This keyboard sounds like it would wear out your hands pretty quickly. You have to expend enery to generate electricty, and I doubt you are going to get much energy from a keyboard unless you make they keys very hard to press (or have very long tavel on each key). On a standard laptop keyboard (with almost no travel) I doubt you are going to get more than a few seconds of battery life out of your keystrokes, even if you are typing a huge amount of text all the time.
Anybody remember those generator powered headlights on bikes? Remember how hard it was to pedal whenever you tried to use it?
Wasn't there an April fools joke similar to this this year?
This seems to be a really short list of workstations, not only did they leave out the Free Unix crowd, they also left out the SGI workstations. They also forgot to measure the useablility of these workstations (speed isn't everything in the workstation market) since some of them come with horrible versions of Unix with terrible UIs.
I'm sure the "Antiporn" group mentioned, along with the multitudes of "think of the children!" groups would be agast if they actually spent time at a library reading the books. There is more stuff in your public library that could be "harmful to children" than most people realize. Shoot, if we're worried about harming the children's delicate sensiblities, we should keep them out of school entirely. After all, nothing good can come from letting people think on their own...
It's not an issue with modelines, it's and issue with the interface for the video card. The flatpanel uses a totally digitial interface (not the standard VGA style connecter) that apparently requires a slightly different driver. I'm not sure if modelines even make sense for a flatpanel, but I suspect they don't.
Actually, these are drivers for the Number 9 card that you get when you buy the flatscreen for the PC.
Monitor drivers? I'm not sure what you are getting at here, but the drivers SGI is releasing will let X talk to the Number 9 card and the Number 9 card talk to the flatscreen.
As an added benefit for the nuclear technitions is that they will be awake and alert, which is a good thing(TM) when you are working with nuclear reactors.:)
You know what IOMEGA stands for don't you? Incredibly Overpriced Media Every Guy Abhors
IOmega seems to have trouble with the concept of reasonably priced media. Maybe after this new restructuring they'll finally get their prices out of the stratosphere and get some of the market back.
The AI in Starcraft cheats, but it doesn't magically get minerals. Now there are some maps where this is true (usually in the "Scenario" directory), but the computer players in a regular match are limited by the same resources you are.
Of course the AI is still weak, but at least it doesn't cheat on resources, although it does have full knowledge of the map which is very annoying.
Well in Starcraft, there is a "Free-for-all" mode where the computer do exact that, the problem is that the game is too easy on the Free-for-all setting. People do exactly what you described above, grab a couple of bases early in the game, fortify them like crazy (especially if they are humans) and let the computers fight it out. A single person can easily defeat 7 computers if he or she manages to maintain a low profile throughout the game.
I think we need to wait a generation or two before computer game AIs start becoming really clever. Even longer if game developers focus on adding new units instead of the AI (as they have historically done). Each unit you add adds quite a bit of complexity to the AI.
The definition I usually see is: Redundant Array of Independant Disks. The Inexpensive has been changed/dropped by a lot of people because RAID in general is everything but inexpensive (just look at hardware RAID racks--mucho $$$).
Try a more modern flatpanel. There is a world of difference between looking at photos on a CRT and looking at photos on a flatpanel. On the flatpanel they look like you can just reach in a grab them, while on CRTs, they tend to look, well...projected. As an added bonus, SGI ships a color-balancing utility with all of its flatpanels (the "ColorLock").
Of course all of the opinions expressed above are my own.
Where are you going to put a DVD on a system built around glasses? A DVD beanie? Why don't you put a propeller on the spindle to keep the system cool (temperature wise) while you're at it?:)
Silicon Graphics does. Check out The Silicon Graphics webpage for the 1600SW. I've got one sitting right next to my CRT and people just marvel at the clarity of the screen. I should point out that the 1600SW has a 110dpi resolution, which largely accounts for its incredible crispness.
(Note: may experiance is with the Silicon Graphics 1600SW flatpanel, YMMV)
Flatpanels aren't for everybody, at least not yet. There are many advantages, however there are also several disadvatages to flatpanels. I'm going to list them so you can make an informed decision by yourself. Advantages
Super crisp display -- Pictures displayes on the Flatpanel look REAL, whereas they look like pictures displayed on a CRT on my monitor.
Small size -- Just look how much of your desk is consumed by a regular monitor
Lower emissions -- Less worry about being slowly irradiated by your own personal xray cannon
Less heat output -- Less energy consumption for lower monthy electricy bills (at least in the summer)
Immune to magnetic fields -- No more worrying about your speakers distorting your monitor, and vice versa
100% digital interface -- No more digital->analog conversion mean no more lossiness.
But there are some disadvatages
Expensive -- Although this will change if they become popular, flatpanels are still pretty expensive
Narrow viewing angle -- You can only view about 60 degrees to any angle, and less if its from the top
You can't change the resolutions, this includes things like fullscreen VESA modes, so a vast majority of games simply won't work with a flatpanel.
Younger technology -- Flatpanels (other than Laptop displays) are a relativly new technology and are going to have more problems than your tried and true CRT, especially w.r.t. manufacturing defects.
I hope this is enough information for you to get started on an informed decision.
Exactly what "facts" is this supposed to collect?
on
The Factoid
·
· Score: 2
My big problem with this is that it is passive and depends on someone else thinking some fact is "worthy" of being broadcast to everyone who walks nearby some location.
Possibly useful applications:
Tourist spots, which dump a bit of information to you reminding you all about your visit
Pretty short list, but maybe my imagination just isn't moving very fast this early in the morning.
Most likely uses (most of these were pointed out in previous articles)
Advertising
Make money fast schemes
Advertising
'Assistant Bombers' that try to dump as many messages as possible to your assistant in as short a time as possible
Overall, this is doomed to failure unless people have some sort of filtering mechanism that isn't intrusive. This is sort of like the Usenet brought into the real world.:P
Most BIOSes have ROM backup on the motherboard. You can reset it by setting a jumper or flipping a dip switch if something goes wrong, so you won't necessarily be hosed if your BIOS gets destroyed. However, there is a caveat: a hosed BIOS can do destructive things to your HD, fortunatly it is unlikely.
Maybe I'm the only one here, but I'd like to see a REAL help system in a BIOS. Every BIOS I've seen that has a help feature just gives you a list of the possible options for a feature. What I want is a short descripion of what a feature is and what reason a person would have to enable or disable it. It is just not very helpful to get to an option menu on a BIOS and find something like PMAS and a "help menu" of "Yes/No".
Of course that is just one example, there are gobs of things you could do with that extra space besides putting in Windows specific advertising (modifiying the filesystem from the BIOS?!? Yuck!).
One thing the article didn't mention directly, but plays a very important part in the stability/quality of your infastructure is the quality of your sysadmins. It doesn't matter if your boxes are triply redundant hot-swappable never go down systems if the sysadmins inadvertanty blow away key files periodically. Lots and lots of IT places seem to hire semi-trained monkeys as sysadmins and then wonder why their site is always going down. Look at the chart of outages on the second or third page of that article, notice how often "Failed software upgrade" appears? The problem is that the hardware vendor is usually blamed for those kinds of problems, which draws attention away from the true problem of unqualified sysadmins. Of course most of the Slashdot crowd doesn't fall in that category.
I think GCC is one of the best compilers for the IA32 architecture, but for other platforms the native compilers are usually better. For instance, on MIPS based machines, SGI's MIPSpro compilers are usually much better than gcc, particularly as you increase the amount of optimization. Unfortunatly I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, just my own personal experiances.
You obviously havn't been to other countries. Almost all countries engage in this kind of propaganda campaign aginst their own citizens continuously. Some countires go as far as to require all media to be state-controlled (including the internet, which is why network access is so hard to come by in these countries). You can't seriously think that the Chinese government is more forthcoming to its people than the US government? We still don't know how many people were killed in Tienamen Square.
Radio stations already do this. Chances are if you have one of those cookie cutter stations with cookie cutter radio personalities, the personalitites are in some recording studio back at the corperate headquarters. What they do is record the same radio show at the headquarters and send it out to several transmitters in various cities. Each transmitter has an ISDN link and a techniction that cuts and pastes the audio just before it is transmitted. If the DJs hold a call in contest, the techniction will take the call and ask the standard questions, the callers voice will then be cut and pasted with the DJ asking those same questions. If you've ever called into a radio station and the person who answered the phone different than the DJs, this is probabally what happened.
Quite possibly. You might even be able to spin a window around while working on it.
The problem is your input device. Mice are horrible 3D navigation tools, and using a combination of mouse/keyboard to navigate your desktop probabally won't go over that well. Besides, who really needs a 3D destop anyway?:)
I think this is a little overrated. I've been posting my email to the usenet and Slashdot for some time now and I still get little (almost no) spam. The only account I have even been heavily spammed on is my old AOL account, but their system is stet up to delight spammers by always keeping a list of all of their members available to the public. Besides, if you never give your email address out what use is it?
Slashdot Mirror
This keyboard sounds like it would wear out your hands pretty quickly. You have to expend enery to generate electricty, and I doubt you are going to get much energy from a keyboard unless you make they keys very hard to press (or have very long tavel on each key). On a standard laptop keyboard (with almost no travel) I doubt you are going to get more than a few seconds of battery life out of your keystrokes, even if you are typing a huge amount of text all the time.
Anybody remember those generator powered headlights on bikes? Remember how hard it was to pedal whenever you tried to use it?
Wasn't there an April fools joke similar to this this year?
My bad.
This seems to be a really short list of workstations, not only did they leave out the Free Unix crowd, they also left out the SGI workstations. They also forgot to measure the useablility of these workstations (speed isn't everything in the workstation market) since some of them come with horrible versions of Unix with terrible UIs.
I'm sure the "Antiporn" group mentioned, along with the multitudes of "think of the children!" groups would be agast if they actually spent time at a library reading the books. There is more stuff in your public library that could be "harmful to children" than most people realize. Shoot, if we're worried about harming the children's delicate sensiblities, we should keep them out of school entirely. After all, nothing good can come from letting people think on their own...
Just my $0.02
It's not an issue with modelines, it's and issue with the interface for the video card. The flatpanel uses a totally digitial interface (not the standard VGA style connecter) that apparently requires a slightly different driver. I'm not sure if modelines even make sense for a flatpanel, but I suspect they don't.
Actually, these are drivers for the Number 9 card that you get when you buy the flatscreen for the PC.
Monitor drivers? I'm not sure what you are getting at here, but the drivers SGI is releasing will let X talk to the Number 9 card and the Number 9 card talk to the flatscreen.
As an added benefit for the nuclear technitions is that they will be awake and alert, which is a good thing(TM) when you are working with nuclear reactors. :)
You know what IOMEGA stands for don't you?
Incredibly
Overpriced
Media
Every
Guy
Abhors
IOmega seems to have trouble with the concept of reasonably priced media. Maybe after this new restructuring they'll finally get their prices out of the stratosphere and get some of the market back.
The AI in Starcraft cheats, but it doesn't magically get minerals. Now there are some maps where this is true (usually in the "Scenario" directory), but the computer players in a regular match are limited by the same resources you are.
Of course the AI is still weak, but at least it doesn't cheat on resources, although it does have full knowledge of the map which is very annoying.
Well in Starcraft, there is a "Free-for-all" mode where the computer do exact that, the problem is that the game is too easy on the Free-for-all setting. People do exactly what you described above, grab a couple of bases early in the game, fortify them like crazy (especially if they are humans) and let the computers fight it out. A single person can easily defeat 7 computers if he or she manages to maintain a low profile throughout the game.
I think we need to wait a generation or two before computer game AIs start becoming really clever. Even longer if game developers focus on adding new units instead of the AI (as they have historically done). Each unit you add adds quite a bit of complexity to the AI.
The definition I usually see is: Redundant Array of Independant Disks. The Inexpensive has been changed/dropped by a lot of people because RAID in general is everything but inexpensive (just look at hardware RAID racks--mucho $$$).
Try a more modern flatpanel. There is a world of difference between looking at photos on a CRT and looking at photos on a flatpanel. On the flatpanel they look like you can just reach in a grab them, while on CRTs, they tend to look, well...projected. As an added bonus, SGI ships a color-balancing utility with all of its flatpanels (the "ColorLock").
Of course all of the opinions expressed above are my own.
Where are you going to put a DVD on a system built around glasses? A DVD beanie? Why don't you put a propeller on the spindle to keep the system cool (temperature wise) while you're at it? :)
Don't get me wrong, I love the 1600SW, but depending on what you do, it may not be right for you.
Warning: once you try the 1600SW for a while, you will never want to go back to regular CRTs.
Silicon Graphics does. Check out The Silicon Graphics webpage for the 1600SW. I've got one sitting right next to my CRT and people just marvel at the clarity of the screen. I should point out that the 1600SW has a 110dpi resolution, which largely accounts for its incredible crispness.
Disclaimer: I work for Silicon Graphics.
Flatpanels aren't for everybody, at least not yet. There are many advantages, however there are also several disadvatages to flatpanels. I'm going to list them so you can make an informed decision by yourself.
Advantages
But there are some disadvatages
- Expensive -- Although this will change if they become popular, flatpanels are still pretty expensive
- Narrow viewing angle -- You can only view about 60 degrees to any angle, and less if its from the top
- You can't change the resolutions, this includes things like fullscreen VESA modes, so a vast majority of games simply won't work with a flatpanel.
- Younger technology -- Flatpanels (other than Laptop displays) are a relativly new technology and are going to have more problems than your tried and true CRT, especially w.r.t. manufacturing defects.
I hope this is enough information for you to get started on an informed decision.Possibly useful applications:
- Tourist spots, which dump a bit of information to you reminding you all about your visit
Pretty short list, but maybe my imagination just isn't moving very fast this early in the morning.Most likely uses (most of these were pointed out in previous articles)
Overall, this is doomed to failure unless people have some sort of filtering mechanism that isn't intrusive. This is sort of like the Usenet brought into the real world.
Most BIOSes have ROM backup on the motherboard. You can reset it by setting a jumper or flipping a dip switch if something goes wrong, so you won't necessarily be hosed if your BIOS gets destroyed. However, there is a caveat: a hosed BIOS can do destructive things to your HD, fortunatly it is unlikely.
Maybe I'm the only one here, but I'd like to see a REAL help system in a BIOS. Every BIOS I've seen that has a help feature just gives you a list of the possible options for a feature. What I want is a short descripion of what a feature is and what reason a person would have to enable or disable it. It is just not very helpful to get to an option menu on a BIOS and find something like PMAS and a "help menu" of "Yes/No".
Of course that is just one example, there are gobs of things you could do with that extra space besides putting in Windows specific advertising (modifiying the filesystem from the BIOS?!? Yuck!).
One thing the article didn't mention directly, but plays a very important part in the stability/quality of your infastructure is the quality of your sysadmins. It doesn't matter if your boxes are triply redundant hot-swappable never go down systems if the sysadmins inadvertanty blow away key files periodically. Lots and lots of IT places seem to hire semi-trained monkeys as sysadmins and then wonder why their site is always going down. Look at the chart of outages on the second or third page of that article, notice how often "Failed software upgrade" appears? The problem is that the hardware vendor is usually blamed for those kinds of problems, which draws attention away from the true problem of unqualified sysadmins. Of course most of the Slashdot crowd doesn't fall in that category.
I think GCC is one of the best compilers for the IA32 architecture, but for other platforms the native compilers are usually better. For instance, on MIPS based machines, SGI's MIPSpro compilers are usually much better than gcc, particularly as you increase the amount of optimization. Unfortunatly I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, just my own personal experiances.
You obviously havn't been to other countries. Almost all countries engage in this kind of propaganda campaign aginst their own citizens continuously. Some countires go as far as to require all media to be state-controlled (including the internet, which is why network access is so hard to come by in these countries). You can't seriously think that the Chinese government is more forthcoming to its people than the US government? We still don't know how many people were killed in Tienamen Square.
Radio stations already do this. Chances are if you have one of those cookie cutter stations with cookie cutter radio personalities, the personalitites are in some recording studio back at the corperate headquarters. What they do is record the same radio show at the headquarters and send it out to several transmitters in various cities. Each transmitter has an ISDN link and a techniction that cuts and pastes the audio just before it is transmitted. If the DJs hold a call in contest, the techniction will take the call and ask the standard questions, the callers voice will then be cut and pasted with the DJ asking those same questions. If you've ever called into a radio station and the person who answered the phone different than the DJs, this is probabally what happened.
Quite possibly. You might even be able to spin a window around while working on it.
:)
The problem is your input device. Mice are horrible 3D navigation tools, and using a combination of mouse/keyboard to navigate your desktop probabally won't go over that well. Besides, who really needs a 3D destop anyway?
I think this is a little overrated. I've been posting my email to the usenet and Slashdot for some time now and I still get little (almost no) spam. The only account I have even been heavily spammed on is my old AOL account, but their system is stet up to delight spammers by always keeping a list of all of their members available to the public. Besides, if you never give your email address out what use is it?