Yup. Yeah. This is all about political revenge. They're going to inconvenience their people my making the switch to a new office suite (which I frankly love) just to shake their collective fist at Microsoft. Yeah. That're REAL rational. Take off that tinfoil hat. You're as bad as the liberals and libertarians.
...anymore in the U.S? God this country is going down the tubes fast. I wonder what's going to happen to Consumer reports magazine when they pot a product? Personally, I deal with two really shitty products at work that I'm stuck with because there are no alternatives. I'd love to talk about how they suck and why, but I know those companies would pull the same kind of shit. That only leaves word of mouth for now. Every chance I get in real life I tell people to avoid these products like the plague. I have also suggested that if someone went postal at either of those businesses, I'd never stop laughing.
It amazes me that this kind of thing slips by the slashdo[tt] editors regularly. Bad science masquerading as legitimate theory. But I really don't see how nanoparticles are going to prevent people from getting flogged. On the one hand you've got a bunch of inanimate particles on the nano level and on the other hand you've got a guy in an executioner's hood holding a cat-o-nine tails above you. What possible match is there? The guy in the executioner's hood is going to win every time. Trust me. I know from experience, I went to catholic school fer crissakes! So... oh? What? Ohhhh... "fogging" not "flogging". Oh. Sorry for the mix up. Oh geez. Now I feel silly. I think I'm gonna blush... Bye.;P
It all has to do with frequencies and harmonics. It really could be either device because the frequency of your cell phone is more likely to have a harmonic relationship with the sounds on your cassette since the phone is used for voice transmissions. But, there are other factors like the color of the paint in the room you're listening to the recordings in. Green paint happens to have a harmonic relationship with sounds in the 22.5 kHz range which is just above the normal hearing range. (Although I can personally hear up into the 32 kHz range myself) Since most people can't hear that high, a room painted with olive green paint is the best listening environment possible.
It's preferrable to paint that color, in flat, on the ceilings, walls, floors and most funrnishings. Plus you want all of your furnishings and decor to be flat green as well. My couch and loveseat are olive green velvet. That provides the least reflection of other colors of light that would mar the quality of your playback. If you can afford to go this far, even replacing the light bulbs with green lights would help tremendously. Since I'm color blind that has the negative effect of making it look like the room turns black when I flip on the green lights. So I had to go with yellow which isn't as good but it's better than nothing. Chances are you might be able to do the green light thing though.
So... how is it that I'm running OpenOffice 2.0 at decent speeds on a machine that is eight years old? But this same machine would croak running Windows XP Pro and Office 2003? Sounds like a pretty strong example of modern apps running on what is considered "antiquated hardware" in the Microsoft world. The same box also runs the latest Firefox, Thunderbird, Java, RealPlayer, Xine and XMMS. So go figure...
That makes a lot of sense, but I doubt our Certron cassette using friend would have understood that. I've been eyeing the gold plated power leads at my local audio shop for a while now. Maybe I should treat myself to a splurge and get the shielded ones. They're about $175 per cable. By the way, do you know if I would need one voltage smoother per power strip, or should I get one per receptacle in the power strip? I know it might push the price up a bit, but I read an article a few months back in Audiomage magazine that mentioned how the introduction of microwave devices such as microwaves, cell phones and hig speed desktop supercomputers can cause problems in power strips. Due to the micro nature of microwaves, the wiring in a powerstrip is akin to the wiring in a house. All of the same factors you mention above apply within the power strip. So my assumption would be that I'd need some kind of power filtering suppository for the power strip. Does that sound right to you?
Hate to break it to you chum, but if you care at all about security, NT4 and Win 9x are broken. And MS ain't comin' to the rescue. Anyone still running NT4 for something serious is an idiot. NT4 has no more support, no more updates, nada. Deader than BSD. You MUST upgrade if you are a decent admin. Otherwise you're a complete and total moron. Or... you could just dump the Microsoft OSes and go with one of the BSDs or Linux. Then you'd have boxes running for years that are CURRENT. That's the main key. You don't lose support on older hardware like you do in Windows. Hate to tell you the truth, but someone had to do it.
A technology guru you might be, but a security expert you are not!! The first rule of security is full disclosure. If you want to be secure hide everything in plain sight. As soon as you start throwing up barriers like encryption and.Net, you make things interesting to the evil hacker types. But, you are apparently someone who has dranken of the Kool-Aid of Microsoft. The last thing we need here is some Bill Gate's loving capitalist pig. If this world is going to get any better, we need to open all doors and windows and take away all barriers to entry at every level. I should be able to walk into your house and use your toilet without having to even know you live there. That is the ideal. In such a world, you wouldn't own the Beowulf cluster. The cluster would own you!! When you ask how anyone could be against what you propose, my only answer is, "Open your eyes".
This isn't really related to your post, but I noticed that you too use a cassette player, like I do. I've been using Certron C-60 tapes since 1978 and just rerecording over them from the radio. But the quality seems to be dropping. I clean the tape heads every 12 hours like I'm supposed to. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what might be causing the drops in the high frequency range. Would you suggest degaussing the head? My uncle said that worked for him with reel-to-reel, but I have my doubts considering how much newer a technology cassettes are when compared with reel-to-reel decks. Also, I don't trust the new Chromium tapes. Have you tried them yet?
USB works fine for all my peripheral needs right now thank you very much. The day you cant point me to an external hard drive that uses PCI-X and has a standard cable that doesn't cost an arm and two heads, then I'll take what you said a little more seriously. That's the problem with you early adopters. You find some new technology you think is going to be the end all and be all for the rest of time and you run with it. Only to find out that no one agreed with you because it was either, too expensive or way too unstable. I mean look at SCSI. That was a dismal failure on the desktop. Apple invented it and tried to push it as a standard, but they didn't get anywhere because it was godawful expensive and terribly unstable. Eventually it got into server rooms (only God knows why) and today we're stuck with legacy nightmares from the SCSI background.
Most of the SAN technologies were built with SCSI technology but ony after decades of revision made them reliable and stable. The pricepoint is still prohibitive though. That's why any server room I run is using ATA drives in Windows 2K boxes with dynamic disks. I've got one box with 20 drives providing the bulk of storage for my organization. The drives are all concatenated into one big dynamic disk that then gets partitioned the way I need it. The best of security from NTFS on DOS and the best of performance by having all the drive spindles moving at the same speed. Try that with your antiquated OS X and BSD boxes. Oh what? You can't? I'm sorry you made the wrong choise to go with SCSI because you are early adopters.
The same thing is going to happen with these phones. You'll buy into them only to be green with envy when Microsoft debuts "Microsoft Phone 2008". We'll see who has the last laugh then.
Oh ye of little intellect... Clusters on belts!? Where in the hell is your mind man? I can relate to the idea of clusters in the server room. Clusters of office PCs that are unused at night make a little sense too. But clusters of portable devices that you carry with you? Do you realize what you're even saying?!! First off, the idea of using bluetooth as the transport between different nodes of a cluster is so ludicrous it doesn't even warrant comment. If you proposed that at any R&D facility, they'd laugh you right out the door in a heartbeat. But, supposing that bluetooth was a viable interconnect between nodes, you're forgetting about a very important aspect of clustered computing. For all of the hype about clustering, one thing most people aren't even aware of is the need for security. Most cluster nodes are in closed and secure environments. Now, unless you plan to start wearing a lead and aluminum foil sheild around your midriff, I don't see how you'll keep such a cluster secure. bluetooth by it's very nature is promiscuous. Do you realize that with clustered beltware combined with address books, you could have a mega virus/worm sweeping the entire wireless world in seconds? And all from the belly of some 300 lb. IT monkey with too much time on his hands? It's people like you who keep me awake at night.
Well. You obviously know nothing about computing devices. One CPU is going to be way loaded down all that functionality you're asking for. I can't see that going over well. Frankly, I'm all for the idea of bluetooth clustering with portable devices. Just imagine a Beowulf on your belt. Now that's REAL power. You pick up your phone and you can control your music player. If you're on a long walk you can divert power from the PDA grid to the music player's main cells thereby increasing the amount of time you can listen to Dark Side of the Moon repeatedly. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Get with the times buddy! Clustered parallel processing is the way of the future! Even on the belt top!
The nerve of that eno2001 guy to think that he knows all. Well, I've met people like hime on Slashdot and they tend to be pretty unstable individual. usually calling for impeachment of president Bush and stuff like that. He's probably a terrorist too.;P
Funny you should mention that. My main box at home is a dual PII 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. Bought it in 1997/98. Here's a short list of what it does:
1. Internal DNS 2. DHCP 3. NFS 4. Samba 5. Internal Web Server 6. VoIP Server (Asterisk PBX) 7. Stateful (ie, always where you left off on the desktop) GNOME Desktop Application Server for four users simultaneously via VNC with all the needed apps (web, mail, office, im) 8. NTP server 9. Various emulators for playing DOS and Windows games and VMWare for more serious work stuff.
All I needed to do was a little tweaking to some kernel settings for better desktop performance.
It's bad for the economy!! Imagine buying a computer system and having it still usable for modern applications nearly a decade later. The various Linux distros allow for this. That cuts into profits for desktop and server sales. That's why Windows is the better choice. It pushes the hardware requirements up so quickly that you need to get new hardware every two to three years. This is good for the economy. Therefore Linux is UnAmerican.
Ummm, hate to break it to you guys but eDonkey is not new. The venerable "Donk" has been around in some fashion for about half a decade. Who thought this was news?
...will buy into this kind of gadgetry. Simply put, "we're not there yet" so why bother forking out cash for an inferior device? All of the crappy devices that are coming out today and constantly changing shape, form factor and interoperability are good for businesses and bad for you. You spend all this money on a device that's only going to last you two or three years at best. Somewhere within those two or three years something better is going to come out and you'll jump on that bandwagon forking out even more cash. meanwhile the investment in this device is lost. Whatever happened to the notion of building a device that was made to last? (ie: GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMER)
Today cell phones are coming with cameras and various memory card slots to support things like taking pictures, making videos, playing music and the like. Some cell phones are also offering TV. It's the whole "convergence" thing being re-released early and often, as it were. Meanwhile the consumers are being duped into spending more and more money on things they don't need but are told that they do. Do you NEED a video recorder in your phone? Really? Do you actually **NEED** that? The.001% of the population that actually needs a way to record video for a legitimate reason (paying job or possibly some sort of visual communication need) is going to do it another way that's better than a shitty camera phone.
Do you really NEED a music player combined with your cell phone? You've been getting along without one all this time. Why the sudden change? I'll tell you why. Because your mind is owned by the business who want (and don't deserve) access to your money! Personally, I wouldn't buy any of this crap unless it does exactly what I need. A music player on it's own makes sense. A music player combined with the markedly useless features of a phone is an ill-implemented luxury. I think I'd be far more excited if a Sony PSP was combined with cell phone functionality. The whole point being that the best portable device that *SHOULD* be the lust object of all people, is the one that can do it all, and do it all well. Not some shitty hacked together mixture of a mediocre technology (iPod) and subpar technology (cell phone).
For a while, I was tempted by the Compaq iPaqs until I realized they aren't made for people like me. They're made for suits. Who cares about schedules, meetings, writing documents in Word and Excel? Not a tech manager, that's for sure. The ideal PDA for me is one that will respond to voice commands, have a wearable display, CLI interface, Unix based, support for alternative text input and wireless. But guess what? There's nothing like that on the market because the companies that make PDAs don't sell to people like me. They sell to mindless sheeple who want gadgets as fetishistic status symbols. They know that those people will keep buying and buying and buying. It's sickening.
Our culture has hopelessly damaged itself through capitalism. These days the only reson to exist is to buy or sell. If you don't want to participate then you have to live on the fringes of society and be labelled as an eccentric. No one does anything to further culture or society anymore. There was a time when people were concerned with making sure that everyone (especially the underpriveleged) was accorded some access to things that will enrich their lives, increase their knowledge and allow them to lift themselves up. Now, everyone is concerned with how much money they make and how their investments are doing. All the while not caring that their investments may be hurting other people. (Walmart is a glaring example)
So thanks Apple. Thanks Motorola. By creating this stupid new and destined to be obsolete in less than five years product, you've convinced more fools to part with their money. That money could have been used to help our society and instead it's going to go to some office monkey walking down the street to work showing off his snazzy new cell phone/iPod. Which he will promptly lose interest in when the next Motorola cell phone comes out that has a music player, video player, brain interface, whatever... It is a truly sad age we live in.
Yeah, but you're probably not a Musician turned tech.:) The only reason to get into computers is artistic persuits. After that everything else is just fluff.
But seriously folks. In some of the better organizations, certification is likely to be a liability than an asset when your looking for a job. Any place where techs are doing the hiring instead of suits, you're going to find that they are really leary of people with certifications. A lot of people want to get into IT but just don't have the aptitude or background for it. So they go and work on their test taking skills and get certifications hoping it will be their big break. However, as soon as they're confronted with real technical problem domains, they can't cut it.
Working in IT and doing it well requires more than just book knowledge. It requires an actual understanding of WHY you do what you do. For example, I'll go back to my early Unix days. I had just come from Windows and I was used to "directly accessing" the floppy drive. When I popped a floppy into a Linux box and I was looknig at the a Bash prompt (no GUI) I knew I could do an 'ls'. But of what? I found a/dev/floppy and tried to 'cd' into it. Didn't work, obviously. I did some searching and found out about this strange command called 'mount'. I got really pissed at what I percieved as needless complexity but I eventually jsut accepted it. That is a perfect example of doing something because I know I'm supposed to do it, but not knowing why. These days, I know why mount and umount are needed, I also know about autofs. In knowing the why (flat file system with no weird path kludges like Windows drive letters) my dealings are much more straightforward. This is something you can't learn from a book or class.
Certs really are pointless unless you are trying to get hired into an IT dept. that is run by the suits instead of the techs. And that's always a nightmare. Techs run IT better than suits do.
Speed controllers! Who cares about the speed controllers!? The important content is the tour-guide box because without it how do you expect the city to market itself!!!?;P
I am not a marketer. I'm a musician who manages a lot of different systems (OSes, routers, switches, etc...). I do it all. Scripting, coding, configs, managing staff, working with vendors and clients, etc... ad nauseum. Yep. Not a marketer.
...I wouldn't be caught dea in one of those disasters on wheels. Here is why:
1. It's too small. I weigh about 450 Lbs due to my healthy and steady Amuricuhn diet of fast food and convenience snacks. I might be able to sit in it by myself, but I'd like to have my wife and kids with me and I don't see how that little thing is going to handle 1400 Lbs total for my family of three.
2. Is uses electricity which is inferior to petroleum for the amount of energy produced per gallon. One gallon of electricity gets you what? Ten feet mabye? Sorry, but give me an Escalade with extra gas tanks.
3. It looks wimpy. Just picture yourself going around full throttle at 20 MPH! When I get in a car, I want to go 0-80 in no more than 15 seconds. Again, give me an Escalade.
4. Where's the DVD player? My son likes to ask a lot of stupid questions about stuff we're driving past when we're on vacation. Like when we drove past the Grand Canyon, he asked if we could get out and look at it. For god sakes! If god had intended for us to actually walk around natural formations like that he would have made us donkeys or billy goats instead of people. My kid needs to have his eyes locked on a DVD or video game so he doesn't ask stupid questions. That's a MAJOR flaw in the design of this thing.
5. IF these things could hit 80-150 miles an hour, they'd also need radar detectors to keep the cops from being able to illegitimately raise revenue by ticketing me when I was well in control of the car. I guess it doesn't matter though since they TOP OUT at 20 MPH! It also doesn't matter because I won't be putting my sweet Amuricuhn ass in one of those pencil necked carts.
6. They're open to the outside. If I want a tan, I'm going to lie on the beach, not sweat like crazy in a car. Who in their right mind would ever want a car that's open? I can count the number of times that my car windows are open here in the U.S. of A. in a year on one hand. I prefer to have my AC blasting on full if it's over 65 F because it keeps me from sweating. I also like the fact that it blows the fragrance from my car air freshener around and makes the car smell like the clean outdoors just the way mother nature intended.
7. There's no stereo system. When I drive I like to avoid being distracted, so I put the stereo up on full volume to drown out any yammering my wife and kid might be sending my way. Whatever they have to say is unimportant and I like Kidd Rock and Eminem. They're much more entertaining.
8. These things are funded by a communist government. I was kind of shocked to find out that Cordoba is a communist run city. I thought the only place the red menace still existed was Cuba and China. I guess we're going to have to pre-emptively strike Cordoba before they get us. They're probably getting together some terrorists to try and take down the good old U.S. of A. Our best and safest route is to probably send some troops down to South America to take care of those uppity commies in Cordoba.
9. Open source software promotes piracy and communism. The use of open source on these "cars" probably violates IP laws in every civilized capitalist nation. If this jackass tried to start a similar business here, I can guaran-damn-tee you that he'd be face to face with CIA and FBI agents wanting to see his past affiliations.
We've got to protect Amuricuh. Our homeland security should be the first thing on everyone's mind on the entire planet because we've got the big guns. Something goes wrong here and we get taken over by the commies, you know they'll use our firepower against all the sissy nations of the world the at turn tail at the slightest sign of trouble. Give us some respect and don't drive these monstrosities anywhere but into the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup. Yeah. This is all about political revenge. They're going to inconvenience their people my making the switch to a new office suite (which I frankly love) just to shake their collective fist at Microsoft. Yeah. That're REAL rational. Take off that tinfoil hat. You're as bad as the liberals and libertarians.
Eat Haggis
...anymore in the U.S? God this country is going down the tubes fast. I wonder what's going to happen to Consumer reports magazine when they pot a product? Personally, I deal with two really shitty products at work that I'm stuck with because there are no alternatives. I'd love to talk about how they suck and why, but I know those companies would pull the same kind of shit. That only leaves word of mouth for now. Every chance I get in real life I tell people to avoid these products like the plague. I have also suggested that if someone went postal at either of those businesses, I'd never stop laughing.
It amazes me that this kind of thing slips by the slashdo[tt] editors regularly. Bad science masquerading as legitimate theory. But I really don't see how nanoparticles are going to prevent people from getting flogged. On the one hand you've got a bunch of inanimate particles on the nano level and on the other hand you've got a guy in an executioner's hood holding a cat-o-nine tails above you. What possible match is there? The guy in the executioner's hood is going to win every time. Trust me. I know from experience, I went to catholic school fer crissakes! So... oh? What? Ohhhh... "fogging" not "flogging". Oh. Sorry for the mix up. Oh geez. Now I feel silly. I think I'm gonna blush... Bye. ;P
It all has to do with frequencies and harmonics. It really could be either device because the frequency of your cell phone is more likely to have a harmonic relationship with the sounds on your cassette since the phone is used for voice transmissions. But, there are other factors like the color of the paint in the room you're listening to the recordings in. Green paint happens to have a harmonic relationship with sounds in the 22.5 kHz range which is just above the normal hearing range. (Although I can personally hear up into the 32 kHz range myself) Since most people can't hear that high, a room painted with olive green paint is the best listening environment possible.
It's preferrable to paint that color, in flat, on the ceilings, walls, floors and most funrnishings. Plus you want all of your furnishings and decor to be flat green as well. My couch and loveseat are olive green velvet. That provides the least reflection of other colors of light that would mar the quality of your playback. If you can afford to go this far, even replacing the light bulbs with green lights would help tremendously. Since I'm color blind that has the negative effect of making it look like the room turns black when I flip on the green lights. So I had to go with yellow which isn't as good but it's better than nothing. Chances are you might be able to do the green light thing though.
So... how is it that I'm running OpenOffice 2.0 at decent speeds on a machine that is eight years old? But this same machine would croak running Windows XP Pro and Office 2003? Sounds like a pretty strong example of modern apps running on what is considered "antiquated hardware" in the Microsoft world. The same box also runs the latest Firefox, Thunderbird, Java, RealPlayer, Xine and XMMS. So go figure...
That makes a lot of sense, but I doubt our Certron cassette using friend would have understood that. I've been eyeing the gold plated power leads at my local audio shop for a while now. Maybe I should treat myself to a splurge and get the shielded ones. They're about $175 per cable. By the way, do you know if I would need one voltage smoother per power strip, or should I get one per receptacle in the power strip? I know it might push the price up a bit, but I read an article a few months back in Audiomage magazine that mentioned how the introduction of microwave devices such as microwaves, cell phones and hig speed desktop supercomputers can cause problems in power strips. Due to the micro nature of microwaves, the wiring in a powerstrip is akin to the wiring in a house. All of the same factors you mention above apply within the power strip. So my assumption would be that I'd need some kind of power filtering suppository for the power strip. Does that sound right to you?
Hate to break it to you chum, but if you care at all about security, NT4 and Win 9x are broken. And MS ain't comin' to the rescue. Anyone still running NT4 for something serious is an idiot. NT4 has no more support, no more updates, nada. Deader than BSD. You MUST upgrade if you are a decent admin. Otherwise you're a complete and total moron. Or... you could just dump the Microsoft OSes and go with one of the BSDs or Linux. Then you'd have boxes running for years that are CURRENT. That's the main key. You don't lose support on older hardware like you do in Windows. Hate to tell you the truth, but someone had to do it.
A technology guru you might be, but a security expert you are not!! The first rule of security is full disclosure. If you want to be secure hide everything in plain sight. As soon as you start throwing up barriers like encryption and .Net, you make things interesting to the evil hacker types. But, you are apparently someone who has dranken of the Kool-Aid of Microsoft. The last thing we need here is some Bill Gate's loving capitalist pig. If this world is going to get any better, we need to open all doors and windows and take away all barriers to entry at every level. I should be able to walk into your house and use your toilet without having to even know you live there. That is the ideal. In such a world, you wouldn't own the Beowulf cluster. The cluster would own you!! When you ask how anyone could be against what you propose, my only answer is, "Open your eyes".
This isn't really related to your post, but I noticed that you too use a cassette player, like I do. I've been using Certron C-60 tapes since 1978 and just rerecording over them from the radio. But the quality seems to be dropping. I clean the tape heads every 12 hours like I'm supposed to. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what might be causing the drops in the high frequency range. Would you suggest degaussing the head? My uncle said that worked for him with reel-to-reel, but I have my doubts considering how much newer a technology cassettes are when compared with reel-to-reel decks. Also, I don't trust the new Chromium tapes. Have you tried them yet?
USB works fine for all my peripheral needs right now thank you very much. The day you cant point me to an external hard drive that uses PCI-X and has a standard cable that doesn't cost an arm and two heads, then I'll take what you said a little more seriously. That's the problem with you early adopters. You find some new technology you think is going to be the end all and be all for the rest of time and you run with it. Only to find out that no one agreed with you because it was either, too expensive or way too unstable. I mean look at SCSI. That was a dismal failure on the desktop. Apple invented it and tried to push it as a standard, but they didn't get anywhere because it was godawful expensive and terribly unstable. Eventually it got into server rooms (only God knows why) and today we're stuck with legacy nightmares from the SCSI background.
Most of the SAN technologies were built with SCSI technology but ony after decades of revision made them reliable and stable. The pricepoint is still prohibitive though. That's why any server room I run is using ATA drives in Windows 2K boxes with dynamic disks. I've got one box with 20 drives providing the bulk of storage for my organization. The drives are all concatenated into one big dynamic disk that then gets partitioned the way I need it. The best of security from NTFS on DOS and the best of performance by having all the drive spindles moving at the same speed. Try that with your antiquated OS X and BSD boxes. Oh what? You can't? I'm sorry you made the wrong choise to go with SCSI because you are early adopters.
The same thing is going to happen with these phones. You'll buy into them only to be green with envy when Microsoft debuts "Microsoft Phone 2008". We'll see who has the last laugh then.
Just for future reference, USB is outmoded. The new interconnect is PCI-X. Learn it. Know it. Love it.
Oh ye of little intellect... Clusters on belts!? Where in the hell is your mind man? I can relate to the idea of clusters in the server room. Clusters of office PCs that are unused at night make a little sense too. But clusters of portable devices that you carry with you? Do you realize what you're even saying?!! First off, the idea of using bluetooth as the transport between different nodes of a cluster is so ludicrous it doesn't even warrant comment. If you proposed that at any R&D facility, they'd laugh you right out the door in a heartbeat. But, supposing that bluetooth was a viable interconnect between nodes, you're forgetting about a very important aspect of clustered computing. For all of the hype about clustering, one thing most people aren't even aware of is the need for security. Most cluster nodes are in closed and secure environments. Now, unless you plan to start wearing a lead and aluminum foil sheild around your midriff, I don't see how you'll keep such a cluster secure. bluetooth by it's very nature is promiscuous. Do you realize that with clustered beltware combined with address books, you could have a mega virus/worm sweeping the entire wireless world in seconds? And all from the belly of some 300 lb. IT monkey with too much time on his hands? It's people like you who keep me awake at night.
Well. You obviously know nothing about computing devices. One CPU is going to be way loaded down all that functionality you're asking for. I can't see that going over well. Frankly, I'm all for the idea of bluetooth clustering with portable devices. Just imagine a Beowulf on your belt. Now that's REAL power. You pick up your phone and you can control your music player. If you're on a long walk you can divert power from the PDA grid to the music player's main cells thereby increasing the amount of time you can listen to Dark Side of the Moon repeatedly. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Get with the times buddy! Clustered parallel processing is the way of the future! Even on the belt top!
The nerve of that eno2001 guy to think that he knows all. Well, I've met people like hime on Slashdot and they tend to be pretty unstable individual. usually calling for impeachment of president Bush and stuff like that. He's probably a terrorist too. ;P
Funny you should mention that. My main box at home is a dual PII 450 with 768 Megs of RAM. Bought it in 1997/98. Here's a short list of what it does:
1. Internal DNS
2. DHCP
3. NFS
4. Samba
5. Internal Web Server
6. VoIP Server (Asterisk PBX)
7. Stateful (ie, always where you left off on the desktop) GNOME Desktop Application Server for four users simultaneously via VNC with all the needed apps (web, mail, office, im)
8. NTP server
9. Various emulators for playing DOS and Windows games and VMWare for more serious work stuff.
All I needed to do was a little tweaking to some kernel settings for better desktop performance.
Thanks for asking.
It's bad for the economy!! Imagine buying a computer system and having it still usable for modern applications nearly a decade later. The various Linux distros allow for this. That cuts into profits for desktop and server sales. That's why Windows is the better choice. It pushes the hardware requirements up so quickly that you need to get new hardware every two to three years. This is good for the economy. Therefore Linux is UnAmerican.
Ummm, hate to break it to you guys but eDonkey is not new. The venerable "Donk" has been around in some fashion for about half a decade. Who thought this was news?
Awww... someone didn't get the iPaq or iPod he wanted, did he? Take your meds dude and chill for a while. ;P
...will buy into this kind of gadgetry. Simply put, "we're not there yet" so why bother forking out cash for an inferior device? All of the crappy devices that are coming out today and constantly changing shape, form factor and interoperability are good for businesses and bad for you. You spend all this money on a device that's only going to last you two or three years at best. Somewhere within those two or three years something better is going to come out and you'll jump on that bandwagon forking out even more cash. meanwhile the investment in this device is lost. Whatever happened to the notion of building a device that was made to last? (ie: GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMER)
.001% of the population that actually needs a way to record video for a legitimate reason (paying job or possibly some sort of visual communication need) is going to do it another way that's better than a shitty camera phone.
Today cell phones are coming with cameras and various memory card slots to support things like taking pictures, making videos, playing music and the like. Some cell phones are also offering TV. It's the whole "convergence" thing being re-released early and often, as it were. Meanwhile the consumers are being duped into spending more and more money on things they don't need but are told that they do. Do you NEED a video recorder in your phone? Really? Do you actually **NEED** that? The
Do you really NEED a music player combined with your cell phone? You've been getting along without one all this time. Why the sudden change? I'll tell you why. Because your mind is owned by the business who want (and don't deserve) access to your money! Personally, I wouldn't buy any of this crap unless it does exactly what I need. A music player on it's own makes sense. A music player combined with the markedly useless features of a phone is an ill-implemented luxury. I think I'd be far more excited if a Sony PSP was combined with cell phone functionality. The whole point being that the best portable device that *SHOULD* be the lust object of all people, is the one that can do it all, and do it all well. Not some shitty hacked together mixture of a mediocre technology (iPod) and subpar technology (cell phone).
For a while, I was tempted by the Compaq iPaqs until I realized they aren't made for people like me. They're made for suits. Who cares about schedules, meetings, writing documents in Word and Excel? Not a tech manager, that's for sure. The ideal PDA for me is one that will respond to voice commands, have a wearable display, CLI interface, Unix based, support for alternative text input and wireless. But guess what? There's nothing like that on the market because the companies that make PDAs don't sell to people like me. They sell to mindless sheeple who want gadgets as fetishistic status symbols. They know that those people will keep buying and buying and buying. It's sickening.
Our culture has hopelessly damaged itself through capitalism. These days the only reson to exist is to buy or sell. If you don't want to participate then you have to live on the fringes of society and be labelled as an eccentric. No one does anything to further culture or society anymore. There was a time when people were concerned with making sure that everyone (especially the underpriveleged) was accorded some access to things that will enrich their lives, increase their knowledge and allow them to lift themselves up. Now, everyone is concerned with how much money they make and how their investments are doing. All the while not caring that their investments may be hurting other people. (Walmart is a glaring example)
So thanks Apple. Thanks Motorola. By creating this stupid new and destined to be obsolete in less than five years product, you've convinced more fools to part with their money. That money could have been used to help our society and instead it's going to go to some office monkey walking down the street to work showing off his snazzy new cell phone/iPod. Which he will promptly lose interest in when the next Motorola cell phone comes out that has a music player, video player, brain interface, whatever... It is a truly sad age we live in.
Yeah, but you're probably not a Musician turned tech. :) The only reason to get into computers is artistic persuits. After that everything else is just fluff.
I like Velamints myself.
/dev/floppy and tried to 'cd' into it. Didn't work, obviously. I did some searching and found out about this strange command called 'mount'. I got really pissed at what I percieved as needless complexity but I eventually jsut accepted it. That is a perfect example of doing something because I know I'm supposed to do it, but not knowing why. These days, I know why mount and umount are needed, I also know about autofs. In knowing the why (flat file system with no weird path kludges like Windows drive letters) my dealings are much more straightforward. This is something you can't learn from a book or class.
But seriously folks. In some of the better organizations, certification is likely to be a liability than an asset when your looking for a job. Any place where techs are doing the hiring instead of suits, you're going to find that they are really leary of people with certifications. A lot of people want to get into IT but just don't have the aptitude or background for it. So they go and work on their test taking skills and get certifications hoping it will be their big break. However, as soon as they're confronted with real technical problem domains, they can't cut it.
Working in IT and doing it well requires more than just book knowledge. It requires an actual understanding of WHY you do what you do. For example, I'll go back to my early Unix days. I had just come from Windows and I was used to "directly accessing" the floppy drive. When I popped a floppy into a Linux box and I was looknig at the a Bash prompt (no GUI) I knew I could do an 'ls'. But of what? I found a
Certs really are pointless unless you are trying to get hired into an IT dept. that is run by the suits instead of the techs. And that's always a nightmare. Techs run IT better than suits do.
Speed controllers! Who cares about the speed controllers!? The important content is the tour-guide box because without it how do you expect the city to market itself!!!? ;P
I am not a marketer. I'm a musician who manages a lot of different systems (OSes, routers, switches, etc...). I do it all. Scripting, coding, configs, managing staff, working with vendors and clients, etc... ad nauseum. Yep. Not a marketer.
...I wouldn't be caught dea in one of those disasters on wheels. Here is why:
1. It's too small. I weigh about 450 Lbs due to my healthy and steady Amuricuhn diet of fast food and convenience snacks. I might be able to sit in it by myself, but I'd like to have my wife and kids with me and I don't see how that little thing is going to handle 1400 Lbs total for my family of three.
2. Is uses electricity which is inferior to petroleum for the amount of energy produced per gallon. One gallon of electricity gets you what? Ten feet mabye? Sorry, but give me an Escalade with extra gas tanks.
3. It looks wimpy. Just picture yourself going around full throttle at 20 MPH! When I get in a car, I want to go 0-80 in no more than 15 seconds. Again, give me an Escalade.
4. Where's the DVD player? My son likes to ask a lot of stupid questions about stuff we're driving past when we're on vacation. Like when we drove past the Grand Canyon, he asked if we could get out and look at it. For god sakes! If god had intended for us to actually walk around natural formations like that he would have made us donkeys or billy goats instead of people. My kid needs to have his eyes locked on a DVD or video game so he doesn't ask stupid questions. That's a MAJOR flaw in the design of this thing.
5. IF these things could hit 80-150 miles an hour, they'd also need radar detectors to keep the cops from being able to illegitimately raise revenue by ticketing me when I was well in control of the car. I guess it doesn't matter though since they TOP OUT at 20 MPH! It also doesn't matter because I won't be putting my sweet Amuricuhn ass in one of those pencil necked carts.
6. They're open to the outside. If I want a tan, I'm going to lie on the beach, not sweat like crazy in a car. Who in their right mind would ever want a car that's open? I can count the number of times that my car windows are open here in the U.S. of A. in a year on one hand. I prefer to have my AC blasting on full if it's over 65 F because it keeps me from sweating. I also like the fact that it blows the fragrance from my car air freshener around and makes the car smell like the clean outdoors just the way mother nature intended.
7. There's no stereo system. When I drive I like to avoid being distracted, so I put the stereo up on full volume to drown out any yammering my wife and kid might be sending my way. Whatever they have to say is unimportant and I like Kidd Rock and Eminem. They're much more entertaining.
8. These things are funded by a communist government. I was kind of shocked to find out that Cordoba is a communist run city. I thought the only place the red menace still existed was Cuba and China. I guess we're going to have to pre-emptively strike Cordoba before they get us. They're probably getting together some terrorists to try and take down the good old U.S. of A. Our best and safest route is to probably send some troops down to South America to take care of those uppity commies in Cordoba.
9. Open source software promotes piracy and communism. The use of open source on these "cars" probably violates IP laws in every civilized capitalist nation. If this jackass tried to start a similar business here, I can guaran-damn-tee you that he'd be face to face with CIA and FBI agents wanting to see his past affiliations.
We've got to protect Amuricuh. Our homeland security should be the first thing on everyone's mind on the entire planet because we've got the big guns. Something goes wrong here and we get taken over by the commies, you know they'll use our firepower against all the sissy nations of the world the at turn tail at the slightest sign of trouble. Give us some respect and don't drive these monstrosities anywhere but into the ground.
...have never been spoken. What do marketers really know anyway. Other than what's shiny... ;P