One cool thing that the theaters in Germany had was a "Baby Booth". It was an enclosed area at the back of the theater with a glass front. It had it's own sound system, and people with small children could watch the movie from there without disturbing the other patrons.
I wish the theaters in my area would add something like that.
Often products are created & sold based on some back-of-a-napkin drawing that a manager handed to development. I've been fortunate in my career -- I've been lucky to get them on notebook paper. It's much nicer than trying to figure out what was drawn through the martini condensation stains...
Duracell came out with about 3 or 4 different shapes for laptop batteries about 7 years ago. I think maybe two companies designed them into their laptops, the rest continued to design proprietary shapes.
Partly, I feel the designs failed to gain acceptance because the laptop engineers thought the Duracell designs didn't accommodate their individual needs so far as shape, power density, connector location, etc. And partly because replacement batteries are a cash cow, even with the built-in liability costs for the few that explode or catch fire.
The good news is that IBM-Lenovo has somewhat standardized on battery shapes for the R and T series Thinkpads. Buying a replacement still isn't any cheaper, but there's a greater chance of a 3rd party designing a plug-compatible battery. When I bought a replacement for my A series, IBM wanted $145 for it, but an aftermarket battery was only $95, which was all I was willing to pay for a 4-year old laptop.
I'd like to see a law passed that says that while you may be granted a patent on an invention or idea, if you fail to produce a viable product based on it, the patent only lasts half as long.
Too many companies seem to be using their patents as blocking mechanisms to keep competitors out, or as a way to extort money from other, larger, firms.
Same technique as govt's anti-trust suit
on
IBM Gives SCO the Works
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· Score: 4, Interesting
IBM was sued by the Justice Department in the 1960-70's timeframe for being anti-competitive (IBM was trying to block firms like Amdahl & Fujitsu from making plug-compatible hardware, and others from making punch-cards that could be used in IBM machinery). IBM was required by the government to keep copies of all internal business correspondence.
As a result, they filled up two rather large warehouses with documents, and told the feds: Here you go, have at it.
At least with SCO, they gave them instructions on how to search.
I agree. From what I've heard, the kernel is a structural nightmare, and even at OS/2's peak, there were only a few people within IBM who knew it well enough to make serious changes.
The WPS, SOM, DSOM, etc, are the interesting parts of the OS, and that's the part that I (as a former OS/2 developer) would like to see.
Human activity is relatively short-term, while a hard drive would be running over a longer period of time. Also, I understand that when running certain experiments, they ask the other astronauts to limit their movements to reduce vibrations.
OT: Have you had a chance to run JEdit on Tiger? If so, what was your impression?
I'm looking for a good editor to do some Mono work on my mini. Yes, seems a little heretical to be using a java-based editor to write C#, but SharpDevelop hasn't been ported yet.
I made 5 DVD coasters on Saturday, trying to burn the Visual Studio.NET 2005 beta 2 DVD from the ISO image I downloaded from MSDN, using 3 different Windows machines. Giving up, I booted the Mac mini (with superdrive option) and ran the Mac OS X Disk Utility.
We had an engineer from NASA come speak to the computer science department when I was in school. One interesting factoid not in TFA is that the reason that disk drives aren't used in spacecraft (at least the small ones) is that the spinning platters act as gyroscopes, and will throw off the attitude of the vehicle.
I wish I could remember the other details of his speech, but one thing struck me as unusual, is that the AP101S doesn't use a standard 8-bit word. It's very task-specific, and the designers felt they could justify it based on packaging, weight, thermal, and need of the software.
Bought it from NewEgg, so I exchanged it for another piece of Crucial RAM. Same results.
If you go through their memory configurator, they have a compatability guarantee. You don't get this when buying through another vendor. In fact, I think the vendor parts have an entirely different set of part numbers (could be wrong).
Same here. I used to buy whatever was cheapest, but after the time that a series of flakey bugs was solved by switching to good quality DRAM, I'll never go back. I probably spent two days troubleshooting it, which at my hourly rate, is many times the amount I "saved" by buying cheap memory.
Blatant promotion: I've never had a bad stick from Crucial
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One cool thing that the theaters in Germany had was a "Baby Booth". It was an enclosed area at the back of the theater with a glass front. It had it's own sound system, and people with small children could watch the movie from there without disturbing the other patrons.
I wish the theaters in my area would add something like that.
Chip H.
...there are no specs.
Often products are created & sold based on some back-of-a-napkin drawing that a manager handed to development. I've been fortunate in my career -- I've been lucky to get them on notebook paper. It's much nicer than trying to figure out what was drawn through the martini condensation stains...
Chip H.
I just dealt with a OEM that makes boards for themselves in China, and even there they refused to fix a problem because it would mean a loss of face.
You should change the requirements to specify that the problem doesn't happen, then.
Chip H.
Duracell came out with about 3 or 4 different shapes for laptop batteries about 7 years ago. I think maybe two companies designed them into their laptops, the rest continued to design proprietary shapes.
Partly, I feel the designs failed to gain acceptance because the laptop engineers thought the Duracell designs didn't accommodate their individual needs so far as shape, power density, connector location, etc. And partly because replacement batteries are a cash cow, even with the built-in liability costs for the few that explode or catch fire.
The good news is that IBM-Lenovo has somewhat standardized on battery shapes for the R and T series Thinkpads. Buying a replacement still isn't any cheaper, but there's a greater chance of a 3rd party designing a plug-compatible battery. When I bought a replacement for my A series, IBM wanted $145 for it, but an aftermarket battery was only $95, which was all I was willing to pay for a 4-year old laptop.
Chip H.
I'd like to see a law passed that says that while you may be granted a patent on an invention or idea, if you fail to produce a viable product based on it, the patent only lasts half as long.
Too many companies seem to be using their patents as blocking mechanisms to keep competitors out, or as a way to extort money from other, larger, firms.
Chip H.
Is it still called doggie style if there aren't any dogs yet?
Chip H.
Little bastards get caught between the keys, turning ASDF into QWWEDRFF. Plus, if they make it past the keys, your keyboard will rattle forever more.
Chip H.
You are in a maze of twisty little licenses, all subtly different.
Chip H.
The new Dell Hernia laptop!
Chip H.
IBM was sued by the Justice Department in the 1960-70's timeframe for being anti-competitive (IBM was trying to block firms like Amdahl & Fujitsu from making plug-compatible hardware, and others from making punch-cards that could be used in IBM machinery). IBM was required by the government to keep copies of all internal business correspondence.
As a result, they filled up two rather large warehouses with documents, and told the feds: Here you go, have at it.
At least with SCO, they gave them instructions on how to search.
Chip H.
Uhhh, LawnDart One, you are cleared for reentry.
Given the long-term tendency of the market to return to historic P/E ratios of around 15-20, 88 to me sounds like speculation, not investing.
Chip H.
IANAn Investment Advisor.
Many Thinkpads are made in Mexico.
Chip H.
The docking connector is in the wrong place (and looks like the wrong shape) for me to reuse my existing Thinkpad dock.
Even so, it looks like a sweet design, and as long as the price isn't outrageous, I'll consider it when I replace my current Thinkpad.
Chip H.
I agree. From what I've heard, the kernel is a structural nightmare, and even at OS/2's peak, there were only a few people within IBM who knew it well enough to make serious changes.
The WPS, SOM, DSOM, etc, are the interesting parts of the OS, and that's the part that I (as a former OS/2 developer) would like to see.
Chip H.
Umm, dual Pentium III 733 mHz with 768mb ram on one of the machines. So it shouldn't have caused a problem if I were surfing and/or checking email.
Chip H.
Human activity is relatively short-term, while a hard drive would be running over a longer period of time. Also, I understand that when running certain experiments, they ask the other astronauts to limit their movements to reduce vibrations.
Chip H.
OT: Have you had a chance to run JEdit on Tiger? If so, what was your impression?
I'm looking for a good editor to do some Mono work on my mini. Yes, seems a little heretical to be using a java-based editor to write C#, but SharpDevelop hasn't been ported yet.
Thanks.
Chip H.
I made 5 DVD coasters on Saturday, trying to burn the Visual Studio .NET 2005 beta 2 DVD from the ISO image I downloaded from MSDN, using 3 different Windows machines. Giving up, I booted the Mac mini (with superdrive option) and ran the Mac OS X Disk Utility.
Result: A perfect disc the first time.
Chip H.
I bought some d30 alphabet dice from these folks
Along with some d10's, you can generate some pretty random passwords.
Chip H.
For the curious, a d30 has A..Z, plus 2 "wild" and 2 "vowel" sides. When I get one of those, I'll usually just re-roll that die.
We had an engineer from NASA come speak to the computer science department when I was in school. One interesting factoid not in TFA is that the reason that disk drives aren't used in spacecraft (at least the small ones) is that the spinning platters act as gyroscopes, and will throw off the attitude of the vehicle.
I wish I could remember the other details of his speech, but one thing struck me as unusual, is that the AP101S doesn't use a standard 8-bit word. It's very task-specific, and the designers felt they could justify it based on packaging, weight, thermal, and need of the software.
Chip H.
I wish I had mod points for you.
This is an excellent article.
Chip H.
Bought it from NewEgg, so I exchanged it for another piece of Crucial RAM. Same results.
If you go through their memory configurator, they have a compatability guarantee. You don't get this when buying through another vendor. In fact, I think the vendor parts have an entirely different set of part numbers (could be wrong).
Chip H.
Same here. I used to buy whatever was cheapest, but after the time that a series of flakey bugs was solved by switching to good quality DRAM, I'll never go back. I probably spent two days troubleshooting it, which at my hourly rate, is many times the amount I "saved" by buying cheap memory.
Blatant promotion: I've never had a bad stick from Crucial
Chip H.
If I were a corporate IT director, it's not likely that I'd let software named CHAOS on my network.
Try a name change -- something like LDCG - Linux Distributed Computing Grid to get more acceptance.
Chip H.