It was self-congratulatory back-patting on the part of the open source people. More constructive and useful discussion would have taken place had it not focussed on or revolved around MS and Mundie.
Whenever I am not sure how to explain open source or free software to someone, I just think, "What Would Michael Tiemann Do?"
He insults VC people, insults the world by saying that "some people get it" when it comes to OS/FS, tells us that there are "some smart people" at MS, and comes off cocky and immature at the same time.
While I believe in OS and FS, for heaven's sake, at least be mature about it!
-Adam
Go ahead, moderate me down if you think this is off-topic, or if you listened to the panel and talks and determined that I've got it all wrong.
I can't wait for all the idiots to start posting, "But they're going to make it just like Windows!!!"
While the reality is is that not only are 'regular' users familiar with windows, but MS has spent significant resources studying exactly these issues and they are common even to those who are not familiar with windows. Many of these concepts (which the Linux community has shunned for years trying to avoid being like Windows) are going to have to be embraced (and extended) by the Linux community if they are going to gain any mindshare in the population.
Actually, I suspect this would make the world a little safer. If a nation decides to throw nukes at us, we don't have to blow them to bits, as long as we can take care of the nukes.
If some small country sent a nuke our way now, it's not a matter of just blowing them up. We'd have to blow them up AND everyone they have a treaty with who also has a nuke. Think Iraq/Russia.
-Adam This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Re:Artificial gravity via centrifugal force etc.
on
ISS Airlock Installed
·
· Score: 2
You wouldn't do this on the current space station. It is orbiting earth, and has an 'up' and a 'down' (ie, it has a face always pointing towards Earth) and several aspects fo the station depend on this relationship.
If you start spinning something on the station, the station (or major parts of it)could not twist or rotate (think gyroscope) without severe stress on various joints unless you made it so it does not turn at all as it spins around the earth.
-Adam This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
They are staging a war on the GPL...
on
MySQL & Nusphere
·
· Score: 1
Obviously MYSQL and NUSPHERE are being payed ludicrous amounts of money from MS to stage a war set on GPL battlegrounds so Mundie can nod his head at it and say,
Actually, it is of great priority. Quite frankly the US needs China, and China needs the US (Ditto for all other nations in the world, see "For Whom The Bell Tolls". We all need each other).
However, the majority of US citizens feel that there are certian basic human rights that ought to be met by everyone. We generally won't mess with another country, but we can force them to make certian decisions due to the fact that they need our business to thrive economically. It would be the same as other nations refusing to trade with us (or limiting, or tariffing, etc) because we don't have vey strict emissions standards, or because we have nuclear arms, etc.
I'm proud of the USA, and am glad to be here. Sure, there are things I disagree with that the nation does both externally and internally, but that's the price I pay for choosing to live in a semi-democracy (republic or 50 states, which are also ruled as republics. We could go to a democracy if we wanted, now that the needed speed and bandwidth of communications are in place, but that would also entail a lessening of our anonymity and privacy).
At any rate, don't think of us as bullying you. Think of it as you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours, and don't touch the other nations that have treaties with us.
IANAPSM (I am not a political science major)
-Adam
Prepare to don flame suit
Donning flame suit...3...2...1...
Flame suit engaged and operational.
IIRC, "Adobe Illustrator" is trademarked, not "Illustrator", which is an english word found in the dictionary.
This is really no different than a "Hershey's Kiss", in that many chocolate makers produce "Kisses" and a "Kiss" which are essentially the same mold as a "Hershey's Kiss", but they are not infringing, since Hershey's cannot trademark the word Kiss.
On the other hand you have "Windows", which has been trademarked succesfully, and it would be difficult for one to make an OS, or nearly any piece of software, with that name.
I doubt that Adobe would win a court battle, but it is expensive and everyone has to choose their battles wisely. Sometimes it's better to stand up and stand firm, other times it's better to bend a little until the wind blows over. I personally would rather have a rename and then the author spend time further developing the software than have all development stop (essentially) while various people grapple in court.
There are multiple reason why we don't have 'web pads'.
Battery life
Size/weight
Durability
Cost
etc
For instance, no one wants a web pad that only lasts 4 hours on one charge, yet that's the average life of a laptop with more room for batteries. The web pad is large and ungainly - try spending more than 15 minutes writing on a legal notepad on your lap while staring at the notepad in your lap. Neck hurts, wrist hurts, etc. It's very bad ergonomically, and these things are too heavy to be held up while in use (like a pda). You hold even a 5 pound weight a foot from your face for more than a few minutes and you'll see what I mean.
Of course, the casing would have to be made of an extremely stiff, non-brittle, easily manufactured, and light material to have a good chance of protecting the LCD from the abuse of regular use, and even then users would expect the warranty to cover things like broken LCDs (Well, it's a pad, so I can just throw it in my backpack like a pad, and it shouldn't break, right?).
Then you have the cost. A web pad will, for at least the first 5 generations of web pads, cost significantly more than a laptop of similar power, and the laptop is still more flexible in what you can do with it.
Then you have the form factor. While the thought of a web pad is cool, how useful would it really be? It can essentially do two things for you, display information, and collect information (notes, planning, etc). These objectives are met fairly handily by laptops and PDAs, or desktops and PDAs. Until the 'killer app' for web pads comes out, they really aren't going to have a warm reception. About the best (and most useful) design I ever saw was an IBM laptop where the screen could completely flip over and cover the keyboard with the screen out and be used as a web pad.
When (if) oled displays become long lasting and large enough, then you'll see web pads everywhere. Until then...
Having worked on many platforms, I can honestly say that if your program works under dos and is meant to be used by stupid people then use environment variables. Say you manage 20 stores, and each store uses about 5 programs. Every time you set a store up you edit 2-3 variables in one autoexec (or other batch file) and you have configured the entire store, instead of messing with 5 configuration files. Not only that but your other batch files can branch according to the store config which is set in the environment. Of course, if your market is hard core programmers and sys admins, then it would probably be best to use a config file (eh, in my day we didn't have config files, you started the program, found it in memory, and changed the values on the fly!), on the other end of the spectrum you'll have people (on all platforms) who are best served by a simpler environment variable.
This is far easier than having to write a program which parses someone else's config file, returning an error code, and then branching the batch based on the error code returned, or, even worse, storing the required info in both a variable and config file.
Ideally you'll give the user a choice, as suggested above, by allowing usage of environment variables, config file, command line, default config file, and program defaults.
But it sounds to me as though 1) you haven't asked the guy WHY he wants to stick with environment variables or 2) he doesn't have a good answer. Backwards compatability is a good answer, though, and it's not to hard to maintain backwards compatability and put a config file and command line options in there as well.
The reason cell phones are not allowed on flights is that the phone, if it makes connection with ground stations, will be trying to connect to several dozen of more groundstations at the same time since they are all available when you're that high. It ties up the cell phone system, and the frequent switching between stations causes a lot of dropped calls, etc. While the usually don't let you use electronic equipment during takeoff and landing (arguably the two most dangerous times in flight) it's more of a safety precaution, although it is absolutely true that today's airplane equipment can be adversely affected by todays external electronic equipment (especially transmitters such as cell phones). By limiting the usage of these devices the plane has a better chance of getting home.
If you're willing to pay $80/mo or more for a reliable connection, you might want to look at your other options which have a guranteed uptime and latency. SDSL can get you both low latency, high speed, and most companies offering it have good gurantees (try Bullseye, for instance).
You could also co-locate an external machine with a static IP, and form a vpn with it with your two links. Perhaps you could even find a host that could set that up for you for less than the cost of co-location. I know, bad latency, but do you really expect to have all three: Fast connection, low latency, low cost?
Part of the issue is that you're trying to take two consumer grade connections and create one business-grade connection. This isn't a 1+1=2 situation at all, you'll be lucky if 1+1=1.25 in your case, and if it is what you choose to do then you might as well use it for automatic failover with the associated glitch of losing any current tcp sessions when it switches. There is just no easy way to get around that with two dynamic IP connections and nothing else. If you can get your cable company(s) to give you static IPs, you might be able to finagle a few things, but you will not be able to mess with the many routers that you'd have to reconfigure to have completely transparent failover.
Often you will get what you pay for in this business, and what you are asking for is going to cost you either:
1) Try to make two broken connections equal one good connection: Work with your software and service providers and get things going (40+ hours, and ongoing problems, say 2-4hours/mo, as well as your connection fees of $80/mo or so) or
2) Skip the pain and simply do it right the first time: Get a dedicated business class connection with gurantees for $120/mo or more depending on your connection speed. A T1 (fractional, burstable, there are lots of options that reduce your cost) is surprisingly affordable these days, if you want better latency and reliability.
But then, your time and effort may be worth less than $10 an hour to you.
I like the part where it says they will 'license' the api. It's neato that they want to use Linux, but it is just a kernel to them, they are unlikely to open any of their software up. Probably will have to join their organization to get access to the code, and, at minimum, buy a license to get access to the full api to develop your apps for it.
-Adam
You've got to admit,
the RIAA has balls.
Specifically, yours...
Say a user writes their password down on a sticky note, and places it in the bottom of their desk drawer (not locked). For another person to get that password the person has to have physical access to the desk and general computer area. If one has that much access, then one can easily install a keyboard monitor (program or hardware) and get the password that way.
It is not a matter of whether the user is going to write the password down or not. It is a matter of physical security.
Reminds me of the CDDB. While not exactly the same, they both started as community efforts, and both turned into commercial efforts with legal strife trying to protect what they consider their territory.
What makes these people think that there's only room for one player in their respective areas? It is frustrating trying to explain to someone that competition is a good thing for them!
-Adam
Objects in browser may be stupider than they appear.
Japanese alone learn some 50,000 symbols before they leave their 5th year of schooling. Unicode was never meant to hold one spot for every character. It was meant to be used as a set of code pages much like ascii was. But it had to be larger than 256 to hold a reasonably representative set of one language at one time (such as Japanese, or Chinese (two dialects), etc).
Most documents consist largely of one language, so you start the document by stating the code page you're using. Very few documents need more than one set of 65,536 characters, but you can intersperse sets if needed.
But the idea of having one universal character set is ludicrous. There are well over 140,000 language characters on this earth, and there are many yet to have been entered into a computer. Sure, we could use 4 bytes per character, but is it really necessary? Absolutely not! Talk about inefficient. The only case where that would be more efficient than code pages is when the majority of documents extensively use more than 64k characters within each document.
Besides, translation software is coming along well enough that soon we will not have to worry about it too much.
I still have an article from an old magazine (80's) with a basic program which accepts a password, and times the interval between keypresses. When a different user types in the same password it was able to determine that it was not the same person, while still accepting the original user.
10 cents a minute for minimum 9600bps (max about 33k, I believe, with a direct digital connection?), or 33 cents a minute for a part of a T1. Oh, and these are business users with no patience and a company card.
-Adam
The shark on jaws was just complaining about its TMJ.
Well, ethernet and network design is getting far enough along where the average user could just plug their DHCP enabled laptop into an ethernet jack and have access. Yes, it would be a big headache as far as security and administration go, but you keep it completely seperate from any other network you have, disallow every packet except verified HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, SSH, HTTPS, and a few others, and you're set.
If you set this up at an airport with no user support, but a charge of $20/Hr (the only accessable web page when they start is a credit card or other payment scheme page which starts a java app which must be running for continued access) and you'd easily cover the cost of one system administrater for every 100 ethernet ports spread around an airport, and make a freaking huge profit to boot. People would pay 33 cents a minute for this stuff, especially when their flight is delayed. Offer discounts when the flight is delayed. Avoid people who are trying to break in by requiring good ticket information to use the service (ie, hackers may not be motivated enough to try if they have to buy a $75 ticket to chicago that will only let them use the service until the flight leaves).
It'll happen, but it'll probably start out as a free ad based service, perhaps available to those using wireless ethernet cards, requiring only ticket info to use the service (enabled 5 hours before the flight leaves, disabled when the plane leaves the ground)
I volunteer to set it up for Detroit Metro airport.
Transformers are a heck of a lot cheaper than DC-DC or DC-AC converters, and can be made about as efficient as a solid state converter. When you're dealing with such high voltages, high currents, or both, you'll find the solid state converters are significantly more expensive.
They need an ethernet jack on it, and a plug for a laptop PS. Just think, pay 25 cents a minute at the airport to check your email, etc... Cheaper than using the Cell or ricochet, and faster too.
-Adam
Honk if you've never seen an Uzi fired out a car window.
I thought it would be neat to put a trackball into a mouse for 4 degrees of movement, but recently I saw an IBM mouse with the little stick on it and thought that would actually be better!
I only saw it in a picture though, and couldn't find it on IBM's web site. Anyone know anything else? It would be great for a first person shooter if you put an additional wheel and a few more buttons on it...
-Adam
---Looking for people to market my in-home, do it yourself root canal kit---
Actually, there are two ways energy is lost, only one of which is inductively. You can harness the magnetic field generated by the power line with a coil (inductive), but you can also harness the electrostatic force generated by the line. This is what happens when you bring a flourescent light close to a high tension line.
Given that a high tension line is, say, 40ft in the air (for good reason), and is at 40kV, then there is 1000V per foot between the line and the ground. The air has a very high resistance, but a few pico or nano amps does flow from the wire to the ground. This is not enough to be felt by the human body, but will light a flourescent bulb (not full brightness, but close). As the lines get close to the ground (as when coming to a substation) they put fencing around it because the voltage can get as high as 10kV per foot, generating more current, more ozone, and a more hazardous place for the human body.
At any rate, I mention this because the superconductor will have very little electrostatic energy (underground cables are insulated better than just with air), but will create a greater magnetic field. This inductive energy is only lost when there are ferrous materials (or conducting loops) within its field. If they engineer it well, they can even limit those losses significantly.
Slashdot Mirror
It was self-congratulatory back-patting on the part of the open source people. More constructive and useful discussion would have taken place had it not focussed on or revolved around MS and Mundie.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Whenever I am not sure how to explain open source or free software to someone, I just think, "What Would Michael Tiemann Do?"
He insults VC people, insults the world by saying that "some people get it" when it comes to OS/FS, tells us that there are "some smart people" at MS, and comes off cocky and immature at the same time.
While I believe in OS and FS, for heaven's sake, at least be mature about it!
-Adam
Go ahead, moderate me down if you think this is off-topic, or if you listened to the panel and talks and determined that I've got it all wrong.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
I can't wait for all the idiots to start posting, "But they're going to make it just like Windows!!!"
While the reality is is that not only are 'regular' users familiar with windows, but MS has spent significant resources studying exactly these issues and they are common even to those who are not familiar with windows. Many of these concepts (which the Linux community has shunned for years trying to avoid being like Windows) are going to have to be embraced (and extended) by the Linux community if they are going to gain any mindshare in the population.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Actually, I suspect this would make the world a little safer. If a nation decides to throw nukes at us, we don't have to blow them to bits, as long as we can take care of the nukes.
If some small country sent a nuke our way now, it's not a matter of just blowing them up. We'd have to blow them up AND everyone they have a treaty with who also has a nuke. Think Iraq/Russia.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
You wouldn't do this on the current space station. It is orbiting earth, and has an 'up' and a 'down' (ie, it has a face always pointing towards Earth) and several aspects fo the station depend on this relationship.
If you start spinning something on the station, the station (or major parts of it)could not twist or rotate (think gyroscope) without severe stress on various joints unless you made it so it does not turn at all as it spins around the earth.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Obviously MYSQL and NUSPHERE are being payed ludicrous amounts of money from MS to stage a war set on GPL battlegrounds so Mundie can nod his head at it and say,
"I told y'all so!"
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Actually, it is of great priority. Quite frankly the US needs China, and China needs the US (Ditto for all other nations in the world, see "For Whom The Bell Tolls". We all need each other).
However, the majority of US citizens feel that there are certian basic human rights that ought to be met by everyone. We generally won't mess with another country, but we can force them to make certian decisions due to the fact that they need our business to thrive economically. It would be the same as other nations refusing to trade with us (or limiting, or tariffing, etc) because we don't have vey strict emissions standards, or because we have nuclear arms, etc.
I'm proud of the USA, and am glad to be here. Sure, there are things I disagree with that the nation does both externally and internally, but that's the price I pay for choosing to live in a semi-democracy (republic or 50 states, which are also ruled as republics. We could go to a democracy if we wanted, now that the needed speed and bandwidth of communications are in place, but that would also entail a lessening of our anonymity and privacy).
At any rate, don't think of us as bullying you. Think of it as you scratch our back, we'll scratch yours, and don't touch the other nations that have treaties with us.
IANAPSM (I am not a political science major)
-Adam
Prepare to don flame suit
Donning flame suit...3...2...1...
Flame suit engaged and operational.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
AIM is an ackronymn, and everyone knows that you cannot trademark them...
Kind of like IBM, DEC, NEC, etc?
-Adam
Don't troll the feeds.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
IIRC, "Adobe Illustrator" is trademarked, not "Illustrator", which is an english word found in the dictionary.
This is really no different than a "Hershey's Kiss", in that many chocolate makers produce "Kisses" and a "Kiss" which are essentially the same mold as a "Hershey's Kiss", but they are not infringing, since Hershey's cannot trademark the word Kiss.
On the other hand you have "Windows", which has been trademarked succesfully, and it would be difficult for one to make an OS, or nearly any piece of software, with that name.
I doubt that Adobe would win a court battle, but it is expensive and everyone has to choose their battles wisely. Sometimes it's better to stand up and stand firm, other times it's better to bend a little until the wind blows over. I personally would rather have a rename and then the author spend time further developing the software than have all development stop (essentially) while various people grapple in court.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Battery life
Size/weight
Durability
Cost
etc
For instance, no one wants a web pad that only lasts 4 hours on one charge, yet that's the average life of a laptop with more room for batteries. The web pad is large and ungainly - try spending more than 15 minutes writing on a legal notepad on your lap while staring at the notepad in your lap. Neck hurts, wrist hurts, etc. It's very bad ergonomically, and these things are too heavy to be held up while in use (like a pda). You hold even a 5 pound weight a foot from your face for more than a few minutes and you'll see what I mean.
Of course, the casing would have to be made of an extremely stiff, non-brittle, easily manufactured, and light material to have a good chance of protecting the LCD from the abuse of regular use, and even then users would expect the warranty to cover things like broken LCDs (Well, it's a pad, so I can just throw it in my backpack like a pad, and it shouldn't break, right?).
Then you have the cost. A web pad will, for at least the first 5 generations of web pads, cost significantly more than a laptop of similar power, and the laptop is still more flexible in what you can do with it.
Then you have the form factor. While the thought of a web pad is cool, how useful would it really be? It can essentially do two things for you, display information, and collect information (notes, planning, etc). These objectives are met fairly handily by laptops and PDAs, or desktops and PDAs. Until the 'killer app' for web pads comes out, they really aren't going to have a warm reception. About the best (and most useful) design I ever saw was an IBM laptop where the screen could completely flip over and cover the keyboard with the screen out and be used as a web pad.
When (if) oled displays become long lasting and large enough, then you'll see web pads everywhere. Until then...
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Having worked on many platforms, I can honestly say that if your program works under dos and is meant to be used by stupid people then use environment variables. Say you manage 20 stores, and each store uses about 5 programs. Every time you set a store up you edit 2-3 variables in one autoexec (or other batch file) and you have configured the entire store, instead of messing with 5 configuration files. Not only that but your other batch files can branch according to the store config which is set in the environment. Of course, if your market is hard core programmers and sys admins, then it would probably be best to use a config file (eh, in my day we didn't have config files, you started the program, found it in memory, and changed the values on the fly!), on the other end of the spectrum you'll have people (on all platforms) who are best served by a simpler environment variable.
This is far easier than having to write a program which parses someone else's config file, returning an error code, and then branching the batch based on the error code returned, or, even worse, storing the required info in both a variable and config file.
Ideally you'll give the user a choice, as suggested above, by allowing usage of environment variables, config file, command line, default config file, and program defaults.
But it sounds to me as though 1) you haven't asked the guy WHY he wants to stick with environment variables or 2) he doesn't have a good answer. Backwards compatability is a good answer, though, and it's not to hard to maintain backwards compatability and put a config file and command line options in there as well.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
The reason cell phones are not allowed on flights is that the phone, if it makes connection with ground stations, will be trying to connect to several dozen of more groundstations at the same time since they are all available when you're that high. It ties up the cell phone system, and the frequent switching between stations causes a lot of dropped calls, etc. While the usually don't let you use electronic equipment during takeoff and landing (arguably the two most dangerous times in flight) it's more of a safety precaution, although it is absolutely true that today's airplane equipment can be adversely affected by todays external electronic equipment (especially transmitters such as cell phones). By limiting the usage of these devices the plane has a better chance of getting home.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
If you're willing to pay $80/mo or more for a reliable connection, you might want to look at your other options which have a guranteed uptime and latency. SDSL can get you both low latency, high speed, and most companies offering it have good gurantees (try Bullseye, for instance).
You could also co-locate an external machine with a static IP, and form a vpn with it with your two links. Perhaps you could even find a host that could set that up for you for less than the cost of co-location. I know, bad latency, but do you really expect to have all three: Fast connection, low latency, low cost?
Part of the issue is that you're trying to take two consumer grade connections and create one business-grade connection. This isn't a 1+1=2 situation at all, you'll be lucky if 1+1=1.25 in your case, and if it is what you choose to do then you might as well use it for automatic failover with the associated glitch of losing any current tcp sessions when it switches. There is just no easy way to get around that with two dynamic IP connections and nothing else. If you can get your cable company(s) to give you static IPs, you might be able to finagle a few things, but you will not be able to mess with the many routers that you'd have to reconfigure to have completely transparent failover.
Often you will get what you pay for in this business, and what you are asking for is going to cost you either:
1) Try to make two broken connections equal one good connection: Work with your software and service providers and get things going (40+ hours, and ongoing problems, say 2-4hours/mo, as well as your connection fees of $80/mo or so) or
2) Skip the pain and simply do it right the first time: Get a dedicated business class connection with gurantees for $120/mo or more depending on your connection speed. A T1 (fractional, burstable, there are lots of options that reduce your cost) is surprisingly affordable these days, if you want better latency and reliability.
But then, your time and effort may be worth less than $10 an hour to you.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
I like the part where it says they will 'license' the api. It's neato that they want to use Linux, but it is just a kernel to them, they are unlikely to open any of their software up. Probably will have to join their organization to get access to the code, and, at minimum, buy a license to get access to the full api to develop your apps for it.
-Adam
You've got to admit,
the RIAA has balls.
Specifically, yours...
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Say a user writes their password down on a sticky note, and places it in the bottom of their desk drawer (not locked). For another person to get that password the person has to have physical access to the desk and general computer area. If one has that much access, then one can easily install a keyboard monitor (program or hardware) and get the password that way.
It is not a matter of whether the user is going to write the password down or not. It is a matter of physical security.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Reminds me of the CDDB. While not exactly the same, they both started as community efforts, and both turned into commercial efforts with legal strife trying to protect what they consider their territory.
What makes these people think that there's only room for one player in their respective areas? It is frustrating trying to explain to someone that competition is a good thing for them!
-Adam
Objects in browser may be stupider than they appear.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Japanese alone learn some 50,000 symbols before they leave their 5th year of schooling. Unicode was never meant to hold one spot for every character. It was meant to be used as a set of code pages much like ascii was. But it had to be larger than 256 to hold a reasonably representative set of one language at one time (such as Japanese, or Chinese (two dialects), etc).
Most documents consist largely of one language, so you start the document by stating the code page you're using. Very few documents need more than one set of 65,536 characters, but you can intersperse sets if needed.
But the idea of having one universal character set is ludicrous. There are well over 140,000 language characters on this earth, and there are many yet to have been entered into a computer. Sure, we could use 4 bytes per character, but is it really necessary? Absolutely not! Talk about inefficient. The only case where that would be more efficient than code pages is when the majority of documents extensively use more than 64k characters within each document.
Besides, translation software is coming along well enough that soon we will not have to worry about it too much.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
I still have an article from an old magazine (80's) with a basic program which accepts a password, and times the interval between keypresses. When a different user types in the same password it was able to determine that it was not the same person, while still accepting the original user.
Long live Basic!
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Great. Now instead of losing a paltry 100MB due to click of death, I can lose 20GB!
I trust Iomega to hold my data like I trust a sieve to hold water.
-Adam
This message created with 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Hmmm.
10 cents a minute for minimum 9600bps (max about 33k, I believe, with a direct digital connection?), or 33 cents a minute for a part of a T1. Oh, and these are business users with no patience and a company card.
-Adam
The shark on jaws was just complaining about its TMJ.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Well, ethernet and network design is getting far enough along where the average user could just plug their DHCP enabled laptop into an ethernet jack and have access. Yes, it would be a big headache as far as security and administration go, but you keep it completely seperate from any other network you have, disallow every packet except verified HTTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, SSH, HTTPS, and a few others, and you're set.
If you set this up at an airport with no user support, but a charge of $20/Hr (the only accessable web page when they start is a credit card or other payment scheme page which starts a java app which must be running for continued access) and you'd easily cover the cost of one system administrater for every 100 ethernet ports spread around an airport, and make a freaking huge profit to boot. People would pay 33 cents a minute for this stuff, especially when their flight is delayed. Offer discounts when the flight is delayed. Avoid people who are trying to break in by requiring good ticket information to use the service (ie, hackers may not be motivated enough to try if they have to buy a $75 ticket to chicago that will only let them use the service until the flight leaves).
It'll happen, but it'll probably start out as a free ad based service, perhaps available to those using wireless ethernet cards, requiring only ticket info to use the service (enabled 5 hours before the flight leaves, disabled when the plane leaves the ground)
I volunteer to set it up for Detroit Metro airport.
Got Route?
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
There's still a good reason to use AC:
Transformers are a heck of a lot cheaper than DC-DC or DC-AC converters, and can be made about as efficient as a solid state converter. When you're dealing with such high voltages, high currents, or both, you'll find the solid state converters are significantly more expensive.
-Adam
Honk if you've... Oh, nevermind. ***WHOOOSH***
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
They need an ethernet jack on it, and a plug for a laptop PS. Just think, pay 25 cents a minute at the airport to check your email, etc... Cheaper than using the Cell or ricochet, and faster too.
-Adam
Honk if you've never seen an Uzi fired out a car window.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
I thought it would be neat to put a trackball into a mouse for 4 degrees of movement, but recently I saw an IBM mouse with the little stick on it and thought that would actually be better!
I only saw it in a picture though, and couldn't find it on IBM's web site. Anyone know anything else? It would be great for a first person shooter if you put an additional wheel and a few more buttons on it...
-Adam
---Looking for people to market my in-home, do it yourself root canal kit---
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Actually, there are two ways energy is lost, only one of which is inductively. You can harness the magnetic field generated by the power line with a coil (inductive), but you can also harness the electrostatic force generated by the line. This is what happens when you bring a flourescent light close to a high tension line.
Given that a high tension line is, say, 40ft in the air (for good reason), and is at 40kV, then there is 1000V per foot between the line and the ground. The air has a very high resistance, but a few pico or nano amps does flow from the wire to the ground. This is not enough to be felt by the human body, but will light a flourescent bulb (not full brightness, but close). As the lines get close to the ground (as when coming to a substation) they put fencing around it because the voltage can get as high as 10kV per foot, generating more current, more ozone, and a more hazardous place for the human body.
At any rate, I mention this because the superconductor will have very little electrostatic energy (underground cables are insulated better than just with air), but will create a greater magnetic field. This inductive energy is only lost when there are ferrous materials (or conducting loops) within its field. If they engineer it well, they can even limit those losses significantly.
-Adam
Root. It does the body good.
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.