be interested in it, whether it is DSL, fixed wireless, cable, or whatever. Very few people care what technology gives them what they want, most care that they get what they want!
Fixed wireless has an inherent advantage in "fast install" (you don't have to roll a truck and bury new wire), and maybe in more universal access (I'm just under 20K feet from my CO, and having trouble getting DSL now that Rhythms croaked).
As others have already said Cisco (some products), Juniper (all), and others. However it was not always this way. Cisco was utterly uninterested in ssh or krb telnet for most of the '90s (I worked for UUNET during most of that time, we did get to request features...). The first router (as far as I know) that did it was Ascend's GFR, and mostly just because it ran a Unix (BSD/OS?) on one board to do the control functions. Juniper was next (similar reason, FreeBSD on the control board). To this day I'm not sure if Cisco added it because people asked, or because people said "They already have it -- we'll buy one of those if you don't give it to us"...
Forever. It is the same prinicpal, remove the choices few people use and most people will find the item easier to learn. Of corse a few people will find the thing useless, but if you do it right you gain more people then you lose.
If you look at the QuickTime "learn more" thing the three "real users" (Moby, "that guy from Smash Mouth", and Seal) all basically say "I'm dumb, and this was designed so even I can use it". Really. It's amazing what people will say about themselves :-)
FYI, Apple seems to be using ~160Kbits/sec for their stats (which is fair since that is what iTunes uses by default...or maybe I just changed it).
That was settled a long time ago. Either when Apple came out with the IIgs, or a bit later when the made CD-ROMs standard on their "new" machines. They settled out of court with Apple records, payed a ton of money ($20mil?), and can now do whatever musical crap they want.
Could be, but Apple isn't special there. Other people make MP3 players and the like. Plus Apple is well liked in the music world, their laptops are very popular for running MIDI shows and the like, lots of artists own them. I'm not sure the RIAA wants to make Apple their next target.
Technically you can't, it will only hotsync with one host, hotsync only sends MP3's to the iPod, and erases ones the iPod has and the host doesn't. Of corse you can run it in the non-auto mode and drag songs to/from it, or operate it like a normal FireWire drive. Once you do that though it is just a disk drive that happens to also play music. It doesn't violate any copyright law that a normal FW drive doesn't...
Smaller drives tend to be more durable then larger ones. Less area to flex I guess. Laptops are frequently shoved in a backpack (they normally don't run inside a backpack for long though). IBM's microdrives are used in digital cameras, and take as much shock as this thing is likely too. In fact one of them survived when it's owner didn't (one photog who died when the 2nd WTC building collapsed had 3 cameras on him, both film cameras popped their backs and lost the film, the microdrive in his EOS-D30 made it, and so did the 30 or so exposed 35mm film cans; alas he did not)
As for the rest of it, yeah, Apple is competing with others, and the iPod is not a killer product. It has some interesting features, but lacks some others.
I'm not so sure. Put an audio CD in my Mac and iTunes starts (unless it is already running) and rips the music into VBR MP3s, with the names from CDDB. Sounds a little simpler since I don't have to even look at a window let alone find the ones with the "right" format.
Note that that isn't the default, the default *also* plays the music, and I think is CBR. I had to click in four places to change it (open prefs, both new prefs, and "Ok").
It's too bad the Mac doesn't give me the option of doing OGGs though. I'm not sure if they really are better, but I like them better.
If you read the spec page you'll see it also acts as a firewire disk. However it costs about $100 more then LaCele's existing 5G FW drive, so it would be kinda over priced...
You mean other then the scroll pad, and the seriously small number of controls and options on it? (yes, cutting down on choice is a UI feature, and one that Apple is very good at)
Having it all go through iTunes is also a good UI choice (a no brainer for Apple of corse), you don't need to deal with another little lame MP3 manager (my most despised part of my Rio). Of corse once you have more then 5G of music you actually have to do work...
Still, not the product for me. I don't really need all that much music when I'm not already next to my laptop, or my car stereo...
From what I understand the low bits have some noise added to them. The noise is an encrypted stream, so a military GPS with the key can reproduce the noise and cancel it out.
Other GPSes have a few choices. If you sit in one place and avg together all the samples you get a value that converges on your real location (because the noise is more or less random, if it were fixed this wouldn't work, but something else would!). You can also use two GPSes, but I kind of forget exactly how this works. I *think* you keep one at a fixed point, and have it broadcast the delta between it's known position and the position that is being broadcast, your mobile GPS uses that delta to find the real location (this may only work if you are looking at the same satellites)
Depends on the camera, and the film. I like the color off of my Canon PS100 better then the color off of Kodak Gold. I like Kodak Portra 160NC, and Fuji Realia 100 a lot more then the PS100.
The color off of the Canon EOS-D30 is very nice, as nice as most films. Of corse at $2500 one would hope it looks good on print. I have heard very nice things about the Fuji S1 Pro's color, but other then that it is a dog of a camera (and also about $2000).
If you look at luminous landscapes he favorably compares the D30 with ciba printed slides (and he is a cibachrome master printer!). Even if it isn't really that good, it is quite nice.
I am going to agree with that, almost. If you are spending over $2000 you can do very well with digital. Under $2000 film is giving you better quality (this year!). Digitals do still help you learn a lot in a very short time though.
TiVo has pretty much zero idea this is happening unless it is announced ahead of time soon enough to get into the guide data.
One of the things TiVo normally does is not re-record things that it has recorded in the last 28 days -- some exceptions apply, the big two are if you ask it to record an episode ("The Red Badge Of Gayness") rather then all episodes of a show ("South Park"), and suggestions don't count as recorded (except maybe if you watch them).
After the 9/11 thing TiVo sent out a patch that basically said that anything recorded that week can be re-recorded even within the 28-day rule. That let most of the stuff that was bumped a week or two get recorded anyway (that was nice because I just made a low priority wish list for first-run-only "Pilot" and caught the first episode of most shows that I could work into my schedule).
It is far from perfect here, the address this week threw everything off, I "fixed it" by setting a manual recording for a big block of time. Fortunitly I knew that one ahead of time and could plan for it.
It turns out that Seinfeld on some random channel that TiVo finds it on for me is now getting preempted by baseball, and worse yet the same episode is on another channel a few hours later, and is not being recorded because of the 28 day rule (which I swear is normally a really useful thing!). I ended up using the Recording History to find another show that is on at the same time that I would like to record (but less then Seinfeld), and bumped it's priority up. So now I get Northern Exposure, and a real Seinfeld later.
Apparently TiVo is working on a thing that can be slapped in the VBI that says "this show is running late" and some other stuff. If the networks choose to use it, and use it correctly that could help a lot. The UK apparently has one of these, and some stations don't use it right, so I'm not sure how it will work out here.
Of corse without TiVo I wouldn't even get Seinfeld, or Northern Exposure. They are on at bad times, plus I'm not always in the mood to watch them. So now TiVo gets them, and if I feel like watching them before they roll off my buffer (about a week) I get too.
Things like the presidents address are uncommon, but somewhat worse with TiVo since you get into the habit of ignoring schedules (since TiVo really does handle 99.8% of things well!).