Yes, they were. They renamed themselves in order to escape the PC/home computer brand image they had built for themselves. This became a liability when the NES and Sega console systems were introduced and the personal computer games market crashed.
Presumably he meant audio, video codecs and graphics accelerator device drivers, which are not needed for a server, but would be useful for a corporate desktop with video-conferencing, software voice-mail and web-based 3D visualisation tools.
Back in the early days of long range missile defence programs, the full moon rising over the horizon was known to create a false signal, as the radar systems were powerful enough to send and receive a signal reflected off the moon.
British Telecom have the same attitude with DSL - they wouldn't provide broadband to areas served by a particular exchange, unless either a good percentage of customers registered for service, or there was another competitor already present (ie cable/electricity company).
Then they would install the necessary hardware (new racks for System X, broadband to Internet router).
I have a feeling that his statement will somebody become a famous quote, like these:
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment, 1977
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
Alice Kahn
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Putt's Law
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman
That could be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.
Good point - what experience do the Public Utilities Commission in supervising maintainance of critical services such as water, electricity, gas and sewerage?
My Computer Science/Mathematics department has a rule that only the TI-84/85/86 calculator is permitted for exams. There are fears that people could cheat by getting a different calculator and storing all their course notes onto that device.
Of course, if someone were intent on cheating, they would figure out a way of making a wireless device that looked just like one of these calculators, and access the web that way.
How does this work? Are they somehow able to emit light waves going out at every point from a flat surface, so that you see a 3D object with correct perspective no matter which direction you look at it from? I guess that isn't that unrealistic; I mean, mirrors do exactly that. But how does it work?
Take a standard 1600x1200 display, place a microlense over each pixel so that the light is only visible from one of sixteen directions (imagine 16 point distributed over a hemisphere). Now wherever a person stands, each eye will only see a particular image.
Middleware software is used to convert existing images to work with this system. A 3D application would have to render 12-16 different views of the scene for this to work.
Yes, there is. But the article is describing a 24" flatbed display system that would sit on your desk or lap and is viewable from all directions within +/-30 degrees from perpendicular and distances over 30 cm. Apparently, the rendering software generates 12 to 16 different stereoscopic images which are combined to generate the different views for each eye. However, the resolution is rather low at 480x300 pixels.
Each pixel has a microlense that only allows light from that pixel to be viewed from a particular direction - it's the natural extension of the laptop screen system.
That is sad to hear. I've worked in Ontario and they have something like 80,000 farms left, which sounds a lot, but they are converting something like 2000 farms each year into housing subdivisions. What are they going to do in 40 years time?
In the beginning of this court case, SCO were being required by the judge to provide evidence to the court relating to the copyright/IP violations by IBM.
Now, just about everyone thinks they don't have anything to show (perhaps even SCO know this themselves), and SCO even appeared to confirm this by requiring IBM to provide them with every possible item of documentation relating to the joint projects (in legal speak "discovery". This had two advantages; it delayed the court, and SCO might just actually find something useful.
IBM isn't falling into this trap, and like everyone else around the world, are still waiting with baited breath for SCO to provide the evidence of the original accusation of IP/copyright theft.
Everyone knows the information from IBM is not fundamental to this case ; after all, you don't go to court accusing someone of theft unless you already know what is missing, do you?
When SCO realized they wouldn't get this information, they attempted another delay tactic, by asking the judge to pause the court hearing until IBM provide all documents relating to their projects with SCO. The judge refused this request, not least of all because the judge is an ex-lawyer himself, and know the tricks that lawyers will get up to when they have a weak case.
This puts this game of legal ping-pong firmly in SCO's side of the net now. They will *have* to provide the evidence of violation otherwise their case will probably collapse.
Well on a serious note, how do they know that the eggs that were dormant don't have some problem with them in the first place wich is why they were dormant?
Many desert/mud-hole creatures will normally reside at the bottom of a lake/water-hole to keep cool and to lay eggs. They have also adapted to avoid dehydration by going into a hibernation state/dormant state if the water completely disappears, and reactivating once the water returns. The only problem with this is that some types of soil can be compressed to form a waterproof barrier. Then the creature is permanently trapped in a dormant state.
Just because we're an island doesn't mean we are secure. We've got the Channel tunnel now - asylum seekers/refugees/illegal immigrants kept trying to run through the tunnel (all 32 underwater miles of it) between train departures. Not forgetting their attempts to sneak on board container trucks, train wagons and ferries; and it's the trucker/airline/ferry owner who gets fined $10,000 per immigrant. Although this has stimulated research into all sorts of detection equipment that wouldn't look out of place in Star Trek (ultra-sensitive microphones that detect heartbeats, gas detectors that detect the carbon dioxide from human breath, near-infra-red detectors that can see through vehicles and containers).
And when they do get caught by customs, they have already destroy all existing documentation, so we don't know where they came from. As there is only so many space in the detention centres, they are allowed 48 hours to stay in the UK before being required to return to customs to be deported.
Our government are really in a panic now, because there is estimated to be 250,000 illegal immigrants plus 5000 terrorists in the UK now. At least one has been caught already
The classic example is the "National Service" theme of "Yes Minister":
Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes!"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."
've received auto-generated spam emails that read a lot like this.
Out of curiosity, I did a keyword search for the strings used in these E-mails. They pull out batches of 14 words (or around 70 characters) at random from several different online book websites. An example includes US General history books
It takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98 on anything. I don't think I've seen it come up faster than 4 minutes on any machine I've ever used it with. Hell, Windows 2000 on average takes 5 minutes to boot on a 1ghz machine with 256 megs of RAM.
This is my experience with my old laptop (450MHz Pentium III) has worn out its keyboard (no F12, Scroll-Lock, Left Shift or F8), the battery is flat, and the LCD backlight replacement has fried). Getting to the login screen seems to take far longer than it used too, and with so many applications that seem to install a "quick-start" option on the toolbar, that 128 Megs of memory is just frittered away (Explorer takes 27 Megs!, let alone RealPlayer, Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, ZoneAlarm, VirusGuard, Hacker Eliminator, Mozilla, Network drivers, DSL Cable Model drivers).
Fortunately, my replacement laptop is dual-boot, so I only have to worry about selecting the right OS for 'Grub' to load; usually Linux, as the command line is much easier to work with, especially for applications development work.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they were. They renamed themselves in order to escape the PC/home computer brand image they had built for themselves. This became a liability when the NES and Sega console systems were introduced and the personal computer games market crashed.
Presumably he meant audio, video codecs and graphics accelerator device drivers, which are not needed for a server, but would be useful for a corporate desktop with video-conferencing, software voice-mail and web-based 3D visualisation tools.
Network Mirror - In Case of Slashdotting, Break Mirror
Wow! Three servers slashdotted with one article - that must be a record...
It wouldn't, but I guess a new moon would have so much RF coming from the direction of the Sun that the system wouldn't work.
Satellite TV is rumored not to work during certains times of the year when the Sun is directly in line with the satellite and receiver dish.
Back in the early days of long range missile defence programs, the full moon rising over the horizon was known to create a false signal, as the radar systems were powerful enough to send and receive a signal reflected off the moon.
65,000 feet is above the jet stream. All the bad stuff is below 50,000 feet.
Now, if they get a whole network of these (50+), they could cover the entire USA.
And just in case anyone wants to know what exactly, a 5,5 armchair nanotube looks like, there are some images of models here.
British Telecom have the same attitude with DSL - they wouldn't provide broadband to areas served by a particular exchange, unless either a good percentage of customers registered for service, or there was another competitor already present (ie cable/electricity company).
Then they would install the necessary hardware (new racks for System X, broadband to Internet router).
I have a feeling that his statement will somebody become a famous quote, like these:
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
Ken Olsen, President, Digital Equipment, 1977
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.
Alice Kahn
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Putt's Law
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman
That could be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it.
Good point - what experience do the Public Utilities Commission in supervising maintainance of critical services such as water, electricity, gas and sewerage?
There was a 13 year old girl in Scotland who submitted an entire essay in mobile phone SMS :
:- kds FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."
"My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3
Perhaps a user could take a Sony PSP, and jam it inside the casing of a TI-85.
My Computer Science/Mathematics department has a rule that only the TI-84/85/86 calculator is permitted for exams. There are fears that people could cheat by getting a different calculator and storing all their course notes onto that device.
Of course, if someone were intent on cheating, they would figure out a way of making a wireless device that looked just like one of these calculators, and access the web that way.
How does this work? Are they somehow able to emit light waves going out at every point from a flat surface, so that you see a 3D object with correct perspective no matter which direction you look at it from? I guess that isn't that unrealistic; I mean, mirrors do exactly that. But how does it work?
Take a standard 1600x1200 display, place a microlense over each pixel so that the light is only visible from one of sixteen directions (imagine 16 point distributed over a hemisphere). Now wherever a person stands, each eye will only
see a particular image.
Middleware software is used to convert existing images to work with this system. A 3D application would have to render 12-16 different views of the scene for this to work.
Yes, there is. But the article is describing a 24" flatbed display system that would sit on your desk or lap and is viewable from all directions within +/-30 degrees from perpendicular and distances over 30 cm. Apparently, the rendering software generates 12 to 16 different stereoscopic images which are combined to generate the different views for each eye. However, the resolution is rather low at 480x300 pixels.
Each pixel has a microlense that only allows light from that pixel to be viewed from a particular direction - it's the natural extension of the laptop screen system.
That is sad to hear. I've worked in Ontario and they have something like 80,000 farms left, which sounds a lot, but they are converting something like 2000 farms each year into housing subdivisions. What are they going to do in 40 years time?
In the beginning of this court case, SCO were being required by the judge to provide evidence to the court relating to the copyright/IP violations by IBM.
Now, just about everyone thinks they don't have anything to show (perhaps even SCO know this themselves), and SCO even appeared to confirm this by requiring IBM to provide them with every possible item of documentation relating to the joint projects (in legal speak "discovery". This had two advantages; it delayed the court, and SCO might just actually find something useful.
IBM isn't falling into this trap, and like everyone else around the world, are still waiting with baited breath for SCO to provide the evidence of the original accusation of IP/copyright theft.
Everyone knows the information from IBM is not fundamental to this case ; after all, you don't go to court accusing someone of theft unless you already know what is missing, do you?
When SCO realized they wouldn't get this information, they attempted another delay tactic, by asking the judge to pause the court hearing until IBM provide all documents relating to their projects with SCO. The judge refused this request, not least of all because the judge is an ex-lawyer himself, and know the tricks that lawyers will get up to when they have a weak case.
This puts this game of legal ping-pong firmly in SCO's side of the net now. They will *have* to provide the evidence of violation otherwise their case will probably collapse.
Yes, the French did. but the French farmers don't like anyone who tries to take away their subsidies.
More details
French farmers used to do that when the US president (Clinton?) was visiting to discuss open trade agreements on wheat and other products.
Well on a serious note, how do they know that the eggs that were dormant don't have some problem with them in the first place wich is why they were dormant?
Many desert/mud-hole creatures will normally reside at the bottom of a lake/water-hole to keep cool and to lay eggs. They have also adapted to avoid dehydration by going into a hibernation state/dormant state if the water completely disappears, and reactivating once the water returns. The only problem with this is that some types of soil can be compressed to form a waterproof barrier. Then the creature is permanently trapped in a dormant state.
Just because we're an island doesn't mean we are secure. We've got the Channel tunnel now - asylum seekers/refugees/illegal immigrants kept trying to run through the tunnel (all 32 underwater miles of it) between train departures. Not forgetting their attempts to sneak on board container trucks, train wagons and ferries; and it's the trucker/airline/ferry owner who gets fined $10,000 per immigrant. Although this has stimulated research into all sorts of detection equipment that wouldn't look out of place in Star Trek (ultra-sensitive microphones that detect heartbeats, gas detectors that detect the carbon dioxide from human breath, near-infra-red detectors that can see through vehicles and containers).
And when they do get caught by customs, they have already destroy all existing documentation, so we don't know where they came from. As there is only so many space in the detention centres, they are allowed 48 hours to stay in the UK before being required to return to customs to be deported.
Our government are really in a panic now, because there is estimated to be 250,000 illegal immigrants plus 5000 terrorists in the UK now. At least one has been caught already
The classic example is the "National Service" theme of "Yes Minister":
Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes!"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."
Probably because "Batman" is on the USA's Dodgy Persons List.
've received auto-generated spam emails that read a lot like this.
Out of curiosity, I did a keyword search for the strings used in these E-mails. They pull out batches of 14 words (or around 70 characters) at random from several different online book websites. An example includes US General history books
It takes 4-5 minutes to boot Windows 98 on anything. I don't think I've seen it come up faster than 4 minutes on any machine I've ever used it with. Hell, Windows 2000 on average takes 5 minutes to boot on a 1ghz machine with 256 megs of RAM.
This is my experience with my old laptop (450MHz Pentium III) has worn out its keyboard (no F12, Scroll-Lock, Left Shift or F8), the battery is flat, and the LCD backlight replacement has fried). Getting to the login screen seems to take far longer than it used too, and with so many applications that seem to install a "quick-start" option on the toolbar, that 128 Megs of memory is just frittered away (Explorer takes 27 Megs!, let alone RealPlayer, Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, ZoneAlarm, VirusGuard, Hacker Eliminator, Mozilla, Network drivers, DSL Cable Model drivers).
Fortunately, my replacement laptop is dual-boot, so I only have to worry about selecting the right OS for 'Grub' to load; usually Linux, as the command line is much easier to work with, especially for applications development work.