It's true I like Sony, the reason? The PS2. I generaly find other Sony consumer hardware to be over-priced and mearly "competive" as opposed to killer. (I'd buy a Fuji digital camera any day, and an LG/Zenith TV before I shelled out 50% more for the Sony equivilent) BUT I bought a PS2 and I'll buy a PS3. It's not just the games, though the success of the PS1 did pave the way for developers to support the PS2 no mater how DIFFICULT it was to program for. The PS2 is NOT personal computer by design, what it is is a small step in the hardware design revolution. Look at how little power a PS2 consumes compaired to a PC with similar computational abilities. Look at how little space the PS2 hardware occupies, and then look at the data bus and architecture used in the PS2. The PS2 with the Linux kit is a perfectly usable, albeit memory limited computer, capable of handling most WEB content with ease, and running the applications that consummers use most often (EG: Word processors, E-mail, Internet, and accounting software).
More and more people are already buying consoles to play games rather than shelling out for a high-end gaming PC. If the CELL architecture can provide not only a killer gaming system, but flexible basic personal computer functionality, then low-end PC's had better watch out! Lets face it, a $400 PC may be more flexible than a PS2, but it's not a WHOLE lot more powerful, and it defiantely isn't a better gameing machine. If Sony-Toshiba-IBM (STI) can shuck the WindowsOS and provide a truly convergent appliance that sells at comodity prices, then Intel/M$ realy should be worried.
I don't think M$ built the XBox JUST to grab a chunck of the not-terribly-lucrative console market, M$ wants to protect itself from the likes of the PS2/PS3 by having a presence in the convergence market before it even hits. I think the one major mistake M$ made was closing the XBox to non-game software. It's hardware is so close to PC-norm that develpment of productivity software to run on the XBox could be as simple as a re-compile.
Sony understands the potential for these 2nd and 3rd generation consoles to perform all the functions of a basic PC and the fact that they are planing on building a CELL-based workstation indicates that the hardware may easily support a "real" end-user OS, now the only question... Linux, AIX, or something else entirely?
Actualy the Tyco product was only about $49.95, and although I wouldn't count on it to survive a two storey drop, I drove a friend's *down* the stairs quite a few times...
Lets see, strap an X-10 camera on it, add a few IR LED's for ilumination, beef up the cheap plastic body with aluminum... I'd say I could build one of these for about $800-1000 USD, typical 150% "toy" mark up, sell 'em at $1600-2200.
my little price estimate reflects a fancy-dancy LiON battery, a little LCD panel for the controller, and a basic stamp for some minor autonomus stuff. Mini motion detectors might be pretty expensive (no knoledge of the subject) but I think this rates as a classic "ten thousand dollar hammer".
wouldn't be the first time I've been called a clod...though unimaginataive? I'm really more of an *INSENSITIVE* clod. All appologies to the slashdot polls.
Yes, I HAVE driven a Prius. maybe it's the ludite in me comming out (I also hate the new BMW 7) but its just a little too gizmo and gimick filled for my taste. I'd almost rather drive a stripped econo-can than have a power switch on the dash... Whatever happened to the hand crank starter damn it?!
Yes, I have driven an '04 Prius and an older Insight (not sure wich year it was really, either '01 or '02 I think) I was favorably impressed by the Insight, but the Prius felt heavy and sluggish to me. I realize that performance is not the FIRST thing many people look for in a car, but a diesel Jetta feels snappier than a Prius. I'm not actually trying to bash hybrids, just point out that there may be other solutions just as valid. Until those other solutions become avaiable hybrids are a step in the right direction. At least people care enough about this topic to argue over it, 4 years ago no one would have bothered, they'd just go out and buy a Yukon XXXXXL.
RE: Those mentioning that hybrids are ment to be clean rather than efficient, and efficiency is a by-product of clean running...
A review by Popular Mechanics magazine several years back (I don't remember the issue or I'd tell you which one it was...) found that, at an emissions testing station a '99 Ferrari 550 Maranello (8-12 MPG on super *eek!*) Had one of the LOWEST emissions of any vehicle they had tested. The Maranello qualified for ULEV status! Proof that a well designed engine/emisions system can burn very clean, even if it's economy is somewhat on the *cough* low side.
Hybrids ARE great for city driving, when the maximum power output of the drive line is almost never required. The batteries can happily slog through traffic for quite some time without needing to run the IC engine. However, high speed highway driving, merging, and passing will often require 100% of available drive line power, this is where hybrids fall down.
Running both the engine and the electrics drains the batteries, requiring the engine to continue to run even after 100% power is not required, the engine has to run fairly hard to charge the batteries back up, and of course there is a loss of efficiency in the conversion from mechanical to electric energy. If you drive like grandma, your hybrid *might* reach the claimed highway efficiency, but at the cost of speed, merging and passing.
Just for comparison my 1992 Alfa Romeo 164s has a 220hp fuel-injected 3 litre V6, asside from the BOSCH Motronic 5.1-ML injection, it is a decidedly low-tech engine. Single overhead cams, 12 valves, 60 degree, the valve train and geometry of this engine date from the mid 60s. The 164s weighs 3650 lbs, roughy TWICE what a Honda Insight weighs. The Alfa also features leather interior, kickin' sound system, very good aerodynamics, and a top speed in excess of 155 mph. If I take this beast on long highway drives, I can manage 31 mpg. The reason? Most the time the engine is using only a small fraction of it's possible power output.
When a hybrid, or for that matter, any underpowered vehicle gets out on the highway the conditions often require the drive line to run at maximum output. No mater how lean burning or smart a fuel injection system is, it has to deliver more fuel to produce more power. But if a 3650 lb luxury/sport sedan can get 30+ Mpg why can't an 1800 lb econo car get 60+? The answer is it CAN. And without the added weight, cost and expense of hybrid systems. Hybrids are *a* solution, they are not however in my oppinion the *best* solution.
What we need are high effiency small-ish engines in the 1.2 to 1.8 litre range put into light weight, aerodynamic bodies. The results would be affordable, reasonably fun to drive and just as efficient as hybrids for most American drivers. Those living in cities may want to consider a full electric solution, or *gasp* public transportation (which is, unfortuneately not really up to snuff in most American cities). In addition, a displacement on demand system could improve the efficiency of small cars in city driving as well. Who says only a V8 would bennefit from this technology? A small 4 cyl car could conceivably be set up to idle on only one cylinder at stop lights.
Hybrids may actualy be better suited to high performance applications than high efficiency applications. Witness the Toyota Volta. The Volta is efficient because it rarely uses 100% of it's available power, and since about 50% of that power is provided by electrics, it's IC engine is similar in efficiency to that of a vehicle with 1/2 the total drive-line power of the Volta. The result is a vehicle that rarely taps it's full potential, and operates at maximum efficiency most of the time rather than maximum output.
As an ameture speaker designer I'd be worried about the folded ports forming resonances that my not even be audible due to extreme low frequency, but which are still subconciously iritating. Granted there is usualy no coherent audio souce in a computer, and the ports are small buy audio standards but resistive coupling can produce some odd results just when you don't what it. I agree with others who have said "build silent to start". The Apple G5 design IS pretty damn nifty, but not perfect. As someone who has owned an Apple Beige G3 tower with five auxiliary fans and four 10,000 RPM Seagate drives in the case I KNOW what a bitch a REALLY REALLY loud computer can be. I aplaud all efforts to make computers quieter.
*grin* A perfectly operating large body snorkel with clean seals and flexible bladder will fill to arround 4 ml. That same pen will squirt a perfect stream from the snorkel about 10-15 feet and 4 ml of black ink will realy make that guy wearing a white silk shirt unhappy. Not only that, but a snorkel in good condition has no air/ink exposure except at the nib. This means ink stays fluid longer, doesn't leak out and flow is controlled entirely by the capilary action of the nib, meaning longer more even writing between re-fills. Only Parker 51's can boast a longer write between re-fill than a snorkel.
Holds an ass load of ink, writes like a dream, and has the coolest and perhaps geekiest damn filler mechanism ever. mid-late 50's pens have always written best for me, though the early sixties pens are also pretty good. The Triumph and Touchdown nibs always seem better than the conventional nibs as well.
Snorkels are readily available on e-bay, and for some reason don't seem draw high bids from the colectors. Expect to pay $25-$50 for a good functioning used snorkel, depending on the amount of gold and wear. If you are willing to learn how to fix the suckers (not that hard(pun intended)) you can get them for $10 or less, and often in better aesthetic condition than "working" pens.
Well, I can't speak for the rest of the Vermont State Colleges system, But this semester my friends at Johnson State College have indicated that JSC has put a per-connection bandwidth cap into effect. The cap is a measly and highly annoying 2.5k sec. You can have 100 connections active, but not a single one of them will be allowed to exceed 2.5k. lame. Lab and office computers are not thus limmited, and neither are the public ports arround campus and in the library, but evey dorm room is capped. if you have a Laptop, you can always drag yourself to a public port, but if your computer is stuck in your dorm room the cap is so low that you might as well have a modem. Thats where JSC student's $60 a semester technology fee goes.
It's a "67 Electric" I Like to claim, that since it's painted in 4 layers of hand-rubbed "Ferrari Red" laquer it's the world's fastest stapler, and with a 40 sheet capacity it sure isn't slow =)
Eat your heart out guys...oh and I beleive that I have my stapler.
Some would argue that BEAM type analog robots (invented by Mark Tilden) are not really "fully functioning" but they do exhibit quite a deal of complex behavior and even a rudimentry short term memory due to feed back loops in their simple Nv/Nu transistor networks. Well any-way the point is that thanks to SMT packages and the simplicity of the circuits involved these autonomous little electronic creatures have been nearly this small for years! oh yeah, and usualy solar powered...
here's a couple of pictures of robots ive seen...these are all simple photo-tropic ostacle-avoiding devices with tactile and IR sensors...
http://www.beam-online.com/Robots/Galleria/Large/o pticPopperFL.JPG
http://www.beam-online.com/Robots/Galleria/Large/T hermoWpenL.JPG
http://www.geocities.com/frankendaddy/Smiley.html
http://www.sierranet.net/~polygon/twitch.html
these aren't even the smallest i've seen, just some of the better sites with pictures.
if you want more infor on how to build your own BEAM type robots, www.beam-online.com is a good place to start looking.
as several others mentioned, the THIRD book is actualy out, Mountain of Black Glass, and it's nice to see that Tad is getting some/. publicity, but it realy is time we were up to date... P.S. you might wana wait till all four books are out before starting the series, or you might end up going insane waiting for the fourth one....they're that good!
MD is not dead..then again neither is Beta.
on
MP3/MD Combo Player
·
· Score: 1
If anyhitng MD in on the upswing. All the hype is long over and prices are falling like stones. Sony's new midd-line portable MD recorder is cheaper than a WM-D3 (about USD $280) pro recording walkman. MD may not be quite up to CD quality but it kicks the crap out of casette tape, and adds tittleing and randon access to boot. As for MD as a storage media for data, it;s been done. You can even still get the things. Problem was speed. They used 2x MD drives...an MD holds about 250meg or so, pretty good for it's size, but not mind blowing, and at 2x it took almost 30min to read/write a disk. Not impressive Also MD's develop errors after about 300-500 re-writes, not fabulous for a data media, but well above average for a music media. AS far as i know no one has tried with faster mechanisms since Sony's failed attempts. If you need portable recoding with good quality MD is cheaper, easier to deal with and more affordable than tape.
PS, anyone know where i can get a Hyper-beta pro deck for less than $5000?
Wwll I'm interested, at first i'm tempted to say "yeah another geek-toy portable that i can add to my christamas want-list"...but then i remeber the secrecy surrounding transmeta and have to think..."they wouldn't have all that secrecy for a another WinCE/Palm device...and Linus Torvalds, whats he doing with it?" so now I imagine a linux-oid based open source machine with the power of a PIII that runs on two AAA size batteries for a month and has real-time voice and handwriting recognition. hmmm Voice controlleg GIMP on the beach. Sounds like fun =)
>>The bad news is that if "The War In Heaven" >>sells, expect a slew of Christian (and soon, no >>doubt, Jewish and Muslim) save-the-soul games >>marketed by greedy Web entrepeneurs who want to >>appear wholesome while raking in big money.
>I think he's trying to say that Christians (and >other religous people) shouldn't be rich. I >don't get this viewpoint.
-Oky, Lets forget the big holy war and concentrate on what was said here...it's simple, what he's saying is that people are going to PRETEND to be "Good Christians" to sell their games/web pages/software if this one is a sucess. Nothing about this claims that money shouldn't be in the hands of good Christians. It just says that Christianity will be used to sell, like sex, violence, profanity, etc. And really, ever those first few decades after Christianity was founded isn't that just waht it was? An advertising tool to get people to buy the Powers-that-be's product, Be it obedience, tithes, or whatever. I'm not limiting this to Christianity this pretty much happens to all religions at some point or another. Hence my beleif that only a truely new religion or no religion (my personal choice is to go non-religion) has any validity spiritualy. Morally they may have value, but they have been crushed into spiritual nonentity by the push of governmental powers. Hell, look at Confuscianism, it was invented AS a governmental tool! and thats what i have to say.
This is all so true, my parents are worth over a million dolars. I have to work my ass off in the summer to help pay for college. Yeah thats right, money just ain't worth what it was years ago. I realize how lucky i am to be able to go to college at all, i have to work hard, but if i fail to get that last $250 scholarship it doesn't mean the end for me. Heh, i'm not even going to a very expensive college. The buck just ain't worth waht it was and anyone who has enough that hey don't have to worry should sit down and take a few minutes to realize just how amazingly lucky thay are.
hehe, i have no better suggestions than the ones already mentioned, but i thought I needed to point out the fact that i am yet another of the people who cares more about an annoying hum in audio equipment than a new Transmeta patent...not that the news isn't appreciated, but geeeze! Hums suck!! you have you tried an isolator/surge protector? Panamax makes a unit called the Co-Ax Max that has six outlet surge protection, cable surge protection and noise filtering on all of it, it also has a $0.5 million connected equipment warranty! they're a little expensive, but when lightning strikes you'll be glad you have it!
i was just reminded of my own problems by this article, i have a SUN 3/110 with no mouse and anyone who has an extra sun type three mouse and pad would be generously rewarded...well ok, resonably compensated...if they could help me out by sending it my way...i've tried all the major used hardware and junk houses and no one seems to be able to find a type three mouse for me. I guess it's time to pull out the big guns...and "ask slashdot", well sort of...
Slashdot Mirror
I amend my previous post by pointing to this. Hot damn!
Actualy, This is the most expensive storage device ever...*grin*
It's true I like Sony, the reason? The PS2. I generaly find other Sony consumer hardware to be over-priced and mearly "competive" as opposed to killer. (I'd buy a Fuji digital camera any day, and an LG/Zenith TV before I shelled out 50% more for the Sony equivilent) BUT I bought a PS2 and I'll buy a PS3. It's not just the games, though the success of the PS1 did pave the way for developers to support the PS2 no mater how DIFFICULT it was to program for. The PS2 is NOT personal computer by design, what it is is a small step in the hardware design revolution. Look at how little power a PS2 consumes compaired to a PC with similar computational abilities. Look at how little space the PS2 hardware occupies, and then look at the data bus and architecture used in the PS2. The PS2 with the Linux kit is a perfectly usable, albeit memory limited computer, capable of handling most WEB content with ease, and running the applications that consummers use most often (EG: Word processors, E-mail, Internet, and accounting software).
More and more people are already buying consoles to play games rather than shelling out for a high-end gaming PC. If the CELL architecture can provide not only a killer gaming system, but flexible basic personal computer functionality, then low-end PC's had better watch out! Lets face it, a $400 PC may be more flexible than a PS2, but it's not a WHOLE lot more powerful, and it defiantely isn't a better gameing machine. If Sony-Toshiba-IBM (STI) can shuck the WindowsOS and provide a truly convergent appliance that sells at comodity prices, then Intel/M$ realy should be worried.
I don't think M$ built the XBox JUST to grab a chunck of the not-terribly-lucrative console market, M$ wants to protect itself from the likes of the PS2/PS3 by having a presence in the convergence market before it even hits. I think the one major mistake M$ made was closing the XBox to non-game software. It's hardware is so close to PC-norm that develpment of productivity software to run on the XBox could be as simple as a re-compile.
Sony understands the potential for these 2nd and 3rd generation consoles to perform all the functions of a basic PC and the fact that they are planing on building a CELL-based workstation indicates that the hardware may easily support a "real" end-user OS, now the only question... Linux, AIX, or something else entirely?
Actualy the Tyco product was only about $49.95, and although I wouldn't count on it to survive a two storey drop, I drove a friend's *down* the stairs quite a few times...
Lets see, strap an X-10 camera on it, add a few IR LED's for ilumination, beef up the cheap plastic body with aluminum... I'd say I could build one of these for about $800-1000 USD, typical 150% "toy" mark up, sell 'em at $1600-2200.
my little price estimate reflects a fancy-dancy LiON battery, a little LCD panel for the controller, and a basic stamp for some minor autonomus stuff. Mini motion detectors might be pretty expensive (no knoledge of the subject) but I think this rates as a classic "ten thousand dollar hammer".
Way to spend our tax money, GO USA!
wouldn't be the first time I've been called a clod...though unimaginataive? I'm really more of an *INSENSITIVE* clod. All appologies to the slashdot polls.
seems to me that saturday morning is the perfect time to post this news...anyone who's awake now (like me) obviously has a problem or a sucky job.
Diesel tourque is hard to beat, even with electric tourque. And in city driving 0-25 is an important number...
*disclaimer* I do very little city driving as I live and work in a rural/suburban area.
Yes, I HAVE driven a Prius. maybe it's the ludite in me comming out (I also hate the new BMW 7) but its just a little too gizmo and gimick filled for my taste. I'd almost rather drive a stripped econo-can than have a power switch on the dash... Whatever happened to the hand crank starter damn it?!
Yes, I have driven an '04 Prius and an older Insight (not sure wich year it was really, either '01 or '02 I think) I was favorably impressed by the Insight, but the Prius felt heavy and sluggish to me. I realize that performance is not the FIRST thing many people look for in a car, but a diesel Jetta feels snappier than a Prius. I'm not actually trying to bash hybrids, just point out that there may be other solutions just as valid. Until those other solutions become avaiable hybrids are a step in the right direction. At least people care enough about this topic to argue over it, 4 years ago no one would have bothered, they'd just go out and buy a Yukon XXXXXL.
Adding to my own ramble...
RE: Those mentioning that hybrids are ment to be clean rather than efficient, and efficiency is a by-product of clean running...
A review by Popular Mechanics magazine several years back (I don't remember the issue or I'd tell you which one it was...) found that, at an emissions testing station a '99 Ferrari 550 Maranello (8-12 MPG on super *eek!*) Had one of the LOWEST emissions of any vehicle they had tested. The Maranello qualified for ULEV status! Proof that a well designed engine/emisions system can burn very clean, even if it's economy is somewhat on the *cough* low side.
Hybrids ARE great for city driving, when the maximum power output of the drive line is almost never required. The batteries can happily slog through traffic for quite some time without needing to run the IC engine. However, high speed highway driving, merging, and passing will often require 100% of available drive line power, this is where hybrids fall down.
Running both the engine and the electrics drains the batteries, requiring the engine to continue to run even after 100% power is not required, the engine has to run fairly hard to charge the batteries back up, and of course there is a loss of efficiency in the conversion from mechanical to electric energy. If you drive like grandma, your hybrid *might* reach the claimed highway efficiency, but at the cost of speed, merging and passing.
Just for comparison my 1992 Alfa Romeo 164s has a 220hp fuel-injected 3 litre V6, asside from the BOSCH Motronic 5.1-ML injection, it is a decidedly low-tech engine. Single overhead cams, 12 valves, 60 degree, the valve train and geometry of this engine date from the mid 60s. The 164s weighs 3650 lbs, roughy TWICE what a Honda Insight weighs. The Alfa also features leather interior, kickin' sound system, very good aerodynamics, and a top speed in excess of 155 mph. If I take this beast on long highway drives, I can manage 31 mpg. The reason? Most the time the engine is using only a small fraction of it's possible power output.
When a hybrid, or for that matter, any underpowered vehicle gets out on the highway the conditions often require the drive line to run at maximum output. No mater how lean burning or smart a fuel injection system is, it has to deliver more fuel to produce more power. But if a 3650 lb luxury/sport sedan can get 30+ Mpg why can't an 1800 lb econo car get 60+? The answer is it CAN. And without the added weight, cost and expense of hybrid systems. Hybrids are *a* solution, they are not however in my oppinion the *best* solution.
What we need are high effiency small-ish engines in the 1.2 to 1.8 litre range put into light weight, aerodynamic bodies. The results would be affordable, reasonably fun to drive and just as efficient as hybrids for most American drivers. Those living in cities may want to consider a full electric solution, or *gasp* public transportation (which is, unfortuneately not really up to snuff in most American cities). In addition, a displacement on demand system could improve the efficiency of small cars in city driving as well. Who says only a V8 would bennefit from this technology? A small 4 cyl car could conceivably be set up to idle on only one cylinder at stop lights.
Hybrids may actualy be better suited to high performance applications than high efficiency applications. Witness the Toyota Volta. The Volta is efficient because it rarely uses 100% of it's available power, and since about 50% of that power is provided by electrics, it's IC engine is similar in efficiency to that of a vehicle with 1/2 the total drive-line power of the Volta. The result is a vehicle that rarely taps it's full potential, and operates at maximum efficiency most of the time rather than maximum output.
As an ameture speaker designer I'd be worried about the folded ports forming resonances that my not even be audible due to extreme low frequency, but which are still subconciously iritating. Granted there is usualy no coherent audio souce in a computer, and the ports are small buy audio standards but resistive coupling can produce some odd results just when you don't what it. I agree with others who have said "build silent to start". The Apple G5 design IS pretty damn nifty, but not perfect. As someone who has owned an Apple Beige G3 tower with five auxiliary fans and four 10,000 RPM Seagate drives in the case I KNOW what a bitch a REALLY REALLY loud computer can be. I aplaud all efforts to make computers quieter.
*grin* A perfectly operating large body snorkel with clean seals and flexible bladder will fill to arround 4 ml. That same pen will squirt a perfect stream from the snorkel about 10-15 feet and 4 ml of black ink will realy make that guy wearing a white silk shirt unhappy.
Not only that, but a snorkel in good condition has no air/ink exposure except at the nib. This means ink stays fluid longer, doesn't leak out and flow is controlled entirely by the capilary action of the nib, meaning longer more even writing between re-fills. Only Parker 51's can boast a longer write between re-fill than a snorkel.
Holds an ass load of ink, writes like a dream, and has the coolest and perhaps geekiest damn filler mechanism ever. mid-late 50's pens have always written best for me, though the early sixties pens are also pretty good. The Triumph and Touchdown nibs always seem better than the conventional nibs as well.
Check out a tech brief here.
Snorkels are readily available on e-bay, and for some reason don't seem draw high bids from the colectors. Expect to pay $25-$50 for a good functioning used snorkel, depending on the amount of gold and wear. If you are willing to learn how to fix the suckers (not that hard(pun intended)) you can get them for $10 or less, and often in better aesthetic condition than "working" pens.
Here's a quick and dirty tutorial on repairing snorkels.
enjoy!
Well, I can't speak for the rest of the Vermont State Colleges system, But this semester my friends at Johnson State College have indicated that JSC has put a per-connection bandwidth cap into effect. The cap is a measly and highly annoying 2.5k sec. You can have 100 connections active, but not a single one of them will be allowed to exceed 2.5k. lame. Lab and office computers are not thus limmited, and neither are the public ports arround campus and in the library, but evey dorm room is capped. if you have a Laptop, you can always drag yourself to a public port, but if your computer is stuck in your dorm room the cap is so low that you might as well have a modem. Thats where JSC student's $60 a semester technology fee goes.
Here it is friends, the REAL Red Swingline.
It's a "67 Electric" I Like to claim, that since it's painted in 4 layers of hand-rubbed "Ferrari Red" laquer it's the world's fastest stapler, and with a 40 sheet capacity it sure isn't slow =)
Eat your heart out guys...oh and I beleive that I have my stapler.
JawzX.
Big Red 1
Big Red Close
Some would argue that BEAM type analog robots (invented by Mark Tilden) are not really "fully functioning" but they do exhibit quite a deal of complex behavior and even a rudimentry short term memory due to feed back loops in their simple Nv/Nu transistor networks. Well any-way the point is that thanks to SMT packages and the simplicity of the circuits involved these autonomous little electronic creatures have been nearly this small for years! oh yeah, and usualy solar powered... here's a couple of pictures of robots ive seen...these are all simple photo-tropic ostacle-avoiding devices with tactile and IR sensors... http://www.beam-online.com/Robots/Galleria/Large/o pticPopperFL.JPG
http://www.beam-online.com/Robots/Galleria/Large/T hermoWpenL.JPG
http://www.geocities.com/frankendaddy/Smiley.html
http://www.sierranet.net/~polygon/twitch.html
these aren't even the smallest i've seen, just some of the better sites with pictures.
if you want more infor on how to build your own BEAM type robots, www.beam-online.com is a good place to start looking.
as several others mentioned, the THIRD book is actualy out, Mountain of Black Glass, and it's nice to see that Tad is getting some /. publicity, but it realy is time we were up to date... P.S. you might wana wait till all four books are out before starting the series, or you might end up going insane waiting for the fourth one....they're that good!
GOATS!
Crispy fries..mmmmm -Jawz
If anyhitng MD in on the upswing. All the hype is long over and prices are falling like stones. Sony's new midd-line portable MD recorder is cheaper than a WM-D3 (about USD $280) pro recording walkman. MD may not be quite up to CD quality but it kicks the crap out of casette tape, and adds tittleing and randon access to boot. As for MD as a storage media for data, it;s been done. You can even still get the things. Problem was speed. They used 2x MD drives...an MD holds about 250meg or so, pretty good for it's size, but not mind blowing, and at 2x it took almost 30min to read/write a disk. Not impressive Also MD's develop errors after about 300-500 re-writes, not fabulous for a data media, but well above average for a music media. AS far as i know no one has tried with faster mechanisms since Sony's failed attempts. If you need portable recoding with good quality MD is cheaper, easier to deal with and more affordable than tape.
PS, anyone know where i can get a Hyper-beta pro deck for less than $5000?
Wwll I'm interested, at first i'm tempted to say "yeah another geek-toy portable that i can add to my christamas want-list"...but then i remeber the secrecy surrounding transmeta and have to think..."they wouldn't have all that secrecy for a another WinCE/Palm device...and Linus Torvalds, whats he doing with it?" so now I imagine a linux-oid based open source machine with the power of a PIII that runs on two AAA size batteries for a month and has real-time voice and handwriting recognition. hmmm Voice controlleg GIMP on the beach. Sounds like fun =)
>>The bad news is that if "The War In Heaven" >>sells, expect a slew of Christian (and soon, no >>doubt, Jewish and Muslim) save-the-soul games >>marketed by greedy Web entrepeneurs who want to >>appear wholesome while raking in big money.
>I think he's trying to say that Christians (and >other religous people) shouldn't be rich. I >don't get this viewpoint.
-Oky, Lets forget the big holy war and concentrate on what was said here...it's simple, what he's saying is that people are going to PRETEND to be "Good Christians" to sell their games/web pages/software if this one is a sucess. Nothing about this claims that money shouldn't be in the hands of good Christians. It just says that Christianity will be used to sell, like sex, violence, profanity, etc. And really, ever those first few decades after Christianity was founded isn't that just waht it was? An advertising tool to get people to buy the Powers-that-be's product, Be it obedience, tithes, or whatever.
I'm not limiting this to Christianity this pretty much happens to all religions at some point or another. Hence my beleif that only a truely new religion or no religion (my personal choice is to go non-religion) has any validity spiritualy. Morally they may have value, but they have been crushed into spiritual nonentity by the push of governmental powers. Hell, look at Confuscianism, it was invented AS a governmental tool!
and thats what i have to say.
This is all so true, my parents are worth over a million dolars. I have to work my ass off in the summer to help pay for college. Yeah thats right, money just ain't worth what it was years ago. I realize how lucky i am to be able to go to college at all, i have to work hard, but if i fail to get that last $250 scholarship it doesn't mean the end for me. Heh, i'm not even going to a very expensive college. The buck just ain't worth waht it was and anyone who has enough that hey don't have to worry should sit down and take a few minutes to realize just how amazingly lucky thay are.
hehe, i have no better suggestions than the ones already mentioned, but i thought I needed to point out the fact that i am yet another of the people who cares more about an annoying hum in audio equipment than a new Transmeta patent...not that the news isn't appreciated, but geeeze! Hums suck!! you have you tried an isolator/surge protector? Panamax makes a unit called the Co-Ax Max that has six outlet surge protection, cable surge protection and noise filtering on all of it, it also has a $0.5 million connected equipment warranty! they're a little expensive, but when lightning strikes you'll be glad you have it!
i was just reminded of my own problems by this article, i have a SUN 3/110 with no mouse and anyone who has an extra sun type three mouse and pad would be generously rewarded...well ok, resonably compensated...if they could help me out by sending it my way...i've tried all the major used hardware and junk houses and no one seems to be able to find a type three mouse for me. I guess it's time to pull out the big guns...and "ask slashdot", well sort of...