Hmm. Aesthetics. Aesthetics is something that the consumate marketdroid will never understand. If they had existed in any great numbers 100 years ago, cars would have had great big fiberglass horse sculptures fused to the chassis, to make it look more like the "original". This is what they would think was "aesthetically pleasing", because they have no great desire to actually appreciate what a car was/is. They just use some hackneyed formula, and whatever garbage plops out on the other side of the equals sign, well, that must be what consumers want.
Apply this to computers, and to a lesser extent, technology in general. A person that appreciates what a computer actually is, doesn't want one that looks like a teddy bear, or like some 1950's vision of the future, complete with some improbable Imac-esque form factor.
Does that mean that I prefer clunky XT style cases, with their "mildewed in a lost cave for 12,000 years" beige? Lord no, simply that in loving the things beyond their plastic shell, I actually have a good idea what might make them look their best without trying to turn them into something they're not. Sleek polished black, with only the slightest hint of organic curves, subtle blue LEDs... you get the idea.
Oh, and the wireless hub/switch thing? Sorry if that seems like it's nitpicking to you, but those are more than buzzwords to me. But thanks for showing to the world that they're nothing more than that to you.
A wireless switch? Duh. You know that a hub isn't a switch, right? Well, that's because the signal is "broadcast" through the ports. Well, with wireless, it is literally broadcast. It uses collision detection schemes. Wireless, by it's very nature, can never be "switched".
Besides, you should be shot for suggesting that we embrace the fashion computer movement.
This is what linux is for. My god, someone is even writing an Apple Prodos filesytem module... and I'm trying to convince a friend of mine to do the same thing with a userspace program he wrote, that reads Atari 800 disks.
Anyone ever heard of a catweasel board? Even GCR encoded floppies, all the way back to the 8 inchers are readable. Truly, with a little effort, I don't see the problem they are having. Pull the stuff off these discs, and archive it on cd or a big RAID array somewhere. Hell, people would mirror it too, as far as that goes. And as for a file format that won't be obselete? I'd go with html myself, though pdf wouldn't be too awful. Sure, these might be old and crusty in 10 years, but we'll never suffer from a way to read them. Someone will always write new software for these formats, and only that if for some reason the old software itself won't compile. This is truly a hardware issue, and not too bad of one at that.
Of course, the Luddites have to have something to complain about, might as well be this.
I have no idea what their policy is today, what was it in late 96, early 97?
I believe that the credit reporting may have been done by the collection agency itself. Like it matters.
As to the 4 months thing, no clue. But it was on the verge of being two years. If their billing apps are coded by the same people who code the client app...
It was like this in the past. However, in the world we have today, there are too many scary possibilities.
#1 AOL bills them for the products, and when they refuse to pay, sics a collection agency on them. Ruins their credit rating, something which might as well be impossible to fix.
#2 AOL already requires a credit card number for service. It wouldn't suprise me, if they just charged it to the card. Maybe a bit easier to fix, but then they lose their internet service. Assume that the credit card company is willing to reverse the charge for an unsolicited product, what do you think AOL's reaction will be?
For instance, back in '95, I lived in a small hick town. The local ISP canceled my service, simply because I had requested a price on a static IP (oh no, he must be a hacker!). In the two months that it took for me to resolve this dispute, I was without internet service. The withdrawal was so bad, I did the previously unimaginable... I signed up for the only other isp with a local number, AOL. It was horrible... if you minimize the stupid AOL screen, it would disconnect you everyy 45 minutes. And if you left it up, it completely covered the desktop. Needless to say, I hurried up, and did the ass-kissing it took, to get my other isp account back.
Well, even though I distinctly remember canceling AOL (it didn't appear on any of my subsequent credit card statements), two years later I have moved, and since canceled the credit card. Well, I get a call from AOL's collection service, demanding that I pay 2 years worth of AOL service. Not alot I can do to prove it to them, because if their own records don't show that I haven't signed on in over 22 months, what will? Worse, I ask them if I'm still signed up for service.
"Yes". "Please cancel it immediately!". "Can we have the credit card number that you signed up with?". "No, I've since canceled it, and have nothing with the number". "We're sorry, but we can't cancel the service without the cc number...".
Well, one month later, they cancel it anyway (thank god), but only because they've farmed it out to a collection agency. When the collection agency asks me if I want to dispute it, I tell them this story. They call me back a week later, telling me that they have rescinded the charges, and that I may have to privately pursue getting this taken off my credit history. Seems even the sharks at the collection agency had never heard of anything so f*cked up... they simply dropped it as unpursuable.
So, I have no trouble believing that AOL would do anything at all, nothing is too low.
I'm not a snob, but the I'm guilty of the second charge.
12 68k Macs. 1 Powermac 5 Amigas 3 Atari ST 1 NeXTstation 1 DECstation 2 VAXstations 1 Apple 'Pippin' Set top box. 1 WebTV (this was given to me, I wouldn't have bought it) 1 PDP-11/04 4 TRS-80's 3 AppleIIgs 3 AppleII's 4 CBM machines (vic20,plus4,c64,c128) And a legion of x86's running respectable alternative OSs including OS/2, Netware, Banyan VINES, Solaris x86, etc. (and I hope I don't have to say, "Linux")
I have the only integrated ethernet/token ring/arcnet/localtalk/atm/fddi network that I've ever heard of, and central to it is my linux server that is directly connected to each of those segments.
Soon, I'm gonna be adding rs-485 to the mix, communicating to a small SBC I'm designing. Econet is going to be much tougher, there weren't many econet pc cards made. Then again, I don't have an acorn yet anyway. Starlan will be a bit easier, I only need to get an AT&T 7300 unix pc, which isn't too tough, and I have found a place that stocks starlan nics (www.melco.com) but they want $400 per. Ouch. Worse, I'm not ready to write my own linux drivers yet, to be honest. And I've already got half the hardware needed for a complete corvus omninet segment, but I'm not sure this even counts.
And of course, just as soon as work picks up a bit, I'll be adding 802.11 and gigabit to the mix. Oh, and don't forget the 3 rs232 SLIP links to some of my older boxes.
1. My original post was completely on topic. 2. I didn't complain that I couldn't read the article, I defended myself when someone accussed me of it. 3. I didn't speculate what he had done, so much as speculate where the rest of the SGI went.
If people want to argue, they'll argue about anything. Using that as a justifcation to shut me up is weak.
(Back Ontopic) You're much better off reading comp.sys.sgi.marketplace. Sure, there are too many dealers there wanting retail prices for stuff that doesn't deserve wholesale... but every once in awhile there is a gem. My luck is that every time one of these comes along, I'm flat broke. I'm serious too, we're talking full Indigo 2 systems in the $150 range, not some beat up, half the parts are missing Personal Iris. Honest to god, with vintage hardware, if it doesn't have the mouse and keyboard, and every other proprietary piece, you're better off waiting. My DECstation is still wanting the puck mouse and a copy of Ultrix 4.3 (this is also valid for SGI... if the drives are pulled, forget it, IRIX media costs up to $150, or even higher).
And please. Don't ever butcher vintage hardware. Ever. So what if it was only the case... someone out there might have had just the motherboard. And he's just ruined it. As a guy that has waited along time to find some parts to complete systems, this really does make me sad.
Gee, I sure hope no one mistakenly throws away a Van Gogh, this guy would paint a goatee beard and mustache on it, complete with blacked tooth and devil horns.
I've come to the conclusion also, that I might as well not comment on anything here on slashdot. I either have to keep it so boring, that there is no point in saying it, or watch my first 3 +1's get modded down to 0 again. Moderators that don't allow anyone to have an unpopular or controversial opinion, turn this into a forum for sheep.
I would very much like for the retard that moderated this as "Troll" to come back here, post as AC if necessary, say that... 1) He owns SGI hardware 2) Or he is trying to purchase an SGI boxen. 3) Or he regularly reads comp.sys.sgi.marketplace 4) Or he has searched for SGI on eBay at least once in the past 12 months.
I'm willing to bet not one of these is true. And yet this guy gets to mod me down? I'm not some crank, or somebody trying to fill the forums with crud. Meta-moderation never sticks up for me, and I've been waiting months to get that privilege myself. Please tell me why I should even bother to come to slashdot at all. I wait days for an interesting story that I actually know something about, and I get three -1's for no fathomable reason. I can't demand an explanation, but if someone could clue me in, I'd appreciate it.
Do you people always have to ask retarded questions like this, when you have to know that sometimes things are slashdotted bad enough that I have to wait a half hour or more just to read them?
Am I supposed to not comment on such articles?
Oh, read through my post again, and make sure I don't have any spelling or grammatical errors. You might as well do all the petty bitching while you're at it.
Oh, do I ever agree. I can't afford an SGI, even a vintage one. You can't buy on ebay, unless you're richer than I am... and here this guy gets an article on slashdot, for doing the hardware equivalent of wintel assimilation? Worse than anything, I'm worried that he just tossed the mainboard in a landfill though. No respect or appreciation for computers, is my conclusion.
So don't you dare moderate me as redundant. No one makes the connection, and I'm not sure if it's there. But is this a Babylon 5 sequel? Nothing about the time period, or technology (except gasoline use, does that count?) rules it out. And we already know that much of earth would be devastated before the shadow virus was contained/fixed/cured.
Then again, am I getting this confused with the period when the rangers were working covertly to rebuild earth?
Please let there be a B5 sequel that doesn't suck. Please. Bringing back G'kar for a crappy pilot where you try to invent bad guys badder than the shadows just stinks.
Wouldn't mind having a 110ghz DSP coprocessor on my system, though. The thing could probably do visual recognition at that rate. Then again, I'm not sure I want the computer to see me in my underwear at 1am.
Seems they don't like my browser, I get a page describing how inadequate it is.
This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that for a split second before the javascript kicks in, I get to see the entire page, along with what I would have thought an interesting article.
Frigidaire doesn't make computers either. That's hardly a flaw in my argument. Besides, if M$ is the role model for Amiga Inc., that's hardly very encouraging. Computer companies that don't make their own computers are vulnerable to all sorts of things, like having M$ keep them off systems, manufacturers making substandard consumer junk, inability to fix critical hardware flaws... etc. Do you really think that if they have a shot, M$ won't actively squash them? Chances are good Be would still be here, but for that. Be had as many as 5 deals going, to be dual loaded on big name systems. If just 1 of those had panned out...
Maybe for you, this vision will be good enough, but for me it's hardly adequate even today. I like to do things that most people would never do, unless it could be bought on a shelf at Walmart, and was promised to configure itself. If it goes your way, I won't be able to have 4 nics in my box, like I do now, there will be no slots at all. No building my own. And with no building my own, there will also be no learning how it all works, short of a masters degree in computer engineering. There are so many good reasons for there to be one more kind of computer, several kinds, and so few reasons to let the industry just explore one approach. Anti-trust issues, lack of creativity, lack of consumer choice, tech security problems on a global scale. Any idea how your general run of the mill script kiddy virus will fare in a world where all systems can run the same code? Now, what if it isn't a script kiddy, but someone with talent? A biosphere where all organisms are genetically identical is a disaster waiting for the right pathogen. Your vision puts us on track for the first part, all we have to do is wait.
I agree on the first part, but the truth is the set top box sector is a loser too, by rights. It might be a goldmine for someone that can pump enough money into it to make it work no matter how bad it is... but that hardly describes McEwen's Amiga.
My apologies. I'm not trying to troll or start flames, but this is a very sorer issue with me. I'm a relative latecomer to the amiga community, just in time to see the last remnants die. I was there when it was being traded around like a hooker at a bachelor party. The gateway purchase hurt, but McEwen makes even that look good. Truly, if people want to write code that will run anywhere, that has already been done, Java. We don't need another, but we're gonna get an even more pervasive and arguably more powerful substitute with.NET. Not that I like that either. And the "new amiga" is going to compete with that? AmigaDE is a joke. A bad joke, that no one laughs at, and the room is silent except for a few in the back crying softly.
What is this even supposed to be used for? That holy grail of marketing morons, the stb? Wow, if that isn't a multi-trillion dollar industry just waiting for the earth to slip into some parallel universe where reality doesn't matter. Or maybe its the PDA os market that M$ is gobbling up left and right. What is PalmOS's marketshare again?
The truth is, no matter how many dumb ideas/vaporware get volleyed back and forth by the media, no matter how many stupid little tricks try to ignore it, the ONLY WAY to have a chance at success for a computer company, is to make computers. Be Inc thought they'd get away with writing software and OS, even though they had a kickass machine that might have found its niche. Be is dead. NeXT did the same thing, and only survived in that they were merged back into Apple. There are people that are actively trying to avoid the x86... cater to them. Of course, Amiga Inc. won't do that, so it will die too. Just not fast enough to suit me.
An infinite number of registers? Are you a troll, or just a crackfiend? You know nothing of assembly language, or you would be laughing as hard as I am now. If you emulate a cpu, and you design the virtual cpu in such a way that there are unlimited registers, they are no longer registers, but rather the equivalent of variables and/or pointers. Registers are good because they are incrdibly faster than pulling things out of system ram, even if it happens to be cached. If a virtual cpu can't take advantage of that, that is if these "unlimited virtual registers" are any different than variables, it would be in cycle times for instructions... and since there will almost always be more virtual regs than literal, this might only happen once in awhile, if ever, and then only if designed to.
It's nothing more than marketing buzzwords created by those who don't understand technology.
Besides. Amiga's strength was awesome hardware that allowed you to dig deep into it, and write tight code. What you're describing is Java on steroids, and sooner or later its testicles will shrink.
Go ahead, moderate me as flamebait and a troll. Just as you do for all my amiga comments. Then ask yourself, Mr. Moderator, if you've ever owned an amiga. I have 5, want several more, and I'm even designing hardware for the platform. Funny, huh?
Do we even know that this ebay seller did this?
on
When Good Ebay'ers Go Bad
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· Score: 1, Insightful
At one time, I did write a proof of concept back orifice/shell script that would scan entire subnets, and report "hits". Had I followed up with it, and used it... who knows how many you could collect? Most ebayers are windows users through and through, and it wouldn't be anything to write a "buttplug" (BO plugin, god I love how cDc names things) that just sat there waiting for the password prompts. Ebay has this annoying habit of forgetting your password, if you switch between buying and selling, and you have to re-enter it quite often (or is it just netscape/linux doing this?). Or, even if he had to go a bit more sophisticated and steal the "logged in" cookie out of the machine, this wouldn't be implausible. Voila. 99 times out of 100, he'd get joe@aol.com that only has feedback of 2, but he gets lucky this time. Bam, motherload... feedbaack in the 1000's. Decides it's his ticket out of script kiddy land, and into the realm of bigtime h4ck3rs. Meanwhile, rfenet or whatever his name is, is on vacation in the bahamas for a month. Hates the email, doesn't want to check it, just relax.
What about this is impossible? It's nothing to change your email address in ebay, so the script kiddy redirects them to another email account where he can say "please use this paypal account, or mail me a cashiers check". Hell, in the bad part of downtown, there are a dozen places that never ask to see photo ID, they just take a 10% cut. And my city isn't even that big.
Did this really happen? I doubt it, but all the pieces are in place. You have to wonder.
Well, it's not the FCC that worries me. It's what happens when we launch a missile big enough to lift a satellite worth having... sure, some amateur rocket hobbyist might manage to put up the equivalent of sputnik, but that would be useless except for bragging rights.
I'm thinking weather balloons would be much more usable, though less permanent. Hell, I've even considered tethered kites (no need for batteries, we still have a line to it) because if you can get them up 3000-5000ft, thats a rather big boost for wireless. Just impossible to get gyroscopes precise enough to make it workable.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the coolest hotrods do have the engine partially exposed. Are you claiming that you would be embarrassed to be seen driving one?
Hmm. Aesthetics. Aesthetics is something that the consumate marketdroid will never understand. If they had existed in any great numbers 100 years ago, cars would have had great big fiberglass horse sculptures fused to the chassis, to make it look more like the "original". This is what they would think was "aesthetically pleasing", because they have no great desire to actually appreciate what a car was/is. They just use some hackneyed formula, and whatever garbage plops out on the other side of the equals sign, well, that must be what consumers want.
Apply this to computers, and to a lesser extent, technology in general. A person that appreciates what a computer actually is, doesn't want one that looks like a teddy bear, or like some 1950's vision of the future, complete with some improbable Imac-esque form factor.
Does that mean that I prefer clunky XT style cases, with their "mildewed in a lost cave for 12,000 years" beige? Lord no, simply that in loving the things beyond their plastic shell, I actually have a good idea what might make them look their best without trying to turn them into something they're not. Sleek polished black, with only the slightest hint of organic curves, subtle blue LEDs... you get the idea.
Oh, and the wireless hub/switch thing? Sorry if that seems like it's nitpicking to you, but those are more than buzzwords to me. But thanks for showing to the world that they're nothing more than that to you.
A wireless switch? Duh. You know that a hub isn't a switch, right? Well, that's because the signal is "broadcast" through the ports. Well, with wireless, it is literally broadcast. It uses collision detection schemes. Wireless, by it's very nature, can never be "switched".
Besides, you should be shot for suggesting that we embrace the fashion computer movement.
This is what linux is for. My god, someone is even writing an Apple Prodos filesytem module... and I'm trying to convince a friend of mine to do the same thing with a userspace program he wrote, that reads Atari 800 disks.
Anyone ever heard of a catweasel board? Even GCR encoded floppies, all the way back to the 8 inchers are readable. Truly, with a little effort, I don't see the problem they are having. Pull the stuff off these discs, and archive it on cd or a big RAID array somewhere. Hell, people would mirror it too, as far as that goes. And as for a file format that won't be obselete? I'd go with html myself, though pdf wouldn't be too awful. Sure, these might be old and crusty in 10 years, but we'll never suffer from a way to read them. Someone will always write new software for these formats, and only that if for some reason the old software itself won't compile. This is truly a hardware issue, and not too bad of one at that.
Of course, the Luddites have to have something to complain about, might as well be this.
I have no idea what their policy is today, what was it in late 96, early 97?
I believe that the credit reporting may have been done by the collection agency itself. Like it matters.
As to the 4 months thing, no clue. But it was on the verge of being two years. If their billing apps are coded by the same people who code the client app...
It was like this in the past. However, in the world we have today, there are too many scary possibilities.
#1 AOL bills them for the products, and when they refuse to pay, sics a collection agency on them. Ruins their credit rating, something which might as well be impossible to fix.
#2 AOL already requires a credit card number for service. It wouldn't suprise me, if they just charged it to the card. Maybe a bit easier to fix, but then they lose their internet service. Assume that the credit card company is willing to reverse the charge for an unsolicited product, what do you think AOL's reaction will be?
For instance, back in '95, I lived in a small hick town. The local ISP canceled my service, simply because I had requested a price on a static IP (oh no, he must be a hacker!). In the two months that it took for me to resolve this dispute, I was without internet service. The withdrawal was so bad, I did the previously unimaginable... I signed up for the only other isp with a local number, AOL. It was horrible... if you minimize the stupid AOL screen, it would disconnect you everyy 45 minutes. And if you left it up, it completely covered the desktop. Needless to say, I hurried up, and did the ass-kissing it took, to get my other isp account back.
Well, even though I distinctly remember canceling AOL (it didn't appear on any of my subsequent credit card statements), two years later I have moved, and since canceled the credit card. Well, I get a call from AOL's collection service, demanding that I pay 2 years worth of AOL service. Not alot I can do to prove it to them, because if their own records don't show that I haven't signed on in over 22 months, what will? Worse, I ask them if I'm still signed up for service.
"Yes". "Please cancel it immediately!". "Can we have the credit card number that you signed up with?". "No, I've since canceled it, and have nothing with the number". "We're sorry, but we can't cancel the service without the cc number...".
Well, one month later, they cancel it anyway (thank god), but only because they've farmed it out to a collection agency. When the collection agency asks me if I want to dispute it, I tell them this story. They call me back a week later, telling me that they have rescinded the charges, and that I may have to privately pursue getting this taken off my credit history. Seems even the sharks at the collection agency had never heard of anything so f*cked up... they simply dropped it as unpursuable.
So, I have no trouble believing that AOL would do anything at all, nothing is too low.
Damn.
Spampaign. As in, "in 2004, many candidates are expected to spampaign for president, but only one will win".
It's aboot time someone set the record straight, eh?
I'm not a snob, but the I'm guilty of the second charge.
12 68k Macs.
1 Powermac
5 Amigas
3 Atari ST
1 NeXTstation
1 DECstation
2 VAXstations
1 Apple 'Pippin' Set top box.
1 WebTV (this was given to me, I wouldn't have bought it)
1 PDP-11/04
4 TRS-80's
3 AppleIIgs
3 AppleII's
4 CBM machines (vic20,plus4,c64,c128)
And a legion of x86's running respectable alternative OSs including OS/2, Netware, Banyan VINES, Solaris x86, etc. (and I hope I don't have to say, "Linux")
I have the only integrated ethernet/token ring/arcnet/localtalk/atm/fddi network that I've ever heard of, and central to it is my linux server that is directly connected to each of those segments.
Soon, I'm gonna be adding rs-485 to the mix, communicating to a small SBC I'm designing. Econet is going to be much tougher, there weren't many econet pc cards made. Then again, I don't have an acorn yet anyway. Starlan will be a bit easier, I only need to get an AT&T 7300 unix pc, which isn't too tough, and I have found a place that stocks starlan nics (www.melco.com) but they want $400 per. Ouch. Worse, I'm not ready to write my own linux drivers yet, to be honest. And I've already got half the hardware needed for a complete corvus omninet segment, but I'm not sure this even counts.
And of course, just as soon as work picks up a bit, I'll be adding 802.11 and gigabit to the mix. Oh, and don't forget the 3 rs232 SLIP links to some of my older boxes.
What kind of computer do you have?
Unfair.
1. My original post was completely on topic.
2. I didn't complain that I couldn't read the article, I defended myself when someone accussed me of it.
3. I didn't speculate what he had done, so much as speculate where the rest of the SGI went.
If people want to argue, they'll argue about anything. Using that as a justifcation to shut me up is weak.
(Back Ontopic)
You're much better off reading comp.sys.sgi.marketplace. Sure, there are too many dealers there wanting retail prices for stuff that doesn't deserve wholesale... but every once in awhile there is a gem. My luck is that every time one of these comes along, I'm flat broke. I'm serious too, we're talking full Indigo 2 systems in the $150 range, not some beat up, half the parts are missing Personal Iris. Honest to god, with vintage hardware, if it doesn't have the mouse and keyboard, and every other proprietary piece, you're better off waiting. My DECstation is still wanting the puck mouse and a copy of Ultrix 4.3 (this is also valid for SGI... if the drives are pulled, forget it, IRIX media costs up to $150, or even higher).
And please. Don't ever butcher vintage hardware. Ever. So what if it was only the case... someone out there might have had just the motherboard. And he's just ruined it. As a guy that has waited along time to find some parts to complete systems, this really does make me sad.
Gee, I sure hope no one mistakenly throws away a Van Gogh, this guy would paint a goatee beard and mustache on it, complete with blacked tooth and devil horns.
I've come to the conclusion also, that I might as well not comment on anything here on slashdot. I either have to keep it so boring, that there is no point in saying it, or watch my first 3 +1's get modded down to 0 again. Moderators that don't allow anyone to have an unpopular or controversial opinion, turn this into a forum for sheep.
I would very much like for the retard that moderated this as "Troll" to come back here, post as AC if necessary, say that...
1) He owns SGI hardware
2) Or he is trying to purchase an SGI boxen.
3) Or he regularly reads comp.sys.sgi.marketplace
4) Or he has searched for SGI on eBay at least once in the past 12 months.
I'm willing to bet not one of these is true. And yet this guy gets to mod me down? I'm not some crank, or somebody trying to fill the forums with crud. Meta-moderation never sticks up for me, and I've been waiting months to get that privilege myself. Please tell me why I should even bother to come to slashdot at all. I wait days for an interesting story that I actually know something about, and I get three -1's for no fathomable reason. I can't demand an explanation, but if someone could clue me in, I'd appreciate it.
Do you people always have to ask retarded questions like this, when you have to know that sometimes things are slashdotted bad enough that I have to wait a half hour or more just to read them?
Am I supposed to not comment on such articles?
Oh, read through my post again, and make sure I don't have any spelling or grammatical errors. You might as well do all the petty bitching while you're at it.
Oh, do I ever agree. I can't afford an SGI, even a vintage one. You can't buy on ebay, unless you're richer than I am... and here this guy gets an article on slashdot, for doing the hardware equivalent of wintel assimilation? Worse than anything, I'm worried that he just tossed the mainboard in a landfill though. No respect or appreciation for computers, is my conclusion.
More like butchered.
So don't you dare moderate me as redundant. No one makes the connection, and I'm not sure if it's there. But is this a Babylon 5 sequel? Nothing about the time period, or technology (except gasoline use, does that count?) rules it out. And we already know that much of earth would be devastated before the shadow virus was contained/fixed/cured.
Then again, am I getting this confused with the period when the rangers were working covertly to rebuild earth?
Please let there be a B5 sequel that doesn't suck. Please. Bringing back G'kar for a crappy pilot where you try to invent bad guys badder than the shadows just stinks.
Wouldn't mind having a 110ghz DSP coprocessor on my system, though. The thing could probably do visual recognition at that rate. Then again, I'm not sure I want the computer to see me in my underwear at 1am.
Seems they don't like my browser, I get a page describing how inadequate it is.
This wouldn't be such a big deal, except that for a split second before the javascript kicks in, I get to see the entire page, along with what I would have thought an interesting article.
I've changed my mind.
Frigidaire doesn't make computers either. That's hardly a flaw in my argument. Besides, if M$ is the role model for Amiga Inc., that's hardly very encouraging. Computer companies that don't make their own computers are vulnerable to all sorts of things, like having M$ keep them off systems, manufacturers making substandard consumer junk, inability to fix critical hardware flaws... etc. Do you really think that if they have a shot, M$ won't actively squash them? Chances are good Be would still be here, but for that. Be had as many as 5 deals going, to be dual loaded on big name systems. If just 1 of those had panned out...
Maybe for you, this vision will be good enough, but for me it's hardly adequate even today. I like to do things that most people would never do, unless it could be bought on a shelf at Walmart, and was promised to configure itself. If it goes your way, I won't be able to have 4 nics in my box, like I do now, there will be no slots at all. No building my own. And with no building my own, there will also be no learning how it all works, short of a masters degree in computer engineering. There are so many good reasons for there to be one more kind of computer, several kinds, and so few reasons to let the industry just explore one approach. Anti-trust issues, lack of creativity, lack of consumer choice, tech security problems on a global scale. Any idea how your general run of the mill script kiddy virus will fare in a world where all systems can run the same code? Now, what if it isn't a script kiddy, but someone with talent? A biosphere where all organisms are genetically identical is a disaster waiting for the right pathogen. Your vision puts us on track for the first part, all we have to do is wait.
I agree on the first part, but the truth is the set top box sector is a loser too, by rights. It might be a goldmine for someone that can pump enough money into it to make it work no matter how bad it is... but that hardly describes McEwen's Amiga.
My apologies. I'm not trying to troll or start flames, but this is a very sorer issue with me. I'm a relative latecomer to the amiga community, just in time to see the last remnants die. I was there when it was being traded around like a hooker at a bachelor party. The gateway purchase hurt, but McEwen makes even that look good. Truly, if people want to write code that will run anywhere, that has already been done, Java. We don't need another, but we're gonna get an even more pervasive and arguably more powerful substitute with .NET. Not that I like that either. And the "new amiga" is going to compete with that? AmigaDE is a joke. A bad joke, that no one laughs at, and the room is silent except for a few in the back crying softly.
What is this even supposed to be used for? That holy grail of marketing morons, the stb? Wow, if that isn't a multi-trillion dollar industry just waiting for the earth to slip into some parallel universe where reality doesn't matter. Or maybe its the PDA os market that M$ is gobbling up left and right. What is PalmOS's marketshare again?
The truth is, no matter how many dumb ideas/vaporware get volleyed back and forth by the media, no matter how many stupid little tricks try to ignore it, the ONLY WAY to have a chance at success for a computer company, is to make computers. Be Inc thought they'd get away with writing software and OS, even though they had a kickass machine that might have found its niche. Be is dead. NeXT did the same thing, and only survived in that they were merged back into Apple. There are people that are actively trying to avoid the x86... cater to them. Of course, Amiga Inc. won't do that, so it will die too. Just not fast enough to suit me.
An infinite number of registers? Are you a troll, or just a crackfiend? You know nothing of assembly language, or you would be laughing as hard as I am now. If you emulate a cpu, and you design the virtual cpu in such a way that there are unlimited registers, they are no longer registers, but rather the equivalent of variables and/or pointers. Registers are good because they are incrdibly faster than pulling things out of system ram, even if it happens to be cached. If a virtual cpu can't take advantage of that, that is if these "unlimited virtual registers" are any different than variables, it would be in cycle times for instructions... and since there will almost always be more virtual regs than literal, this might only happen once in awhile, if ever, and then only if designed to.
It's nothing more than marketing buzzwords created by those who don't understand technology.
Besides. Amiga's strength was awesome hardware that allowed you to dig deep into it, and write tight code. What you're describing is Java on steroids, and sooner or later its testicles will shrink.
Go ahead, moderate me as flamebait and a troll. Just as you do for all my amiga comments. Then ask yourself, Mr. Moderator, if you've ever owned an amiga. I have 5, want several more, and I'm even designing hardware for the platform. Funny, huh?
At one time, I did write a proof of concept back orifice/shell script that would scan entire subnets, and report "hits". Had I followed up with it, and used it... who knows how many you could collect? Most ebayers are windows users through and through, and it wouldn't be anything to write a "buttplug" (BO plugin, god I love how cDc names things) that just sat there waiting for the password prompts. Ebay has this annoying habit of forgetting your password, if you switch between buying and selling, and you have to re-enter it quite often (or is it just netscape/linux doing this?). Or, even if he had to go a bit more sophisticated and steal the "logged in" cookie out of the machine, this wouldn't be implausible. Voila. 99 times out of 100, he'd get joe@aol.com that only has feedback of 2, but he gets lucky this time. Bam, motherload... feedbaack in the 1000's. Decides it's his ticket out of script kiddy land, and into the realm of bigtime h4ck3rs. Meanwhile, rfenet or whatever his name is, is on vacation in the bahamas for a month. Hates the email, doesn't want to check it, just relax.
What about this is impossible? It's nothing to change your email address in ebay, so the script kiddy redirects them to another email account where he can say "please use this paypal account, or mail me a cashiers check". Hell, in the bad part of downtown, there are a dozen places that never ask to see photo ID, they just take a 10% cut. And my city isn't even that big.
Did this really happen? I doubt it, but all the pieces are in place. You have to wonder.
Well, it's not the FCC that worries me. It's what happens when we launch a missile big enough to lift a satellite worth having... sure, some amateur rocket hobbyist might manage to put up the equivalent of sputnik, but that would be useless except for bragging rights.
I'm thinking weather balloons would be much more usable, though less permanent. Hell, I've even considered tethered kites (no need for batteries, we still have a line to it) because if you can get them up 3000-5000ft, thats a rather big boost for wireless. Just impossible to get gyroscopes precise enough to make it workable.