Acadia University in Canada (http://www.acadiau.ca) has been doing something like this for a while. The difference is that everybody at Acadia gets an IBM thinkpad when they go there, they don't have to "work" for it. They upgrade the model they use every two years and you can buy it from them for cheap at the end of the school year. It's a nice system, but then again Acadia is one of the most expensive schools in Canada
I found that saddest T-shirt ever on ebay once, it was a t-shirt somebody had made for the Commodore 64 Rocky Horror Picture Show game. I figure a shirt like that must appeal to about 6 people in the whole world.
He also sold tapes with Emacs on them which was a big source of income in the early GNU/FSF days. That's changed though with the interweb and whatnot, I can't think of anyone I know who actually paid for GCC or any other GNU product recently because most free *nix distros come with them included (and even easier to install than from the CDs).
Not allowing the book to be downloaded isn't a big deal though, it's like how OpenBSD doesn't put up images so that they can encourage people to pay for their CD sets. However, I would bet that his book isn't GPLed and you could probably argue that he's a little hypocritical because of that. I would think though that a "free" license for books though would require some changes from the GPL though.
I think it would make sense for a new company setting up now to do that. However, most of the companies that use these mainframes are very old and established, so switching over to a PC cluster system would have few if any benefits (most of the benefit was cost, but if you've already got a mainframe setup then most of that saving goes out the window) and a whole shitload of risk while switching (for instance a bank, a failure of their system would surely result in fire, brimstone, death and such).
Freedom is a sloping mountain and everybody wants to get to the summit, forcing all software to be open would be climbing up over the top and then starting down the other side. Nobody should have their creations FORCED away from them, it's THEIR creation, so THEY should get to deside how to distribute it to people. Ideally all people/companies would open their software, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have the right to refuse to open it.
Richard Stallman has talked about how all software should be open and that's always been where I start to disagree with him. Again, I agree that it would be beneficial to the world if all software were open, but I still think that people should be given the right to choose whether or not they want release it as "open".
Oh well, it's not something I really need to take a whole lot of time thinking about and defending against because it's really an unpassable law (and pretty unenforcable too). Just think about it, it'd be about as unenforcable as anti-piracy laws;-)
Apparently, there were only like 4 programmers for the Channel F's 26 games. I was talking with my brother about possibly programming for the 2600 and he challenged me to program for the Channel F. Not only would that be a problem because there is very little information about around for the Channel F, but also because at least 2 of the 4 guys that know (or knew) how to program the Channel F are not alive any more.
Now, I've got my suspicions of whether magnetic strips can be read at a distance, but to be honest, I'm more than willing to concede that it's a longshot at best (and a hilariously laughable descent into paranoia at worst).
I would bet that you can't, but it's a possibility. This is kind of related though, I saw a story about a couple of guys who figured out a scheme to spoof ATM cards. They owned a convenience store and they had one of those swipe ATM/Credit/Debit terminals for the customer to use at the register and they had modified it so that the information in the magnetic strip was logged by a laptop they kept behind the counter and then they had a security camera directly above the register that would capture people entering their PIN. They could then take the magnetic strip's information, put it on a new card and it would act just like the person's ATM card. So with that and their knowledge of the person's PIN they could take whatever they wanted from the person's bank account.
I haven't really heard much about the project myself and so I haven't looked, but from what I read on GNU's info page about it it seems pretty interesting. Also the GNU Octal stuff seems interesting, what about that, every decent film editor has at least rudimentary sound manipulation utilities.
If they're not, can anybody give reasons why? Projects like those and GYVE (GNU Yellow Vector Editor) are things that confirm my faith in GNU and RMS in my times of doubt.
#1 - A lot of DVDs don't have FBI Warnings, and of those that do, most of them are not longer than 20 seconds.
#2 - I don't know about you, but on my DVD player even though you can't SKIP the FBI warning you can still fast forward through it (same as on VHS!).
I don't recall EVER running into an FBI warning longer than 30 seconds OR one that couldn't be fast forwarded through. However, there is one DVD I own which has movie previews before the movie which could not be skipped and that was annoying, but they could still be fast forwarded through (LIKE ON VHS!). So just ONE of my DVDs (out of 100+) has something annoying in the beginning and even then it's no worse than its VHS equivalent.
Come on, we live in the year 2002 and electronics are cheap, don't just settling with a "beep", you could at least spruce it up and make it play a song. If you could make it play actual audio files that would be the best though, I would pay you money if you got a working sattelite that could play "Let's Get it On" receivable on my radio.
I put salespitch markup tags around my particularly enthusiastic remarks, but apparently that didn't go through. Nuts.
Anyways, I also wanted to say that even if Microsoft gets away from operating systems that I really doubt they'll open source it, they *might* release it for free though.
In Neal Stephenson's book "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line" he talked about how he thought Microsoft should get out of the OS business and start just selling software. If that idea seems startling to you pick up the book, he makes a good case for it. It's only like $10 and it's a very interesting and well written book, pick your copy up today!
Basically his argument was that Microsoft is okay at writing application software and they really suck pretty bad at writing operating systems (when compared to MacOS, Linux/BSD/? or BeOS). Also, that tying their applications more and more into their OS weakens their applications' good attributes.
I think.Net really is a good indicator that Microsoft might be moving in this direction. Although at first it seems like a way to trick people into using Windows and making things even more proprietory, it also makes it so that programs written using the.Net libraries will ultimately be easily portable independant of Windows (...and will also trick more people into using it giving MS more REAL ULTIMATE POWER).
In about the same section of the book Neal Stephenson also talks about how Apple is in a similar situation with their hardware and their OS, their OS is great, but the hardware just weakens it (granted it's not bad hardware, just that it's proprietory and expensive). Again if this seems shocking pick up a copy of the book and give it a read. I think there really is a good chance that Apple will eventually drop their hardware, even if a lot of you believe it will never happen.
So yeah, basically my point is that Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line" is a really awesome book, it's cheap, insightful, short (but not too short) and overall well written (not boring tech-speak, but not not devoid of technical ideas).
Could you fit a website designed for 800x600 on your 240x160 PDA?
If the site was designed with a specific resolution in mind then I'm not sure I'd want to read it. Designing websites for specific resolutions is for people that don't know how to design websites.
FUCK FUCK FUCK.
You're right, but (follow me on this one, I'm stretching this a little bit) a quadrangle is defined as a shape with four sides, constructed using four points, and since no definition I've ever seen or heard has mentioned anything in regards to 2D and 3D, a tetrahedron would fit that description (sides in a 3D shape are the faces of the shape right, not the same as the edges of the figure).
HAHA! I BEAT GEOMETRY, TAKE THAT MRS. LAVERDIERRE!
Triangulation works great in two dimensions, but when you use a third you have to do quadrangulation (is that even a word? I'll bet it is) like say you work for a company in a five story office building, when you triangulate where a person is in relation to you distance wise and in which general direction, but you don't really know where he is, maybe he's 15 meters in front of you and maybe he's 5 meters in front of you, but three floors down. They could both register as the same with triangulation.
I will start the quadrangulating WiFi revolution.
This kind of triangulation would be useless, since you'll need three WiFi access points (thus the term "triangulation".
Umm... no, you need two points for triangulation, that's the way triangulation works, you use the distance from two separate points to a third point (the object/person etc. that you are triangulating) to complete the triangle. You need two WiFi access points and one person using them.
Two WiFi points versus one isn't a HUGE deal and it's kind of a non-issue anyways since probably no company would bother with this anyways, excluding the select few where the boss is a geek and puts one in because he thinks it's cool.
The correct plural is Unices, just like the correct plurals for Matrix and Vertex are Matrices and Vertices. However, nobody knows how to pluralize words that end in X so nobody cares if you pluralize it wrong. I guarantee you no car salesman will ever put out an ad yelling about the insane prices he has on the brand new 2003 Matrices.
I've always hated the all or nothing priviledges that Unix uses.
You know what, you're right! I think it's time for Unix 2: Electric Boogaloo. I would be more than happy to spearhead that movement. I mean "Electric Boogaloo", words that end in an "X", it sounds so cool!!!!
I just had a flashback, there used to be some type of laptop where when you opened it up the keyboard would expand past the sides of the notebook to give you a larger more usable keyboard. Was it the old thinkpads? I forget. Anyways, I think that this Vaio could do with doing something like that because that keyboard is just rediculously small. I mean, if you're getting something that small you might as well give up and make it use a stylus like a PDA or one of those Fujitsu tablet computers because that would make it way more useful.
The only problem I see with the expanding keyboard idea is that it would increase thickness and the whole vaio notebook line prides themselves on how thin they are and with this super small vaio that would matter the most.
I think it's stupid really, you end up paying twice as much for that thing as you would for a larger, but faster, more flexible and really more USABLE regular sized laptop and the only advantage you get is that it's small (not even *that* small, most pants pockets couldn't fit it so you'll need a bag for it anyways!
Re:Where's Commodore?!?!?!
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The great thing about the C64 was that you could do sprite animations in BASIC
I remember reading on a TI-83 programming board somebody suggested making something like that because a lot of people want to make games with sprites but don't want to learn assembly (lazy bastards!). I don't think anything ever came of it though. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Acadia University in Canada (http://www.acadiau.ca) has been doing something like this for a while. The difference is that everybody at Acadia gets an IBM thinkpad when they go there, they don't have to "work" for it. They upgrade the model they use every two years and you can buy it from them for cheap at the end of the school year. It's a nice system, but then again Acadia is one of the most expensive schools in Canada
I remember seeing those pictures from consumer reports at least 4 years ago. Finally, I've beaten the Slashdot curve!
I found that saddest T-shirt ever on ebay once, it was a t-shirt somebody had made for the Commodore 64 Rocky Horror Picture Show game. I figure a shirt like that must appeal to about 6 people in the whole world.
He also sold tapes with Emacs on them which was a big source of income in the early GNU/FSF days. That's changed though with the interweb and whatnot, I can't think of anyone I know who actually paid for GCC or any other GNU product recently because most free *nix distros come with them included (and even easier to install than from the CDs). Not allowing the book to be downloaded isn't a big deal though, it's like how OpenBSD doesn't put up images so that they can encourage people to pay for their CD sets. However, I would bet that his book isn't GPLed and you could probably argue that he's a little hypocritical because of that. I would think though that a "free" license for books though would require some changes from the GPL though.
I think it would make sense for a new company setting up now to do that. However, most of the companies that use these mainframes are very old and established, so switching over to a PC cluster system would have few if any benefits (most of the benefit was cost, but if you've already got a mainframe setup then most of that saving goes out the window) and a whole shitload of risk while switching (for instance a bank, a failure of their system would surely result in fire, brimstone, death and such).
Freedom is a sloping mountain and everybody wants to get to the summit, forcing all software to be open would be climbing up over the top and then starting down the other side. Nobody should have their creations FORCED away from them, it's THEIR creation, so THEY should get to deside how to distribute it to people. Ideally all people/companies would open their software, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have the right to refuse to open it.
;-)
Richard Stallman has talked about how all software should be open and that's always been where I start to disagree with him. Again, I agree that it would be beneficial to the world if all software were open, but I still think that people should be given the right to choose whether or not they want release it as "open".
Oh well, it's not something I really need to take a whole lot of time thinking about and defending against because it's really an unpassable law (and pretty unenforcable too). Just think about it, it'd be about as unenforcable as anti-piracy laws
Apparently, there were only like 4 programmers for the Channel F's 26 games. I was talking with my brother about possibly programming for the 2600 and he challenged me to program for the Channel F. Not only would that be a problem because there is very little information about around for the Channel F, but also because at least 2 of the 4 guys that know (or knew) how to program the Channel F are not alive any more.
Oh well, the idea that it once existed still picks up my spirits.
Does anybody know if this uses anything from GNU's Free Film Project?
I haven't really heard much about the project myself and so I haven't looked, but from what I read on GNU's info page about it it seems pretty interesting. Also the GNU Octal stuff seems interesting, what about that, every decent film editor has at least rudimentary sound manipulation utilities.
If they're not, can anybody give reasons why? Projects like those and GYVE (GNU Yellow Vector Editor) are things that confirm my faith in GNU and RMS in my times of doubt.
I think they're called gargoyles ;-)
...yeah that's right, I used a winking emoticon.
#1 - A lot of DVDs don't have FBI Warnings, and of those that do, most of them are not longer than 20 seconds. #2 - I don't know about you, but on my DVD player even though you can't SKIP the FBI warning you can still fast forward through it (same as on VHS!). I don't recall EVER running into an FBI warning longer than 30 seconds OR one that couldn't be fast forwarded through. However, there is one DVD I own which has movie previews before the movie which could not be skipped and that was annoying, but they could still be fast forwarded through (LIKE ON VHS!). So just ONE of my DVDs (out of 100+) has something annoying in the beginning and even then it's no worse than its VHS equivalent.
Come on, we live in the year 2002 and electronics are cheap, don't just settling with a "beep", you could at least spruce it up and make it play a song. If you could make it play actual audio files that would be the best though, I would pay you money if you got a working sattelite that could play "Let's Get it On" receivable on my radio.
I put salespitch markup tags around my particularly enthusiastic remarks, but apparently that didn't go through. Nuts. Anyways, I also wanted to say that even if Microsoft gets away from operating systems that I really doubt they'll open source it, they *might* release it for free though.
In Neal Stephenson's book "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line" he talked about how he thought Microsoft should get out of the OS business and start just selling software. If that idea seems startling to you pick up the book, he makes a good case for it. It's only like $10 and it's a very interesting and well written book, pick your copy up today!
.Net really is a good indicator that Microsoft might be moving in this direction. Although at first it seems like a way to trick people into using Windows and making things even more proprietory, it also makes it so that programs written using the .Net libraries will ultimately be easily portable independant of Windows (...and will also trick more people into using it giving MS more REAL ULTIMATE POWER).
Basically his argument was that Microsoft is okay at writing application software and they really suck pretty bad at writing operating systems (when compared to MacOS, Linux/BSD/? or BeOS). Also, that tying their applications more and more into their OS weakens their applications' good attributes.
I think
In about the same section of the book Neal Stephenson also talks about how Apple is in a similar situation with their hardware and their OS, their OS is great, but the hardware just weakens it (granted it's not bad hardware, just that it's proprietory and expensive). Again if this seems shocking pick up a copy of the book and give it a read. I think there really is a good chance that Apple will eventually drop their hardware, even if a lot of you believe it will never happen.
So yeah, basically my point is that Neal Stephenson's "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line" is a really awesome book, it's cheap, insightful, short (but not too short) and overall well written (not boring tech-speak, but not not devoid of technical ideas).
FUCK FUCK FUCK. You're right, but (follow me on this one, I'm stretching this a little bit) a quadrangle is defined as a shape with four sides, constructed using four points, and since no definition I've ever seen or heard has mentioned anything in regards to 2D and 3D, a tetrahedron would fit that description (sides in a 3D shape are the faces of the shape right, not the same as the edges of the figure). HAHA! I BEAT GEOMETRY, TAKE THAT MRS. LAVERDIERRE!
Triangulation works great in two dimensions, but when you use a third you have to do quadrangulation (is that even a word? I'll bet it is) like say you work for a company in a five story office building, when you triangulate where a person is in relation to you distance wise and in which general direction, but you don't really know where he is, maybe he's 15 meters in front of you and maybe he's 5 meters in front of you, but three floors down. They could both register as the same with triangulation. I will start the quadrangulating WiFi revolution.
I just had a flashback, there used to be some type of laptop where when you opened it up the keyboard would expand past the sides of the notebook to give you a larger more usable keyboard. Was it the old thinkpads? I forget. Anyways, I think that this Vaio could do with doing something like that because that keyboard is just rediculously small. I mean, if you're getting something that small you might as well give up and make it use a stylus like a PDA or one of those Fujitsu tablet computers because that would make it way more useful. The only problem I see with the expanding keyboard idea is that it would increase thickness and the whole vaio notebook line prides themselves on how thin they are and with this super small vaio that would matter the most. I think it's stupid really, you end up paying twice as much for that thing as you would for a larger, but faster, more flexible and really more USABLE regular sized laptop and the only advantage you get is that it's small (not even *that* small, most pants pockets couldn't fit it so you'll need a bag for it anyways!