I use a proper backpack - they are so much more comfortable to wear for longer periods of time than a shoulder bag or even the backpack style laptop bags. I currently have a 35 litre lowe apline day pack, which has ample space inside.
To protect the laptop I use a snug fitting zipped case, which keeps it away from other potentially sharp things inside the bag.
The backpack is almost completely waterproof, although as it is several years old (getting on for 6 years) some of the waterproofing is wearing off the side pockets, but the main part of the bag is still fairly secure against most types of Weather European winters can throw at it.
The LCD will only show you what is in frame, nothing more. If you have an extreme case, where you are really close to something and using a very wide aperture, to soften the background you might just see it, but seeing whether you have an entire object in focus, no chance.
Certainly you can duplicate the effect with a digital camera, but at what cost? I good digital SLR in the UK starts around 800 pounds, still the LCD would be useless - an SLR shows you what is in frame anyway, that is the point. I take the point you could run home (or hook up to a laptop when on the move) and see the results fairly quickly.
That said, with a few basic bits of equipment you could have the same results with film cameras. You just need to develop the film, not print it, to see those things and that doesn't take very long at all and can be done at home.
I would strongly object to the idea that you can "see the results immediately" if you mean the measily preview you get on the built in LCD. I would advise against learning photography on a digital camera, any basic, but functional SLR that takes film is so much better. You have to actually think about exposure and apature then. You make mistakes sure. I fail to see how you can check things like depth of field on a tiny screen, where everything is sharp due to the incredibly low resolution of the display.
Where is the skill in taking say, 50 pictures of one thing with different settings anyways? I would find that unrewarding. Ok, you might use bracketing to take a few pictures with apature a notch either way, or a slightly faster/slower shutter just to be sure. (sometimes slight over or under exposure adds mood to a picture)
Also, when it comes to taking a picture in a moment what settings are you going to use? You can't have lots of trials of the same thing in those situations. Even modern SLRs with complex optics don't always select the correct exposure for the photograph.
Things I would look for in an SLR to learn photography on:
A camera with simple controls and that shows clearly whether an exposure is correct or not, my wife's Canon AE-1 is better at this than my Practica for example, even though the Practica is a more recent camera. A camera that gives you a depth of field preview is useful too. I would probably go with a second hand Canon, they are pretty solid, plus Sigma still make lenses that are compatable via an adapter.
Film is fairly cheap and if you are doing a photography course, you probably have access to a dark room and can do most of the developing yourself (another useful skill in learning photogrpahy) which means you'll only print those pictures that turned out and make a saving that way.
Where I work we were faced with a relocation. As part of the concessions management were willing to give us, was an extensive home-working option. Which we accepted. This of course lead the need for us to have a high-speed link to our office network.
The main network at work is outsourced and is ran in a very inflexible way, basically if you want to use anything other than MS Office, you're screwed. In the end the outsourcers could offer us 56K dialup on a pay-per minute number, with laptops we pay for (they own) and we pay a support cost, but as we needed to run linux, that would provide absolutely no support. Not exactly optimum, considering it would be relatively trivial to configure some sort of VPN over the Internet and just use cable or DSL in peoples home.
So this is what we did, we extended our existing seperate network for software development and now have a network we control ourselves and is far more useful and reliable than anything the corporate network could provide.
Of course, not all Software Engineers have the necessary skills for network management/admin, but a few of us do and it all works nicely.
So is disabling the auto-run feature of Windows also a violation of the DMCA? Or does SunnComm's product somehow sidestep the fact this can be disabled? If so, is this now an "illegal" use of my computer?
After all, if a cracker attacks my machine and runs some arbitary code on it without my permission, that is against the law. Why is installing some broken device driver, without my permission the not same? It shouldn't be all that hard to demonstrate inserting an Audio CD does not neccessarily mean that you intend or expect software to be installed from it.
I wonder what happens to those in work place enviroments when they insert the CD. My employeer has just had another "attempt" at locking down their Windows machines to prevent users installing software (the attempt is bound to be futile.. but there we go). Is the user of a machine they have no administration powers over now in violation of the DMCA too?
Erm, unless Apple had a RISC based PC in or before 1987, I very much doubt they were the first to bring RISC out of the server room.
Acorn in the UK developed its own RISC processor (Acorn Risc Processor or ARM - sound familiar?) and released their first computer using it in 1987. It was, what, 5-6 years later or so that Apple released its first PowerPC machine?
Of course, the A in ARM has been replaced with "Advanced", but Acorn were still the first company to bring out a RISC based personal computer.
I really do not see sales of CDs dying out completely. Although CDs do not have quite the same asthetic charm of old Vynil LPs, they are something that can be placed on a shelf and browsed through.
There is that whole ritual of playing music that is rather lost with digital mediums. Where is the "fun" in selecting what you want to listen to from a menu? Its been diluted a lot already from loading the disc on the turntable and aligning the stylus to just shoving the thing into the tray.
For all the evils of the RIAA, I do enjoy having a collection of something phsyical - I can't believe I am alone in thinking this. Sure, I use MP3s, sitting at my desk now I am listening to some, but thats mostly pure convenience while I work. (or procrastinate as the case may be)
This was how Asimov described them in Caves of Steel. Additionally, his city was based on a strict class structure, which if you were of a certain level and higher, you were allowed to sit in the seating on the central express "strip" (as he called them).
It is a shame this is not further reaching, something that has always amused me about Windows, and this is all versions including XP is that it is not properly localised.
I have XP, on my work machine, set up to have my locale set to English [United Kingdom] and yet it still manages to put "Color" into dialogs. It must be rather fustrating to try and teach kids to spell colour in the English way and yet have to use a computer that does not spell it correctly from the UK point of view. If my Gnome2 desktop knows how British people spell Colour, why doesn't XP?
Not just TV series, there were radio shows about it. Also late at night the BBC broadcasted software over its Radio channels. The idea being that you would record it to cassette then load it into your computer.
I never tried this, but it was a very neat way of distributing software, without having to type it all in by hand or send cassettes out to people.
Wouldn't Unix's credibility be damaged if anything could lay claim to being "Unix"? Therefore over time such a term would become worthless.
I am not saying FreeBSD and Linux aren't worthy of being called "Unix" rather than "Unix like" but is everything that could claim it, worthy of it? Now and in the future?
I do not think this is aimed primarily at people purchasing things like CDs. Up until now, AOL has been able to sell Internet connections to people in the EU, without paying sales tax, this has been a particulary sore issue for competiting ISPs in the UK who, rightly, claim that how can they compete fairly with AOL if AOL's subscriptions are not subject to VAT?
These companies have theatened to move a lot of their operations out of the EU to take advantage of the same tax loophole that AOL uses. I doubt it was their complaining that caused the EU to re-write its rules on VAT, but I suspect it had an influence.
Afterall, people importing items personally in to the EU are liable to pay VAT on them anyways. The only way to avoid it is to only purcahse one or two CDs at once. Over a certain threshold you are required to pay tax on the items anyways.
This includes items that are sent to you as "gifts" Although, as I have found out, customs officials often waive these taxes if the amounts are small.
So you just have to buy it with some other item of "hardware". I am not sure you would actually be able to be prosecuted for purchasing an OEM edition of Windows XP, isn't it the seller's reponsibility to sell the products according to Microsoft's wishes?
Why is Windows XP command line "watered down"? Admitadly I have not used XP Home much, but I am sure you can still hit windows-R and type cmd and get the very same command prompt that NT, W2K, XP Pro has. In XP Pro it even seems to have tab-completion of filename activated by default.
The default command line under NT and its like is not in the same league as a basic unix shell no, but in XP it doesn't seem to be any worse than the previous versions of Windows.
It would be a bad idea, and I think it is a common mis-conception that it would be a good thing to have a programming language that would mirror something like a written or spoken language. I can't see any real advantage. The idea of readability is not a valid argument, good code should be as readable (if you know the language) as something written in your own tongue.
Knowledge of the language is important. For example, in English, it is perfectly possible to have different (and opposing) interpretations of a simple sentance. This is not a good thing for computers.
I have a bias, as I am a fan of Functional Programming languages, but I feel that they have the way of the future about them. They have a basis in mathematics. Software Engineering needs to evolve from the age of Hack/Slash/cobble together and into an age of true engineering.
There is something to be said of a piece of software that can be "proved" via mathematical theory to work, than one that has been developed in a Object Oriented/Procedual language. That is not to say it won't fail in practice, but at least you'll have more confidence about it, rather more like more traditional Engineering.
Functional Programming hasn't had its day yet, mostly because there aren't systems around that are optimised to perform its operations. Programmers often dislike it as it requires a different way of approaching problem solving.
If there is going to be surplus of processing power, perhaps Functional Programming will come of age?
The difference in the US is that the reciever of a call from a land line to a mobile phone pays the additional cost of the call. For this reason, you can usually go to a pay phone, drop in the minimum call charge, dial a mobile phone and talk for as long as you like, without it costing you more than your 25 cents (or is it 35 cents now?)
There is no distinction in North America, as far as I have seen, between the number of a mobile phone and the number of a land line.
I am not sure how much you know about typography, but an italic font is different to an oblique font. (Oblique is pretty much "just tilt the font") An Italic font is designed that way from the outset and looks far better than having a regular font titled forward.
I am sure you are likely to disagree with me, but look at say a postscript Times Roman italic font. Take the regular version of the same font, convert it into shapes and tilt it forwards a little in a drawing program. Side by side they will look different and the "oblique" version will look rather inferior to the proper italic version.
If it works in the same way RISC OS worked over 10 years ago, you type in a filename and then drag the icon to a window to save, the file then appears in that window with the filename typed in.
The ROX Desktop team have created a system under Unix/Linux that works like this.
It is a very elegant way of saving files, but, if you have "raise on focus" it could be awkward to use, RISC OS doens't raise of focus so it was easy to have a filer window overlapping your work window slightly and just dump your files there.
Thats a major slight on the Architectural profession you are making there. Architects do not just deal with "asthetics". A/good/ architect should be considering how the building is to be used, which materials are suitable to be used together with asthetic values.
Architecture is a lot about layout rather than just fancy features. Do you know for a fact that the Architect specified the patio roof to be concrete? Or did a contractor figure he could do it cheaper that way? Was the house designed for the location it was built in, or was it a design imported from somewhere else? Were features added at the insistance of the client, which the Architect added under protest?
Given that most modern designs of houses are incredibly poor and often just carbon copies of a design that a contractor has made over and over again, the world would be a better place if more people employeed architects. (and they do not cost a vast amount of money) I sigh in dispare at the suburban sprawl a lot of N.American cities seem to have, all the houses looking largely identical.
And I wouldn't put too much faith in GPS-based anti-collision devices just yet. For those to work, every single aircraft that files has to have one. Are you suggesting the FAA mandate avionics upgrades for all aircraft? Because that is what it would take for such devices to be truly useful.
ADS systems are augmented by further broadcasts from ground based Radar data. So all ADS capable aircraft should be kept informed of aircraft that are fitted with ADS equipment AND those that are not.
Typically non-ADS aircraft would be seperated by altitude. No, its not totally safe, but neither is Radar and it is a whole lot cheaper for large areas of low density traffic and better than nothing.
CMM isn't about high quality design, nor is it a "Design philosophy". All that CMM basially says that if you do something, you can do it again to the same standard within similar costs or time contraints.
The safety of the systems on the Space Shuttle (and indeed in ATC systems) is more due to their fail safe configuration, design of the system and how much testing has been done. It would be perfectly possible for a company at CMM level 5 to make the worst software in the world and still maintain their level 5 status.
What has happened to gopher? Is there still a large number of gopher sites out there or has it really died a death having succumb to the "world wide web"?
I suppose it is why the bug wasn't discovered before. 90% of current Internet users probably never used gopher or have even heard of it.
Mmmmm, this isn't authoritative, but up until I stopped working with Acorn hardware (mid 1995, A5000 or so) the situation was this:
proprietary hardware (the mouse plugged into the back of the keyboard using some 9-pin connector)
or, you could get software to enable you to use a standard serial mouse.
The keyboard and mouse connectors were the same as those used on Sun Sparc Stations, so not totally proprietary.
The beauty of RISC OS is the fact it is small and fast. The whole thing fits into 4MB of ROM, so what is a relatively slow peice of hardware by latest x86 standards, can have an OS that loads extremely quickly. I still use my RISC OS machine for the odd task or two it is just more comfortable than Linux or Windows.
So what Pause have done is taken an idea from one area of the broadcast business (Namely, time delay of a live video stream) and hooked it up to some digital storage mechanisium. (They quote a circular buffer) Which is what they have patented. I suppose it begs the question, is it obvious to use a "circular buffer" in "digital memory" to buffer a live video stream? Or to reverse the logic... what is the first thing you think of tobuffer a live stream of digital data?
That may be a simplistic view of the issue of course.
I have three spare processors knocking around a couple of old pentiums (a P66 and I think a P90) together with a 486 DX2/66 - all of them came with a heatsync glued to the processor.
Wasn't it when Intel moved to socket 7 they stopped coming with heatsyncs attached. My P150 which I still use certainly didn't come with a heatsync. It now has a rediculously large heatsync and fan on it suitable for a K6-2, as the original
far far smaller one failed and I couldn't be bothered to hunt out one that was a more appropriate size.
Re:The correct name for these bricks is LEGOS
on
When Lego Meet Rubik
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· Score: 1
I have a book somewhere around about the histroy of the Lego Company. Their founder started producing wooden toys on wheels. Got quite a reputation for Quality in Danmark for them. Some considerable number of years later the first Lego brick appeared. At no point in the company's history were their bricks refered to as "Legos".
The name was invented by the company's founder I understand it is a derivation of the Danish equivilent of "Play Well". Amusingly the guy had a competition for the name of the company. Offering (if I remember correctly) a bottle of fine wine. In the end he thought his name was best and drunk the wine himself.
I doubt in any of the literature refers to the bricks as "legos".
Slashdot Mirror
I use a proper backpack - they are so much more comfortable to wear for longer periods of time than a shoulder bag or even the backpack style laptop bags. I currently have a 35 litre lowe apline day pack, which has ample space inside.
To protect the laptop I use a snug fitting zipped case, which keeps it away from other potentially sharp things inside the bag.
The backpack is almost completely waterproof, although as it is several years old (getting on for 6 years) some of the waterproofing is wearing off the side pockets, but the main part of the bag is still fairly secure against most types of Weather European winters can throw at it.
The LCD will only show you what is in frame, nothing more. If you have an extreme case, where you are really close to something and using a very wide aperture, to soften the background you might just see it, but seeing whether you have an entire object in focus, no chance.
Certainly you can duplicate the effect with a digital camera, but at what cost? I good digital SLR in the UK starts around 800 pounds, still the LCD would be useless - an SLR shows you what is in frame anyway, that is the point. I take the point you could run home (or hook up to a laptop when on the move) and see the results fairly quickly.
That said, with a few basic bits of equipment you could have the same results with film cameras. You just need to develop the film, not print it, to see those things and that doesn't take very long at all and can be done at home.
I would strongly object to the idea that you can "see the results immediately" if you mean the measily preview you get on the built in LCD. I would advise against learning photography on a digital camera, any basic, but functional SLR that takes film is so much better. You have to actually think about exposure and apature then. You make mistakes sure. I fail to see how you can check things like depth of field on a tiny screen, where everything is sharp due to the incredibly low resolution of the display.
Where is the skill in taking say, 50 pictures of one thing with different settings anyways? I would find that unrewarding. Ok, you might use bracketing to take a few pictures with apature a notch either way, or a slightly faster/slower shutter just to be sure. (sometimes slight over or under exposure adds mood to a picture)
Also, when it comes to taking a picture in a moment what settings are you going to use? You can't have lots of trials of the same thing in those situations. Even modern SLRs with complex optics don't always select the correct exposure for the photograph.
Things I would look for in an SLR to learn photography on:
A camera with simple controls and that shows clearly whether an exposure is correct or not, my wife's Canon AE-1 is better at this than my Practica for example, even though the Practica is a more recent camera.
A camera that gives you a depth of field preview is useful too.
I would probably go with a second hand Canon, they are pretty solid, plus Sigma still make lenses that are compatable via an adapter.
Film is fairly cheap and if you are doing a photography course, you probably have access to a dark room and can do most of the developing yourself (another useful skill in learning photogrpahy) which means you'll only print those pictures that turned out and make a saving that way.
Where I work we were faced with a relocation. As part of the concessions management were willing to give us, was an extensive home-working option. Which we accepted. This of course lead the need for us to have a high-speed link to our office network.
The main network at work is outsourced and is ran in a very inflexible way, basically if you want to use anything other than MS Office, you're screwed. In the end the outsourcers could offer us 56K dialup on a pay-per minute number, with laptops we pay for (they own) and we pay a support cost, but as we needed to run linux, that would provide absolutely no support. Not exactly optimum, considering it would be relatively trivial to configure some sort of VPN over the Internet and just use cable or DSL in peoples home.
So this is what we did, we extended our existing seperate network for software development and now have a network we control ourselves and is far more useful and reliable than anything the corporate network could provide.
Of course, not all Software Engineers have the necessary skills for network management/admin, but a few of us do and it all works nicely.
So is disabling the auto-run feature of Windows also a violation of the DMCA? Or does SunnComm's product somehow sidestep the fact this can be disabled? If so, is this now an "illegal" use of my computer?
After all, if a cracker attacks my machine and runs some arbitary code on it without my permission, that is against the law. Why is installing some broken device driver, without my permission the not same? It shouldn't be all that hard to demonstrate inserting an Audio CD does not neccessarily mean that you intend or expect software to be installed from it.
I wonder what happens to those in work place enviroments when they insert the CD. My employeer has just had another "attempt" at locking down their Windows machines to prevent users installing software (the attempt is bound to be futile.. but there we go). Is the user of a machine they have no administration powers over now in violation of the DMCA too?
Erm, unless Apple had a RISC based PC in or before 1987, I very much doubt they were the first to bring RISC out of the server room.
Acorn in the UK developed its own RISC processor (Acorn Risc Processor or ARM - sound familiar?) and released their first computer using it in 1987. It was, what, 5-6 years later or so that Apple released its first PowerPC machine?
Of course, the A in ARM has been replaced with "Advanced", but Acorn were still the first company to bring out a RISC based personal computer.
I really do not see sales of CDs dying out completely. Although CDs do not have quite the same asthetic charm of old Vynil LPs, they are something that can be placed on a shelf and browsed through.
There is that whole ritual of playing music that is rather lost with digital mediums. Where is the "fun" in selecting what you want to listen to from a menu? Its been diluted a lot already from loading the disc on the turntable and aligning the stylus to just shoving the thing into the tray.
For all the evils of the RIAA, I do enjoy having a collection of something phsyical - I can't believe I am alone in thinking this. Sure, I use MP3s, sitting at my desk now I am listening to some, but thats mostly pure convenience while I work. (or procrastinate as the case may be)
This was how Asimov described them in Caves of Steel. Additionally, his city was based on a strict class structure, which if you were of a certain level and higher, you were allowed to sit in the seating on the central express "strip" (as he called them).
It is a shame this is not further reaching, something that has always amused me about Windows, and this is all versions including XP is that it is not properly localised.
I have XP, on my work machine, set up to have my locale set to English [United Kingdom] and yet it still manages to put "Color" into dialogs. It must be rather fustrating to try and teach kids to spell colour in the English way and yet have to use a computer that does not spell it correctly from the UK point of view. If my Gnome2 desktop knows how British people spell Colour, why doesn't XP?
Not just TV series, there were radio shows about it. Also late at night the BBC broadcasted software over its Radio channels. The idea being that you would record it to cassette then load it into your computer.
I never tried this, but it was a very neat way of distributing software, without having to type it all in by hand or send cassettes out to people.
Wouldn't Unix's credibility be damaged if anything could lay claim to being "Unix"? Therefore over time such a term would become worthless.
I am not saying FreeBSD and Linux aren't worthy of being called "Unix" rather than "Unix like" but is everything that could claim it, worthy of it? Now and in the future?
I do not think this is aimed primarily at people purchasing things like CDs. Up until now, AOL has been able to sell Internet connections to people in the EU, without paying sales tax, this has been a particulary sore issue for competiting ISPs in the UK who, rightly, claim that how can they compete fairly with AOL if AOL's subscriptions are not subject to VAT?
These companies have theatened to move a lot of their operations out of the EU to take advantage of the same tax loophole that AOL uses. I doubt it was their complaining that caused the EU to re-write its rules on VAT, but I suspect it had an influence.
Afterall, people importing items personally in to the EU are liable to pay VAT on them anyways. The only way to avoid it is to only purcahse one or two CDs at once. Over a certain threshold you are required to pay tax on the items anyways.
This includes items that are sent to you as "gifts" Although, as I have found out, customs officials often waive these taxes if the amounts are small.
So you just have to buy it with some other item of "hardware". I am not sure you would actually be able to be prosecuted for purchasing an OEM edition of Windows XP, isn't it the seller's reponsibility to sell the products according to Microsoft's wishes?
Why is Windows XP command line "watered down"? Admitadly I have not used XP Home much, but I am sure you can still hit windows-R and type cmd and get the very same command prompt that NT, W2K, XP Pro has. In XP Pro it even seems to have tab-completion of filename activated by default.
The default command line under NT and its like is not in the same league as a basic unix shell no, but in XP it doesn't seem to be any worse than the previous versions of Windows.
It would be a bad idea, and I think it is a common mis-conception that it would be a good thing to have a programming language that would mirror something like a written or spoken language. I can't see any real advantage. The idea of readability is not a valid argument, good code should be as readable (if you know the language) as something written in your own tongue.
Knowledge of the language is important. For example, in English, it is perfectly possible to have different (and opposing) interpretations of a simple sentance. This is not a good thing for computers.
I have a bias, as I am a fan of Functional Programming languages, but I feel that they have the way of the future about them. They have a basis in mathematics. Software Engineering needs to evolve from the age of Hack/Slash/cobble together and into an age of true engineering.
There is something to be said of a piece of software that can be "proved" via mathematical theory to work, than one that has been developed in a Object Oriented/Procedual language. That is not to say it won't fail in practice, but at least you'll have more confidence about it, rather more like more traditional Engineering.
Functional Programming hasn't had its day yet, mostly because there aren't systems around that are optimised to perform its operations. Programmers often dislike it as it requires a different way of approaching problem solving.
If there is going to be surplus of processing power, perhaps Functional Programming will come of age?
The difference in the US is that the reciever of a call from a land line to a mobile phone pays the additional cost of the call. For this reason, you can usually go to a pay phone, drop in the minimum call charge, dial a mobile phone and talk for as long as you like, without it costing you more than your 25 cents (or is it 35 cents now?)
There is no distinction in North America, as far as I have seen, between the number of a mobile phone and the number of a land line.
I am not sure how much you know about typography, but an italic font is different to an oblique font. (Oblique is pretty much "just tilt the font") An Italic font is designed that way from the outset and looks far better than having a regular font titled forward.
I am sure you are likely to disagree with me, but look at say a postscript Times Roman italic font. Take the regular version of the same font, convert it into shapes and tilt it forwards a little in a drawing program. Side by side they will look different and the "oblique" version will look rather inferior to the proper italic version.
The ROX Desktop team have created a system under Unix/Linux that works like this.
It is a very elegant way of saving files, but, if you have "raise on focus" it could be awkward to use, RISC OS doens't raise of focus so it was easy to have a filer window overlapping your work window slightly and just dump your files there.
Thats a major slight on the Architectural profession you are making there. Architects do not just deal with "asthetics". A /good/ architect should be considering how the building is to be used, which materials are suitable to be used together with asthetic values.
Architecture is a lot about layout rather than just fancy features. Do you know for a fact that the Architect specified the patio roof to be concrete? Or did a contractor figure he could do it cheaper that way? Was the house designed for the location it was built in, or was it a design imported from somewhere else? Were features added at the insistance of the client, which the Architect added under protest?
Given that most modern designs of houses are incredibly poor and often just carbon copies of a design that a contractor has made over and over again, the world would be a better place if more people employeed architects. (and they do not cost a vast amount of money) I sigh in dispare at the suburban sprawl a lot of N.American cities seem to have, all the houses looking largely identical.
And I wouldn't put too much faith in GPS-based anti-collision devices just yet. For those to work, every single aircraft that files has to have one. Are you suggesting the FAA mandate avionics upgrades for all aircraft? Because that is what it would take for such devices to be truly useful.
ADS systems are augmented by further broadcasts from ground based Radar data. So all ADS capable aircraft should be kept informed of aircraft that are fitted with ADS equipment AND those that are not.
Typically non-ADS aircraft would be seperated by altitude. No, its not totally safe, but neither is Radar and it is a whole lot cheaper for large areas of low density traffic and better than nothing.
CMM isn't about high quality design, nor is it a "Design philosophy". All that CMM basially says that if you do something, you can do it again to the same standard within similar costs or time contraints.
The safety of the systems on the Space Shuttle (and indeed in ATC systems) is more due to their fail safe configuration, design of the system and how much testing has been done. It would be perfectly possible for a company at CMM level 5 to make the worst software in the world and still maintain their level 5 status.
What has happened to gopher?
Is there still a large number of gopher sites out there or has it really died a death having succumb to the "world wide web"?
I suppose it is why the bug wasn't discovered before. 90% of current Internet users probably never used gopher or have even heard of it.
- proprietary hardware (the mouse plugged into the back of the keyboard using some 9-pin connector)
- or, you could get software to enable you to use a standard serial mouse.
The keyboard and mouse connectors were the same as those used on Sun Sparc Stations, so not totally proprietary. The beauty of RISC OS is the fact it is small and fast. The whole thing fits into 4MB of ROM, so what is a relatively slow peice of hardware by latest x86 standards, can have an OS that loads extremely quickly. I still use my RISC OS machine for the odd task or two it is just more comfortable than Linux or Windows.So what Pause have done is taken an idea from one area of the broadcast business (Namely, time delay of a live video stream) and hooked it up to some digital storage mechanisium. (They quote a circular buffer) Which is what they have patented. I suppose it begs the question, is it obvious to use a "circular buffer" in "digital memory" to buffer a live video stream? Or to reverse the logic... what is the first thing you think of tobuffer a live stream of digital data?
That may be a simplistic view of the issue of course.
I have three spare processors knocking around a couple of old pentiums (a P66 and I think a P90) together with a 486 DX2/66 - all of them came with a heatsync glued to the processor.
Wasn't it when Intel moved to socket 7 they stopped coming with heatsyncs attached. My P150 which I still use certainly didn't come with a heatsync. It now has a rediculously large heatsync and fan on it suitable for a K6-2, as the original
far far smaller one failed and I couldn't be bothered to hunt out one that was a more appropriate size.
I have a book somewhere around about the histroy of the Lego Company. Their founder started producing wooden toys on wheels. Got quite a reputation for Quality in Danmark for them. Some considerable number of years later the first Lego brick appeared. At no point in the company's history were their bricks refered to as "Legos".
The name was invented by the company's founder I understand it is a derivation of the Danish equivilent of "Play Well". Amusingly the guy had a competition for the name of the company. Offering (if I remember correctly) a bottle of fine wine. In the end he thought his name was best and drunk the wine himself.
I doubt in any of the literature refers to the bricks as "legos".