Anyway, most of us that went through college engineering programs did something similar to this at one time. Whether it was building a computer out of parts or designing and architecture in VHDL and throwing it with some assembly code on an FPGA. It is a good way to learn how architectures really work.
Takes me back to my junior-year comp-sci class back in the mid-80's -- we built the StuPIDD 4 (Student Project In Digital Design) -- a very speedy (well, it ran as fast as your thumb could push the clock/plunger) 4 bit computer, on a giant breadboard and wire-wrapped stuff everywhere. It was an interesting experience, but I'm glad to make my living coding, rather than with hardware!
Another day in the office, which, according to one recent study, consists of handling 46 phone calls, 25 emails, 16 voicemails, 23 items of post, eight inter-office memos, 16 faxes and nine mobile phone calls.
The article wasn't really clear on this -- are we supposed to believe EACH employee is getting that much crap to deal with and respond to? Or, if that's spread out amongs the "100 to 499 staff", then it doesn't sound like much at all...
Most of the brightest students I have are actually 30-40+. Granted, this isn't always the case, but the tendancy is that the older individuals actually *want* to learn.
I dunno, I think you're just seeing that:
A) The younger students are partying like they are eighteen.
and
B) The older students are behaving like they are married with mortgages and children.
I don't think this is necessarily true. As the article points out, setting it up on a few servers would be sufficient to get things started provided those few servers were the right ones. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which servers they should be.
Hmmm, the BIG isp's with thousands of users, who would be hard-pressed to provide the horse-power for such a system in the first place?
There appears to be actual consumer-protective teeth in these bills which mirror the telephone 'do not call' lists.
I dunno, as the article states:
"It's not easy for consumers to sue spammers in small claims court," said Catlett. "The burden's on the recipient to show harm, and the economic hardship on single individuals tends to be small."
Oddly, the Democrats seem (in the limited sample set I've seen) to be the big users of spam and telemarketing. Either the Republicans are, as usual, slow in comprehending technology, or the Democrats are, as usual, quick to claim the time and resources of others.
I'm convinced it's the other way around -- last fall, I got phone-spammed MERCILESSLY by the various republican campaigns and interest groups,
despite my best efforts to tell them to QUIT FSCKING CALLING.
Talking with other people, leads me to believe it all boils down to your neighborhood demographics, as to which party thinks it would be most fruitful to call you up and remind you to vote.
Thanks for the reply! I wasn't aware that the device made a persistent connection -- seems rather unusual. This would definitely be cheaper than my current long distance bill...
Actually it IS that simple with newer VoIP offerings. Simply plug into your ethernet connection and connect your analog phone(s) and you are done. you keep you phone number and to end user there is NO difference, just some added features.
Uhmmmm, what if you've already got a NAT'd LAN? Presumably, for anyone to be able to ring your VoIP phone, you'd need to be forwarding a port or two, right? Does it then become a "server" which tends to be frowned upon by most ISP's? And what about the poor bastages who can get DSL/Cable, but the only get private IP addresses from their ISP? Seems to me like it can't possibly be totally idiot-proof...
I'd have to agree with most of what's said there. But the one thing that I HATE about Opera7, is the MDI mode. I've tried every dialog/menu-option I can find, but nothing seems to let me get seperate windows (ie, everything is a subwindow in a single instance of a main Opera window). Am I just missing something? Opera6 was much better, imho.
I guess the one question that hit me first, was who is going to buy these?
Well, I might... My wife's folks have just retired (and become Wisconsin/Florida snowbirds), and have finally expressed an interest in getting a computer. Something nice and small like this would be a snap to carry back and forth. Although, at this $1000 price, I think a laptop would make more sense.
I'm posting this on a 30+ mile wireless link. 802.11 has more range than many people think, given line of sight and good antennas.
Details! I want details! (ie, how'd you set it up, what kind of bandwidth & latency do you get, what's the surrounding terrain like, how does it hold up in the rain/snow/wind).
Anyone know why the article doesn't mention anything about SIV (Simian "IV" instead of Human "IV). From what I've read in the past, they are remarkably similar...
Potashner, who also received a $261,232 loan in December 1999 to purchase RioPort stock, said the board members voted last December to make their loans ``non-recourse,'' an accounting term that meant the directors would not be personally liable if they failed to pay.
How do I get one of these loans? Sounds an awful lot like free money...
You can do this too, just make sure you send an HTML mail. But... I get "medieval" (or is it m3d13v4l) on llamas who send me html emails! (go ahead, groan all you like)
When my kid had a broken arm in the 80s -- a crappy greenstick fracture I could have set myself -- the total bill was well over $1000. I have no idea how much a doc would charge today for reducing and casting a simple fracture, but I bet it would be huge.
The bills are so high now, because they need to offset the lowball payments that the HMO's give them. I just had a visit to the ER two months ago, and got a notice in the mail from BlueCross that the hospital bill for that day (had an EKG, CT scan, and an MRI) was over $5,000, though they only paid $1,200. Subsequent tests over the next few weeks were paid at even lesser rates (than the 20% from the ER visit).
What won't happen is that linux users will buy this machine and pop in a mandrake or debian cd. The reason is that linux users generally spend more money on their hardware and are unlikely to want a low budget PC.
Actually, I don't think the MicroTel boxes are that bad. My $399 box that I just bought 3 weeks ago came with decent enough parts (Duron 1.3GHz cpu, MicroStar mobo, 40 gb disk...), and it's been running as my FreeBSD server. I wouldn't want to try and play Quake on it, but it makes a VERY nice replacement for my old celeron 333 box.
Even given that you store source code for libjpeg and libpng, do you really trust your family's history to the idea that C, for example, will still be readable in 2102? What about the Compact Disc format itself?
Formats change of course, and data-files will need to be migrated from time to time to new media formats. As for the file formats, I suspect that there will be people around who are capable of translating C to whatever other language is popular at that time.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, most of us that went through college engineering programs did something similar to this at one time. Whether it was building a computer out of parts or designing and architecture in VHDL and throwing it with some assembly code on an FPGA. It is a good way to learn how architectures really work.
Takes me back to my junior-year comp-sci class back in the mid-80's -- we built the StuPIDD 4 (Student Project In Digital Design) -- a very speedy (well, it ran as fast as your thumb could push the clock/plunger) 4 bit computer, on a giant breadboard and wire-wrapped stuff everywhere. It was an interesting experience, but I'm glad to make my living coding, rather than with hardware!
Another day in the office, which, according to one recent study, consists of handling 46 phone calls, 25 emails, 16 voicemails, 23 items of post, eight inter-office memos, 16 faxes and nine mobile phone calls.
The article wasn't really clear on this -- are we supposed to believe EACH employee is getting that much crap to deal with and respond to? Or, if that's spread out amongs the "100 to 499 staff", then it doesn't sound like much at all...
Most of the brightest students I have are actually 30-40+. Granted, this isn't always the case, but the tendancy is that the older individuals actually *want* to learn.
I dunno, I think you're just seeing that:
A) The younger students are partying like they are eighteen.
and
B) The older students are behaving like they are married with mortgages and children.
> Remember the latest Microsoft vulnerability?
;-)
You mean the <input type crash> one?
Not a very informative article, tho!
Wow, that is incredible. 16% VAT? Because the new computer could *possibly* be used for copyright violations? What a crock...
Hmmm, the BIG isp's with thousands of users, who would be hard-pressed to provide the horse-power for such a system in the first place?
If light is traveling more slowly than it has in the past, wouldn't that look an awful lot like the universe's expansion was accelerating?
I dunno, as the article states:
I'm convinced it's the other way around -- last fall, I got phone-spammed MERCILESSLY by the various republican campaigns and interest groups, despite my best efforts to tell them to QUIT FSCKING CALLING. Talking with other people, leads me to believe it all boils down to your neighborhood demographics, as to which party thinks it would be most fruitful to call you up and remind you to vote.
Heh, looks like it took out a big portion of Bank of America's ATM (cash) machines!
Link
I can't believe that BoA has their ATM's on the internet -- anyone know more about how it got to their ATM network?
Heh, looks like it took out a big portion of Bank of America's ATM (cash) machines! Link
Thanks for the reply! I wasn't aware that the device made a persistent connection -- seems rather unusual. This would definitely be cheaper than my current long distance bill...
Actually it IS that simple with newer VoIP offerings. Simply plug into your ethernet connection and connect your analog phone(s) and you are done. you keep you phone number and to end user there is NO difference, just some added features.
Uhmmmm, what if you've already got a NAT'd LAN? Presumably, for anyone to be able to ring your VoIP phone, you'd need to be forwarding a port or two, right? Does it then become a "server" which tends to be frowned upon by most ISP's? And what about the poor bastages who can get DSL/Cable, but the only get private IP addresses from their ISP? Seems to me like it can't possibly be totally idiot-proof...
I'd have to agree with most of what's said there. But the one thing that I HATE about Opera7, is the MDI mode. I've tried every dialog/menu-option I can find, but nothing seems to let me get seperate windows (ie, everything is a subwindow in a single instance of a main Opera window). Am I just missing something? Opera6 was much better, imho.
I guess the one question that hit me first, was who is going to buy these?
Well, I might... My wife's folks have just retired (and become Wisconsin/Florida snowbirds), and have finally expressed an interest in getting a computer. Something nice and small like this would be a snap to carry back and forth. Although, at this $1000 price, I think a laptop would make more sense.
I'm posting this on a 30+ mile wireless link. 802.11 has more range than many people think, given line of sight and good antennas.
Details! I want details! (ie, how'd you set it up, what kind of bandwidth & latency do you get, what's the surrounding terrain like, how does it hold up in the rain/snow/wind).
Anandtech has a review and TechReport as well .
Anyone know why the article doesn't mention anything about SIV (Simian "IV" instead of Human
"IV). From what I've read in the past, they are remarkably similar...
Information-poor? Sure it was a long read, but I found it very informative. It ought to be required-reading for all US federal officials.
Potashner, who also received a $261,232 loan in December 1999 to purchase RioPort stock, said the board members voted last December to make their loans ``non-recourse,'' an accounting term that meant the directors would not be personally liable if they failed to pay.
How do I get one of these loans? Sounds an awful lot like free money...
You can do this too, just make sure you send an HTML mail.
But... I get "medieval" (or is it m3d13v4l) on llamas who send me html emails! (go ahead, groan all you like)
When my kid had a broken arm in the 80s -- a crappy greenstick fracture I could have set myself -- the total bill was well over $1000. I have no idea how much a doc would charge today for reducing and casting a simple fracture, but I bet it would be huge.
The bills are so high now, because they need to offset the lowball payments that the HMO's give them. I just had a visit to the ER two months ago, and got a notice in the mail from BlueCross that the hospital bill for that day (had an EKG, CT scan, and an MRI) was over $5,000, though they only paid $1,200. Subsequent tests over the next few weeks were paid at even lesser rates (than the 20% from the ER visit).
What won't happen is that linux users will buy this machine and pop in a mandrake or debian cd. The reason is that linux users generally spend more money on their hardware and are unlikely to want a low budget PC.
Actually, I don't think the MicroTel boxes are that bad. My $399 box that I just bought 3 weeks ago came with decent enough parts (Duron 1.3GHz cpu, MicroStar mobo, 40 gb disk...), and it's been running as my FreeBSD server. I wouldn't want to try and play Quake on it, but it makes a VERY nice replacement for my old celeron 333 box.
Even given that you store source code for libjpeg and libpng, do you really trust your family's history to the idea that C, for example, will still be readable in 2102? What about the Compact Disc format itself?
Formats change of course, and data-files will need to be migrated from time to time to new media formats. As for the file formats, I suspect that there will be people around who are capable of translating C to whatever other language is popular at that time.