When Doom was all the rage, I enjoyed playing it, but always ended up getting motion sick. I always figured it had something to do with the wall textures and the way their motion was so apparent (like looking sideways out of the car window). As a result, I haven't had any interest in games like Quake...why play a game that makes you feel awful?
Anyway, it's nice to know that others out there have the same problem.
Well, just putting the structured cabling in the house isn't particularly newsworthy. And a house having structured cabling isn't going to make that much of a difference at resale...it's quick and cheap for alarm companies to wire a house, and adding data cable isn't much different.
The news part of this is the fact that builders are fronting the money for the infrastructure to the house, and actually acting as a service provider.
And if you watch shows like "This Old House", nearly all of the recent jobs have included CAT5 lines throughout, as well as open conduit for future use.
Minidiscs use SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) to prevent direct digital copies. There are a number of devices that will strip the SCMS info from the bitstream, plus pro-grade MD players/recorders can be set to ignore the SCMS data.
The record labels have been fighting tooth and nail to add things like SCMS to every new technology that comes out. They even managed to get an extra charge attached to blank DAT media to compensate the labels for their predicted losses to pirating.
And attempted suits over enabling copyright infringement have a long history. Universal and Disney sued Sony in 1976 because the Betamax allowed people to tape TV broadcasts. Take a look at http://www.hrrc.org/history.html for more details.
Re:the copying vs copyright clause
on
At The Crossroads
·
· Score: 2
When the printing press was invented, no longer did some monk have to write out the bible word by word in shorthand... you could crank out hundreds of them in a week.
There is an interesting analogy to look at here. Once the printing press made Bibles widely available to the masses, it was the beginning of the end for the absolute power of the Catholic Church. The people could now read their own Bibles, and make their own interpretations, and tell the Church to piss off. Martin Luther wrote his theses, and the Protestant movement was born.
Today, a free net presents a threat to government abuses and the power wielded by the media and corporations. While these groups always continue to have uninformed consumers who continue to look to them for pre-digested 'content' (think AOL Time Warner and how many people use them as their ISP), they don't want anything to undermine their power. So their corporate lawyers will lash out at any perceived threat, using the fuzzy IP laws as their basis. Few are able to outspend the corporations in court, so the corporation ends up on top.
Sprint has been great for me. The free long distance aspect pretty much pays for the cost of the service. Their roaming costs while on other networks are very straightforward. Also, I've found their customer service to be excellent.
I haven't tried using any of their wireless web services yet.
First off, I want to say that I've been a fan of Metallica for a number of years...I have several of the "old" albums on vinyl, and 'Master' was the first CD I ever bought. I haven't bought any Metallica discs since the black album, since I simply don't care for the "new" sound as much and the lyrics don't carry the same weight as the older stuff.
One of the things I've always respected about Metallica is the energy they put into their live shows, and the apparent sincerity when thanking their fans for coming. The attacks against Napster seem to be a complete reversal of this fan-friendly nature.
The "art vs. commodity" issue has been brought up a lot, but I have to ask this: Isn't the nature of art that it's the artist's creative expression? How widely the art is spread, or how much money is or isn't paid for it does not diminish the art itself. The fact that you can buy cheap posters nearly anywhere of Salvador Dali's work doesn't invalidate his work. The ultimate gratification for the artist should be that people enjoy and appreciate their work, not making their record label and manager a lot of money.
Because the broadcasters only decided digital TV was good when they lobbied the FCC enough to let the broadcasters decide if they wanted to use all of their bandwidth for digital TV or not.
The incumbent licensees were automatically assigned the HDTV bandwidth, because the FCC wanted to move to HDTV and reallocate the existing VHF spectrum. No quarrel there.
But the broadcasters immediately decided they wanted to use their allocated bandwidth for anything they wanted...so they could send a lower quality TV feed (than full HDTV), and add subscription based services to bring in more revenue. _That's_ the part that's annoying. The incumbent broadcaster can now pursue other money-making ventures not associated with "serving the public interest", as their broadcast license requires, without paying for that bandwidth like everyone else has to.
I kind of sit on the fence on this issue. Some of my thoughts:
Many tout computers as the magic pill that will cure all ills of the public schools. Some of these (such as IBM and Toshiba, as mentioned) have a strong financial incentive to promote this idea. But if we have difficulty finding enough teachers that are even competent to teach the "basics", imagine how hard it will be to find and retain people who can actually generate useful computer-based instruction. Remember all the teachers you had who had to have a student get the VCR working? A wholesale revamping of the educational system would be required.
What about support people? It appears to be a rarity among school districts that they actually have enough and/or competent technical people on staff. The tech staff would have to be beefed up greatly to deal with this. From that standpoint, it would be best to have the systems locked down as much as possible to prevent the student hosing the system.
What is the appropriate age level for this? Grade schoolers should probably be content to play with LOGO on an Apple II, and maybe some interactive educational games. Even all the way up to high school, I'm hesistant to endorse the personal laptop even all the way through high school. Remember that through high school, the kids are forced to be there. Those kids who don't care in the first place aren't going to suddenly become interested in school because they're provided a laptop. Once you're in college, I think the laptop becomes useful.
Realize I'm not trying to be a Luddite here. I certainly think that kids should be exposed to technology. I simply feel that it should be age-appropriate, that the people "teaching" the technology have a clue, and that the students are also properly grounded in "traditional" studies...putting together a multimedia report with information you found on the web is fine, but you still need to know how to produce a written paper and use other information resources.
And the various "radical" factions know that school boards are the best way to get your foot in the door of politics. The "religious right" has been using school board positions as a stepping stone for some time now.
However, in places like Oklahoma, you have a textbook committee, which is appointed by the governer, approving what books schools can spend state money on. The Attorney General ended up telling them they didn't have the authority to require an evolution disclaimer. But now an elected official is pushing a bill requiring creationism to be taught. Even if you can stop some insanity at the school board level, there are still plenty of people higher up the food chain who will promote their cause.
Cluetrain gives us another reason to be scared of the media establishment, and of Washington.
Indeed. The idea of the marketplace returning to a conversation is wonderful. But when we see the power that the MPAA is able to wield against DeCSS, and Mattel against those who have exposed their filtering software problems, you have to wonder if the conversation won't be muted.
DeCSS, Mattel, and other recent issues haven't fully played out, so we can't yet say who will win.
Let's say that every/. reader grabbed a copy of DeCSS. If the MPAA is able to keep getting court orders to have it removed from whatever web site it pops up at, they've still won. How? Simple. The masses of people out there will never know anything about it except what they are force-fed by the mass media. DeCSS would survive in the geek underground, but it would no longer be able to pose any sort of threat to the MPAA.
If the marketplace is truly going to change as suggested by the manifesto, many more people are going to have to participate in the conversation. Getting on-line through AOL and shopping on-line at Wal-Mart does not make you a part of the conversation....you're still just a consumer being led around by advertising...and there's a lot of people out there like that.
Look at the trademark database. MS has registered the word "Windows" for use in a number of ways relating to computers. So it's actually Microsoft(R) Windows(R).
I used to work for a company that made handheld GPS systems. Our advertising originally called our programmable split view screen a "windows" feature. MS sent a nastygram, and it was no longer called that...
Not only was it interesting to once again hear his pronunciation, but it was fun to see his clothing...
Other than the clothing, some of the computer graphics, etc., it was amazing how well this has held up over 20 years. Carl was talking about the amazing possibilities and responsibilities that would arise when we decoded the human genome...which is where we are today.
I was a little kid when this series first aired on PBS, and it was great to see those highlights again. It made me realize just how much I learned and was influenced by this series.
And watching the highlights now, it's interesting to hear how much Pink Floyd was used for music....
Yep. I started with Slackware too. On a 386 Microchannel PS/2. With an ESDI drive. What a monstrous beast. But it still works, although when it's been powered down for a while I have to pull out the hard drive and smack it against a table a few times to get it to spin up...:)
Not that anyone cares, but it happens to be my birthday too....I haven't done nearly as much for the world in 26 years as Linux has done in 8, but then the hackers of the world haven't been actively contributing to make a better me....
Not too many people may know this off the top of their heads, but today is also the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Interesting in that neither the Linux kernel nor the Constitution were perfect, but both laid the groundwork for freedom (not free beer) and individual power. (Yeah, I know, the GPL is probably a better analogue to the U.S. Constitution, but to my knowledge, they don't share any milestone dates.)
Those are called radomes. Their main purpose is to provide some amount of weather protection for the connection between the antenna element and the transmission line, and to prevent ice buildup on the antenna itself. Ice buildup leads to power being reflected back into the transmitter, meaning less power is radiated. If the reflections are sufficient, they can fry a transmitter, although most modern xmitters have built-in VSWR protection, which automatically decreases their power output to a safe level.
Snow or rain attenuation won't be improved by a radome, since that is an issue of the snow or rain currently in the air between the transmit and receive antennas. To eliminate that, you'd have to have big tube connecting the two antennas, and then you've suddenly gone from wireless to a coaxial cable connection...:)
Being a former employee of a major GPS manufacturer (I won't say which one...just that I got laid off because they were seriously in debt), I can tell you that the GPS design community is well aware of the week rollover problem. The problem isn't inherent in the GPS system itself, but rather in the specific units. The ground segment has the responsibility for handling local time....it doesn't really matter to the computation of satellite position. Some early units simply don't account for the rollover, so it's going to take them a while to figure out where they are.
Thanks for pointing out that site. Great information there. Living in the middle of the Bible Belt, there is nearly constant debate on evolution going on. This site does a great job of showing the creationists' claims as the pseudo-science they really are.
Oh...and for those who continually go on about evolution being "only a theory".....a theory is merely the best explanation we have for a process or event. "Best" meaning it has the most evidence to support it. So while we're discarding things that are "just theories", let's get rid of the theory of relativity, which was used as basis for nuclear fission and fusion by humans (including bombs and reactors). Similary, let's not forget "atomic theory", which states that all matter is made of atoms, which contain electrons and other particles....let's see...all of chemistry is based on this, along with a great deal of physics, electromagnetics, etc.
Thanks for pointing out that site. Great information there. Living in the middle of the Bible Belt, there is nearly constant debate on evolution going on. This site does a great job of showing the creationists' claims as the pseudo-science they really are. Oh...and for those who continually go on about evolution being "only a theory".....a theory is merely the best explanation we have for a process or event. "Best" meaning it has the most evidence to support it. So while we're discarding things that are "just theories", let's get rid of the theory of relativity, which was used as basis for nuclear fission and fusion by humans (including bombs and reactors). Similary, let's not forget "atomic theory", which states that all matter is made of atoms, which contain electrons and other particles....let's see...all of chemistry is based on this, along with a great deal of physics, electromagnetics, etc.
I tried for almost 4 months to donate stuff. No one wanted any of it. They only wanted cutting edge
I spend my time working with a local animal shelter group. I just love it when people drop off a 286 to donate. Unfortunately, when individuals are wanting to donate a computer, it's usually too old for our needs. Fortunately a couple of companies that were doing some spring cleaning had loads of 486 class stuff they either wanted us to take or they were going to dumpster it....I took it all of course...
Obviously you don't want to spend all your time trying to find someone to take this equipment, but I'd recommend you contact a few non-profits in your area and ask if they can use it. Also check with any local computer user groups. I know the one here spends one Saturday a month rebuilding donated systems for use by a boys' ranch.
If you do find a group that is willing to take the systems, be sure to ask them if they have someone around who is going to take care of them...flat out tell them that you will not be able to provide them any support, or else they'll be calling you for every problem they have.
Oh yes, they do spam you every day with their newsletter. Every day is a sale day, so make sure you don't rush in to buying anything. I've purchased over $200 worth of stuff from them in the past year, and am fairly happy. Customer service sucks big time, so hope nothing goes wrong.
Yeah...after reading an article in Linux Journal about using the X10 290(?) controller, I did some poking around their web site. Found the ActiveHome kit which was a much better price. E-mailed them to see if the controller boxes were compatible from the PC end. Never got an answer, just the daily e-mail specials. And the "one day only" deal is BS...I've been getting mail about the Firecracker deal for like a week now.
So, their attitude about handling inquires kind of hacks me off.
Your friend's homemade PC wouldn't qualify...you had to be able to provide the original invoice, warranty certificate, or something to prove the date of purchase. The documentation requirement narrows down the eligibility quite a bit.
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When Doom was all the rage, I enjoyed playing it, but always ended up getting motion sick. I always figured it had something to do with the wall textures and the way their motion was so apparent (like looking sideways out of the car window). As a result, I haven't had any interest in games like Quake...why play a game that makes you feel awful?
Anyway, it's nice to know that others out there have the same problem.
Well, just putting the structured cabling in the house isn't particularly newsworthy. And a house having structured cabling isn't going to make that much of a difference at resale...it's quick and cheap for alarm companies to wire a house, and adding data cable isn't much different.
The news part of this is the fact that builders are fronting the money for the infrastructure to the house, and actually acting as a service provider.
And if you watch shows like "This Old House", nearly all of the recent jobs have included CAT5 lines throughout, as well as open conduit for future use.
Minidiscs use SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) to prevent direct digital copies. There are a number of devices that will strip the SCMS info from the bitstream, plus pro-grade MD players/recorders can be set to ignore the SCMS data.
The record labels have been fighting tooth and nail to add things like SCMS to every new technology that comes out. They even managed to get an extra charge attached to blank DAT media to compensate the labels for their predicted losses to pirating.
And attempted suits over enabling copyright infringement have a long history. Universal and Disney sued Sony in 1976 because the Betamax allowed people to tape TV broadcasts. Take a look at http://www.hrrc.org/history.html for more details.
When the printing press was invented, no longer did some monk have to write out the bible word by word in shorthand... you could crank out hundreds of them in a week.
There is an interesting analogy to look at here. Once the printing press made Bibles widely available to the masses, it was the beginning of the end for the absolute power of the Catholic Church. The people could now read their own Bibles, and make their own interpretations, and tell the Church to piss off. Martin Luther wrote his theses, and the Protestant movement was born.
Today, a free net presents a threat to government abuses and the power wielded by the media and corporations. While these groups always continue to have uninformed consumers who continue to look to them for pre-digested 'content' (think AOL Time Warner and how many people use them as their ISP), they don't want anything to undermine their power. So their corporate lawyers will lash out at any perceived threat, using the fuzzy IP laws as their basis. Few are able to outspend the corporations in court, so the corporation ends up on top.
Sprint has been great for me. The free long distance aspect pretty much pays for the cost of the service. Their roaming costs while on other networks are very straightforward. Also, I've found their customer service to be excellent.
I haven't tried using any of their wireless web services yet.
First off, I want to say that I've been a fan of Metallica for a number of years...I have several of the "old" albums on vinyl, and 'Master' was the first CD I ever bought. I haven't bought any Metallica discs since the black album, since I simply don't care for the "new" sound as much and the lyrics don't carry the same weight as the older stuff.
One of the things I've always respected about Metallica is the energy they put into their live shows, and the apparent sincerity when thanking their fans for coming. The attacks against Napster seem to be a complete reversal of this fan-friendly nature.
The "art vs. commodity" issue has been brought up a lot, but I have to ask this: Isn't the nature of art that it's the artist's creative expression? How widely the art is spread, or how much money is or isn't paid for it does not diminish the art itself. The fact that you can buy cheap posters nearly anywhere of Salvador Dali's work doesn't invalidate his work. The ultimate gratification for the artist should be that people enjoy and appreciate their work, not making their record label and manager a lot of money.
Because the broadcasters only decided digital TV was good when they lobbied the FCC enough to let the broadcasters decide if they wanted to use all of their bandwidth for digital TV or not.
The incumbent licensees were automatically assigned the HDTV bandwidth, because the FCC wanted to move to HDTV and reallocate the existing VHF spectrum. No quarrel there.
But the broadcasters immediately decided they wanted to use their allocated bandwidth for anything they wanted...so they could send a lower quality TV feed (than full HDTV), and add subscription based services to bring in more revenue. _That's_ the part that's annoying. The incumbent broadcaster can now pursue other money-making ventures not associated with "serving the public interest", as their broadcast license requires, without paying for that bandwidth like everyone else has to.
- Many tout computers as the magic pill that will cure all ills of the public schools. Some of these (such as IBM and Toshiba, as mentioned) have a strong financial incentive to promote this idea. But if we have difficulty finding enough teachers that are even competent to teach the "basics", imagine how hard it will be to find and retain people who can actually generate useful computer-based instruction. Remember all the teachers you had who had to have a student get the VCR working? A wholesale revamping of the educational system would be required.
- What about support people? It appears to be a rarity among school districts that they actually have enough and/or competent technical people on staff. The tech staff would have to be beefed up greatly to deal with this. From that standpoint, it would be best to have the systems locked down as much as possible to prevent the student hosing the system.
- What is the appropriate age level for this? Grade schoolers should probably be content to play with LOGO on an Apple II, and maybe some interactive educational games. Even all the way up to high school, I'm hesistant to endorse the personal laptop even all the way through high school. Remember that through high school, the kids are forced to be there. Those kids who don't care in the first place aren't going to suddenly become interested in school because they're provided a laptop. Once you're in college, I think the laptop becomes useful.
Realize I'm not trying to be a Luddite here. I certainly think that kids should be exposed to technology. I simply feel that it should be age-appropriate, that the people "teaching" the technology have a clue, and that the students are also properly grounded in "traditional" studies...putting together a multimedia report with information you found on the web is fine, but you still need to know how to produce a written paper and use other information resources.And the various "radical" factions know that school boards are the best way to get your foot in the door of politics. The "religious right" has been using school board positions as a stepping stone for some time now.
However, in places like Oklahoma, you have a textbook committee, which is appointed by the governer, approving what books schools can spend state money on. The Attorney General ended up telling them they didn't have the authority to require an evolution disclaimer. But now an elected official is pushing a bill requiring creationism to be taught. Even if you can stop some insanity at the school board level, there are still plenty of people higher up the food chain who will promote their cause.
In addition to Home Depot, don't forget to sue the pipe manufacturer and the company that mined the lead.
Of course, I doubt you can find a lead pipe at Home Depot....would more likely be galvanized steel.
But don't think it's too far-fetched. Remember that a number of cities are suing gun manufacturers.....
Indeed. The idea of the marketplace returning to a conversation is wonderful. But when we see the power that the MPAA is able to wield against DeCSS, and Mattel against those who have exposed their filtering software problems, you have to wonder if the conversation won't be muted.
DeCSS, Mattel, and other recent issues haven't fully played out, so we can't yet say who will win.
Let's say that every /. reader grabbed a copy of DeCSS. If the MPAA is able to keep getting court orders to have it removed from whatever web site it pops up at, they've still won. How? Simple. The masses of people out there will never know anything about it except what they are force-fed by the mass media. DeCSS would survive in the geek underground, but it would no longer be able to pose any sort of threat to the MPAA.
If the marketplace is truly going to change as suggested by the manifesto, many more people are going to have to participate in the conversation. Getting on-line through AOL and shopping on-line at Wal-Mart does not make you a part of the conversation....you're still just a consumer being led around by advertising...and there's a lot of people out there like that.
Look at the trademark database. MS has registered the word "Windows" for use in a number of ways relating to computers. So it's actually Microsoft(R) Windows(R).
I used to work for a company that made handheld GPS systems. Our advertising originally called our programmable split view screen a "windows" feature. MS sent a nastygram, and it was no longer called that...
Not only was it interesting to once again hear his pronunciation, but it was fun to see his clothing...
Other than the clothing, some of the computer graphics, etc., it was amazing how well this has held up over 20 years. Carl was talking about the amazing possibilities and responsibilities that would arise when we decoded the human genome...which is where we are today.
I was a little kid when this series first aired on PBS, and it was great to see those highlights again. It made me realize just how much I learned and was influenced by this series.
And watching the highlights now, it's interesting to hear how much Pink Floyd was used for music....
Yep. I started with Slackware too. On a 386 Microchannel PS/2. With an ESDI drive. What a monstrous beast. But it still works, although when it's been powered down for a while I have to pull out the hard drive and smack it against a table a few times to get it to spin up... :)
Not that anyone cares, but it happens to be my birthday too....I haven't done nearly as much for the world in 26 years as Linux has done in 8, but then the hackers of the world haven't been actively contributing to make a better me....
Not too many people may know this off the top of their heads, but today is also the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Interesting in that neither the Linux kernel nor the Constitution were perfect, but both laid the groundwork for freedom (not free beer) and individual power. (Yeah, I know, the GPL is probably a better analogue to the U.S. Constitution, but to my knowledge, they don't share any milestone dates.)
Snow or rain attenuation won't be improved by a radome, since that is an issue of the snow or rain currently in the air between the transmit and receive antennas. To eliminate that, you'd have to have big tube connecting the two antennas, and then you've suddenly gone from wireless to a coaxial cable connection... :)
Two good links about this:
http://joe.mehaffey.com/y2000dat.htm
http://joe.mehaffey.com/y2k-sv.txt
Thanks for pointing out that site. Great information there. Living in the middle of the Bible Belt, there is nearly constant debate on evolution going on. This site does a great job of showing the creationists' claims as the pseudo-science they really are.
Oh...and for those who continually go on about evolution being "only a theory".....a theory is merely the best explanation we have for a process or event. "Best" meaning it has the most evidence to support it. So while we're discarding things that are "just theories", let's get rid of the theory of relativity, which was used as basis for nuclear fission and fusion by humans (including bombs and reactors). Similary, let's not forget "atomic theory", which states that all matter is made of atoms, which contain electrons and other particles....let's see...all of chemistry is based on this, along with a great deal of physics, electromagnetics, etc.
Thanks for pointing out that site. Great information there. Living in the middle of the Bible Belt, there is nearly constant debate on evolution going on. This site does a great job of showing the creationists' claims as the pseudo-science they really are. Oh...and for those who continually go on about evolution being "only a theory".....a theory is merely the best explanation we have for a process or event. "Best" meaning it has the most evidence to support it. So while we're discarding things that are "just theories", let's get rid of the theory of relativity, which was used as basis for nuclear fission and fusion by humans (including bombs and reactors). Similary, let's not forget "atomic theory", which states that all matter is made of atoms, which contain electrons and other particles....let's see...all of chemistry is based on this, along with a great deal of physics, electromagnetics, etc.
I spend my time working with a local animal shelter group. I just love it when people drop off a 286 to donate. Unfortunately, when individuals are wanting to donate a computer, it's usually too old for our needs. Fortunately a couple of companies that were doing some spring cleaning had loads of 486 class stuff they either wanted us to take or they were going to dumpster it....I took it all of course...
Obviously you don't want to spend all your time trying to find someone to take this equipment, but I'd recommend you contact a few non-profits in your area and ask if they can use it. Also check with any local computer user groups. I know the one here spends one Saturday a month rebuilding donated systems for use by a boys' ranch.
If you do find a group that is willing to take the systems, be sure to ask them if they have someone around who is going to take care of them...flat out tell them that you will not be able to provide them any support, or else they'll be calling you for every problem they have.
Yeah...after reading an article in Linux Journal about using the X10 290(?) controller, I did some poking around their web site. Found the ActiveHome kit which was a much better price. E-mailed them to see if the controller boxes were compatible from the PC end. Never got an answer, just the daily e-mail specials. And the "one day only" deal is BS...I've been getting mail about the Firecracker deal for like a week now.
So, their attitude about handling inquires kind of hacks me off.
Your friend's homemade PC wouldn't qualify...you had to be able to provide the original invoice, warranty certificate, or something to prove the date of purchase. The documentation requirement narrows down the eligibility quite a bit.