Gregory Benford had a short story called "The Touch" that was in Omni in 1982 (81?) that was kinda close to this.
IIRC, the story consisted of this guy playing a "Sim" game where he directed a spy (assassin?) character in the game. The spy would "touch" someone to kill them. The story ends when the gamer inadvertently directs his "sim" into his "real-life" room and "touches" himself from behind.
I haven't used it recently, but I remember AutoCAD 12 and 13 allowed a user to use the menu or the command-line alternately. Any action could be done in either location, and the bonus was that menu, mouse activities generated events in the command-line pane.
Agreed - most likely, it's just some guy with a 28K modem who's got a dedicated phone line. Sometimes, his mom picks up the wrong line and the whole site goes down.
Yeah, but if you rely on JET to provide any functionality, 2.6/2.7 don't provide it. If you're working on a non-WinNT kernel machine, you have to install 2.5, then install 2.7 to get JET and be secure. Or, there's a sep. D/L for JET.
Yeah, I know, you shouldn't be using JET anymore, but sometimes it's the hand (or product) you're dealt.
Here in the Chicago area, our family started with "Scotty's Market" in the NW suburbs right after we had our daughter. Lugging a child in and out of a car over and over again is rough on you and the child, so we went the route of online grocers.
They were pretty good, but small, and were soon swallowed by Peapod. Just for a change, we then gave Webvan a spin. Very impressive - the guy who showed up even put on the paper booties so he wouldn't get the floor dirty. After about five deliveries, they stopped wearing the booties, narrowing their delivery windows, and eventually went belly-up.
We're now with Peapod. Their delivery charges and prices are decent, and they wear the booties off and on.
One things that's been supreme about these operations has usually been the quality of food. Produce is usually better than I can get at the local Dominick's (owned by Safeway) or Jewel (owned by Albertson's). We're vegetarians, but friends say the meat is excellent, too. It seems like they get first pick of the produce and meat before the chains do, or something, because it's always been better than I could have picked out myself.
Seriously, if you like good fresh food, and are a little lazy for any reason, the track record for these operations in the food quality department has been stellar.
Don't have the exact case handy, but a farmer planting non-GMO corn next to a "Roundup" GMO corn crop of his neighbor noticed that one patch near the border had become resistant to his herbicide. The neighbor's corn had bred with his, making his corn resistant.
He called up Monsanto, producer of Roundup, and told them about it. They came out, noticed the same thing, then pressed charges for theft of product. The farmer called them! Eventually, he counter-sued for crop-contamination, trespass, and a whole bunch of other things and Monsanto went away.
Standard Google search on Monsanto, GMO, Roundup, etc. brings up all sorts of interesting stuff.
As a parent (of a 2yo), I'm not looking forward to her days on the net. Right now, Teletubbies disturbs me a little bit.
My brother has VNC going on the home network just to keep an eye on his two kids, and one of them's gotten the family AOL account shut down for inappropriate behaviour in a chat room (don't ask).
Leave the computer out in the open, like the TV, and let the oversight be implicit. Your kids may watch something out of line when they're out or you are, but something tells me that neither you nor they are going to watch XXX when you're both in the same house.
Like it is at work. Your behavior might change if a URL log is kept, but it would really change if your back is to your boss who can always see your screen.
can bring it down! Imagine, if you will, that there's a Quickie Mart in the middle of this stretch. Every time the microwave oven heats a "Pocket", the link is down.
I live in Illinois, and many national outfits have branches here, so I almost always end up paying local tax.
A wrinkle is also Illinois' "Fair Use" tax, which says if you buy something out of state to "escape" the tax, but use it in state, you owe Illinois the tax you should have paid, due with annual income taxes.
Almost nobody pays it, but if you're a business, blowing it off for office purchases can burn you if you get an audit.
Many states already have such a system, with poor enforcement. Travelling internationally, you can usually get a refund for the VAT in most countries when you leave the country.
I work regularly with DOCsOpen, iManage, and a few other similar products.
The catch with DOCsOpen is that it uses an older model for intercepting file operations from within Apps (ODMA integration). Also, DOCsOpen requires that the client do all of the SQL manipulations to find its files on the server (two-tier arch.)
The newer release of DOCs (called PowerDOCs, and a newer product just came out) move the queries to a middle tier server, and have slowly started moving away from ODMA int. and towards COM models. iManage, for example, has worked this way for years and has had fewer complaints.
he mentioned tossing the concept of normal *files* and folders
Actually, quite a bit of headway has been made in replacing the folder model with a database model. Products such as DOCsOpen (company called Hummingbird) and iManage, as well as Tahoe (MS) and the BeOS have made great pushes in either popping down the files anywhere, or at least giving the end user a layer of abstraction that uses a DB to access the data/files, rather than the "folder within a folder" thing.
Also, thinkers like Alan Kay have been pushing for the death of the "Desktop" metaphor for well over a decade. It had its purpose in the start, but now it's just tired and irrelevant.
I've had the car a year and love it. I used to have a CRX (1986), and the "slot car" feel is almost exactly the same.
I have the CVT. The trans is cool in itself, but several cars, most recently a Saturn and an Audi, are selling with them. When you floor it, the tach climbs, then holds steady, but the car keeps accellerating. Very weird feel, but you get used to it.
The 5spd, OTOH is capable of much higher MPG ratings and the gas/electric combo is much more at the control of the driver - if you shift too early and floor it, you're using all electric and little gas. The 5spd also can switch into "lean burn" where at low draw, it burns at less than the standard 14:1 stoich. ratio. Generally, a 5spd worst mileage is better than a CVTs best (yeah, there are exceptions, but "all things being equal"). For example, 60 MPG is pretty good for the CVT (50 might be the low end), while the 5spd drivers expect 70 or so.
The 5spd is also more prone to "battery recalibrations" where the computer loses track of how much charge is left in the 144v battery pack. Suddenly, you have the next couple of miles without "assist" and you're in "Geo Metro" mode. The 5spds may be more prone to this because of the ability of the driver to draw off of it much more than a CVT.
What's this all mean? Well, as others have said, this isn't a money decision, since payback is a while. The same might be said for solar, wind power, etc. However, since the Insights were "early" tech, early adopters paid more than someone in the resale channel, and the resale value of most of the hybrids has been iffy. By getting one used, you let someone else take that risk. Additionally, because there were so few made by Honda, dealers who get them in trade-ins don't know what to price them at.
Either car would be a "geek" dream, and you have decide between the staggering mileage of the 5spd against the extra tech and "point and shoot" of the CVT. Oh, and the CVT is SULEV certified while the 5spd (lean burn and all) is only ULEV.
"What about the back seat?" Well, I've got a family, and whenever the kids go somewhere, we take the wagon. Whenever someone's going without the kids, it's the Honda. People never ask "what about the back seat?" about Corvette's, etc., and the fact is most families only need ONE car that can seat the Brady Bunch, not both of them.
Gotta go. email at Insightfill at yahoo dot com if you want, or just lurk the boards there.
Our other car is a 2001 Passat, and it comes with inst. MPG on the dash. The net effect, I've found isn't that big of a deal. People who floor it at every light will continue to do so, and the inst. MPG readout won't change their patterns.
Little things, like proper tire inflation can make a big diff. without changing driver behavior. A person who buys a Ford Expedition doesn't buy it for the MPG, and the extra display would only be depressing. Yes, it could change their driving patterns, but not unless they want it to. If such were the case, smaller cars would sell better.
For drivers to really change their patterns, gasoline has to cost more and stay there for a while. Last time it spiked over $2/gal here, everyone whined to DC about it and started looking for scapegoats. Nobody looked in the mirror.
But, yes, it's a good idea, and everyone at the Yahoo Insight board wonder why more cars don't come with one.
Here's one that might have more impact - miles to empty. I've seen them in the past, and it's pretty impressive.
Would anyone like to comment on why the Prius and Insight were not designed this way?
The Insight and Prius are slightly different.
In the Prius, the gas and electric motor run in parallel - almost next to each other. This allows the system to trade-off control, where at low speeds or full charge, the electric runs it all. At higher speeds, electric can't compete, so the gas takes over. At still higher speeds or under hard accell., they both are going.
In the Insight (and Civic), the two motors are in series. The electric sits between the gas and the transmission. The gas is the main source of power, while the electric acts as a "turbo" of sorts - providing assist when needed. The gas is always running, except for the way-cool "auto-stop", when the car turns off at stop lights. The electric motor that runs the car is also the starter, so starting is smooth and seamless.
A car which runs entirely on the electric and relies on the gas to run the batteries is possible, but requires fairly powerful motors at each wheel, and electric power has full torque at zero RPM. This means that the faster the car is going, the less additional (re: passing) power it can provide. An electric motor has a staggering 0-30 moment! This setup is actually used in industrial mining trucks, like those made by Komatsu, as well as most train engines.
As an Insight owner, I try to keep up with this stuff. Turns out Toyota has retracted that promise, saying that there was a "misinterpretation" on the Japanese end.
Can't find the link, but here's the WSJ article re: same:
Toyota Still Plans to Sell 300,000 Hybrid Vehicles a Year By 2005 Friday October 25, 5:19 pm ET By Norihiko Shirouzu, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
DETROIT -- Toyota Motor Corp. reaffirmed it aims to sell a total of 300, 000 super-efficient, electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles a year by 2005.
Toyota's reaffirmation came in response to a news report earlier this week that said the auto maker plans to use hybrid engines in all vehicles by 2012 to increase fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions. The report also said Toyota won't sell 300,000 hybrids annually until 2007.
Kevin Webber, a Toyota spokesman in Ann Arbor, Mich., said the report was " inaccurate," which he said stemmed from a "misinterpretation" of comments in Japanese made by a Toyota executive.
Mr. Webber said it is "technically infeasible" to use hybrid systems in all vehicles Toyota sells around the world in 10 years. He said Toyota continues to aim to sell 300,000 hybrids a year by about 2005.
Last month, Toyota's president Fujio Cho said the No. 1 Japanese auto maker will expand its lineup of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles into larger vehicles, such as midsized sport-utility vehicles and minivans, as it tries to sell a total of 300,000 hybrids a year by 2005.
Cho said Toyota "will expand hybrid systems into an array of models, including larger vehicles."
Already, Toyota recently has begun selling in Japan a hybrid minivan called the Estima. In the U.S., Toyota currently sells only one hybrid, the small Prius car, while in Japan its lineup includes the Prius and a Crown luxury car equipped with a so-called "mild" hybrid system, in addition to the Estima.
Many people who have just enough money (but not rich) aren't buying new cars because the old one is causing too much trouble, but figuratively, to change the dashboard every few years; they're just bored with the old one.
Right now, on this planet, millions of non-sentient beings are jabbering on their digital cell-phones (using exactly those broadcast techniques) and don't hear a thing.
When I first read this, I thought they were talking about dumping a brain down to MP3 or OGG.
Images of artifacts and/. discussions of the best codec or rate came to mind. Suddenly, people will be discussing whether or not the average person can identify a person as real or a copy - maybe a Heechee Turing Test or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Gregory Benford had a short story called "The Touch" that was in Omni in 1982 (81?) that was kinda close to this.
IIRC, the story consisted of this guy playing a "Sim" game where he directed a spy (assassin?) character in the game. The spy would "touch" someone to kill them. The story ends when the gamer inadvertently directs his "sim" into his "real-life" room and "touches" himself from behind.
<sniff>I loved Omni!</sniff>
I haven't used it recently, but I remember AutoCAD 12 and 13 allowed a user to use the menu or the command-line alternately. Any action could be done in either location, and the bonus was that menu, mouse activities generated events in the command-line pane.
Like, perhaps, the infamous exploding/leaking capacitors of two weeks ago?
Here?
Cool program, though.
When I was in mainframes in the early 80's, the mainframe repair guy had a good one.
He was on the phone talking to the refrigerator repair guy and told him:
Tech: "My refrigerator is down."
Repair Guy: (longish pause) "'Down?' where?"
Today, that probably wouldn't have been a big deal.
OTOH, that was also a job that had so conditioned me that I started to type a "9" to get an outside line on my home phone.
(good grief: I'm 34 and talking about the "good old days")
Agreed - most likely, it's just some guy with a 28K modem who's got a dedicated phone line. Sometimes, his mom picks up the wrong line and the whole site goes down.
Yeah, I know, you shouldn't be using JET anymore, but sometimes it's the hand (or product) you're dealt.
What a pain...
They were pretty good, but small, and were soon swallowed by Peapod. Just for a change, we then gave Webvan a spin. Very impressive - the guy who showed up even put on the paper booties so he wouldn't get the floor dirty. After about five deliveries, they stopped wearing the booties, narrowing their delivery windows, and eventually went belly-up.
We're now with Peapod. Their delivery charges and prices are decent, and they wear the booties off and on.
One things that's been supreme about these operations has usually been the quality of food. Produce is usually better than I can get at the local Dominick's (owned by Safeway) or Jewel (owned by Albertson's). We're vegetarians, but friends say the meat is excellent, too. It seems like they get first pick of the produce and meat before the chains do, or something, because it's always been better than I could have picked out myself.
Seriously, if you like good fresh food, and are a little lazy for any reason, the track record for these operations in the food quality department has been stellar.
Don't have the exact case handy, but a farmer planting non-GMO corn next to a "Roundup" GMO corn crop of his neighbor noticed that one patch near the border had become resistant to his herbicide. The neighbor's corn had bred with his, making his corn resistant.
He called up Monsanto, producer of Roundup, and told them about it. They came out, noticed the same thing, then pressed charges for theft of product. The farmer called them! Eventually, he counter-sued for crop-contamination, trespass, and a whole bunch of other things and Monsanto went away.
Standard Google search on Monsanto, GMO, Roundup, etc. brings up all sorts of interesting stuff.
My brother has VNC going on the home network just to keep an eye on his two kids, and one of them's gotten the family AOL account shut down for inappropriate behaviour in a chat room (don't ask).
Leave the computer out in the open, like the TV, and let the oversight be implicit. Your kids may watch something out of line when they're out or you are, but something tells me that neither you nor they are going to watch XXX when you're both in the same house.
Like it is at work. Your behavior might change if a URL log is kept, but it would really change if your back is to your boss who can always see your screen.
can bring it down! Imagine, if you will, that there's a Quickie Mart in the middle of this stretch. Every time the microwave oven heats a "Pocket", the link is down.
A wrinkle is also Illinois' "Fair Use" tax, which says if you buy something out of state to "escape" the tax, but use it in state, you owe Illinois the tax you should have paid, due with annual income taxes.
Almost nobody pays it, but if you're a business, blowing it off for office purchases can burn you if you get an audit.
Many states already have such a system, with poor enforcement. Travelling internationally, you can usually get a refund for the VAT in most countries when you leave the country.
Interesting product! They even sell the worms. There was a write-up in Forbes last year on them.
The catch with DOCsOpen is that it uses an older model for intercepting file operations from within Apps (ODMA integration). Also, DOCsOpen requires that the client do all of the SQL manipulations to find its files on the server (two-tier arch.)
The newer release of DOCs (called PowerDOCs, and a newer product just came out) move the queries to a middle tier server, and have slowly started moving away from ODMA int. and towards COM models. iManage, for example, has worked this way for years and has had fewer complaints.
Actually, quite a bit of headway has been made in replacing the folder model with a database model. Products such as DOCsOpen (company called Hummingbird) and iManage, as well as Tahoe (MS) and the BeOS have made great pushes in either popping down the files anywhere, or at least giving the end user a layer of abstraction that uses a DB to access the data/files, rather than the "folder within a folder" thing.
Also, thinkers like Alan Kay have been pushing for the death of the "Desktop" metaphor for well over a decade. It had its purpose in the start, but now it's just tired and irrelevant.
I've had the car a year and love it. I used to have a CRX (1986), and the "slot car" feel is almost exactly the same.
I have the CVT. The trans is cool in itself, but several cars, most recently a Saturn and an Audi, are selling with them. When you floor it, the tach climbs, then holds steady, but the car keeps accellerating. Very weird feel, but you get used to it.
The 5spd, OTOH is capable of much higher MPG ratings and the gas/electric combo is much more at the control of the driver - if you shift too early and floor it, you're using all electric and little gas. The 5spd also can switch into "lean burn" where at low draw, it burns at less than the standard 14:1 stoich. ratio. Generally, a 5spd worst mileage is better than a CVTs best (yeah, there are exceptions, but "all things being equal"). For example, 60 MPG is pretty good for the CVT (50 might be the low end), while the 5spd drivers expect 70 or so.
The 5spd is also more prone to "battery recalibrations" where the computer loses track of how much charge is left in the 144v battery pack. Suddenly, you have the next couple of miles without "assist" and you're in "Geo Metro" mode. The 5spds may be more prone to this because of the ability of the driver to draw off of it much more than a CVT.
What's this all mean? Well, as others have said, this isn't a money decision, since payback is a while. The same might be said for solar, wind power, etc. However, since the Insights were "early" tech, early adopters paid more than someone in the resale channel, and the resale value of most of the hybrids has been iffy. By getting one used, you let someone else take that risk. Additionally, because there were so few made by Honda, dealers who get them in trade-ins don't know what to price them at.
Either car would be a "geek" dream, and you have decide between the staggering mileage of the 5spd against the extra tech and "point and shoot" of the CVT. Oh, and the CVT is SULEV certified while the 5spd (lean burn and all) is only ULEV.
"What about the back seat?" Well, I've got a family, and whenever the kids go somewhere, we take the wagon. Whenever someone's going without the kids, it's the Honda. People never ask "what about the back seat?" about Corvette's, etc., and the fact is most families only need ONE car that can seat the Brady Bunch, not both of them.
Gotta go. email at Insightfill at yahoo dot com if you want, or just lurk the boards there.
I'm the parent post on the WSJ article, too.
Our other car is a 2001 Passat, and it comes with inst. MPG on the dash. The net effect, I've found isn't that big of a deal. People who floor it at every light will continue to do so, and the inst. MPG readout won't change their patterns.
Little things, like proper tire inflation can make a big diff. without changing driver behavior. A person who buys a Ford Expedition doesn't buy it for the MPG, and the extra display would only be depressing. Yes, it could change their driving patterns, but not unless they want it to. If such were the case, smaller cars would sell better.
For drivers to really change their patterns, gasoline has to cost more and stay there for a while. Last time it spiked over $2/gal here, everyone whined to DC about it and started looking for scapegoats. Nobody looked in the mirror.
But, yes, it's a good idea, and everyone at the Yahoo Insight board wonder why more cars don't come with one.
Here's one that might have more impact - miles to empty. I've seen them in the past, and it's pretty impressive.
The Insight and Prius are slightly different.
In the Prius, the gas and electric motor run in parallel - almost next to each other. This allows the system to trade-off control, where at low speeds or full charge, the electric runs it all. At higher speeds, electric can't compete, so the gas takes over. At still higher speeds or under hard accell., they both are going.
In the Insight (and Civic), the two motors are in series. The electric sits between the gas and the transmission. The gas is the main source of power, while the electric acts as a "turbo" of sorts - providing assist when needed. The gas is always running, except for the way-cool "auto-stop", when the car turns off at stop lights. The electric motor that runs the car is also the starter, so starting is smooth and seamless.
A car which runs entirely on the electric and relies on the gas to run the batteries is possible, but requires fairly powerful motors at each wheel, and electric power has full torque at zero RPM. This means that the faster the car is going, the less additional (re: passing) power it can provide. An electric motor has a staggering 0-30 moment! This setup is actually used in industrial mining trucks, like those made by Komatsu, as well as most train engines.
As an Insight owner, I try to keep up with this stuff. Turns out Toyota has retracted that promise, saying that there was a "misinterpretation" on the Japanese end.
Can't find the link, but here's the WSJ article re: same:
Toyota Still Plans to Sell 300,000 Hybrid Vehicles a Year By 2005
Friday October 25, 5:19 pm ET
By Norihiko Shirouzu, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
DETROIT -- Toyota Motor Corp. reaffirmed it aims to sell a total of 300, 000 super-efficient, electric-gasoline hybrid vehicles a year by 2005.
Toyota's reaffirmation came in response to a news report earlier this week that said the auto maker plans to use hybrid engines in all vehicles by 2012 to increase fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions. The report also said Toyota won't sell 300,000 hybrids annually until 2007.
Kevin Webber, a Toyota spokesman in Ann Arbor, Mich., said the report was " inaccurate," which he said stemmed from a "misinterpretation" of comments in Japanese made by a Toyota executive.
Mr. Webber said it is "technically infeasible" to use hybrid systems in all vehicles Toyota sells around the world in 10 years. He said Toyota continues to aim to sell 300,000 hybrids a year by about 2005.
Last month, Toyota's president Fujio Cho said the No. 1 Japanese auto maker will expand its lineup of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles into larger vehicles, such as midsized sport-utility vehicles and minivans, as it tries to sell a total of 300,000 hybrids a year by 2005.
Cho said Toyota "will expand hybrid systems into an array of models, including larger vehicles."
Already, Toyota recently has begun selling in Japan a hybrid minivan called the Estima. In the U.S., Toyota currently sells only one hybrid, the small Prius car, while in Japan its lineup includes the Prius and a Crown luxury car equipped with a so-called "mild" hybrid system, in addition to the Estima.
-Norihiko Shirouzu, The Wall Street Journal
Sybill, anyone?
Many people who have just enough money (but not rich) aren't buying new cars because the old one is causing too much trouble, but figuratively, to change the dashboard every few years; they're just bored with the old one.
I think it's been determined in court that selling Windows was the crime of the century.
Europa, maybe?
Still looking for intelligent life on Earth.
Images of artifacts and /. discussions of the best codec or rate came to mind. Suddenly, people will be discussing whether or not the average person can identify a person as real or a copy - maybe a Heechee Turing Test or something.