Re:6d mouse more useful
on
3D Mouse
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Absolutely. I use a space-mouse at work (VR), but I guess relatively few people on slashdot know about them?
You don't move it around like a regular mouse, rather you hold the hockey-puck sized control in your hand and push/pull it _gently_ in one of 3 directions. Being able to twist the puck gives you the other 3 degrees of freedom.
The device is sprung and returns to center when you let go. The total movement of the puck is only about a centimetre (0.393700787 inches;) in any direction.
When you're used to using a normal mouse, it takes a while to get the feel of the relatively sensitive spacemouse, but since your hand remains stationary on the desk while using it, it's not tiring.
Drawbacks: Cost - the things are EXPENSIVE! Also I doubt it would totally replace a normal mouse - with the speed turned up high it wouldn't be accurate enough for fine tasks, and with the speed lower it'd take you forever to get from one side of the screen to the other. The space mouse is intended to manipulate models in 3D space.
Sun hardware has additional, wonderful resiliency features... engineers can then replace the broken cpus/memory/interfaces WITHOUT BRINGING THE MACHINE DOWN. This lends itself to an environment than can enjoy nearly 100% uptime.
Can Sun also transparently replace a failed CPU on a machine, WITHOUT HAVING LOST THE PROCESS THAT WAS RUNNING ACROSS ALL 1024 CPUS SIMULTANEOUSLY?
Thought not.
Long uptimes look good on the availability report you send to your boss, but when a user's job dies after 100,000 CPU hours he's still not going to be impressed.
1.) you can't just press enter like in IE after entering information eg login/password, searches anything you have to press tab THEN enter.
This works on all the mozilla/firefox installs I've seen. Something strange there.
2.) it doesn't pass off most wmv files to mplayer2 like it should and does with everything else fine
Have a look in the preferences (Navigator->Help Applications). Do you have an entry for video/x-ms-wmv there? (Under Unix this info can also come from/etc/mailcap - not sure where else this might be hidden in Windows.)
3.) why can't i run exes? must it not only second guess me but lock me into a forced download/install/delete cycle when IE lets me just execute after the download is complete trusting me to make the right choice?
Bill Gates is paid no where near $2 billion a year from Microsoft though. No stock options either. He (and now Balmer) are actually some of the lowest paid CEOs.
That may be, but I estimate that, via his sale of MSFT stock, he's earned around $5.3 million a day for the last two years.
This is off-topic, but nonetheless should be of interest to mozilla users who are forced to use Outlook at work. Even more so for people who use linux at work and are forced to access email via Outlook Web Access (sob!).
Mozilla support for exchange servers (without IMAP) looks like it should now be implementable.
Actually, my reason is that I'm ethically opposed to purchasing water, but it's damn hard to find someone who'll give you water for free.
That's why I love working where I am now. My company has actually piped water into a room right next to my office, and I can drink as much of it as I like!!
Once, during the 70s, I accidentally spilled Pepsi on the control panel at the Two Mile Island nuclear power plant, and Jimmy Carter came to fix it, and he was irradiated and grew to over 50 feet...
Boy, I'm glad that safety in nuclear power-stations is better today!
A 50 foot Bush-zilla is the last thing the world needs...
WARNING, CAUTION, DANGER, AND BEWARE! Gullibility Virus Spreading over the Internet!
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
"These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers," a spokesman said. "Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a streetcorner." However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
"My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone," reported one weeping victim. "I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous."
Another victim, now in remission, added, "When I first heard about "the sulfnbk.exe virus" and Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true." It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, "My name is Jane, and I've been hoaxed." Now, however, she is spreading the word. "Challenge and check whatever you read," she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
The willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, "I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo." When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected.
Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community. Courses in critical thinking are also widely available, and there is online help from many sources, including:
Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability at http://www.ciac.org/ciac/
Symantec/Anti Virus Research Center at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
McAfee Associates Virus Hoax List http://vil.nai.com/VIL/hoaxes.asp
The Urban Legends Web Site http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/
Those people who are still symptom free can help inoculate themselves against the Gullibility Virus by reading some good material on sources, such as:
Evaluating Internet Research Sources http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm
Evaluation of Information Sources http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm
Lastly, as a public service, Internet users can help stamp out the Gullibility Virus by sending copies of this message to anyone who forwards them a hoax.
This message is so important, we're sending it anonymously! Forward it to all your friends right away! Don't think about it! This is not a chain letter! This story is true! Don't check it out!
I think old computers are ugly. I can appreciate the old mechanical machines, they are a true work of art, but old boxes of transistors and PCB's are just not pleasing in any way.
I used to collect PDP-11s, so I can understand the attraction. My first (an 11/35) had core memory (for the youngsters out there, bits are stored in tiny magnetised iron rings, each ring has a wire running through it to sense and set the bit), and with a magnifying glass you could see each individual bit.
You mention boxes of transistors - I had friends in the DECUS NOP group (Nostalgic Old Products) who would debug broken hardware by sitting down with a PCB, a logic probe, and the circuit diagrams, and trace out the circuit until they found the disfunctional chip/transistor. Seeing how a CPU board, or a disk controller is built up from individual switches has been an educational experience for me, not just in a theoretical sense (a computer circuit is built from transistors), but from a real, hands-on, holy-shit-this-set-of-gates-is-an-adder sense.
Before I got a diode-matrix onto which to code my boot-strap I used to know the boot-strap code off by heart, and would toggle it in on the front panel in order to bring my machine to life.
Once you've got a PDP-11 of some sort, and have connections to other collectors, a hell of a lot of hardware starts coming your way. The number of different peripherals available for the PDP-11 was just astounding. 8" floppys, various removal hard-disks (I had both RK drives with 2MB storage and the RLs with a massive 5MB!), all sorts of tape drives, my favorite being the full height rell-to-reel tape drives with 1 metre long vaccuum columns which act as "springs" to damp the tapes movement.
There were teleprinters, terminals, and bus extension cabinets. Other people I knew had second houses completely full with old gear. I guess this is exactly the problem that the computer museum is facing.
The other problem is, as you mention, very few people are actually interested in the old hardware. And there's a world of difference of having the stuff yourself and tinkering with it, and simply seeing a restored old computer in a museum but not being allowed to touch it.
In Europe, at least, most of your wishes seem to be coming true.
1. Cheap, cheap, cheap. The damn things get lost and stolen too easily. If they cost $25 that'd be OK.
Yes, but only as long as you don't want MMS, UMTS, Bluetooth, etc. See below.
2. Pretty in pink. Make them colored, even better, make it possible to print phone sheaths on an inkjet. Why the boring grey?
Most phones can be bought in a range of colors and/or have interchangeable skins.
3. Standardised: one single battery standard for all phones. One single micro plug for all phones. One single power supply for all phones.
OK, chargers aren't there yet, and perhaps differences in battery technology make this difficult, but at least the data connections are becoming standardised thanks to Bluetooth. New BMWs just need the phone to be authenticated with the on-board computer and the car can then use the phone regardless of whether the phone is lying in the cradle or in your pocket.
4. Extensible rather than overpackaged. If I want a digital camera, MP3 player, PDA, let me add this to the phone. It'd be a lot easier if mobile phones had standard connections and some kind of docking system.
My Siemens S55 has a snap-on camera module with flash. I hate the thing, but that's just because the quality of the thing is crap and the connector is really dodgy. Again, Bluetooth could be the answer.
Let me propose a new, radical design for mobile phones. First replace SIM cards with "core" modules that are the size of a phone battery pack. These cores conform to an industry standard and have the SIM card embedded in them, along with the bulk of the GSM electronics.
The core can then be "sheathed" with anything from a $2.50 cover that provides just a keypad and headset jack, to a $2500 cover covered with diamonds.
I think your core modules are going to be too inflexible. How about we modularise things a bit more - a small standardised storage device which we can attach to various phone electronics (to allow upgrades of the electronics, or a choice between folding, compact, and larger models with more features). Battery technology is becoming flexible with regard to shape and umm... flexibility, so let's keep that free-form too, since we want users to be able to choose between tiny devices and larger devices with a longer battery life. Best would be to allow the battery to clip on the to the electronic module.
Now the people who would like a shiny, colored phone can buy the electronic module which allows the shells to be exchanged, whereas business users who don't care can go with boring grey where the integrated shell will be cheaper to manufacture.
Oh, wait... that's sounding a lot like the status quo.
Now if I, a simple Slashdotter, can come up with a plan to revolutionize the mobile phone industry, either I'm a genius, or the experts reviewed in this article are bumbling idiots, or both.
I can think of another alternative.:)
I suspect the mobile-phone market is one of the more market-driven industries out there, judging by the amount of competition and innovations we're seeing.
Personally, I've just set up my first WLAN at home and find the freedom of being able to surf/work anywhere in the house just great (but what's with the chalk marks outside my front-door?;). For me the next step would be to access my home network from my laptop _wherever_ I am. A Bluetooth/UMTS gateway over my cellphone could be just what I need, if the price was right...
And although hotmail's spam filtering seems to have improved recently, it's still enough of a problem for me (keep running up close to the limit).
One thing I found that helped - you can configure hotmail to dump junk-mail rather than filing it. That's keeping me comfortably at 50% at the moment.
I'd love to be able to download some mails out of my hotmail account to free up space there, but that doesn't seem to be an option (OK, it might work with Outlook, but I don't have Outlook).
My first HD had 40MB, I know it was small number...
My second (PC) hard-disk was 40MB. 40MB was the upgrade to a size that I'd never possibly be able to fill. Guess what?:)
Today I have 120GB, and I am never out of space. 120GB is more than 120CDs. On one CD I can put whole movie or half of movie, few mp3 albums, or lots, lots of text/sources. I just have no idea what I could put on bigger drive, except movies I don't watch, music I don't listen and software I don't use.
Half a movie fits on one CD, but only with pretty crappy quality. A DVB digital TV stream needs about 2GB per hour, so my digital video server (with 400GB disk) can store about 200 hours of video. At least it could, if not for all my music, documents, and uhh... anatomical-research images.:)
So to answer your question, once your home entertainment system is integrated into your computer, you will have no problem filling up your 120GB disk. If you wait for HDTV before going digital, I'm guessing anything smaller than 500GB won't be worth considering.
"So the IT guy says he can't backup my work. But he can replace the filesystem with one that can be backed up in the future..."
Sometimes I think sysadmins can be as stupid as users.
Let's take a look at that from my (sysadmin) perspective.
I have plenty of workstations with scratch filesystems which are not backed up, and were a user to ask me about backups, I would probably help him move his work to another filesystem where it will "be backed up in the future...".
The icing on the cake is, of course, that the users "think I'm stupid", when the reality is that they don't know the background behind IT policies (e.g. cost of disks vs. backups).
I have to agree with all of the naysayers on this. As much as I'd love to double my hard disk space for free, there's no such thing as a free lunch. This looks like a really terrific way to hose all of the data on your hard drive. You're really better off just shopping around for a reasonably priced 100gb hard drive or something instead.
Nothing against you, atlasheavy, but this _really_ didn't rate a '+4 Insightful'.
this isn't like in the old days of the "punch a new hole to make your 5-1/4 inch floppy double sided", where if you screw up, you lose only a disk worth of data - with this, if you screw up, you lose a _disk worth_ of data.
Don't know about that. 20 years ago, all my data lived on 5 floppies. Today it's on 5 hard disks. But it is any more important? Basically only the resolution of our porn has changed.:)
When region coding was introduced, DVD players were high-end hardware for consumers.
Now they're cheap enough that people can afford multiple players, and set them to different regions.
I live in Europe and buy a lot of DVDs here (europeans films, bargain-bin DVDs, etc.), and a lot of DVDs from the US (cheaper, earlier release, etc.), so this solution made a lot of sense for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely. I use a space-mouse at work (VR), but I guess relatively few people on slashdot know about them?
;) in any direction.
You don't move it around like a regular mouse, rather you hold the hockey-puck sized control in your hand and push/pull it _gently_ in one of 3 directions. Being able to twist the puck gives you the other 3 degrees of freedom.
The device is sprung and returns to center when you let go. The total movement of the puck is only about a centimetre (0.393700787 inches
When you're used to using a normal mouse, it takes a while to get the feel of the relatively sensitive spacemouse, but since your hand remains stationary on the desk while using it, it's not tiring.
Drawbacks: Cost - the things are EXPENSIVE! Also I doubt it would totally replace a normal mouse - with the speed turned up high it wouldn't be accurate enough for fine tasks, and with the speed lower it'd take you forever to get from one side of the screen to the other. The space mouse is intended to manipulate models in 3D space.
Sun hardware has additional, wonderful resiliency features... engineers can then replace the broken cpus/memory/interfaces WITHOUT BRINGING THE MACHINE DOWN. This lends itself to an environment than can enjoy nearly 100% uptime.
Can Sun also transparently replace a failed CPU on a machine, WITHOUT HAVING LOST THE PROCESS THAT WAS RUNNING ACROSS ALL 1024 CPUS SIMULTANEOUSLY?
Thought not.
Long uptimes look good on the availability report you send to your boss, but when a user's job dies after 100,000 CPU hours he's still not going to be impressed.
1.) you can't just press enter like in IE after entering information eg login/password, searches anything you have to press tab THEN enter.
/etc/mailcap - not sure where else this might be hidden in Windows.)
This works on all the mozilla/firefox installs I've seen. Something strange there.
2.) it doesn't pass off most wmv files to mplayer2 like it should and does with everything else fine
Have a look in the preferences (Navigator->Help Applications). Do you have an entry for video/x-ms-wmv there? (Under Unix this info can also come from
3.) why can't i run exes? must it not only second guess me but lock me into a forced download/install/delete cycle when IE lets me just execute after the download is complete trusting me to make the right choice?
Think about it.
Bill Gates is paid no where near $2 billion a year from Microsoft though. No stock options either. He (and now Balmer) are actually some of the lowest paid CEOs.
That may be, but I estimate that, via his sale of MSFT stock, he's earned around $5.3 million a day for the last two years.
This is off-topic, but nonetheless should be of interest to mozilla users who are forced to use Outlook at work. Even more so for people who use linux at work and are forced to access email via Outlook Web Access (sob!).
Mozilla support for exchange servers (without IMAP) looks like it should now be implementable.
Bug 128284
Please vote for this bug if you desperately _desperately_ (like me!) need support for exchange!
and does suggest Firefox is somewhat less capable than IE because the fancy menus on Slate do not work...
Slate has fancy menus?
Damn, gotta get me some of that MSIE.
Actually, my reason is that I'm ethically opposed to purchasing water, but it's damn hard to find someone who'll give you water for free.
That's why I love working where I am now. My company has actually piped water into a room right next to my office, and I can drink as much of it as I like!!
Once, during the 70s, I accidentally spilled Pepsi on the control panel at the Two Mile Island nuclear power plant, and Jimmy Carter came to fix it, and he was irradiated and grew to over 50 feet...
Boy, I'm glad that safety in nuclear power-stations is better today!
A 50 foot Bush-zilla is the last thing the world needs...
I send the following, reply-to-all:
.htm
--
WARNING, CAUTION, DANGER, AND BEWARE!
Gullibility Virus Spreading over the Internet!
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Institute for the Investigation of Irregular Internet Phenomena announced today that many Internet users are becoming infected by a new virus that causes them to believe without question every groundless story, legend, and dire warning that shows up in their inbox or on their browser. The Gullibility Virus, as it is called, apparently makes people believe and forward copies of silly hoaxes relating to cookie recipes, email viruses, taxes on modems, and get-rich-quick schemes.
"These are not just readers of tabloids or people who buy lottery tickets based on fortune cookie numbers," a spokesman said. "Most are otherwise normal people, who would laugh at the same stories if told to them by a stranger on a streetcorner." However, once these same people become infected with the Gullibility Virus, they believe anything they read on the Internet.
"My immunity to tall tales and bizarre claims is all gone," reported one weeping victim. "I believe every warning message and sick child story my friends forward to me, even though most of the messages are anonymous."
Another victim, now in remission, added, "When I first heard about "the sulfnbk.exe virus" and Good Times, I just accepted it without question. After all, there were dozens of other recipients on the mail header, so I thought the virus must be true." It was a long time, the victim said, before she could stand up at a Hoaxees Anonymous meeting and state, "My name is Jane, and I've been hoaxed." Now, however, she is spreading the word. "Challenge and check whatever you read," she says.
Internet users are urged to examine themselves for symptoms of the virus, which include the following:
The willingness to believe improbable stories without thinking the urge to forward multiple copies of such stories to others a lack of desire to take three minutes to check to see if a story is true T. C. is an example of someone recently infected. He told one reporter, "I read on the Net that the major ingredient in almost all shampoos makes your hair fall out, so I've stopped using shampoo." When told about the Gullibility Virus, T. C. said he would stop reading email, so that he would not become infected.
Anyone with symptoms like these is urged to seek help immediately. Experts recommend that at the first feelings of gullibility, Internet users rush to their favorite search engine and look up the item tempting them to thoughtless credence. Most hoaxes, legends, and tall tales have been widely discussed and exposed by the Internet community. Courses in critical thinking are also widely available, and there is online help from many sources, including:
Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability at
http://www.ciac.org/ciac/
Symantec/Anti Virus Research Center at
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
McAfee Associates Virus Hoax List
http://vil.nai.com/VIL/hoaxes.asp
The Urban Legends Web Site
http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/
Urban Legends Reference Pages
http://www.snopes.com
Datafellows Hoax Warnings
http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/
Those people who are still symptom free can help inoculate themselves against the Gullibility Virus by reading some good material on sources, such as:
Evaluating Internet Research Sources
http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm
Evaluation of Information Sources
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln
Lastly, as a public service, Internet users can help stamp out the Gullibility Virus by sending copies of this message to anyone who forwards them a hoax.
This message is so important, we're sending it anonymously! Forward it to all your friends right away! Don't think about it! This is not a chain letter! This story is true! Don't check it out!
enquiring minds need to know
off the top of my head I can't think of any other comic books that were redone for a completely different culture. Anyone?
Yes. Oh, yes.
But you'd better hope it doesn't come out like this.
I think old computers are ugly. I can appreciate the old mechanical machines, they are a true work of art, but old boxes of transistors and PCB's are just not pleasing in any way.
I used to collect PDP-11s, so I can understand the attraction. My first (an 11/35) had core memory (for the youngsters out there, bits are stored in tiny magnetised iron rings, each ring has a wire running through it to sense and set the bit), and with a magnifying glass you could see each individual bit.
You mention boxes of transistors - I had friends in the DECUS NOP group (Nostalgic Old Products) who would debug broken hardware by sitting down with a PCB, a logic probe, and the circuit diagrams, and trace out the circuit until they found the disfunctional chip/transistor. Seeing how a CPU board, or a disk controller is built up from individual switches has been an educational experience for me, not just in a theoretical sense (a computer circuit is built from transistors), but from a real, hands-on, holy-shit-this-set-of-gates-is-an-adder sense.
Before I got a diode-matrix onto which to code my boot-strap I used to know the boot-strap code off by heart, and would toggle it in on the front panel in order to bring my machine to life.
Once you've got a PDP-11 of some sort, and have connections to other collectors, a hell of a lot of hardware starts coming your way. The number of different peripherals available for the PDP-11 was just astounding. 8" floppys, various removal hard-disks (I had both RK drives with 2MB storage and the RLs with a massive 5MB!), all sorts of tape drives, my favorite being the full height rell-to-reel tape drives with 1 metre long vaccuum columns which act as "springs" to damp the tapes movement.
There were teleprinters, terminals, and bus extension cabinets. Other people I knew had second houses completely full with old gear. I guess this is exactly the problem that the computer museum is facing.
The other problem is, as you mention, very few people are actually interested in the old hardware. And there's a world of difference of having the stuff yourself and tinkering with it, and simply seeing a restored old computer in a museum but not being allowed to touch it.
In Europe, at least, most of your wishes seem to be coming true.
:)
;). For me the next step would be to access my home network from my laptop _wherever_ I am. A Bluetooth/UMTS gateway over my cellphone could be just what I need, if the price was right...
1. Cheap, cheap, cheap. The damn things get lost and stolen too easily. If they cost $25 that'd be OK.
Yes, but only as long as you don't want MMS, UMTS, Bluetooth, etc. See below.
2. Pretty in pink. Make them colored, even better, make it possible to print phone sheaths on an inkjet. Why the boring grey?
Most phones can be bought in a range of colors and/or have interchangeable skins.
3. Standardised: one single battery standard for all phones. One single micro plug for all phones. One single power supply for all phones.
OK, chargers aren't there yet, and perhaps differences in battery technology make this difficult, but at least the data connections are becoming standardised thanks to Bluetooth. New BMWs just need the phone to be authenticated with the on-board computer and the car can then use the phone regardless of whether the phone is lying in the cradle or in your pocket.
4. Extensible rather than overpackaged. If I want a digital camera, MP3 player, PDA, let me add this to the phone. It'd be a lot easier if mobile phones had standard connections and some kind of docking system.
My Siemens S55 has a snap-on camera module with flash. I hate the thing, but that's just because the quality of the thing is crap and the connector is really dodgy. Again, Bluetooth could be the answer.
Let me propose a new, radical design for mobile phones. First replace SIM cards with "core" modules that are the size of a phone battery pack. These cores conform to an industry standard and have the SIM card embedded in them, along with the bulk of the GSM electronics.
The core can then be "sheathed" with anything from a $2.50 cover that provides just a keypad and headset jack, to a $2500 cover covered with diamonds.
I think your core modules are going to be too inflexible. How about we modularise things a bit more - a small standardised storage device which we can attach to various phone electronics (to allow upgrades of the electronics, or a choice between folding, compact, and larger models with more features). Battery technology is becoming flexible with regard to shape and umm... flexibility, so let's keep that free-form too, since we want users to be able to choose between tiny devices and larger devices with a longer battery life. Best would be to allow the battery to clip on the to the electronic module.
Now the people who would like a shiny, colored phone can buy the electronic module which allows the shells to be exchanged, whereas business users who don't care can go with boring grey where the integrated shell will be cheaper to manufacture.
Oh, wait... that's sounding a lot like the status quo.
Now if I, a simple Slashdotter, can come up with a plan to revolutionize the mobile phone industry, either I'm a genius, or the experts reviewed in this article are bumbling idiots, or both.
I can think of another alternative.
I suspect the mobile-phone market is one of the more market-driven industries out there, judging by the amount of competition and innovations we're seeing.
Personally, I've just set up my first WLAN at home and find the freedom of being able to surf/work anywhere in the house just great (but what's with the chalk marks outside my front-door?
Yeah, the page _says_ mozilla 1.7, but the URL it gives me for the download is the 1.6 version. What's up with that?
A little poking around in the FTP directory, and I found the 1.7 versions...
Mine's still 2MB too. :(
And although hotmail's spam filtering seems to have improved recently, it's still enough of a problem for me (keep running up close to the limit).
One thing I found that helped - you can configure hotmail to dump junk-mail rather than filing it. That's keeping me comfortably at 50% at the moment.
I'd love to be able to download some mails out of my hotmail account to free up space there, but that doesn't seem to be an option (OK, it might work with Outlook, but I don't have Outlook).
Someone has found that the dinosaur turned up between 1100 and 1200 NZST on the 5th of May. :)
Did you notice that in the first picture, the lens looks pretty dirty, and in the second one it's much cleaner?
But ever tried to find, say, ten pages, or even a paragraph, about Napoleon?
That's what an encyclopaedia is for, isn't it?
My first HD had 40MB, I know it was small number...
:)
:)
My second (PC) hard-disk was 40MB. 40MB was the upgrade to a size that I'd never possibly be able to fill. Guess what?
Today I have 120GB, and I am never out of space. 120GB is more than 120CDs. On one CD I can put whole movie or half of movie, few mp3 albums, or lots, lots of text/sources. I just have no idea what I could put on bigger drive, except movies I don't watch, music I don't listen and software I don't use.
Half a movie fits on one CD, but only with pretty crappy quality. A DVB digital TV stream needs about 2GB per hour, so my digital video server (with 400GB disk) can store about 200 hours of video. At least it could, if not for all my music, documents, and uhh... anatomical-research images.
So to answer your question, once your home entertainment system is integrated into your computer, you will have no problem filling up your 120GB disk. If you wait for HDTV before going digital, I'm guessing anything smaller than 500GB won't be worth considering.
Why is it perfectly acceptable for a set of software in common use by millions of people to have an utterly broken UI?
Disclaimer: I hate Microsoft.
No-one said that it's perfectly acceptable. But I can't think of any operating system that would not be considered broken under your criteria.
People in glass houses and all...
"So the IT guy says he can't backup my work. But he can replace the filesystem with one that can be backed up in the future..."
Sometimes I think sysadmins can be as stupid as users.
Let's take a look at that from my (sysadmin) perspective.
I have plenty of workstations with scratch filesystems which are not backed up, and were a user to ask me about backups, I would probably help him move his work to another filesystem where it will "be backed up in the future...".
The icing on the cake is, of course, that the users "think I'm stupid", when the reality is that they don't know the background behind IT policies (e.g. cost of disks vs. backups).
I have to agree with all of the naysayers on this. As much as I'd love to double my hard disk space for free, there's no such thing as a free lunch. This looks like a really terrific way to hose all of the data on your hard drive. You're really better off just shopping around for a reasonably priced 100gb hard drive or something instead.
Nothing against you, atlasheavy, but this _really_ didn't rate a '+4 Insightful'.
this isn't like in the old days of the "punch a new hole to make your 5-1/4 inch floppy double sided", where if you screw up, you lose only a disk worth of data - with this, if you screw up, you lose a _disk worth_ of data.
:)
Don't know about that. 20 years ago, all my data lived on 5 floppies. Today it's on 5 hard disks. But it is any more important? Basically only the resolution of our porn has changed.
When region coding was introduced, DVD players were high-end hardware for consumers.
Now they're cheap enough that people can afford multiple players, and set them to different regions.
I live in Europe and buy a lot of DVDs here (europeans films, bargain-bin DVDs, etc.), and a lot of DVDs from the US (cheaper, earlier release, etc.), so this solution made a lot of sense for me.
We carried shoeboxes full of punched cards over to the card reader. Woe unto those unfortunate souls who dropped theirs.
As a 7th grader, I once caused a 10th grader to drop his stack. It wasn't BASIC - no line numbers.
Came pretty close to being fed through the line printer.
These days, of course, we have easier ways to lose hours of work - two vi sessions open, anyone?
I believe the red carpet is over 400 metres long, spanning the length of Courtenay Place, one of our largest streets.
:)
As an australian, I can't pass up an opportunity to poke a bit of fun at the kiwis. So...
Your largest streets are 400 metres long? I honestly though NZ was a bit bigger than that. Or do you just not have all that many cars?
Or does length in New Zealand refer to width? Sort of like that vowel-rotating thing?