I knew there was a good reason to run my screen a 1600x1200x75Hz. Someone would have to be receiving a 144MHz optical signal to get a decent reading of my screen, and from far away it's not easy...
You need a non backlit (reflective) TFT LCD, then you need to get a special plastic overlay that acts as a light pipe. This takes light from around the edges of the screen (from LEDs, CCFTs, etc) and shines it onto the display, which then reflects it back to you.
This same stuff is what is being used by the people making the 'backlight' for the gameboy advance.
You should be able to get this all in one package, but you need to make sure that the LCD is reflective, with lighting coming from the front.
But this is already happening. Those who can afford hair transplants, liposuction, and facelifts get an aesthetic advantage over those who can't. And look around - the world hasn't exactly fallen apart because of it.
The transplants, liposuction, facelifts, etc do not get passed down from generation to generation. I did not say that it wasn't happening, and who are you to say that the world isn't 'exactly' falling apart? I appreciate you sharing your opinion, but it's just your opinion - nothing more. I do not intend to suggest that the world is falling apart, either.
By your logic, we should eliminate all university fees, and have enrolment done via some sort of "lottery," to ensure that rich parents' kids don't get an advantage over those who can't afford school, or couldn't afford a private tutor through high school to help them score higher on the SATs.
My logic does not suggest any course of action. It simply states that this sort of preselection has a known result. I did not say that we live in a society now free of class distinctions, nor did I say that we should avoid this course of action because it may polarize those distinctions more. I said that it will be the outcome of genetic preselection, based on how societies changed under previous technological advancments available to the wealthy.
I won't get into the whole argument about what we should put on the other side of the scale to balance things - if anything. That is a whole field which is not suited for discussion on this board. One thing can be said - So far, in our society, the innovations that at one time used to be available only to the rich trickle down so they are commonplace and affordable by the vast majority of the populace, which is somewhat different than many (but not all) previous empires.
If you don't consult a lawyer, then only write strictly factual, verifiable information. Do not provide opinions, and stay away from putting words into the potential employees mouth (ie, don't relay opinions and statements that the employee said to you that raised or lowered your opinion of them).
"Mr X worked for the company from this time to that time, and left voluntarily. He completed 5 projects, 4 of which were on time and under budget. His 5 employee reviews indicated that he performed as expected in all areas, and was respected by his peers. He demonstrated the following skills..."
Then, near the end, place a phrase such as,"For more detail, please feel free to contact me at (phone)." If they want more detail or a personal perspective they can call you and get that info over the phone.
The ability to screen for these is directly related to the financial status of the person using the screening system. The poor would go the 'natural' way and subsequently become a lower class physically than families who can afford such procedures. As can be seen in every society documented or studied, physical differences lead to class tendencies. Even if it were illegal to discriminate based on some physical triat, it would happen and become the norm in many industries, pushing the lower class even lower.
Plus it require a LOT of government control and intervention to prevent such discrimination, reducing individual privacy and rights.
But we won't be around long enough to see it, so how about if we jump in with both feet and darn the consequences... We'll create a better class of geeks! Or at least ones with 6 fingers (better keyboarding) or a mousing hand or something.
You've likely noticed that as the processors get faster and hotter the heatsinks and fans got larger and more essential.
The basic equation you'll run into is that for a given amount of processing power the cpu is going to be releasing a given amount of heat. If that heat is not dissipated it'll build up destructively.
The last processor I saw without a fan was a PII 300, and that had a heatsink twice as large as a normal fan heatsink situated directly below the power supply - which meant that it got a good deal of active cooling.
In order to effectively cool a modern processer (which does put out less heat per clock cycle than older processors, but not by much) you cannot just slap a large heatsink on it, slow it down, and expect it to have enough cooling.
In short, the only downside other than having a slower computer is that it won't work. A 1.8GHz processor running at 900MHz is going to let off as much heat as a processor in the same family rated at 900MHz, which surely needs cooling.
The 1.8GHz processor is letting off more heat than the 900MHz. The reason you can use the same heatsink and fan is that the heatsink and fan are overrated for the 900MHz, but not so much that the fan is not required.
Lastly, current processors are pipelined dynamic machines, meaning that they have a range of clock speeds in which their output will be valid. Too slow and they stop working, too fast and they stop working. You're generally safe underclocking a processor whose same die includes processors at the lower speed, but be careful, since higher speed variants generally have some small die changes which are not great enough to tell anyone, but do affect the range.
This field (thermal dynamics) is rife with documentation and resources. You should be able to calculate the heat output of the processor and determine the correct sizing heatsink. Don't be surprised if you find it requires a passive heatsink size of greater than 81 square inches, with a surface area significantly larger...
-Adam
You either generate less heat, or move it silently
on
Mini-PC w/o Fans?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The key here is you need to generate less heat, and/or use a method to remove heat to another location silently.
Examples of the first method (make less heat) would be:
Get a laptop that doesn't have a fan.
Use an older computer or SBC (P100, etc)
Examples of the second method would be:
Using heat pipes to move heat away from the processor to a convection cooled heatsink
Water cooling to a convection cooled heatsink (requires a method such as one discussed recently, or a silent pump)
A seperate noisy bit located in another area (forinstance - you have the noisiest part of your air conditioner outside your home)
Which method you choose depends on the processing power you need, and your budget.
But then, you probably already knew this and were hoping for something in the 'cheap', 'little work', 'high power' bin. Unfortunately nothing currently exists that fulfills all three. If you really don't mind a low power system, then you can experiment with a k6-2 running at 200MHz or so, with a 300w PS. You'd have to put a big fanless heatsink on the k6-2, and arrange the case such that natural chimney effect airflow will go past all the major components and through the fanless 300w ps (which should be providing less than 100w). Don't put more than a single 5400rpm HD in there (or diskless boot, if possible - look at cheap compactflash - ide adaptors), and skip the cd and floppy unless absolutely needed. Use an all-in-one low end motherboard.
If all you need the device to do is repeating, or simple transmission/reception (to LCD, from keyboard, perhaps), even if you need to log everything to a hard drive, you'd be much better off in the long run making or using a system that uses microcontrollers instead of a full blown computer (where you'd waste 50-90% of your energy).
It appears as though psk31 is simple enough that a micro with a decent A/D would easily handle both reception and transmission. Is there a need for the extra processing power, or is this an issue of rapid development is more important than battery usage?
A lot of concerns voiced in this discussion are dealt with adequately in the article.
That being said, "Sign me up!". The security, privacy, availability issues are going to be solved. As in the article, you get to determine when, how, etc your computer is used, and you get to set the price.
What this means in reality, though, is that there will be people who will set up farms of computers and underbid their processing power/storage space/bandwidth, and you will get very little, if any, money. Imagine a few cents a month, maybe.
This system would be of great use to big business (who will really make savings) but will have little effect on the consumer except, perhaps, faster access to products and services sold by big business.
The problem being that the only resource the average user may possibly use from such a system is backup. Your network connection isn't going to be fast enough to buy a cheap computer and buy processing power online for your game. MMORPGs, however, may take on a whole new meaning when they start being able to handle millions of simultaneously connected players, and a fully interactive virtual 3d world may come to fruition through such a distributed system.
So, as many research products go, this will enable businesses to lower their costs and compete more effectively with each other, which, surprise, surprise, will (eventually) mean a cost reduction for our services and products.
I'll start building my slow storage rack now. Shouldn't cost more than a few hundred for a terrabyte of near-line and on-line data.
The only bottleneck you have then is your PCI bus.
You'll probably be fine with the 10 drives and one HD as long as:
1) You use a ramdisk
2) You make sure each burner has at least 2MB of buffer
With the 2MB buffer, fast scsi, ram disk and DMA you should run into no problems even with 24 or 32 speed burners. You'd be better off, of course, with a faster/wider PCI bus.
Integrate a robotic loading/unloading system, and 24x drives - you'll get 10 cds every two minutes. Your class of fifty can get their CD on the way out the door. It may be more cost effective to get twice as many drives that run at half the speed.
The same was/is said about mother's milk for a growing infant - and while it is true, it has since been determined that one of a few dozen stock solutions will work for 99% of all infants.
Of course, the fetus is probably a lot more complex in its requirements, but the point I'm trying to make is that we thought the same thing about mother's milk. It may well be that for best development a woman's womb and the nurishment and hormones therein are the only option, but we could in fact be at a point, technologically, to make the several dozen nutrient streams, one or two of which will be adequate at meeting a developing fetus' needs.
I'd prefer the old fashioned way (being male, married with two kids), and I'm sure that for many years to come after it becomes 99.9% effective many will feel the same way.
But it's coming, and the ethical issues need to be worked out, because the profit is there, meaning that the technology will come, and it will work.
The download file (If you actually read the entire page) contains instructions on how to download the larger sampling of 900,000 web pages - the 57MB download is NOT the 900,000 sample file, only a subset of the 900,000 subset of GOOGLE.
Palm did well - so well that the majority of their customers don't want or need to upgrade. They made a PDA John Doe could use (John doe could barely send email when he got his palm). So what have they had to do? They've had to expand their market to include other groups to keep their sales up, now they've got the wireless PDAs, and they've got the cheap PDAs, and now they've saturated that market with satisfied, non-returning customers. The only market they don't have a PDA for is the power-user market, and they really haven't made much headway into the enterprise market (not nearly as much as they were expecting).
So they've painted themselves into a corner. Handspring at least did a little better - by making their PDAs cheaper and non-upgradeable they have customers that are starting to wonder if they should get the new model - but not many, because they have the same market Palm has, and these people don't care to fix what's not broken.
So they see their sales dropping, and they are going to be cutting jobs and weathering the storm (by seperating their businesses, etc), and at the same time try and find a way to 1) get people to upgrade 2) break into other markets.
They've chosen primarily 1. They indicate that palm 5 will have backward compatability, but don't indicate any sort of forward compatability - soon you'll see apps that only run on >= P5 OS. They are hoping that this will happen quickly enough to save them before they run out of money. The only 'new' market they are trying to get into is the enterprise market again They've been trying to get into if for years, and haven't made any headway because their devices are not seen as necessary. Of the highly touted new features, the only one the palm doesn't have in its earlier versions in one form or another is the encryption - which John Doe doesn't need, care for, or want to deal with. This is a feature that the 'enterprise' customers have always wanted - on paper. They won't likely use it to its fullest, but it's a comfort buzzword they think they need.
Prognosis: Not good. Palm won't die out, but they won't have the time or resources to make any significant change to its OS and retarget it for larger, untapped markets. Its current offering is slightly less dazzling when seen side by side at the shopping mall, and not nearly as well marketted as the PocketPC.
I found that a $20 cordless phone (900MHz - 2.4GHz interferes with 802.11b) and $12 headset works perfectly for me. Make sure the cordless has a belt clip and headset jack. A hold button is nice...
Think of it in terms of physical security. You wouldn't leave your office unlocked just because you thought no one knew where the entrance was, or knew how to operate your special door handle which required no key.
Your uplink is publicly accessable, and therefore should require some sort of key. The strength of the lock should be determined by the ratio between needed security and money available for the lock. Sure, it'll cost a few k in development costs to put a better lock on, but think about the money lost if the satellite drifted under the control of a hacker, and you didn't have the fuel to put it back.
Of course. telling a group like this that your satellites are largely unprotected is like telling a kid the candy store is unlocked and no one is watching.
The other issue is that your customers likely have insurance on the sats. It may be that a good encryption system will lower the insurance cost, and thus make your sats more valuable when people start hacking into them.
I started with mediaone, which was bought by comcast. Now comcast is changing our email addresses, saying that they are moving our network off @home, but they were outsourcing tech support to ATT already, so essentially we were paying comcast for @home service and ATT support.
Looks like it's all going right to comcast now though so we may yet have one company providing our service.
On the good side - mediaone did an outstanding job setting up the network here (Ann Arbor cable rebuild) and I peak at 2.2Mb/S - if I'm talking to a fast server. Luckily UofMichigan mirrors all the important distributions and I get them at that speed.
Hopefully comcast will not only not fix it if it's not broken, but they will use this as a model for their other cable services elsewhere. 2.2Mb/S isn't ideal broadband, but it's certianly a step in the right direction.
It sounds like you don't want to shell out the money to do it properly (ie, this computer and proper monitoring hardware is going to cost more than a computer with the hardware built in), so here's a few suggestions:
Hook some thermisters (resistance varies with temperature) to the joystick input - it can support 4 of them. Hook fan speed outputs to some divide by ten ICs and then put that output on the joystick buttons. You've got a complete temperature monitoring unit then!
CPU votlages are a bit trickier. If you understand how the joystick port works you can use some cmos switches (or more crudely relays) and resistors to read the voltages with the joystick port as well.
Alternately, you can learn how to program a microcontroller which hooks up to a serial port (or even ISA) and that can do everything for you. I use PIC microcontrollers - cheap and easy to obtain, program and use... My PIC site.
I've been on the beta program since April, and can say that the only real reason to upgrade over 98/me is stability. I wouldn't bother upgrading win2k computers. the extra features are nice, but most of them are either 1) new, and therefore not full-featured (or fully tested/trusted) compared to alternatives (compare PCAnywhere to the Remote feature) or 2) available for win98/me and 2k.
I'm not going back. Sure, it doesn't work with my older web cam, my opti931 sound cards and a few other *low cost* pieces of some computers I've put it on, and the software that came with my $250 cd burner (also purchased in April - CD Creator 4) is also unusable (the only real loss I have with it - I can only use the built in CD burning functions right now) but I've had about 4 stops (when the system halts, dumps memory to the HD and reboots because of some hardware or software issue) in this entire time, and I only reboot when I install software (which was something that was supposed to be fixed, but oh well)
Having said that, I should also say that I'm not going to upgrade the office I work for. Sure, the benefits would be great, but we can't afford the $99 per computer when win98 works for us. Even if we had crashes on each computer daily, we still wouldn't save enough time and money to make up for the cost of the upgrade to the home version, nevermind professional. So it's installed on one computer which has to be rock solid - it's the one I dial into when I'm away from work (I work at home 3 of 5 days a week) and also serves a simple PHP/APACHE site which shows some MS access database information, but isn't worth a full blown server.
So the only thing against it is the 'MS Tax' and the only thing you're getting for that money is the stability we all should have gotten 10 years ago from MS.
In this job you would not have power to determine the remedy, only to enforce it. Is the remedy clearly defined (and adequate)? How much power do you believe you will truly have, given that MS will surely follow the letter of the remedy, while attempting to foil the intent of it: for instance the portions which only require MS to share interoperation documentation to commericial entities, as opposed to all software developers?
I can help you out of this mess. Just give me all the IPs you don't want to (or can't) manage, and I'll make sure they're well taken care of.
-Adam
"His cook has been goosed as ordered, sir."
Re:Firmware was posted...
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 2
I suspected that, and peeked at it a little bit more just now. It is all regular assembler, as you state.
So why don't you go ahead and release the code with comments? And while you're at the it, the schematic would be nice... And the contents of the configuration eeprom from the altera part... Gerbers, etc...;-)
Actually, MS is internally very competitive. Apparently when faced with a choice between two competing technologies, Mr Gates often decided to wait awhile and see who produced better results. It can be very cut-throat.
You can read more about this on other sites on the internet - I have a relative working there, but of course we never talk about stuff like that (as most MS employees are discouraged from talking about such things, and business and pleasure don't mix) so I have, at best, third hand knowledge, but it seems reasonable.
-Adam
WWW Jel - Immediately relieves surfing pain!
Indications - For temporary relief of 404 pages due to bad links.
Directions -
Compose email to the webmaster
Apply description of page you came from and page you're attempting to load liberally over affected area.
Warning - Do not use this product more than 7 times per day. If surfing and sore 404 problems do not improve in 7 days; if irritaion or pain persist or worsen; if rash or other symptoms appear consult your ISP.
Do not exceed recommended dosage.
If you have a history of allergy to computers, bad jokes or parodies, please consult with your ISP or local computer retailer before use.
Micro Basics - all the goodness with 75% less fat!
No animals were injured in the testing of this website. In fact, many of them wanted seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew there was a good reason to run my screen a 1600x1200x75Hz. Someone would have to be receiving a 144MHz optical signal to get a decent reading of my screen, and from far away it's not easy...
-Adam
You need a non backlit (reflective) TFT LCD, then you need to get a special plastic overlay that acts as a light pipe. This takes light from around the edges of the screen (from LEDs, CCFTs, etc) and shines it onto the display, which then reflects it back to you.
This same stuff is what is being used by the people making the 'backlight' for the gameboy advance.
You should be able to get this all in one package, but you need to make sure that the LCD is reflective, with lighting coming from the front.
-Adam
But this is already happening. Those who can afford hair transplants, liposuction, and facelifts get an aesthetic advantage over those who can't. And look around - the world hasn't exactly fallen apart because of it.
The transplants, liposuction, facelifts, etc do not get passed down from generation to generation. I did not say that it wasn't happening, and who are you to say that the world isn't 'exactly' falling apart? I appreciate you sharing your opinion, but it's just your opinion - nothing more. I do not intend to suggest that the world is falling apart, either.
By your logic, we should eliminate all university fees, and have enrolment done via some sort of "lottery," to ensure that rich parents' kids don't get an advantage over those who can't afford school, or couldn't afford a private tutor through high school to help them score higher on the SATs.
My logic does not suggest any course of action. It simply states that this sort of preselection has a known result. I did not say that we live in a society now free of class distinctions, nor did I say that we should avoid this course of action because it may polarize those distinctions more. I said that it will be the outcome of genetic preselection, based on how societies changed under previous technological advancments available to the wealthy.
I won't get into the whole argument about what we should put on the other side of the scale to balance things - if anything. That is a whole field which is not suited for discussion on this board. One thing can be said - So far, in our society, the innovations that at one time used to be available only to the rich trickle down so they are commonplace and affordable by the vast majority of the populace, which is somewhat different than many (but not all) previous empires.
-Adam
Consult a lawyer.
,"For more detail, please feel free to contact me at (phone)." If they want more detail or a personal perspective they can call you and get that info over the phone.
If you don't consult a lawyer, then only write strictly factual, verifiable information. Do not provide opinions, and stay away from putting words into the potential employees mouth (ie, don't relay opinions and statements that the employee said to you that raised or lowered your opinion of them).
"Mr X worked for the company from this time to that time, and left voluntarily. He completed 5 projects, 4 of which were on time and under budget. His 5 employee reviews indicated that he performed as expected in all areas, and was respected by his peers. He demonstrated the following skills..."
Then, near the end, place a phrase such as
-Adam
The ability to screen for these is directly related to the financial status of the person using the screening system. The poor would go the 'natural' way and subsequently become a lower class physically than families who can afford such procedures. As can be seen in every society documented or studied, physical differences lead to class tendencies. Even if it were illegal to discriminate based on some physical triat, it would happen and become the norm in many industries, pushing the lower class even lower.
Plus it require a LOT of government control and intervention to prevent such discrimination, reducing individual privacy and rights.
But we won't be around long enough to see it, so how about if we jump in with both feet and darn the consequences... We'll create a better class of geeks! Or at least ones with 6 fingers (better keyboarding) or a mousing hand or something.
-Adam
You've likely noticed that as the processors get faster and hotter the heatsinks and fans got larger and more essential.
The basic equation you'll run into is that for a given amount of processing power the cpu is going to be releasing a given amount of heat. If that heat is not dissipated it'll build up destructively.
The last processor I saw without a fan was a PII 300, and that had a heatsink twice as large as a normal fan heatsink situated directly below the power supply - which meant that it got a good deal of active cooling.
In order to effectively cool a modern processer (which does put out less heat per clock cycle than older processors, but not by much) you cannot just slap a large heatsink on it, slow it down, and expect it to have enough cooling.
In short, the only downside other than having a slower computer is that it won't work. A 1.8GHz processor running at 900MHz is going to let off as much heat as a processor in the same family rated at 900MHz, which surely needs cooling.
The 1.8GHz processor is letting off more heat than the 900MHz. The reason you can use the same heatsink and fan is that the heatsink and fan are overrated for the 900MHz, but not so much that the fan is not required.
Lastly, current processors are pipelined dynamic machines, meaning that they have a range of clock speeds in which their output will be valid. Too slow and they stop working, too fast and they stop working. You're generally safe underclocking a processor whose same die includes processors at the lower speed, but be careful, since higher speed variants generally have some small die changes which are not great enough to tell anyone, but do affect the range.
This field (thermal dynamics) is rife with documentation and resources. You should be able to calculate the heat output of the processor and determine the correct sizing heatsink. Don't be surprised if you find it requires a passive heatsink size of greater than 81 square inches, with a surface area significantly larger...
-Adam
The key here is you need to generate less heat, and/or use a method to remove heat to another location silently.
Examples of the first method (make less heat) would be:
Get a laptop that doesn't have a fan.
Use an older computer or SBC (P100, etc)
Examples of the second method would be:
Using heat pipes to move heat away from the processor to a convection cooled heatsink
Water cooling to a convection cooled heatsink (requires a method such as one discussed recently, or a silent pump)
A seperate noisy bit located in another area (forinstance - you have the noisiest part of your air conditioner outside your home)
Which method you choose depends on the processing power you need, and your budget.
But then, you probably already knew this and were hoping for something in the 'cheap', 'little work', 'high power' bin. Unfortunately nothing currently exists that fulfills all three. If you really don't mind a low power system, then you can experiment with a k6-2 running at 200MHz or so, with a 300w PS. You'd have to put a big fanless heatsink on the k6-2, and arrange the case such that natural chimney effect airflow will go past all the major components and through the fanless 300w ps (which should be providing less than 100w). Don't put more than a single 5400rpm HD in there (or diskless boot, if possible - look at cheap compactflash - ide adaptors), and skip the cd and floppy unless absolutely needed. Use an all-in-one low end motherboard.
-Adam
If all you need the device to do is repeating, or simple transmission/reception (to LCD, from keyboard, perhaps), even if you need to log everything to a hard drive, you'd be much better off in the long run making or using a system that uses microcontrollers instead of a full blown computer (where you'd waste 50-90% of your energy).
It appears as though psk31 is simple enough that a micro with a decent A/D would easily handle both reception and transmission. Is there a need for the extra processing power, or is this an issue of rapid development is more important than battery usage?
-Adam
A lot of concerns voiced in this discussion are dealt with adequately in the article.
That being said, "Sign me up!". The security, privacy, availability issues are going to be solved. As in the article, you get to determine when, how, etc your computer is used, and you get to set the price.
What this means in reality, though, is that there will be people who will set up farms of computers and underbid their processing power/storage space/bandwidth, and you will get very little, if any, money. Imagine a few cents a month, maybe.
This system would be of great use to big business (who will really make savings) but will have little effect on the consumer except, perhaps, faster access to products and services sold by big business.
The problem being that the only resource the average user may possibly use from such a system is backup. Your network connection isn't going to be fast enough to buy a cheap computer and buy processing power online for your game. MMORPGs, however, may take on a whole new meaning when they start being able to handle millions of simultaneously connected players, and a fully interactive virtual 3d world may come to fruition through such a distributed system.
So, as many research products go, this will enable businesses to lower their costs and compete more effectively with each other, which, surprise, surprise, will (eventually) mean a cost reduction for our services and products.
I'll start building my slow storage rack now. Shouldn't cost more than a few hundred for a terrabyte of near-line and on-line data.
-Adam
The only bottleneck you have then is your PCI bus.
You'll probably be fine with the 10 drives and one HD as long as:
1) You use a ramdisk
2) You make sure each burner has at least 2MB of buffer
With the 2MB buffer, fast scsi, ram disk and DMA you should run into no problems even with 24 or 32 speed burners. You'd be better off, of course, with a faster/wider PCI bus.
Integrate a robotic loading/unloading system, and 24x drives - you'll get 10 cds every two minutes. Your class of fifty can get their CD on the way out the door. It may be more cost effective to get twice as many drives that run at half the speed.
-Adam
The same was/is said about mother's milk for a growing infant - and while it is true, it has since been determined that one of a few dozen stock solutions will work for 99% of all infants.
Of course, the fetus is probably a lot more complex in its requirements, but the point I'm trying to make is that we thought the same thing about mother's milk. It may well be that for best development a woman's womb and the nurishment and hormones therein are the only option, but we could in fact be at a point, technologically, to make the several dozen nutrient streams, one or two of which will be adequate at meeting a developing fetus' needs.
I'd prefer the old fashioned way (being male, married with two kids), and I'm sure that for many years to come after it becomes 99.9% effective many will feel the same way.
But it's coming, and the ethical issues need to be worked out, because the profit is there, meaning that the technology will come, and it will work.
-Adam
The download file (If you actually read the entire page) contains instructions on how to download the larger sampling of 900,000 web pages - the 57MB download is NOT the 900,000 sample file, only a subset of the 900,000 subset of GOOGLE.
-Adam
Palm did well - so well that the majority of their customers don't want or need to upgrade. They made a PDA John Doe could use (John doe could barely send email when he got his palm). So what have they had to do? They've had to expand their market to include other groups to keep their sales up, now they've got the wireless PDAs, and they've got the cheap PDAs, and now they've saturated that market with satisfied, non-returning customers. The only market they don't have a PDA for is the power-user market, and they really haven't made much headway into the enterprise market (not nearly as much as they were expecting).
So they've painted themselves into a corner. Handspring at least did a little better - by making their PDAs cheaper and non-upgradeable they have customers that are starting to wonder if they should get the new model - but not many, because they have the same market Palm has, and these people don't care to fix what's not broken.
So they see their sales dropping, and they are going to be cutting jobs and weathering the storm (by seperating their businesses, etc), and at the same time try and find a way to 1) get people to upgrade 2) break into other markets.
They've chosen primarily 1. They indicate that palm 5 will have backward compatability, but don't indicate any sort of forward compatability - soon you'll see apps that only run on >= P5 OS. They are hoping that this will happen quickly enough to save them before they run out of money. The only 'new' market they are trying to get into is the enterprise market again They've been trying to get into if for years, and haven't made any headway because their devices are not seen as necessary. Of the highly touted new features, the only one the palm doesn't have in its earlier versions in one form or another is the encryption - which John Doe doesn't need, care for, or want to deal with. This is a feature that the 'enterprise' customers have always wanted - on paper. They won't likely use it to its fullest, but it's a comfort buzzword they think they need.
Prognosis: Not good. Palm won't die out, but they won't have the time or resources to make any significant change to its OS and retarget it for larger, untapped markets. Its current offering is slightly less dazzling when seen side by side at the shopping mall, and not nearly as well marketted as the PocketPC.
-Adam
Well, if you only put two songs on there how random can it be?
-Adam
I found that a $20 cordless phone (900MHz - 2.4GHz interferes with 802.11b) and $12 headset works perfectly for me. Make sure the cordless has a belt clip and headset jack. A hold button is nice...
-Adam
Think of it in terms of physical security. You wouldn't leave your office unlocked just because you thought no one knew where the entrance was, or knew how to operate your special door handle which required no key.
Your uplink is publicly accessable, and therefore should require some sort of key. The strength of the lock should be determined by the ratio between needed security and money available for the lock. Sure, it'll cost a few k in development costs to put a better lock on, but think about the money lost if the satellite drifted under the control of a hacker, and you didn't have the fuel to put it back.
Of course. telling a group like this that your satellites are largely unprotected is like telling a kid the candy store is unlocked and no one is watching.
The other issue is that your customers likely have insurance on the sats. It may be that a good encryption system will lower the insurance cost, and thus make your sats more valuable when people start hacking into them.
-Adam
I started with mediaone, which was bought by comcast. Now comcast is changing our email addresses, saying that they are moving our network off @home, but they were outsourcing tech support to ATT already, so essentially we were paying comcast for @home service and ATT support.
Looks like it's all going right to comcast now though so we may yet have one company providing our service.
On the good side - mediaone did an outstanding job setting up the network here (Ann Arbor cable rebuild) and I peak at 2.2Mb/S - if I'm talking to a fast server. Luckily UofMichigan mirrors all the important distributions and I get them at that speed.
Hopefully comcast will not only not fix it if it's not broken, but they will use this as a model for their other cable services elsewhere. 2.2Mb/S isn't ideal broadband, but it's certianly a step in the right direction.
-Adam
It sounds like you don't want to shell out the money to do it properly (ie, this computer and proper monitoring hardware is going to cost more than a computer with the hardware built in), so here's a few suggestions:
Hook some thermisters (resistance varies with temperature) to the joystick input - it can support 4 of them. Hook fan speed outputs to some divide by ten ICs and then put that output on the joystick buttons. You've got a complete temperature monitoring unit then!
CPU votlages are a bit trickier. If you understand how the joystick port works you can use some cmos switches (or more crudely relays) and resistors to read the voltages with the joystick port as well.
Alternately, you can learn how to program a microcontroller which hooks up to a serial port (or even ISA) and that can do everything for you. I use PIC microcontrollers - cheap and easy to obtain, program and use... My PIC site.
-Adam
I've been on the beta program since April, and can say that the only real reason to upgrade over 98/me is stability. I wouldn't bother upgrading win2k computers. the extra features are nice, but most of them are either 1) new, and therefore not full-featured (or fully tested/trusted) compared to alternatives (compare PCAnywhere to the Remote feature) or 2) available for win98/me and 2k.
I'm not going back. Sure, it doesn't work with my older web cam, my opti931 sound cards and a few other *low cost* pieces of some computers I've put it on, and the software that came with my $250 cd burner (also purchased in April - CD Creator 4) is also unusable (the only real loss I have with it - I can only use the built in CD burning functions right now) but I've had about 4 stops (when the system halts, dumps memory to the HD and reboots because of some hardware or software issue) in this entire time, and I only reboot when I install software (which was something that was supposed to be fixed, but oh well)
Having said that, I should also say that I'm not going to upgrade the office I work for. Sure, the benefits would be great, but we can't afford the $99 per computer when win98 works for us. Even if we had crashes on each computer daily, we still wouldn't save enough time and money to make up for the cost of the upgrade to the home version, nevermind professional. So it's installed on one computer which has to be rock solid - it's the one I dial into when I'm away from work (I work at home 3 of 5 days a week) and also serves a simple PHP/APACHE site which shows some MS access database information, but isn't worth a full blown server.
So the only thing against it is the 'MS Tax' and the only thing you're getting for that money is the stability we all should have gotten 10 years ago from MS.
-Adam
Is this committee like, you know, a beowolf cluster of industry people? Or do you see it as more of a multiprocessor system?
-Adam
In this job you would not have power to determine the remedy, only to enforce it. Is the remedy clearly defined (and adequate)? How much power do you believe you will truly have, given that MS will surely follow the letter of the remedy, while attempting to foil the intent of it: for instance the portions which only require MS to share interoperation documentation to commericial entities, as opposed to all software developers?
-Adam
"His cook was goosed, as ordered sir."
Mag readers generally do NOT have a component to determine the speed - the data on the stripe is self clocking.
-Adam
I can help you out of this mess. Just give me all the IPs you don't want to (or can't) manage, and I'll make sure they're well taken care of.
-Adam
"His cook has been goosed as ordered, sir."
I suspected that, and peeked at it a little bit more just now. It is all regular assembler, as you state.
;-)
So why don't you go ahead and release the code with comments? And while you're at the it, the schematic would be nice... And the contents of the configuration eeprom from the altera part... Gerbers, etc...
-Adam
Actually, MS is internally very competitive. Apparently when faced with a choice between two competing technologies, Mr Gates often decided to wait awhile and see who produced better results. It can be very cut-throat.
You can read more about this on other sites on the internet - I have a relative working there, but of course we never talk about stuff like that (as most MS employees are discouraged from talking about such things, and business and pleasure don't mix) so I have, at best, third hand knowledge, but it seems reasonable.
-Adam
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