Ditto. I've been running a Dell 600m with the Pentium M (1.8GHz) with a docking station and it is great. I don't play FPS games, but it handles my scientific computing needs quite handily.
The only two complaints I have are: The Dell feels a little flimsy compared to the IBM Thinkpad and Windows XP seems to get doggy if I don't reboot it after severals days of use. I don't know if the latter is due to dock and undocking, power management, or just ornery Windows XP.
Well AA fire really isn't a problem since the max altitude is 8000m (~24000 ft). As for SAM's an SA-6 can reach out 24 km and the SA-20 can reach out 400km. So most SAM's cannot reach far enough to be a threat. A SA-20 type threat is the only threat if the ABL was providing a TMD role and that is why you have Wild Weasels.
Actually at altitude beam control works better since you have to compensate for less turbulence. Ideally the ABL would destroy the missile as early as possible in the boost phase; however, range-to-target and turbulence limits how soon you can engage the target.
The technical challenge has never really been "hitting the target." The challenge they have been facing is system integration, specifically getting everything to fit on the 747 with the proper weight distribution. Hitting a target was demonstrated in the Aiborne Laser Laboratory project years ago. In fact, there is active research in extending the usable range of the ABL.
Actually it is not very interesting. One of the biggest advocates of the entertainment industry is Rep Howard Berman (D-CA). Some of the sponsors of the INDUCE Act are Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD). You can click the names to see the top contributers. It is interesting to note that neither Stabenow or Sarbanes receives much (if any) money from the entertainment industry.
Unless you have been living on Mars for the last eight months, you might have noticed that George Bush is not the darling of the entertainment industry. If you look at the top contributers not one of them are from the entertainment industry. One cannot say the same for John Kerry. The top contributors include Time Warner and Viacom. If you look at the RNC ($2.8M) and the DNC ($5.7M) who do you think is more beholden to the entertainment industry?
I think it is obvious that the actions of the entertainment industry is independent of the occupant of the White House. The Democrats are as friendly to corporations as the Republicans. If you believe otherwise, then you have tasted to much of the Kool-Aid. I hope you voted Nader, because both the Democrats and the Republicans are not for you.
If DirecTV was not doing business in a specified country but the footprint of the satellite signal was "bleeding" into that country are you stealing the service if you decrypt the signal? The company has no legal existence in that country, so it does not own anything.
My sentiments exactly. Each episode draws from a limited set of topics
A joke involving Kevin & Sarah's relationship
A hollywood pitch
How they don't make enough money
Kazaa
Piracy
I find the eye-candy particularly OT and I like women. Hot women are great, but having them on a tech show when they know nothing about--or have nothing to do with--tech is just an obvious play for the male audience. How about Kim Polese or Ellen Poon for a change.
I didn't find the drink review too bad--Jolt, Code Red is common beverage of choice in the programmer/gamer world. The constant reference to Bawls was idiotic. The analogy that comes to mind is that adult supervision has left the show and the kids are playing.
What purpose does it serve the researchers to have SSN's? The purpose of the study was to study the impact of wages on in-home care. Likewise, the names are irrelevant to the researchers. The agency that provided the data should have eliminated the names and SSN's and replaced them with a unique identifier.
This smacks of laziness on the part of the data provider and the researcher(s).
If the perpetrators are smart they would wait a couple of years before using the data. By then most people would have given up on placing fraud alerts on the credit reports.
Another scenario would be to use the SSN's of minors--there would be no fraud alert on those records. In fact, the credit bureaus recommend that you do not put a fraud alert on a minor's record since that would cause a credit record to be created. There could be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of fraudulent credit cards and loans being issued.
After the tricare hard drive theft, which contained information on half a million beneficiaries, one would think some action would be taken. No such luck--Tricare and the DoD still uses social security numbers as unique identifiers and I still have to keep putting fraud alert on my credit report.
The really idiotic part was that the class action lawsuite was dismissed because "the class had suffered no damages." One law firm's reaction was the potential value of this ruling as a defense for future privacy theft instances.
We use DirecWay in a bit of an extreme situation--on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. At 8000 feet, Mother Nature can be tougher to deal with when compared to a typical installation. On the plus side we have a very unobstructed view to the satellite. We do not have the DW6000, we have the USB version that requires drivers that runs under Windows.
First, we never saw speeds reaching what was advertised, maybe about 200 kbps down. You definitely want to go with the professional install--it was not pricey even with the surcharge for coming out to the sticks (2.5 hour drive).
We run a web proxy application on the Windows machines, which provides HTTP connectivity to the other machines in the network. We never tried a "conversational" protocol like SSH, but my guess is the latency would be problematic.
Suprisingly, rain and snow have not been a big deal. We have both DirecTV and DirecWay and I cannot recall a rain or snow outage. Last time I was there, not only did we have snow, but the cloud level was about 6000 ft. With those conditions, the DirecTV signal strength was 80 to 90.
I would give you more details, but Mother Nature and her 50-70 mph winds pushed the dish out of alignment and we have had the worst time getting it pointed again. The dish has three degrees of freedom (elevation, azimuth, and polarity) and getting it right involves moving all three axes. While trying to fix the alignment, the RX signal strength would oscillate between 0 and 70--needless to say that made it difficult to align. I would recommend you do the following after a successful installation:
Record all the positions of the dish
Verify that the post is plumb
Mark the positions on the dish
The other thing to consider is that you definitely do not want to have people or animals within 3 feet of the business end of the dish--the TX power is significant. That basically rules out ground-level installations.
You know what is really interesting. Do a Google search on "Unix Hater Handbook" and look at results (the first one is reproduced below).
"The Unix-Haters Handbook" WWW Page
The UNIX-HATERS Handbook Click here to see full cover (195K bytes).... D Bibliography.
Editors of "The Unix-Haters handbook", ugh@next.cambridge.ma.us.
Description: Complete text of the book edited by Simson Garfinkel, Daniel Weise, and Steven Strassmann. [PDF]
Category: Computers > Software > Operating Systems > Unix research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html - 3k - Cached - Similar pages
> First of all, there's really no legitimate
> reason why you can't use the usual garage door
> remote
Wrong...my car has an integrated garage door controller and I prefer to use it.
-jd
The original poster was correct, assuming that you are not carrying a balance. Most credit card providers will not charge you any interest on purchases if you pay 100% of your balance when it is due. Thus, your money remains in your checking account until you pay the credit card bill earning a whopping 1.5% - 2.2% APY interest on a money market account or 0.5% - 1.5% APY interest on a interest-bearing checking account.
A quote that I found interesting in the article was:
Acacia Research reported a net loss last year of $29.6 million on sales that plummeted to $882,000, from $24.6 million the previous year. If nothing else, the stock is a screaming bargain. The market values the entire company at just 43% of the $55 million Acacia has on hand in cash and cash equivalents. "All I know is I've been buying a lot of stock lately," Ryan says gamely.
It seems to me that the business model of getting vague or overly broad patents does not provide a steady income stream. If you go to their web site you find that they still list their V-chip technology (even though they lost a patent enforcement case--guess the patent was not that important) and their biochip technology (also a loser in the courts).
The bottom line is that there is a desperate need for patent reform. My first suggestion is a peer review process. Technology specialization has gotten to the point where I do not think a fulltime patent clerk can stay current in a field. Second, the patent process must be completed in a short timeframe. If you cannot provide a clear patent right away, then you probably do not have good idea. The current patent process has a disclosure document program that can be used to help establish precedent. It even provides for a patent pending. IMHO those two concepts provide sufficient protection of an idea. The purpose of a finite timeframe is to reduce the number of submarine patents.
A dissenting opinion to my view can be found here.
I wonder what the impact of an overly rigid copyright/patent on an economy would be. If we consider a country that has no copyright or patent system, then there is less incentive to innovate. Artists would only produce under a patronage system and products would either rely on trade secrets (slowing scientific progress) or price competition (a drive to low profit margins). In communist countries art was viewed as the property of the people and artists, theoretically at least, were supported, i.e. "each to his own ability."
On the other hand, if there is a very rigid patent system, ideas never get into the public domain and every new product has a defacto tax built into it. The inflationary pressure would be incredible. Copyrights behave a little bit differently than patents in this scenario. An extensive protection period for copyrights provides an incentive for "monopolistic stagnation"1. Similarly, copyrights can be used as a form of censorship or to limit access by competitors. The effect can be rather chilling--no Project Gutenberg, information controlled by one source for extended periods of time, etc.
In the case of Mexico, or any country that follows a similar path, I think the business climate would eventually detoriate. There would be a high price of entry for new businesses and established businesses would feel less pressure to compete. Even foreign companies would have difficulty in entering.
An interesting read on copyrights can be found in the article by Lydia Pallas Loren. Maybe my argument is full of holes.
Reminds me of the SGI Origin 2000's that have the LCD panel on each rack. The display would show the system load or some such thing. Never really saw the utility of it, but I was not the admin on the system so maybe I am just obtuse. Maybe people walk up and down the computer room with a clipboard (paper or otherwise) and check things off.
For admin purposes, my preferences tend towards KVMs, ssh, or a remote X application. The only real utility (as I see it) is if the computer is an appliance: Media player, home automation, bartender, etc. Even so, it probably would be more useful with a touch panel.
It already is being used. Network analysis (NA) and visualization tools are being used in parts of the government to look at everything from criminal organizations to terrorists. The three biggest hurdles for the government (or for that matter a company that wants to use NA tools for commercial purposes):
-- Computing resources and visualization techniques. Only fairly recently has computing power, storage, and graphics capability have gotten to the point where you can deploy these tools in the hands of the analyst. Having the analyst go to a specialized computer terminal/operator is a barrier for its use. The big problem that remains is how to effectively display complex networks. When I looked at moderately complex networks, it quickly became a plate of spaghetti.
-- Data sources. Unless you have a common data source, NA tools are exceedingly difficult to implement. You need to capture the entities that are involved, the relationships between, and a indicator of data quality. That data source needs to be integrated with the other tools the analyst uses. For example, if a marketing analyst is reading a survey on who are trendsetters for teen fashions, that analyst needs to be able to seamlessly update a database on who the trendsetters are. That same database needs to feed a NA tool that can be used to determine who the key trendsetters are.
-- Analyst rut. Some analysts either have a resistance to adopting new tools or are ignorant of the tools. I think often the problem lies on the tool building side of the house. It is not unusual to see a new application get deployed with little or no input from the users. In one of my jobs, I saw an application get deployed that was completely unusable by over 90% of the users. Apparently the developers were using (new at that time) Pentium-based computers when all the regular users had 486s. The application brought the 486 to its knees.
It really is pretty neat when you start with a sparse network with uncertain links and after working it on it for awhile you end up with a solid network, identified new relationships, and discovered new entities.
Not entirely true. Under 17 USC 102(b) facts are not protected by copyright (the EU does protect collections of facts ref). Under 17 USC 103&101 works "formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." White pages are not protected because there is no creativity.
This is where I go out on a limb because I could not find the citation. I remember reading that the Supreme Court ruled in a case where a map publisher sued another publisher for copyright infringement. The defendant used the plaintiffs map to create a new map. The plaintiff had introduced small errors into the maps in order detect such copying. The court ruled in favor of the defendant on the basis that since it was a new representation, it did not copy the creative aspect of the map. The introduction of errors is not a basis for copyright protection because nobody would ever be able to copy facts.
At my last job they deployed an IM client over the entire company and it proved to be a huge benefit. In fact, the general counsel issued guidelines on when the text of an IM conversation needed to be saved.
The benefits of IM, as I see it are:
The ability to talk with a colleague on an asynchronous basis
The ability to see if someone was at their computer
A reduction in "non-work" related wandering
At first I was skeptical of IM, but after having it for awhile, I much prefer it over the phone. My current employer does not use it and find I am not as productive.
Just how many treaties has the US abrogated lately? The only one that comes to mind was ABM and that was a treaty well past its prime--much like the banning of the crossbow by the Pope. Many arms control advocates claim that the ABM is the "foundation" for all modern arms-limitation treaties; however, I would argue that arms control is an iterative process and obsolete treaties need to be discarded. As for the The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, if it does not prove adaptable enough to support modern property rights, then it needs to be revised or discarded.
I also think that you dismiss manned spaceflight to readily. While there are some things that robotic probes can do better, there are times when decidely human qualities win out.
Oh yes, Europe is the most freedom loving continent in the Universe. They would never do anything to abridge individual rights. Never! Oh wait, the EU is telling Italians how to make pasta. It seems it is not compliant with EU food safety standards.
Asia, that is another freedom utopia. They never interfere with freedom. Oh wait, how about that giant firewall called China.
Russia, that is definitely the pinnacle of freedom. They would never permit the government to snoop the data flowing through an ISP.
Now that is a profoundly funny observation! Kudos.
It is interesting to consider the similarities with Circuit City's poorly conceived Divx format. In that case the consumer outright rejected the concept of having to pay to view a DVD they bought. Now we have Congress trying to legislate a technology scheme that the consumers rejected in the past. The truly ironic point is that none of this will stop pirated copies. It will just annoy the average consumer.
Life was so much simpler when the government tested nukes.
There are two problems in building a large solar array. First is the environmental impact and second is the initial cost in energy.
In order to get commercially useful quantities of energy, you have to cover a rather large area of real estate. The impact on the natural habitat would be severe (even a desert has life in it).
The second problem is the amount of energy needed to build the solar array. I have heard anectdotal statements that photoelectric cells have a negative energy production when you factor in the energy used to manfacture the cell and the life expectancy of it(I will defer to anyone who has information from a better source). I would imagine that a boiler-type array would be lower cost, but would it be significantly lower?
I am not saying that solar cells are not useful, they have their applications. The problem with building large scale arrays on Earth is real estate and the atmosphere, which cuts down the amount of sunlight reaching the surface (and lets not forget nighttime either). The best place to build a solar array is in space and that is even more expensive and difficult to do.
Slashdot Mirror
The only two complaints I have are: The Dell feels a little flimsy compared to the IBM Thinkpad and Windows XP seems to get doggy if I don't reboot it after severals days of use. I don't know if the latter is due to dock and undocking, power management, or just ornery Windows XP.
Well AA fire really isn't a problem since the max altitude is 8000m (~24000 ft). As for SAM's an SA-6 can reach out 24 km and the SA-20 can reach out 400km. So most SAM's cannot reach far enough to be a threat. A SA-20 type threat is the only threat if the ABL was providing a TMD role and that is why you have Wild Weasels.
The technical challenge has never really been "hitting the target." The challenge they have been facing is system integration, specifically getting everything to fit on the 747 with the proper weight distribution. Hitting a target was demonstrated in the Aiborne Laser Laboratory project years ago. In fact, there is active research in extending the usable range of the ABL.
Unless you have been living on Mars for the last eight months, you might have noticed that George Bush is not the darling of the entertainment industry. If you look at the top contributers not one of them are from the entertainment industry. One cannot say the same for John Kerry. The top contributors include Time Warner and Viacom. If you look at the RNC ($2.8M) and the DNC ($5.7M) who do you think is more beholden to the entertainment industry?
I think it is obvious that the actions of the entertainment industry is independent of the occupant of the White House. The Democrats are as friendly to corporations as the Republicans. If you believe otherwise, then you have tasted to much of the Kool-Aid. I hope you voted Nader, because both the Democrats and the Republicans are not for you.
If DirecTV was not doing business in a specified country but the footprint of the satellite signal was "bleeding" into that country are you stealing the service if you decrypt the signal? The company has no legal existence in that country, so it does not own anything.
- A joke involving Kevin & Sarah's relationship
- A hollywood pitch
- How they don't make enough money
- Kazaa
- Piracy
I find the eye-candy particularly OT and I like women. Hot women are great, but having them on a tech show when they know nothing about--or have nothing to do with--tech is just an obvious play for the male audience. How about Kim Polese or Ellen Poon for a change.I didn't find the drink review too bad--Jolt, Code Red is common beverage of choice in the programmer/gamer world. The constant reference to Bawls was idiotic. The analogy that comes to mind is that adult supervision has left the show and the kids are playing.
This smacks of laziness on the part of the data provider and the researcher(s).
Another scenario would be to use the SSN's of minors--there would be no fraud alert on those records. In fact, the credit bureaus recommend that you do not put a fraud alert on a minor's record since that would cause a credit record to be created. There could be hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of fraudulent credit cards and loans being issued.
The really idiotic part was that the class action lawsuite was dismissed because "the class had suffered no damages." One law firm's reaction was the potential value of this ruling as a defense for future privacy theft instances.
First, we never saw speeds reaching what was advertised, maybe about 200 kbps down. You definitely want to go with the professional install--it was not pricey even with the surcharge for coming out to the sticks (2.5 hour drive).
We run a web proxy application on the Windows machines, which provides HTTP connectivity to the other machines in the network. We never tried a "conversational" protocol like SSH, but my guess is the latency would be problematic.
Suprisingly, rain and snow have not been a big deal. We have both DirecTV and DirecWay and I cannot recall a rain or snow outage. Last time I was there, not only did we have snow, but the cloud level was about 6000 ft. With those conditions, the DirecTV signal strength was 80 to 90.
I would give you more details, but Mother Nature and her 50-70 mph winds pushed the dish out of alignment and we have had the worst time getting it pointed again. The dish has three degrees of freedom (elevation, azimuth, and polarity) and getting it right involves moving all three axes. While trying to fix the alignment, the RX signal strength would oscillate between 0 and 70--needless to say that made it difficult to align. I would recommend you do the following after a successful installation:
- Record all the positions of the dish
- Verify that the post is plumb
- Mark the positions on the dish
The other thing to consider is that you definitely do not want to have people or animals within 3 feet of the business end of the dish--the TX power is significant. That basically rules out ground-level installations.> First of all, there's really no legitimate > reason why you can't use the usual garage door > remote Wrong...my car has an integrated garage door controller and I prefer to use it. -jd
The original poster was correct, assuming that you are not carrying a balance. Most credit card providers will not charge you any interest on purchases if you pay 100% of your balance when it is due. Thus, your money remains in your checking account until you pay the credit card bill earning a whopping 1.5% - 2.2% APY interest on a money market account or 0.5% - 1.5% APY interest on a interest-bearing checking account.
The bottom line is that there is a desperate need for patent reform. My first suggestion is a peer review process. Technology specialization has gotten to the point where I do not think a fulltime patent clerk can stay current in a field. Second, the patent process must be completed in a short timeframe. If you cannot provide a clear patent right away, then you probably do not have good idea. The current patent process has a disclosure document program that can be used to help establish precedent. It even provides for a patent pending. IMHO those two concepts provide sufficient protection of an idea. The purpose of a finite timeframe is to reduce the number of submarine patents.
A dissenting opinion to my view can be found here.
On the other hand, if there is a very rigid patent system, ideas never get into the public domain and every new product has a defacto tax built into it. The inflationary pressure would be incredible. Copyrights behave a little bit differently than patents in this scenario. An extensive protection period for copyrights provides an incentive for "monopolistic stagnation"1. Similarly, copyrights can be used as a form of censorship or to limit access by competitors. The effect can be rather chilling--no Project Gutenberg, information controlled by one source for extended periods of time, etc.
In the case of Mexico, or any country that follows a similar path, I think the business climate would eventually detoriate. There would be a high price of entry for new businesses and established businesses would feel less pressure to compete. Even foreign companies would have difficulty in entering.
An interesting read on copyrights can be found in the article by Lydia Pallas Loren. Maybe my argument is full of holes.
-------------
1COMPUTER ASSOCIATES INTERNATIONAL, INC. v. ALTAI, INC., 982 F.2d 693 (HTML)
For admin purposes, my preferences tend towards KVMs, ssh, or a remote X application. The only real utility (as I see it) is if the computer is an appliance: Media player, home automation, bartender, etc. Even so, it probably would be more useful with a touch panel.
It already is being used. Network analysis (NA) and visualization tools are being used in parts of the government to look at everything from criminal organizations to terrorists. The three biggest hurdles for the government (or for that matter a company that wants to use NA tools for commercial purposes): -- Computing resources and visualization techniques. Only fairly recently has computing power, storage, and graphics capability have gotten to the point where you can deploy these tools in the hands of the analyst. Having the analyst go to a specialized computer terminal/operator is a barrier for its use. The big problem that remains is how to effectively display complex networks. When I looked at moderately complex networks, it quickly became a plate of spaghetti. -- Data sources. Unless you have a common data source, NA tools are exceedingly difficult to implement. You need to capture the entities that are involved, the relationships between, and a indicator of data quality. That data source needs to be integrated with the other tools the analyst uses. For example, if a marketing analyst is reading a survey on who are trendsetters for teen fashions, that analyst needs to be able to seamlessly update a database on who the trendsetters are. That same database needs to feed a NA tool that can be used to determine who the key trendsetters are. -- Analyst rut. Some analysts either have a resistance to adopting new tools or are ignorant of the tools. I think often the problem lies on the tool building side of the house. It is not unusual to see a new application get deployed with little or no input from the users. In one of my jobs, I saw an application get deployed that was completely unusable by over 90% of the users. Apparently the developers were using (new at that time) Pentium-based computers when all the regular users had 486s. The application brought the 486 to its knees. It really is pretty neat when you start with a sparse network with uncertain links and after working it on it for awhile you end up with a solid network, identified new relationships, and discovered new entities.
This is where I go out on a limb because I could not find the citation. I remember reading that the Supreme Court ruled in a case where a map publisher sued another publisher for copyright infringement. The defendant used the plaintiffs map to create a new map. The plaintiff had introduced small errors into the maps in order detect such copying. The court ruled in favor of the defendant on the basis that since it was a new representation, it did not copy the creative aspect of the map. The introduction of errors is not a basis for copyright protection because nobody would ever be able to copy facts.
At my last job they deployed an IM client over the entire company and it proved to be a huge benefit. In fact, the general counsel issued guidelines on when the text of an IM conversation needed to be saved.
The benefits of IM, as I see it are:
- The ability to talk with a colleague on an asynchronous basis
- The ability to see if someone was at their computer
- A reduction in "non-work" related wandering
At first I was skeptical of IM, but after having it for awhile, I much prefer it over the phone. My current employer does not use it and find I am not as productive.I also think that you dismiss manned spaceflight to readily. While there are some things that robotic probes can do better, there are times when decidely human qualities win out.
Oh yes, Europe is the most freedom loving continent in the Universe. They would never do anything to abridge individual rights. Never! Oh wait, the EU is telling Italians how to make pasta. It seems it is not compliant with EU food safety standards.
Asia, that is another freedom utopia. They never interfere with freedom. Oh wait, how about that giant firewall called China.
Russia, that is definitely the pinnacle of freedom. They would never permit the government to snoop the data flowing through an ISP.
You must have a unique definition of freedom.
Now that is a profoundly funny observation! Kudos.
It is interesting to consider the similarities with Circuit City's poorly conceived Divx format. In that case the consumer outright rejected the concept of having to pay to view a DVD they bought. Now we have Congress trying to legislate a technology scheme that the consumers rejected in the past. The truly ironic point is that none of this will stop pirated copies. It will just annoy the average consumer.
Life was so much simpler when the government tested nukes.
There are two problems in building a large solar array. First is the environmental impact and second is the initial cost in energy.
In order to get commercially useful quantities of energy, you have to cover a rather large area of real estate. The impact on the natural habitat would be severe (even a desert has life in it).
The second problem is the amount of energy needed to build the solar array. I have heard anectdotal statements that photoelectric cells have a negative energy production when you factor in the energy used to manfacture the cell and the life expectancy of it(I will defer to anyone who has information from a better source). I would imagine that a boiler-type array would be lower cost, but would it be significantly lower?
I am not saying that solar cells are not useful, they have their applications. The problem with building large scale arrays on Earth is real estate and the atmosphere, which cuts down the amount of sunlight reaching the surface (and lets not forget nighttime either). The best place to build a solar array is in space and that is even more expensive and difficult to do.