Yes, I'm getting a tad tired of the "Fuel cells in laptops next week" articles. Looking through the archives I see we were having the same discussion in June of 2004. I believe Toshiba was demoing a fuel cell laptop around that time. It has very much become a "I'll believe it when I see them on the shelf" situation.
To: Commander in chief
From: Joint Chiefs/NASA liason
RE: Preparations for Mars invasion
With two robotic forward observers on the ground and 3 stratigic communications/spy satillites in the air, I feel we have established an excellent pre-invasion infrastructure.
Intelligence gathered so far indicates the local Mars authorities have intercepted and successfully translated some of our communications (they probably gained this ability through their analysis of the equiptment they previously captured). Given that they can understand our communications and are aware of our presence and activities, I suggest we start a propeganga campaign to further prepare them for our arrival. I recommend using our deep space communications relay equiptment to send the message: "Resistance is futile, you will be invaded and your resources added to ours."
For me, not only has the quality of movies been found lacking, but my standards have been raised a bit on the types of movies I will see in the theatre. In order to justify the cost, it has to be a movie I think I will REALLY like that's subject matter is something I think will really matter to me. "V for Vendetta" will probably be the first movie I see in the theatre since "Serenity" because of it's subject matter.
The nail in the coffin though (as it were), is the Netflix and Blockbuster DVDs by mail services. I never have to get off my excellent *ss other then to go to the mailbox. And with Blockbuster at least, I can "save" movies that are just coming to theaters so I can watch them later when they come out on DVD. So, when I see a preview for something I might like...I just jump on blockbuster.com and save it. Sure I don't get to see it till a couple months later when it hits DVD...but I don't care as very rarely does a movie come along thats actually worth seeing in the theatre anymore. Unlike the live action epics of yesteryear (eg Ben Hur), CGI probably looks BETTER on my home TV set then the theatre screen.
I live in Oregon. I have lived here all my life. I have never submitted a slashdot story but I can see how others who live here might want to brag. I must say it is indeed amazing...in more ways then one.
Amazing how beautiful it is and how we have so much diversity at our fingertips.
Amazing how much technology, open source software, and community there is.
Amazing how much charity Oregonians are able to come up with for various causes every year.
Amazing how great comic books and shows like the simpsons originated here.
I could go on and on. Does that make me concieted or just proud of where I hail from? I dunno, you figure it out.
Is this offtopic? Probably...oh well, gotta burn some karma sometimes.
Yes, Netware had lost some of it's hold earlier in the '90s with the newer tecnologies and the lack of seemless integration with the windows desktops everybody was starting to run. But Netware really died Dec 31st, 1999. There was a (minor) Y2K bug in the version everybody was running (4.x I think was the culprit if memory serves). The only "solution" was to upgrade to 5.x. Of course Novell was greedy and told companies they had to pay (alot) for that upgrade and THAT was when everyone went scrambing to Microsoft and others. I actually did Novell networking support up till that date. By that date; every company, school, and even government client I worked with had either switched or was in the process of switching. I haven't logged even 1 hour of Novell support since 2000.
Just recently I worked with a new client (on a database project) who are still running it. They are having problems with the newer versions and have spent a fortune on it, but are locked into some custom software that will cost them a another fortune to re-build once they are finally forced to switch. The good news (for me) is that my company is now positioned to get at least some of the contracts for doing that work when the time comes *GRIN*
I find it interesting that Oracle followed a similar path of charging way too much for licensing and upgrades and are in the process of experiencing a similar fate.
To: Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME
Re: Genetically modified mice
Dear Sir,
I understand that you are in the business of breeding custom-designed mice. My company's activities sometimes require the use of animals with certain qualities that are getting hard to find these days. I am contacting you as our supplies of sharks and sea bass seem to have "dried up". Could you by chance produce a large quantity of ill tempered mice? We would also be interested in having laser beams attached to their little heads if you have the facilities for that.
Thank you in advance,
Number Two
Svartalf, you are indeed insightful today. Personally I use Asterisk meetme conferences for all my conferencing needs. Only limited to my server horsepower and available bandwidth. Can have almost an unlimited number of people call into it through SIP, IAX2 or an IAX2 trunked PTSN #.
I tried skype a couple times (mostly because some girl talked me into it), but she wasn't worth it. The lack on interoperability totally killed it. The last thing I need is yet another app running on my main console all the time. Asterisk runs happilly on my server in the corner and rings my normal home phones all over the house if someone is trying to reach me. I might even pay for a skype IAX2 or SIP access account. But being a closed system they are too much trouble to deal with.
Of course we could generate AJAX code on the server side with the visual basic controls. But my point all along is that there is no reason for us to do anything like that. There are actually reasons not to. For instance, IE6 and earlier actually uses a client activex control to execute XMLhttprequest code. Why would we want to change to something that requires all our IE users to use an activex hack to work? When IE7 is mainstream and things like the newer versions of Opera are firmly embedded in the users computers so people are natively supporting xmlhttprequest calls, then we can revisit the idea. In my business we don't have the option of dictating to our customers that they have to use a specific browser or browser version. Either it works or they go away. Sure there are ways of getting the older browsers to handle it in most cases, but as far as I'm concerned their all hack solutions and not something I'm willing to hang the future of my company on.
The logic is simple. If it just has to work no matter what, use the tried, tested and universally supported solution. Being progressive has it's place...especially in the cyber world. But as far as I'm concerned there are far too many elitist web devs out there that think the world has to conform to what they say because they say so.
Using an IE proprietary extension is as good as just making simple platform-independant xmlhttprequest calls?
The controls do all the work server side sherlock. We did extensive testing to make sure it works properly on a variety of browsers including Firefox, Netscape, IE and foreign language browsers. Ironically in this case, our application works seemlessly with alot of browsers that don't even support xmlhttprequest calls or support them through hacks (IE 6 and below activex objects???).
The latest project on my plate is a console app even. So refreshing to deal with an application that actually responds in a reasonable amount of time to button clicks. Console apps aside though...
The main web app I am working on these days still happilly uses VB6 controls. We (the engineering crew) have discussed switching to.net or some other new fangled thing more times then I can remember but we always come to the same conclusions. It works and works well and has no limitations another technology could overcome any easier, switching to something else would not benefit us any beyond being able to brag that I'm coding in [insert fad here]. Downsides include spending ALOT of time re-engineering a pretty complex system and almost certainly introducing a bunch of bugs that would almost certainly cause the product to loose customers.
In short, we aren't AJAX revolutionaries because we would realize no benefit from it. Google used it in one app and that spurred a frenzy because it was cool and it was Google. But that was an implimentation of somthing special that couldn't really be done well any other way. To say we need to automatically apply that to all the old functions just because Google uses it (for something mostly unrelated to what we are doing) is dumb. When we have a problem that analysis shows AJAX is the best solution for, only then will we dive into it.
Do I think AJAX will go away? No! It certainly has it's uses. Do I think AJAX has been over-hyped and a bunch of managers will make their engineering teams use it for no good reason because of the hype? That is a resounding yes. Oh well, life goes on.
I thought these asteroid things had been roaming the glaxaly for thousands of years? Even if they meant to say "newly discovered", that still isn't quite right. The thing has been being tracked for over a year now.
Anyway, it says the impact wouldn't happen till 2102. I plan to be quite dead by that date from normal causes so it's not my problem:P
I do agree that taking responsibility for one's own actions should be revived in American society. But this issue goes beyond that a tad. The assertion is that immersively violent video games can "train", "hypnotize" and/or "endoctrinate" people into violent behavior.
From my own experiences and observations, that assertion is completely true on some levels. What I have observed however, is that the type of violence played in the game directly relates to how the subject reacts.
"Moral" violence (IE, good guys fighting the bad guys) still trains the subject to be capable of violent behavior, but with a moral basis and restraint. They are only likely to act out that behavior when faced with a bad situation. On the other hand, games laced with immorral or "grey" violence have a different effect. The subject has been trained to use violence to solve any problem and/or be violent as a lifestyle. This is the line that gets crossed where people become significantly more likely to engage in random violence and general criminal activity.
With all that said however, I do NOT support any government bodies attempts to regulate it. They have already shown that they do not understand the issue and even if they did I would not trust them to write good laws around it. There are only two good solutions IMHO:
1. The video game industry grows some morals and regulates themselves. There are some good games makers out there and some that really don't care and are no better then drug dealers. But if the industry created their own regulatory body, maybe they could set some reasonable standards.
2. Society in general grows some morals and stops buying the games with excessive immoral violence. And parents actually take some responsibility for their offspring and keep and eye on what they are getting into. Given recent trends this solution's chances of actually happening seem somewhere between unlikely and "snowballs chance in hell", but it's worth mentioning as it's the best.
The odds of this being a problem for 'space entrepreneurs' is probably comparable to me winning powerball within the same timeframe. Space is big. Really big.
Really? Hmmm, I like those odds. I think I should like to watch this on TV and win the lottery.
***Me scurries out to buy powerball tickets and a bigger TV***
I am intrigued. I get lambasted for having tried to text while driving as if I am a lone idiot doing it (I do avoid it as a rule)...and yet I see other people on their cell phones, PDAs, and blackberrys while driving almost every day as I drive back and forth to work. Probably the funniest/saddest example to me was a guy on a bicycle who almost got run over because he was weaving into traffic while trying to punch something into his cell phone.
Who needs to fool forensic analysis? As is proved by the moon landing consiracy theorists, all you need to do is spread a rumor that the footage is fake/real and include some lies about how this or that doesn't (or does) make sense. The public is so dumb that they will submit to your power of suggestion regardless of if the assertions really do make sense.
I for one look forward to mining the moon for all it's available natural resources. I'm sure there has to be some useful minerals in it's composition and if there is ice on it, that will be helpful to keep my drink cold.
Well, if all we need to do is FAKE it... Who needs X prizes? Just render the whole thing with CGI. I'm sure some geek could pull that off in his basement.
Just friggin get on with it! The time has passed to sit around talking about it. It's been what? 30 years since we last landed on the moon? We need action!
While it certainly has it's uses. It does seem over-used.
Pros for me:
-Have my computer send me alerts.
-Send a quick e-mail to someone from the road.
-Send a short message to someone discreetly in a location where talking on the phone would be rude/inappropriate.
-Get a message through to someone when the reception is there but not good enough to have a conversation.
Cons for me:
-Almost have driven off the road on various occasions while trying to punch in a message or read a message. Way more dangerous then just talking.
-Time consuming to communicate the simplist of concepts.
-Sore thumbs
-U.S. carrier pricing on text messages makes it not make much sense economically.
-Additional way of being in-personal in your communication with other human beings.
-Short messages can be easilly mis-interpreted. Have gotten several people mad at me for no reason just because they took a brief text message the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
I like anyone to show me a 200gb SCSI drive for any price. The only SCSI drives I have seen recently jumped right from 146GB to 300GB flavors.
Yes, I'm getting a tad tired of the "Fuel cells in laptops next week" articles. Looking through the archives I see we were having the same discussion in June of 2004. I believe Toshiba was demoing a fuel cell laptop around that time. It has very much become a "I'll believe it when I see them on the shelf" situation.
Classified: Top Top (I mean really TOP) Secret.
To: Commander in chief
From: Joint Chiefs/NASA liason
RE: Preparations for Mars invasion
With two robotic forward observers on the ground and 3 stratigic communications/spy satillites in the air, I feel we have established an excellent pre-invasion infrastructure.
Intelligence gathered so far indicates the local Mars authorities have intercepted and successfully translated some of our communications (they probably gained this ability through their analysis of the equiptment they previously captured). Given that they can understand our communications and are aware of our presence and activities, I suggest we start a propeganga campaign to further prepare them for our arrival. I recommend using our deep space communications relay equiptment to send the message: "Resistance is futile, you will be invaded and your resources added to ours."
End communication.
For me, not only has the quality of movies been found lacking, but my standards have been raised a bit on the types of movies I will see in the theatre. In order to justify the cost, it has to be a movie I think I will REALLY like that's subject matter is something I think will really matter to me. "V for Vendetta" will probably be the first movie I see in the theatre since "Serenity" because of it's subject matter.
The nail in the coffin though (as it were), is the Netflix and Blockbuster DVDs by mail services. I never have to get off my excellent *ss other then to go to the mailbox. And with Blockbuster at least, I can "save" movies that are just coming to theaters so I can watch them later when they come out on DVD. So, when I see a preview for something I might like...I just jump on blockbuster.com and save it. Sure I don't get to see it till a couple months later when it hits DVD...but I don't care as very rarely does a movie come along thats actually worth seeing in the theatre anymore. Unlike the live action epics of yesteryear (eg Ben Hur), CGI probably looks BETTER on my home TV set then the theatre screen.
OK, so it was 3 to 4, not 5 to 6. Give me a break, it was 6 years ago!
I live in Oregon. I have lived here all my life. I have never submitted a slashdot story but I can see how others who live here might want to brag. I must say it is indeed amazing...in more ways then one.
Amazing how beautiful it is and how we have so much diversity at our fingertips.
Amazing how much technology, open source software, and community there is.
Amazing how much charity Oregonians are able to come up with for various causes every year.
Amazing how great comic books and shows like the simpsons originated here.
I could go on and on. Does that make me concieted or just proud of where I hail from? I dunno, you figure it out.
Is this offtopic? Probably...oh well, gotta burn some karma sometimes.
Yes, Netware had lost some of it's hold earlier in the '90s with the newer tecnologies and the lack of seemless integration with the windows desktops everybody was starting to run. But Netware really died Dec 31st, 1999. There was a (minor) Y2K bug in the version everybody was running (4.x I think was the culprit if memory serves). The only "solution" was to upgrade to 5.x. Of course Novell was greedy and told companies they had to pay (alot) for that upgrade and THAT was when everyone went scrambing to Microsoft and others. I actually did Novell networking support up till that date. By that date; every company, school, and even government client I worked with had either switched or was in the process of switching. I haven't logged even 1 hour of Novell support since 2000.
Just recently I worked with a new client (on a database project) who are still running it. They are having problems with the newer versions and have spent a fortune on it, but are locked into some custom software that will cost them a another fortune to re-build once they are finally forced to switch. The good news (for me) is that my company is now positioned to get at least some of the contracts for doing that work when the time comes *GRIN*
I find it interesting that Oracle followed a similar path of charging way too much for licensing and upgrades and are in the process of experiencing a similar fate.
To: Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME Re: Genetically modified mice Dear Sir, I understand that you are in the business of breeding custom-designed mice. My company's activities sometimes require the use of animals with certain qualities that are getting hard to find these days. I am contacting you as our supplies of sharks and sea bass seem to have "dried up". Could you by chance produce a large quantity of ill tempered mice? We would also be interested in having laser beams attached to their little heads if you have the facilities for that. Thank you in advance, Number Two
Svartalf, you are indeed insightful today. Personally I use Asterisk meetme conferences for all my conferencing needs. Only limited to my server horsepower and available bandwidth. Can have almost an unlimited number of people call into it through SIP, IAX2 or an IAX2 trunked PTSN #.
I tried skype a couple times (mostly because some girl talked me into it), but she wasn't worth it. The lack on interoperability totally killed it. The last thing I need is yet another app running on my main console all the time. Asterisk runs happilly on my server in the corner and rings my normal home phones all over the house if someone is trying to reach me. I might even pay for a skype IAX2 or SIP access account. But being a closed system they are too much trouble to deal with.
Of course we could generate AJAX code on the server side with the visual basic controls. But my point all along is that there is no reason for us to do anything like that. There are actually reasons not to. For instance, IE6 and earlier actually uses a client activex control to execute XMLhttprequest code. Why would we want to change to something that requires all our IE users to use an activex hack to work? When IE7 is mainstream and things like the newer versions of Opera are firmly embedded in the users computers so people are natively supporting xmlhttprequest calls, then we can revisit the idea. In my business we don't have the option of dictating to our customers that they have to use a specific browser or browser version. Either it works or they go away. Sure there are ways of getting the older browsers to handle it in most cases, but as far as I'm concerned their all hack solutions and not something I'm willing to hang the future of my company on.
The logic is simple. If it just has to work no matter what, use the tried, tested and universally supported solution. Being progressive has it's place...especially in the cyber world. But as far as I'm concerned there are far too many elitist web devs out there that think the world has to conform to what they say because they say so.
You kicked my robotic mule! Now it need operation!
I didn't kick your robotic mule or whatever. I don't even know you.
Are you going to pay for the operation?
No!
I'm going to kill you.
What?
Just Kidding!
[If you get this joke, you REALLY need to get out more.]
Using an IE proprietary extension is as good as just making simple platform-independant xmlhttprequest calls?
The controls do all the work server side sherlock. We did extensive testing to make sure it works properly on a variety of browsers including Firefox, Netscape, IE and foreign language browsers. Ironically in this case, our application works seemlessly with alot of browsers that don't even support xmlhttprequest calls or support them through hacks (IE 6 and below activex objects???).
The latest project on my plate is a console app even. So refreshing to deal with an application that actually responds in a reasonable amount of time to button clicks. Console apps aside though...
.net or some other new fangled thing more times then I can remember but we always come to the same conclusions. It works and works well and has no limitations another technology could overcome any easier, switching to something else would not benefit us any beyond being able to brag that I'm coding in [insert fad here]. Downsides include spending ALOT of time re-engineering a pretty complex system and almost certainly introducing a bunch of bugs that would almost certainly cause the product to loose customers.
The main web app I am working on these days still happilly uses VB6 controls. We (the engineering crew) have discussed switching to
In short, we aren't AJAX revolutionaries because we would realize no benefit from it. Google used it in one app and that spurred a frenzy because it was cool and it was Google. But that was an implimentation of somthing special that couldn't really be done well any other way. To say we need to automatically apply that to all the old functions just because Google uses it (for something mostly unrelated to what we are doing) is dumb. When we have a problem that analysis shows AJAX is the best solution for, only then will we dive into it.
Do I think AJAX will go away? No! It certainly has it's uses. Do I think AJAX has been over-hyped and a bunch of managers will make their engineering teams use it for no good reason because of the hype? That is a resounding yes. Oh well, life goes on.
I thought these asteroid things had been roaming the glaxaly for thousands of years? Even if they meant to say "newly discovered", that still isn't quite right. The thing has been being tracked for over a year now.
Anyway, it says the impact wouldn't happen till 2102. I plan to be quite dead by that date from normal causes so it's not my problem:P
I do agree that taking responsibility for one's own actions should be revived in American society. But this issue goes beyond that a tad. The assertion is that immersively violent video games can "train", "hypnotize" and/or "endoctrinate" people into violent behavior.
From my own experiences and observations, that assertion is completely true on some levels. What I have observed however, is that the type of violence played in the game directly relates to how the subject reacts.
"Moral" violence (IE, good guys fighting the bad guys) still trains the subject to be capable of violent behavior, but with a moral basis and restraint. They are only likely to act out that behavior when faced with a bad situation. On the other hand, games laced with immorral or "grey" violence have a different effect. The subject has been trained to use violence to solve any problem and/or be violent as a lifestyle. This is the line that gets crossed where people become significantly more likely to engage in random violence and general criminal activity.
With all that said however, I do NOT support any government bodies attempts to regulate it. They have already shown that they do not understand the issue and even if they did I would not trust them to write good laws around it. There are only two good solutions IMHO:
1. The video game industry grows some morals and regulates themselves. There are some good games makers out there and some that really don't care and are no better then drug dealers. But if the industry created their own regulatory body, maybe they could set some reasonable standards.
2. Society in general grows some morals and stops buying the games with excessive immoral violence. And parents actually take some responsibility for their offspring and keep and eye on what they are getting into. Given recent trends this solution's chances of actually happening seem somewhere between unlikely and "snowballs chance in hell", but it's worth mentioning as it's the best.
I can't seem to find the place on the SCO website where I enter my E-Gold payment to "invest" in their program... It IS is HYIP...right?
The odds of this being a problem for 'space entrepreneurs' is probably comparable to me winning powerball within the same timeframe. Space is big. Really big.
Really? Hmmm, I like those odds. I think I should like to watch this on TV and win the lottery.
***Me scurries out to buy powerball tickets and a bigger TV***
I can't say things are much better here in the US. But any way you look at it it's true. Mod parent insightful.
I am intrigued. I get lambasted for having tried to text while driving as if I am a lone idiot doing it (I do avoid it as a rule) ...and yet I see other people on their cell phones, PDAs, and blackberrys while driving almost every day as I drive back and forth to work. Probably the funniest/saddest example to me was a guy on a bicycle who almost got run over because he was weaving into traffic while trying to punch something into his cell phone.
Who needs to fool forensic analysis? As is proved by the moon landing consiracy theorists, all you need to do is spread a rumor that the footage is fake/real and include some lies about how this or that doesn't (or does) make sense. The public is so dumb that they will submit to your power of suggestion regardless of if the assertions really do make sense.
I for one look forward to mining the moon for all it's available natural resources. I'm sure there has to be some useful minerals in it's composition and if there is ice on it, that will be helpful to keep my drink cold.
Well, if all we need to do is FAKE it... Who needs X prizes? Just render the whole thing with CGI. I'm sure some geek could pull that off in his basement.
Just friggin get on with it! The time has passed to sit around talking about it. It's been what? 30 years since we last landed on the moon? We need action!
Sorry, I'm bordering on rant status here...
While it certainly has it's uses. It does seem over-used.
Pros for me:
-Have my computer send me alerts.
-Send a quick e-mail to someone from the road.
-Send a short message to someone discreetly in a location where talking on the phone would be rude/inappropriate.
-Get a message through to someone when the reception is there but not good enough to have a conversation.
Cons for me:
-Almost have driven off the road on various occasions while trying to punch in a message or read a message. Way more dangerous then just talking.
-Time consuming to communicate the simplist of concepts.
-Sore thumbs
-U.S. carrier pricing on text messages makes it not make much sense economically.
-Additional way of being in-personal in your communication with other human beings.
-Short messages can be easilly mis-interpreted. Have gotten several people mad at me for no reason just because they took a brief text message the wrong way.
Well, they float so they must weigh the same as a duck. Burn them! Burn them!