that was my question too. They are talking about non volatile RAM, at the same time talking about a sub-one-second refresh rate, which in most memory terminology, refers to how often you have to "renew" (read, and then rewrite) the 1 or 0 in the cell to prevent it from resetting. I don't consider that to be non volatile.
According to the article, the 0.7Hz refresh rate is what they need now with the experimental dots. The researchers predict that in the future they'll be able to make dots with a refresh rate of 3.17 * 10^-14 Hz, or one refresh every 1 million years.
That's an amazing difference between what we have now and what we might have later. Seems a little (?) over-optimistic,
1) Size. I really like small laptops. While the 15" MacBook pro was sleek and light, I like the carry-around feel of the Dell better.
Sorry, that confuses me. You like small laptops, but you're listing that as a point for buying a bigger one? Or was that a point for themacbook?
2) Price. For the specs I needed, the prices were about the same, until I found Dell's refurb site.
There's a reason why there are more refurb dells available than refurb macs.
3) OS. Yes, you heard that right. Vista got dumped the first day for Ubuntu 7.10, which runs near-flawlessly on thi slaptop.... But after configuring compiz fusion,
Did you compare the dell with changed OS and gui enhancement apps, with a stock macbook? Maybe you should take a look at all the free gui enhancements available for Mac OS X to level the playing field?
Only two changes are necessary to convert a dell user to a mac user... 18 months, combined with the loss of 250,000 hair follicles.
I will modify that only slightly, If you chose the Dell over a Mac because the hardware is slightly better, then you deserve Vista., and will then go looking for a button maker and tshirt printer.
Coming from a shop that spends over 50% of its service time cleaining up windows, listen to me here. That is some fine software, and is 100% useless in the hands of someone that cannot be trained to not click on banners or click on links in email.
We see several boxes a week loaded with those titles that are either just plain destroyed or are botnetted. If you can train them how to use the computer, that'll work for windows. Macs don't put the onus on the user to protect their computer, they do it for them. And they don't need to download and install other software to merely help it to be secure.
They're not saying it's better because it is better,, they're saying it's better because they don't like Macs. If they had good reasons to say it was better, you can bet you'd be hearing them.
It's the only answer that makes sense, and it makes good sense.
The only more confused ones are the people buying the iMacs, with Apple bundled memory upgrades.
An easy solution is to have racks on a standard floor, and run the cables up and out of the racks and run on a cable track at about the 6.5 ft level between racks and patch panels.
This keeps the cables neatly in place and out of the way, is easy to maintain and make changes to, and does not require all the problems you can get with a drop floor. Running another cable in a drop floor can take 20 minutes and half a dozen pulled tiles, (and an RC monster truck helps..) or four minutes and no hassels with a tray and a stepstool.
In a lot of ways it's also nice to leave the servers and routers in the rack and put the switches over with the patch panel. I know some of those cables technically need to go down to the piece in the rack below them, but if you wun it all to patch panels, it saves endless trouble trying to make changes or cope with hardware failure that requires rerouting, It also prevents a wire nest from attacking you when you open up the back door on the rack. This only works well if you already have a clear idea of what needs to be in the rack and won't be making frequent changes to the rack contents.
When you're pawing around with a patch panel and a bunch of switches you are already in "wire nest mode" and are working with a much more consistent environment to work with, not hunting for what port is where on the back and which port is wan1 and which is wan2 etc, as they are not usually well marked. This arrangement forces you to consult documentation as to what's where and forces you to see the big picture which helps prevent stupid mistakes in crisis situations.
(Editor's note: We're honoring a request from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. not to reveal the make or model of the laptop the company supplied for our testing purposes.)
I've replaced maybe 250 HDs for Apple, and of those, about 18 have been sent to drivesavers. If you ship your computer TO apple to get it repaired, they will replace the HD if they believe it's bad. (even if that's not why it's being sent in, so back up your data!) Apple will also often refuse to repair a computer with "missing modules" such as HDs. I personally find this annoying with respect to macbooks. I would like to be able to send a macbook in for say, a bad logic board, but remove the HD prior to shipment to insure apple does not replace it. Sometimes they flat out refuse to repair the laptop if you send it in without the HD. (presumably becaue it may be involved with the problem you're sending it in for?)
If you take it to an AASP (apple authorized serivce provider) you can have them ship the HD to drivesavers for data recovery if necessary prior to shipping to apple. We also offer the service of backing up the contents of the HD prior to doing a mail-in repair. (the time for which is not covered under warranty, and you will get charged again if a restore is required)
It's not unreasonable or even uncommon for a manufacturer to keep all "modules" replaced, be they hard drives, power supplies, motherboards, or whatever. The only modules apple is not interested in having returned are cheap cosmetic ones. Sometimes they even change their minds. I'll find that a part they wanted back they no longer want back, or sometimes I'll find a part they didn't used to want back they do now. Macbook top cases (which include the keyboard) used to be NRET (non return) but are now returnable. I'm guessing it's not a matter if them wanting them back, but that they are trying to discourage AASPs from fraudulently ordering them as a method of obtaining free stocking parts. (you could file a false warranty claim on a top case, and not have to send anything back, so you could just shelve it or sell it)
If you are worried about sensitive information on your HD, hit it with a bulk tape eraser before shipping it in. If you are interested in data recovery, send it to drivesavers (or total recall, there are several that apple allows to open their drives) before shipping to apple. Otherwise, what you get should not come as a surprise.
The only drawback to this system is that if your laptop is say, a week from leaving warranty, there may not be time to send to drivesavers and get it back before you can start the repair before it leaves warranty. I'm fairly sure if you talked with apple you could get a waiver on that though, they've got a pretty high "customer satisfaction" level they try to maintain.
I was just thinking I'd like to watch the original pilot again. I remember the promos of it where they had devon standing beside kitt with his scanner sweeping, talking about a much cooler car that "does more than just jump puddles", referring to their main car featuring competition of the time, Dukes of Hazard. As I recall, that episode mainly revolved around Michael freaking out as he found out 'the hard way' that his car was sentient. Is it available anywhere? Not that I'm geeking out enough to go buy the box set;)
The other car featuring show I can think of that I also enjoyed is of course the Delorian. No personality, but a lot of class.
How many times did we watch Michael video conference with Devon?
10 miles Range 20 miles
I have no idea what they are talking about here. Do they mean in "super pursuit mode" or just ordinary driving? 10 mile range sounds kinda silly.
No Keyless Entry and Ignition Yes
How many times did Michael run up to kitt to meet him in a hurry, where kitt power slid to a stop and swung th door open? That's about as 'keyless entry' as it gets.
No 360-Degree Video Surveillance Yes
I never knew the original kitt had blind spots? He seemed to have 360 degree vision?
No 24-Hour Roadside Assistance Yes
What do you call that big black semi? They didn't even need to pull over to get in, so maybe you can call it NOT roadside because he didn't need to pull over?
No In-Seat Medical Diagnosis Yes
Several episodes kitt diagnosed the medical condition of some passenger that Michael dumped into the passenger seat.
(yes this used to be one of my favorite shows of 'the day'. the very similar show Airwolf rocked too)
I'm not a market analyst but I have to wonder, I don't see why it would be illegal to increase the market value of your product by taking steps to encourage the demand? That's the goal of advertising and many other common market practices.
One system I saw reminds me of this problem. It was a touch screen that displayed a keypad. The screen was at a terminal of sorts, and there was a box drawn around the area in front on the ground in red tape. By company rules only one person was allowed in the box at a time, so if you needed to approach the door in a group, you were required to take turns and queue up in a line outside the box.
The screen was a fresnel lens type cover, so you had to be standing at the correct orientation to the screen to read it. People behind you any distance, or off to the side even a little, could not see the screen at all. The screen presented a numeric keypad and you had to key in your passcode.
The trick here is, the keypad was not a standard 0-9 3x3 grid. The numbers were in a 3x3 grid, but were in random places each time you used it. So anyone watching your hands to see what you pressed wasn't getting anything useful besides the length of the passcode. (which was fixed at 10 characters) There was a setting to shuffle the keys on each keypress but that was found to get on people's nerves, so you could presumably figure out if a person had a pair of letters in the code that were the same but that's not too big of a deal.
Only thing is a screen scraper combined with a keylogger (to log mouse clicks) would still own all of this.
It'd be nice if some international body examined the issue of software security risks and established a guideline so we didn't have this ongoing problem of what to call a bug and what not to, and to finally put to bed the notion that notifying users of newly discovered vunlerabilities is bad for security.
I for one would like to see a rating scale that factors in not just the problem, the severity, and the scope, but also the availability of information on the problem. For example, you couldn't score anywhere near a perfect 10 even if the problem was minor and affected very few people, if you failed to tell anyone about it until you had it patched. Failing to disclose a known problem until someone else blew the whistle on you (or released an exploit into the wild) should earn you an automatic zero on the attempt.
Like most other mistakes, in the end security flaws almost always become magnified if you try to hide them.
Either somewhere in their statistical models they have determined that snow white publicity combined with a large number of your customers getting zinged costs them less in the end than fessing up and protecting their customers better. Or they're just being stupid about it.
But I think they're just being stupid about it. Wasn't there a quote something along the lines of "never attribute to malace that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"?
I've had to install burners for dozens of users. Most times I go looking for something in their movies folder that's 200-500mb in size that will make a good test. Or an entire folder of data that's about that size, of which their pictures folder is often a good fit.
If you hide a body in your trunk don't go get pissed off at Jiffy Lube when they report you for what they discover while changing your rear turn signal light.
If I can't quickly find anything of the right size for a test I'll grab an ext HD and plug in and dump something onto their machine. (now watch the maffia go after me...) This takes a bit of additional time. Consider now the innocent customer that gets upset if I charge him what he feels is a little too much time and I try to justify it saying I had to locate and transfer some test data to his machine to test the burn. You KNOW he will say "why didn't you just burn xyz right there from the desktop?" You can't justify BOTH behaviors, you have to pick one. We choose to make 98% of our customers happy with our decision.
Another good car example comes up right away. If you take your car into a car detail shop and they notice your stash under the driver seat, again, busted. Don't go blaming the tech for (A) your illegal activity, and further (B) your stupidity for making it so easily stumbled upon. I hate it when I see criminals (lesser or greater) try to cry that their rights were violated when the most trivial and common actions lead to their discovery. I acknowledge that we must have to have laws against unreasonable searches etc but too many criminals are trying to take great advantage of the laws made to protect the innocent in an attemt to escape their own conviction for obviously deliberate and illegal activity. These criminals don't care about the rights of the innocent, they are in it 100% trying to save themselves and are hoping to sucker the paranoid sector of the innocent to their defense.
I mean, if you have to turn on a switch to make it work properly, on what is a widely known public test suite, makes one wonder if they aren't engaging some very specific tweaks to the render engine to pass the test. I'd like to see the makers of acid2 modify it a bit, shift things around but still be testing all the same elements, and see if ie8 will still pass it. I think I'd also add a small element (like a freckle on the face) to make sure they're not just dishing us up a fixed pre-rendered image.
It would not completely shock me if someone discovered that with that box ticked, it checks the html somewhat tersely to see if it's acid2, and if so, branches to a totally different bit of code.
I'd leave the box checked and see just how trashed it renders some other pages, and then take a look at THEM and see if their code was correct or not. I think I'd prefer a browser that refused to properly render improperly written code rather than one that makes "best effort". Or at least one that has both options. It looks like there's a chance this is exactly what they are trying to do, which is brilliant.
If you have money, and are stupid, you are likely to get phished. While getting phished is unlikely to collectively benefit stupidkind, they DO now collectively have much less money. This should either make them a less attractive target, or at least mitigate the level of damage the phishers can do. I suppose you could say the internet is being "phished out". Pretty soon "a fool and his money are soon parted" will have been applied enough that few of the stupid people have anything left to be phished? Looks like a problem that is destined to take care of itself.
Not that I classify windows users as sensible people in the first place, but why oh WHY are 90% of the windows computers sold today preloaded with Vista, if so many people can't stand it???
My best guess is that MS is licensing to machine retailers at some ridiculously low rate of like $35 for a $299 install, to insure we get it rammed down our throats whether we want it or not. This being the case, MS is taking a calculated loss on Vista, evidently hoping to get more windows users for whatever comes after vista? I don't think it's going to work out that way?
That kit is almost identical to my 200-in-1 kit. They moved the batteries up topside and added binding posts but that's the one. There is NO BETTER way to teach kids about electronics. The link on radio shack's page should be named "15-in-1 kit". Doesn't look like there's enough to make jack with it. I wonder how many projects are in that book they ship with it.
They must have bought it from Tandy. Nice, they even posted a list of the 200 projects here: http://www.quasarelectronics.com/kit-files/epl/epl200.pdf Many of the projects are to teach you about how digital circuits work, like how AND and NOR gates are actually assembled from smaller parts. Sort of like the difference between learning assembly and C++. Sure C++ will get it done faster but if you know assembly you can kick butt and know more about why things work. Too bad they didn't post one or two pages of the kit like oh, #94. An actual, working, AM radio transmitter. Somewhere in that list is a circiut that makes a working intercom. I had a lot of fun with that one.
I believe I have a gift idea for someone I know now. But unfortunately I don't think this is a gift for everyone. I was a major self-starter on these sorts of things, and unless you have some committment to it I don't know, it may end up as parent says, in the clothset after a few weeks.
Some of these projects used almost ALL the components on the kit. There is simply no way to make a kit that allows physical assembly of such complex projects that can match the structure of the schematic. Also, if you wanted to "insert" some circuitry in a fixed position kit, that would be a nightmare. This kit is just a matter of moving a couple wires.
I can't believe how cheap that thing is. I smoked two or three transistors and both chips and had to replace them, and some of those parts were hard to come by. Try today to find a non CMOS RS232 NAND chip...
The 150-in-1 kit was similar in size to this one but was in a wooden box instead of a plastic case. Almost as many parts to use, but not as big of a project book.
And here's one of the ones I don't like: http://www.laserballs.com/teb.htm That was radio shack's upgrade to the 200 in 1 and was as I expected, a miserable flop. Again trying to use a peg board approach to assembly, severely limits flexibility and creativity.
Radio Shack used to sell 150-in-1 and 200-in-one sets. They were 20"x 12" wood or plastic boxes with groups of parts on the top board, including transistors, resistors, capacitors, and a variety of other parts. The parts were mounted to the colorful top, labeled and grouped. Their connectors ran to numbered springs beside them. You'd use the included wire to run between parts, by bending springs to the side, inserting the stripped end of the wire, and releasing it.
They came with booklets that had 150 (or 200) different projects to make. They'd start you out slow, showing you a picture of the kit with the wires in place, and a set of number lists like 18-22-85-10 33-28-21 etc to rum the wires. Later in the book they replaced the picture of the kit with a schematic of the project.
Some of the latter projects were quite complex, and many of them used some nifty components such as a earphone for a microphone, and a CDS sensor to make a light beam tripped noise maker. It's too bad you can't find anything like that nowadays. I've seen kits today that use plastic encased pieces assembled on pegboards, but I can just imagine how difficult it would be to play with the design by adjusting parts. I suppose nowadays people would let their young kids play with sets such as mine alone, and they'd swollow the wires or something and blame+sue radio shack for $20 million. Sad.
Those sets got me into electroncis when I was 8. The knowlege I had of electronics in gradeschool drarfed teachers I ran into on the subject in high school. Now people have to wait until college to get the education I got before age 10. *sigh*
The occurance of his post makes a great deal more sense if you consider the possibility that he's less technical than the "average user". That would explain why he's unaware of standard features. Sort of like a caveman complaining that a mouse is too complicated of a tool for the "average user" to be be expected to use.
didn't the Andromeda series have a ship that had an avatar body? Rommi or something was her name. (probably a shortening of "Andromeda", which was the ship's name) Until that point (fairly early in the series) the ship had a sentient avatar that presented herself anywhere in the ship as a grainy hologram, but could only communicate and couldn't interact with the environment or leave the ship. One of the crew converted a maintenance bot of some sort to match the holographic projection, allowing the ship's avatar to walk the halls of the ship, which is an interesting concept just in and of itself.
I thought that was a refreshing change. Most other sci fi series that had sentient ships had a viewscreen or something else to represent the ship's presense. I don't think any other series has given the ship an avatar as a humanoid. Somewhat the opposite of what's seen more commonly in sci fi, where the humans have a ship as an avatar. (think Voltron or pick your assembly mech series)
"no RAID"? oh, you think THAT'S bad. No no no you don't understand here. I'm not the one calling the shots or things would not BE this way.
The fun really began erlier that afternoon. "ok while I replace the drive can you go get the backups in case we need them?
"well y'know I've been meaning to DO that. No, I can explain..."
he deserves what happens, I'm just the one that has to pick up the pieces. He got very protective of the data during and just after the restore process, I think he was severely threatened. Which is probably about par, and certainly less severe than would happen to a lot of managers in that situation. I've seen people fired on the spot for baiting that level of risk.
As for the other poster, you know about 5 yrs ago I'd have agreed with you somewhat. 7 yrs ago western digital was absolutely worthless, maxtor was good, ibm was garbage, and seagate was the gold standard. Today however, maxtor bought out by ibm, and wd has about switched places with seagate. I've replaced and RMA'd more seages in the last year than all the western digitals in the past. One seagate recently went out in such spectacular style that I heard it from outside the building, sounded like someone was running a circular saw. That one was 6 weeks old iirc. Right now I think the best bet is western digital. I never thought I'd be saying that 7 yrs ago.
I keep telling my manager to quit buying seagates. I am tired of having to rebuild my service machine hard drives. I went through three of them in two weeks awhile ago. Sure they have a 5 yr warranty but my time and the inconvenience of a HD failure are worth more than what that saves. I thought we had finally drilled the point home when we had a HD failure in the server on Friday, which holds the entire POS system including open and past service records customer data and inventory. (at which time I found we had NO BACKUP... grrrreat) So I worked on the drive and got it up enough to copy off from and he hands me a HD to put in the server to replace it.
Yes I know, I should have looked but I was in a hurry and didn't. I didn't seriously even consider the possibility. Started the copy process and went home. Get phonecall. "you're not going to believe this, but the new HD is chirping." "PLEEEEASE tell me it's not a Seagate?" "well y'know actually well let me explain.."
I'm allowed to scream now right?
Near as I can figure, he wanted to get the last seagate 250 "out of inventory" which is a good thing, and saw replacing our server's HD as a good way of doing it, which is a bad thing.
HIS manager has a 3.5ft long wrench in his office and I believe he threatened to use it "to make adjustments" if this happens again. (he's a big fella, The Wrench suits him well)
What's annoying is it's going to get RMA'd, and the replacement is going to be a seagate, and is going to be in inventory. If it were my call I'd either get a refund on it or just plain throw it out and call it a good investment.
I have a GT701-WG and it runs busybox. I just recently updated the firmware too. This is a Qwest DSL modem with wireless capacity.
Strange that you can telnet into it and login, but you can't ssh in. Fortunately the telnet is only listening to machines on its lan ports, since there's no way to turn it off that I know of.
Slashdot Mirror
that was my question too. They are talking about non volatile RAM, at the same time talking about a sub-one-second refresh rate, which in most memory terminology, refers to how often you have to "renew" (read, and then rewrite) the 1 or 0 in the cell to prevent it from resetting. I don't consider that to be non volatile.
According to the article, the 0.7Hz refresh rate is what they need now with the experimental dots. The researchers predict that in the future they'll be able to make dots with a refresh rate of 3.17 * 10^-14 Hz, or one refresh every 1 million years.
That's an amazing difference between what we have now and what we might have later. Seems a little (?) over-optimistic,
1) Size. I really like small laptops. While the 15" MacBook pro was sleek and light, I like the carry-around feel of the Dell better.
... But after configuring compiz fusion,
Sorry, that confuses me. You like small laptops, but you're listing that as a point for buying a bigger one? Or was that a point for themacbook?
2) Price. For the specs I needed, the prices were about the same, until I found Dell's refurb site.
There's a reason why there are more refurb dells available than refurb macs.
3) OS. Yes, you heard that right. Vista got dumped the first day for Ubuntu 7.10, which runs near-flawlessly on thi slaptop.
Did you compare the dell with changed OS and gui enhancement apps, with a stock macbook? Maybe you should take a look at all the free gui enhancements available for Mac OS X to level the playing field?
Only two changes are necessary to convert a dell user to a mac user... 18 months, combined with the loss of 250,000 hair follicles.
I will modify that only slightly, If you chose the Dell over a Mac because the hardware is slightly better, then you deserve Vista., and will then go looking for a button maker and tshirt printer.
Coming from a shop that spends over 50% of its service time cleaining up windows, listen to me here. That is some fine software, and is 100% useless in the hands of someone that cannot be trained to not click on banners or click on links in email.
We see several boxes a week loaded with those titles that are either just plain destroyed or are botnetted. If you can train them how to use the computer, that'll work for windows. Macs don't put the onus on the user to protect their computer, they do it for them. And they don't need to download and install other software to merely help it to be secure.
They're not saying it's better because it is better,, they're saying it's better because they don't like Macs. If they had good reasons to say it was better, you can bet you'd be hearing them.
It's the only answer that makes sense, and it makes good sense.
The only more confused ones are the people buying the iMacs, with Apple bundled memory upgrades.
An easy solution is to have racks on a standard floor, and run the cables up and out of the racks and run on a cable track at about the 6.5 ft level between racks and patch panels.
This keeps the cables neatly in place and out of the way, is easy to maintain and make changes to, and does not require all the problems you can get with a drop floor. Running another cable in a drop floor can take 20 minutes and half a dozen pulled tiles, (and an RC monster truck helps..) or four minutes and no hassels with a tray and a stepstool.
In a lot of ways it's also nice to leave the servers and routers in the rack and put the switches over with the patch panel. I know some of those cables technically need to go down to the piece in the rack below them, but if you wun it all to patch panels, it saves endless trouble trying to make changes or cope with hardware failure that requires rerouting, It also prevents a wire nest from attacking you when you open up the back door on the rack. This only works well if you already have a clear idea of what needs to be in the rack and won't be making frequent changes to the rack contents.
When you're pawing around with a patch panel and a bunch of switches you are already in "wire nest mode" and are working with a much more consistent environment to work with, not hunting for what port is where on the back and which port is wan1 and which is wan2 etc, as they are not usually well marked. This arrangement forces you to consult documentation as to what's where and forces you to see the big picture which helps prevent stupid mistakes in crisis situations.
(Editor's note: We're honoring a request from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. not to reveal the make or model of the laptop the company supplied for our testing purposes.)
Apple MacBook Pro
I've replaced maybe 250 HDs for Apple, and of those, about 18 have been sent to drivesavers. If you ship your computer TO apple to get it repaired, they will replace the HD if they believe it's bad. (even if that's not why it's being sent in, so back up your data!) Apple will also often refuse to repair a computer with "missing modules" such as HDs. I personally find this annoying with respect to macbooks. I would like to be able to send a macbook in for say, a bad logic board, but remove the HD prior to shipment to insure apple does not replace it. Sometimes they flat out refuse to repair the laptop if you send it in without the HD. (presumably becaue it may be involved with the problem you're sending it in for?)
If you take it to an AASP (apple authorized serivce provider) you can have them ship the HD to drivesavers for data recovery if necessary prior to shipping to apple. We also offer the service of backing up the contents of the HD prior to doing a mail-in repair. (the time for which is not covered under warranty, and you will get charged again if a restore is required)
It's not unreasonable or even uncommon for a manufacturer to keep all "modules" replaced, be they hard drives, power supplies, motherboards, or whatever. The only modules apple is not interested in having returned are cheap cosmetic ones. Sometimes they even change their minds. I'll find that a part they wanted back they no longer want back, or sometimes I'll find a part they didn't used to want back they do now. Macbook top cases (which include the keyboard) used to be NRET (non return) but are now returnable. I'm guessing it's not a matter if them wanting them back, but that they are trying to discourage AASPs from fraudulently ordering them as a method of obtaining free stocking parts. (you could file a false warranty claim on a top case, and not have to send anything back, so you could just shelve it or sell it)
If you are worried about sensitive information on your HD, hit it with a bulk tape eraser before shipping it in. If you are interested in data recovery, send it to drivesavers (or total recall, there are several that apple allows to open their drives) before shipping to apple. Otherwise, what you get should not come as a surprise.
The only drawback to this system is that if your laptop is say, a week from leaving warranty, there may not be time to send to drivesavers and get it back before you can start the repair before it leaves warranty. I'm fairly sure if you talked with apple you could get a waiver on that though, they've got a pretty high "customer satisfaction" level they try to maintain.
I was just thinking I'd like to watch the original pilot again. I remember the promos of it where they had devon standing beside kitt with his scanner sweeping, talking about a much cooler car that "does more than just jump puddles", referring to their main car featuring competition of the time, Dukes of Hazard. As I recall, that episode mainly revolved around Michael freaking out as he found out 'the hard way' that his car was sentient. Is it available anywhere? Not that I'm geeking out enough to go buy the box set ;)
The other car featuring show I can think of that I also enjoyed is of course the Delorian. No personality, but a lot of class.
No Audio/Video In-Dash Functions Yes
How many times did we watch Michael video conference with Devon?
10 miles Range 20 miles
I have no idea what they are talking about here. Do they mean in "super pursuit mode" or just ordinary driving? 10 mile range sounds kinda silly.
No Keyless Entry and Ignition Yes
How many times did Michael run up to kitt to meet him in a hurry, where kitt power slid to a stop and swung th door open? That's about as 'keyless entry' as it gets.
No 360-Degree Video Surveillance Yes
I never knew the original kitt had blind spots? He seemed to have 360 degree vision?
No 24-Hour Roadside Assistance Yes
What do you call that big black semi? They didn't even need to pull over to get in, so maybe you can call it NOT roadside because he didn't need to pull over?
No In-Seat Medical Diagnosis Yes
Several episodes kitt diagnosed the medical condition of some passenger that Michael dumped into the passenger seat.
(yes this used to be one of my favorite shows of 'the day'. the very similar show Airwolf rocked too)
I'm not a market analyst but I have to wonder, I don't see why it would be illegal to increase the market value of your product by taking steps to encourage the demand? That's the goal of advertising and many other common market practices.
One system I saw reminds me of this problem. It was a touch screen that displayed a keypad. The screen was at a terminal of sorts, and there was a box drawn around the area in front on the ground in red tape. By company rules only one person was allowed in the box at a time, so if you needed to approach the door in a group, you were required to take turns and queue up in a line outside the box.
The screen was a fresnel lens type cover, so you had to be standing at the correct orientation to the screen to read it. People behind you any distance, or off to the side even a little, could not see the screen at all. The screen presented a numeric keypad and you had to key in your passcode.
The trick here is, the keypad was not a standard 0-9 3x3 grid. The numbers were in a 3x3 grid, but were in random places each time you used it. So anyone watching your hands to see what you pressed wasn't getting anything useful besides the length of the passcode. (which was fixed at 10 characters) There was a setting to shuffle the keys on each keypress but that was found to get on people's nerves, so you could presumably figure out if a person had a pair of letters in the code that were the same but that's not too big of a deal.
Only thing is a screen scraper combined with a keylogger (to log mouse clicks) would still own all of this.
It'd be nice if some international body examined the issue of software security risks and established a guideline so we didn't have this ongoing problem of what to call a bug and what not to, and to finally put to bed the notion that notifying users of newly discovered vunlerabilities is bad for security.
I for one would like to see a rating scale that factors in not just the problem, the severity, and the scope, but also the availability of information on the problem. For example, you couldn't score anywhere near a perfect 10 even if the problem was minor and affected very few people, if you failed to tell anyone about it until you had it patched. Failing to disclose a known problem until someone else blew the whistle on you (or released an exploit into the wild) should earn you an automatic zero on the attempt.
Like most other mistakes, in the end security flaws almost always become magnified if you try to hide them.
Either somewhere in their statistical models they have determined that snow white publicity combined with a large number of your customers getting zinged costs them less in the end than fessing up and protecting their customers better. Or they're just being stupid about it.
But I think they're just being stupid about it. Wasn't there a quote something along the lines of "never attribute to malace that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"?
I've had to install burners for dozens of users. Most times I go looking for something in their movies folder that's 200-500mb in size that will make a good test. Or an entire folder of data that's about that size, of which their pictures folder is often a good fit.
If you hide a body in your trunk don't go get pissed off at Jiffy Lube when they report you for what they discover while changing your rear turn signal light.
If I can't quickly find anything of the right size for a test I'll grab an ext HD and plug in and dump something onto their machine. (now watch the maffia go after me...) This takes a bit of additional time. Consider now the innocent customer that gets upset if I charge him what he feels is a little too much time and I try to justify it saying I had to locate and transfer some test data to his machine to test the burn. You KNOW he will say "why didn't you just burn xyz right there from the desktop?" You can't justify BOTH behaviors, you have to pick one. We choose to make 98% of our customers happy with our decision.
Another good car example comes up right away. If you take your car into a car detail shop and they notice your stash under the driver seat, again, busted. Don't go blaming the tech for (A) your illegal activity, and further (B) your stupidity for making it so easily stumbled upon. I hate it when I see criminals (lesser or greater) try to cry that their rights were violated when the most trivial and common actions lead to their discovery. I acknowledge that we must have to have laws against unreasonable searches etc but too many criminals are trying to take great advantage of the laws made to protect the innocent in an attemt to escape their own conviction for obviously deliberate and illegal activity. These criminals don't care about the rights of the innocent, they are in it 100% trying to save themselves and are hoping to sucker the paranoid sector of the innocent to their defense.
I mean, if you have to turn on a switch to make it work properly, on what is a widely known public test suite, makes one wonder if they aren't engaging some very specific tweaks to the render engine to pass the test. I'd like to see the makers of acid2 modify it a bit, shift things around but still be testing all the same elements, and see if ie8 will still pass it. I think I'd also add a small element (like a freckle on the face) to make sure they're not just dishing us up a fixed pre-rendered image.
It would not completely shock me if someone discovered that with that box ticked, it checks the html somewhat tersely to see if it's acid2, and if so, branches to a totally different bit of code.
I'd leave the box checked and see just how trashed it renders some other pages, and then take a look at THEM and see if their code was correct or not. I think I'd prefer a browser that refused to properly render improperly written code rather than one that makes "best effort". Or at least one that has both options. It looks like there's a chance this is exactly what they are trying to do, which is brilliant.
If you have money, and are stupid, you are likely to get phished. While getting phished is unlikely to collectively benefit stupidkind, they DO now collectively have much less money. This should either make them a less attractive target, or at least mitigate the level of damage the phishers can do. I suppose you could say the internet is being "phished out". Pretty soon "a fool and his money are soon parted" will have been applied enough that few of the stupid people have anything left to be phished? Looks like a problem that is destined to take care of itself.
Not that I classify windows users as sensible people in the first place, but why oh WHY are 90% of the windows computers sold today preloaded with Vista, if so many people can't stand it???
My best guess is that MS is licensing to machine retailers at some ridiculously low rate of like $35 for a $299 install, to insure we get it rammed down our throats whether we want it or not. This being the case, MS is taking a calculated loss on Vista, evidently hoping to get more windows users for whatever comes after vista? I don't think it's going to work out that way?
Here is what you need: http://www.quasarelectronics.com/epl200.htm
That kit is almost identical to my 200-in-1 kit. They moved the batteries up topside and added binding posts but that's the one. There is NO BETTER way to teach kids about electronics. The link on radio shack's page should be named "15-in-1 kit". Doesn't look like there's enough to make jack with it. I wonder how many projects are in that book they ship with it.
They must have bought it from Tandy. Nice, they even posted a list of the 200 projects here: http://www.quasarelectronics.com/kit-files/epl/epl200.pdf Many of the projects are to teach you about how digital circuits work, like how AND and NOR gates are actually assembled from smaller parts. Sort of like the difference between learning assembly and C++. Sure C++ will get it done faster but if you know assembly you can kick butt and know more about why things work. Too bad they didn't post one or two pages of the kit like oh, #94. An actual, working, AM radio transmitter. Somewhere in that list is a circiut that makes a working intercom. I had a lot of fun with that one.
I believe I have a gift idea for someone I know now. But unfortunately I don't think this is a gift for everyone. I was a major self-starter on these sorts of things, and unless you have some committment to it I don't know, it may end up as parent says, in the clothset after a few weeks.
Some of these projects used almost ALL the components on the kit. There is simply no way to make a kit that allows physical assembly of such complex projects that can match the structure of the schematic. Also, if you wanted to "insert" some circuitry in a fixed position kit, that would be a nightmare. This kit is just a matter of moving a couple wires.
I can't believe how cheap that thing is. I smoked two or three transistors and both chips and had to replace them, and some of those parts were hard to come by. Try today to find a non CMOS RS232 NAND chip...
The 150-in-1 kit was similar in size to this one but was in a wooden box instead of a plastic case. Almost as many parts to use, but not as big of a project book.
Here's another good link: http://www.retrothing.com/2007/01/a_modern_descen.html - looks like a rework of the original 150 in 1 kit.
And here's one of the ones I don't like: http://www.laserballs.com/teb.htm That was radio shack's upgrade to the 200 in 1 and was as I expected, a miserable flop. Again trying to use a peg board approach to assembly, severely limits flexibility and creativity.
More kits available here: http://www.laserballs.com/tee.htm
Radio Shack used to sell 150-in-1 and 200-in-one sets. They were 20"x 12" wood or plastic boxes with groups of parts on the top board, including transistors, resistors, capacitors, and a variety of other parts. The parts were mounted to the colorful top, labeled and grouped. Their connectors ran to numbered springs beside them. You'd use the included wire to run between parts, by bending springs to the side, inserting the stripped end of the wire, and releasing it.
They came with booklets that had 150 (or 200) different projects to make. They'd start you out slow, showing you a picture of the kit with the wires in place, and a set of number lists like 18-22-85-10 33-28-21 etc to rum the wires. Later in the book they replaced the picture of the kit with a schematic of the project.
Some of the latter projects were quite complex, and many of them used some nifty components such as a earphone for a microphone, and a CDS sensor to make a light beam tripped noise maker. It's too bad you can't find anything like that nowadays. I've seen kits today that use plastic encased pieces assembled on pegboards, but I can just imagine how difficult it would be to play with the design by adjusting parts. I suppose nowadays people would let their young kids play with sets such as mine alone, and they'd swollow the wires or something and blame+sue radio shack for $20 million. Sad.
Those sets got me into electroncis when I was 8. The knowlege I had of electronics in gradeschool drarfed teachers I ran into on the subject in high school. Now people have to wait until college to get the education I got before age 10. *sigh*
This would have looked right in place in the recent remake of the movie Time Machine. The gears in the lid are a very nice touch.
Only thing that I wouldn't like is how big it is. It looks to stand over 3" tall, a lot of that is in the lid I think.
The occurance of his post makes a great deal more sense if you consider the possibility that he's less technical than the "average user". That would explain why he's unaware of standard features. Sort of like a caveman complaining that a mouse is too complicated of a tool for the "average user" to be be expected to use.
didn't the Andromeda series have a ship that had an avatar body? Rommi or something was her name. (probably a shortening of "Andromeda", which was the ship's name) Until that point (fairly early in the series) the ship had a sentient avatar that presented herself anywhere in the ship as a grainy hologram, but could only communicate and couldn't interact with the environment or leave the ship. One of the crew converted a maintenance bot of some sort to match the holographic projection, allowing the ship's avatar to walk the halls of the ship, which is an interesting concept just in and of itself.
I thought that was a refreshing change. Most other sci fi series that had sentient ships had a viewscreen or something else to represent the ship's presense. I don't think any other series has given the ship an avatar as a humanoid. Somewhat the opposite of what's seen more commonly in sci fi, where the humans have a ship as an avatar. (think Voltron or pick your assembly mech series)
"no RAID"? oh, you think THAT'S bad. No no no you don't understand here. I'm not the one calling the shots or things would not BE this way.
The fun really began erlier that afternoon. "ok while I replace the drive can you go get the backups in case we need them?
"well y'know I've been meaning to DO that. No, I can explain..."
he deserves what happens, I'm just the one that has to pick up the pieces. He got very protective of the data during and just after the restore process, I think he was severely threatened. Which is probably about par, and certainly less severe than would happen to a lot of managers in that situation. I've seen people fired on the spot for baiting that level of risk.
As for the other poster, you know about 5 yrs ago I'd have agreed with you somewhat. 7 yrs ago western digital was absolutely worthless, maxtor was good, ibm was garbage, and seagate was the gold standard. Today however, maxtor bought out by ibm, and wd has about switched places with seagate. I've replaced and RMA'd more seages in the last year than all the western digitals in the past. One seagate recently went out in such spectacular style that I heard it from outside the building, sounded like someone was running a circular saw. That one was 6 weeks old iirc. Right now I think the best bet is western digital. I never thought I'd be saying that 7 yrs ago.
I keep telling my manager to quit buying seagates. I am tired of having to rebuild my service machine hard drives. I went through three of them in two weeks awhile ago. Sure they have a 5 yr warranty but my time and the inconvenience of a HD failure are worth more than what that saves. I thought we had finally drilled the point home when we had a HD failure in the server on Friday, which holds the entire POS system including open and past service records customer data and inventory. (at which time I found we had NO BACKUP... grrrreat) So I worked on the drive and got it up enough to copy off from and he hands me a HD to put in the server to replace it.
Yes I know, I should have looked but I was in a hurry and didn't. I didn't seriously even consider the possibility. Started the copy process and went home. Get phonecall. "you're not going to believe this, but the new HD is chirping." "PLEEEEASE tell me it's not a Seagate?" "well y'know actually well let me explain.."
I'm allowed to scream now right?
Near as I can figure, he wanted to get the last seagate 250 "out of inventory" which is a good thing, and saw replacing our server's HD as a good way of doing it, which is a bad thing.
HIS manager has a 3.5ft long wrench in his office and I believe he threatened to use it "to make adjustments" if this happens again. (he's a big fella, The Wrench suits him well)
What's annoying is it's going to get RMA'd, and the replacement is going to be a seagate, and is going to be in inventory. If it were my call I'd either get a refund on it or just plain throw it out and call it a good investment.
I have a GT701-WG and it runs busybox. I just recently updated the firmware too. This is a Qwest DSL modem with wireless capacity.
Strange that you can telnet into it and login, but you can't ssh in. Fortunately the telnet is only listening to machines on its lan ports, since there's no way to turn it off that I know of.
BusyBox v0.61.pre (2006.07.03-16:17+0000) Built-in shell (ash)
ifconfig sure does list a lot of ports. It must be a very generically written os to work easily on a wide variety of their boxes.