I heard on the radio this morning about how the retailers are already selling out of 360s. Of course all that is by design as we saw previously: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/03/ 0026241&tid=211. Never mind that it's all social engineering...go buy yours now before they are all gone!!!
I have to use IE for accessing my work e-mail remotely too. However, I find it VERY easy to not use IE for anything else. I simply set my default browser to Firefox and the nifty tabbed browsing feature makes going back to using IE for random stuff painful and unwelcome.
With everyone falling all over themselves to make everything we interact with use RFIDs somehow I begin to wonder... If I need one to start my car, one to pay for gas, one to identify me to the door of my house, one for security at work, one for security on the computer at work, one to "authenticate" me to my entertainment devices (how soon do you suppose the *IAA will be trying to use this for some sort of DRM???). How soon will it be before I need some sort of RFID management system built into my clothing to hold all the RFIDs??? They are small, so it doesn't have to be a large piece of clothing. Just something with lots of little pockets or something to hold all the RFIDs. Since you have to have them with you always and don't want them stolen or your life would be ruined, I suggest RFID management underwear.
Alternatively, maybe the answer is a standardized RFID tag for each individual that all the respective devices are taught to recognize when you purchase them? It could be the same tag that is issued to you in your passport. (I know some people would argue that that would open up a huge security hole to your identity, but since when have the RFID sploogers had any reguard for security issues in the technology???)
With all that said, I for one do NOT welcome our new RFID overlords. I prefer to remain interactive with my environment on a physical level thank you very much. I'll leave my geek card at the door...
yes, reminds me of the headlines that came out in the '80s of how some scientist in the mid-west had found fossil evidence of "the missing link". They had drawings of how he looked and everything. Very convincing. Of course it was all based on a tooth they guy found in the dirt that was later proven to be less then 100 years old and belonging to a pig. They can do some interesting things with reconstruction based on found evidence, but it no where near as exact a science as they would have you believe on CSI.
The free ORacle "lite" is meant only as a demo. It has very severe limitations on database size and what kind of hardware it can utilize. They did a very good job of making sure it would only be used as a demo or by people who would be better off with Access anyway. Once you get beyond the free version, prepare to turn over your right arm AND firstborn for licence fees and support contracts. And don't be decieved into thinking you can get away with not having a support contract; Oracle is a complicated system that mere mortals were not meant to maintain. (yes, I just implied you Oracle DBAs are god-like...try not to get too big a head over it)
Oh, and while we are speaking of market pressure on Oracle, lets not forget about IBM's DB2 database. Recent versions (while still annoying in their syntax) have become quite robust in their feature sets and able to handle most anything you would throw at Oracle. The advantage that companies see with DB2 is that you can get it in a package with matching IBM hardware. Simplifies purchasing and in theory should be ultra-stable. Don't get me wrong, a company I work with uses DB2 and not only do I dislike working with it but it just generally sucks for them to maintain. So I would probably never recommend it to anyone. Just saying that it's another competitor taking business away from Oracle.
No, they don't allow the sa account to have a blank password any longer. Actually, 2005 now requires the sa password to be "strong" (upper and lower case characters plus numbers or special characters).
Parent was modded funny but I think it would work. My grandpa used to keep his welding rod in an old refigerator in his shop. It kept the rod cool and dry and it could keep in there for many years without going bad. (he ran a farm equiptment repair business out of his shop in in semi-retired days)
Moisture wouldn't be a problem, would stay cool, the machines own cooling fans would keep the air circulating and minimize hot spots.
Plus you could keep some cans of beer in there too just because!
Haha, reminds me of my economics class in school. The teacher created a "virtual community" where each student played a different role. We were assigned professions such as doctor, grocer, builder, ect. I was one of the "blood sucking lawyers" responsible for creating contracts between other students for business deals and the sort or arbitrating disputes. Ironically, I was the only one to get an A as every other student in the class got busted for cheating or otherwise engaging in illegal activity to accumulate wealth. I made the most *legitamate* money of anyone in the class (by buying and selling real eatate on the side). We used monopoly money and one kid went so far as to go buy a monopoly game and take all the money out of it to sneak into his "account" at school. Obviously he got busted quick when the teacher noticed his bank account has magically grown overnight. In real life it would have been like reporting on your 1040 you work at the local gas station but have billions in income and then paying your taxes with counterfiet cash. Not exactly intelligent.
Thank you for your trollishness there sir... but you failed in the following things:
[X] You failed to note that the product already exists from some small companies. (see other posts in this thread)
AND
([X] You failed to actually pay attention to what I wrote
OR
[X] You failed to realize that I am not an an executive at Linksys (or other mainstream networking device company) with the power to make products happen.)
AND
[X] You COMPLETELY failed to grasp the concept of what I was saying.
As you noted, ANYBODY can come up with a half-baked implimentation of something. What we are looking for is a major company to come up with one so these things happen:
A. Availability in Volume
B. Availability in "normal" retail stores
C. Lower prices due to A and B
D. Widespread user acceptance
E. Corporate executive acceptance
F. Widespread support due to A through E.
When I first read the headline I got excited...but then it turned out to be a huge letdown. We VOIP users have been waiting for a good mainstream SIP based Wifi handset for a long time now and having one from Linksys would have been great. But this is nothing of the sort. Just yet another "dongle" for your PC for making PC to PC calls. You are still tethered to your PC (just through a wireless tether) meaning it has the cool factor but is not practical for most real-world users to replace their traditional cordless phone. Come up with a SIP standard device that uses my existing Wi-fi access point and can support multiple access point profiles and then you will have something.
You know some jokester is going to actually build a "Dr Evil" rocket shaped like a giant Johnson [space center?] and attempt to join the league. The burning questions in my mind are:
1. Will the league allow the ship with the "exciting new shape":P
2. What will the public have to say about it (snicker snicker)
Yes, only 10GB hard drive is rediculous. Just the windows OS takes up practically all that space these days. And then how are the users supposed to store all their digital photos and MP3s? Even grandma likes to take pictures of her grandkids with her shiney new digital camera she spent her last social security check on and e-mail them to the entire family. And the casual computer user chic HAS to have her massive MP3 collection. Considering that single platters hold over 100GB now I don't see any reason (cost or otherwise) to go with such a small drive.
I caught a preview showing on monday here in Portland, OR. The crowd there very much enjoyed the show and there was a standing ovation at the end. While I did cheer with the rest of them and did enjoy the movie overall, I have to only give it 4 out of 5 stars. I won't spoil it for anyone and go into detail, but I was dissapointed with a couple things that seemed to detract from the flow of the movie so that's what knocked off a star. But there were plenty of good quotable lines, a decent plot, and quite a bit revealed about the FireFly universe that we didn't previously know about. I hope it does extreemly well in theatres and the actors come back and do another movie (the cast already signed a contract to do another movie if this one does well).
They wouldn't have been able to pass the "patriot act" in the US if it was called a terrorism act. It had to be sold to the public and congress. Same result either way though: gross misuse of power by law enforcement.
All the law abiding citizens like myself have somehow become suspects and even criminalized for no good reason. We didn't do anything wrong...they just made up laws so they could accuse us and haul us in on a whim. At this rate, even the professional business people like me will have to take a clue from the inner city black people and people of new orlenes and start calling police "the man" and shooting at them. So sad.
Yes, I actually built one of these type of devices and put it on my car. The net result was actually a reduction in fuel economy due to big load on the alternator caused by the efficiency loss of breaking down the water. Granted my electrolisys unit was not a highly efficent design...but still I would find claims along this line of a net gain to be highly suspicious.
Interesting... My first thought though was that they were making fun of themselves a bit by choosing a name that sounded alot like Knuk-Stuck. Oh well, I guess I just need to learn how to speak native american languages now...
Don't forget the Russian shuttle. It's now destroyed as the building it was being stored in collapsed in a snow storm a few years ago. But on it's one maiden voyage it launched, orbited the earth and returned to a safe landing within a couple inches of it's mark on the runway in heavy crosswinds...all unmanned. That's impressive engineering. Now only if they could have engineered that hanger it was being stored in as well:P
I have a linux server that's been up 24/7 for months. The only times it's been down in years was for prolonged power outages. And it became non-responsive yesterday afternoon. My DSL was also out for a while yesterday afternoon. I thought I was just having a bad technology day...
I live in Oregon. All I have to say is: Just what we need...ANOTHER volcano! Like Mt Saint Helens doesn't give us enough excitement. Plus Mt Hood rumbles now and again and constaintly has small amounts of steam coming off it. Personally I would prefer if this state remained a natural-disaster-free zone.
One thing the article (and everyone posting here) seems to miss is that Wal-mart doesn't track their supply chain by RFIDs on the individual items. The RFIDs go on the pallets/case boxes/ect. The individual items on the shelves still have barcodes that are scanned at the register. Walmart tried RFIDs on individual items and abandoned the idea. The reasoning I heard was that while incredibly cheap, RFID tags are alot more expensive then simply printing a bar-code on a box that you are already printing. The net of efficency gain vs. cost of putting RFIDs on everything was a negative number so they went to the case/pallet level where it makes more sense.
Moral of this story? RFIDs are cool and have their place, but can never replace the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of barcodes for identification of huge lots of items.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a bit intrigued. Last year they called it "Blue Monday" in a reference to how hyperlinks typically show up in blue on a plain HTML page.
But then I guess "Blue Monday" is too confusing given all the other things that it could refer to... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monday
I heard on the radio this morning about how the retailers are already selling out of 360s. Of course all that is by design as we saw previously: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/03/ 0026241&tid=211. Never mind that it's all social engineering...go buy yours now before they are all gone!!!
I have to use IE for accessing my work e-mail remotely too. However, I find it VERY easy to not use IE for anything else. I simply set my default browser to Firefox and the nifty tabbed browsing feature makes going back to using IE for random stuff painful and unwelcome.
With everyone falling all over themselves to make everything we interact with use RFIDs somehow I begin to wonder... If I need one to start my car, one to pay for gas, one to identify me to the door of my house, one for security at work, one for security on the computer at work, one to "authenticate" me to my entertainment devices (how soon do you suppose the *IAA will be trying to use this for some sort of DRM???). How soon will it be before I need some sort of RFID management system built into my clothing to hold all the RFIDs??? They are small, so it doesn't have to be a large piece of clothing. Just something with lots of little pockets or something to hold all the RFIDs. Since you have to have them with you always and don't want them stolen or your life would be ruined, I suggest RFID management underwear.
Alternatively, maybe the answer is a standardized RFID tag for each individual that all the respective devices are taught to recognize when you purchase them? It could be the same tag that is issued to you in your passport. (I know some people would argue that that would open up a huge security hole to your identity, but since when have the RFID sploogers had any reguard for security issues in the technology???)
With all that said, I for one do NOT welcome our new RFID overlords. I prefer to remain interactive with my environment on a physical level thank you very much. I'll leave my geek card at the door...
yes, reminds me of the headlines that came out in the '80s of how some scientist in the mid-west had found fossil evidence of "the missing link". They had drawings of how he looked and everything. Very convincing. Of course it was all based on a tooth they guy found in the dirt that was later proven to be less then 100 years old and belonging to a pig. They can do some interesting things with reconstruction based on found evidence, but it no where near as exact a science as they would have you believe on CSI.
The free ORacle "lite" is meant only as a demo. It has very severe limitations on database size and what kind of hardware it can utilize. They did a very good job of making sure it would only be used as a demo or by people who would be better off with Access anyway. Once you get beyond the free version, prepare to turn over your right arm AND firstborn for licence fees and support contracts. And don't be decieved into thinking you can get away with not having a support contract; Oracle is a complicated system that mere mortals were not meant to maintain. (yes, I just implied you Oracle DBAs are god-like...try not to get too big a head over it)
Oh, and while we are speaking of market pressure on Oracle, lets not forget about IBM's DB2 database. Recent versions (while still annoying in their syntax) have become quite robust in their feature sets and able to handle most anything you would throw at Oracle. The advantage that companies see with DB2 is that you can get it in a package with matching IBM hardware. Simplifies purchasing and in theory should be ultra-stable. Don't get me wrong, a company I work with uses DB2 and not only do I dislike working with it but it just generally sucks for them to maintain. So I would probably never recommend it to anyone. Just saying that it's another competitor taking business away from Oracle.
I guess -40 Kelvin would be the truest definition of "colder then cold"...
No, they don't allow the sa account to have a blank password any longer. Actually, 2005 now requires the sa password to be "strong" (upper and lower case characters plus numbers or special characters).
Bah! You beat me to that comment.
:)
At this point I suppose it is obigatory though!
Parent was modded funny but I think it would work. My grandpa used to keep his welding rod in an old refigerator in his shop. It kept the rod cool and dry and it could keep in there for many years without going bad. (he ran a farm equiptment repair business out of his shop in in semi-retired days)
Moisture wouldn't be a problem, would stay cool, the machines own cooling fans would keep the air circulating and minimize hot spots.
Plus you could keep some cans of beer in there too just because!
Haha, reminds me of my economics class in school. The teacher created a "virtual community" where each student played a different role. We were assigned professions such as doctor, grocer, builder, ect. I was one of the "blood sucking lawyers" responsible for creating contracts between other students for business deals and the sort or arbitrating disputes. Ironically, I was the only one to get an A as every other student in the class got busted for cheating or otherwise engaging in illegal activity to accumulate wealth. I made the most *legitamate* money of anyone in the class (by buying and selling real eatate on the side). We used monopoly money and one kid went so far as to go buy a monopoly game and take all the money out of it to sneak into his "account" at school. Obviously he got busted quick when the teacher noticed his bank account has magically grown overnight. In real life it would have been like reporting on your 1040 you work at the local gas station but have billions in income and then paying your taxes with counterfiet cash. Not exactly intelligent.
Thank you for your trollishness there sir... but you failed in the following things:
[X] You failed to note that the product already exists from some small companies. (see other posts in this thread)
AND
([X] You failed to actually pay attention to what I wrote
OR
[X] You failed to realize that I am not an an executive at Linksys (or other mainstream networking device company) with the power to make products happen.)
AND
[X] You COMPLETELY failed to grasp the concept of what I was saying.
As you noted, ANYBODY can come up with a half-baked implimentation of something. What we are looking for is a major company to come up with one so these things happen:
A. Availability in Volume
B. Availability in "normal" retail stores
C. Lower prices due to A and B D. Widespread user acceptance
E. Corporate executive acceptance
F. Widespread support due to A through E.
When I first read the headline I got excited...but then it turned out to be a huge letdown. We VOIP users have been waiting for a good mainstream SIP based Wifi handset for a long time now and having one from Linksys would have been great. But this is nothing of the sort. Just yet another "dongle" for your PC for making PC to PC calls. You are still tethered to your PC (just through a wireless tether) meaning it has the cool factor but is not practical for most real-world users to replace their traditional cordless phone. Come up with a SIP standard device that uses my existing Wi-fi access point and can support multiple access point profiles and then you will have something.
You know some jokester is going to actually build a "Dr Evil" rocket shaped like a giant Johnson [space center?] and attempt to join the league. The burning questions in my mind are:
1. Will the league allow the ship with the "exciting new shape":P
2. What will the public have to say about it (snicker snicker)
Yes, only 10GB hard drive is rediculous. Just the windows OS takes up practically all that space these days. And then how are the users supposed to store all their digital photos and MP3s? Even grandma likes to take pictures of her grandkids with her shiney new digital camera she spent her last social security check on and e-mail them to the entire family. And the casual computer user chic HAS to have her massive MP3 collection. Considering that single platters hold over 100GB now I don't see any reason (cost or otherwise) to go with such a small drive.
I caught a preview showing on monday here in Portland, OR. The crowd there very much enjoyed the show and there was a standing ovation at the end. While I did cheer with the rest of them and did enjoy the movie overall, I have to only give it 4 out of 5 stars. I won't spoil it for anyone and go into detail, but I was dissapointed with a couple things that seemed to detract from the flow of the movie so that's what knocked off a star. But there were plenty of good quotable lines, a decent plot, and quite a bit revealed about the FireFly universe that we didn't previously know about. I hope it does extreemly well in theatres and the actors come back and do another movie (the cast already signed a contract to do another movie if this one does well).
They wouldn't have been able to pass the "patriot act" in the US if it was called a terrorism act. It had to be sold to the public and congress. Same result either way though: gross misuse of power by law enforcement.
All the law abiding citizens like myself have somehow become suspects and even criminalized for no good reason. We didn't do anything wrong...they just made up laws so they could accuse us and haul us in on a whim. At this rate, even the professional business people like me will have to take a clue from the inner city black people and people of new orlenes and start calling police "the man" and shooting at them. So sad.
Yes, I actually built one of these type of devices and put it on my car. The net result was actually a reduction in fuel economy due to big load on the alternator caused by the efficiency loss of breaking down the water. Granted my electrolisys unit was not a highly efficent design...but still I would find claims along this line of a net gain to be highly suspicious.
Interesting... My first thought though was that they were making fun of themselves a bit by choosing a name that sounded alot like Knuk-Stuck. Oh well, I guess I just need to learn how to speak native american languages now...
Don't forget the Russian shuttle. It's now destroyed as the building it was being stored in collapsed in a snow storm a few years ago. But on it's one maiden voyage it launched, orbited the earth and returned to a safe landing within a couple inches of it's mark on the runway in heavy crosswinds...all unmanned. That's impressive engineering. Now only if they could have engineered that hanger it was being stored in as well:P
I have a linux server that's been up 24/7 for months. The only times it's been down in years was for prolonged power outages. And it became non-responsive yesterday afternoon. My DSL was also out for a while yesterday afternoon. I thought I was just having a bad technology day...
I live in Oregon. All I have to say is: Just what we need...ANOTHER volcano! Like Mt Saint Helens doesn't give us enough excitement. Plus Mt Hood rumbles now and again and constaintly has small amounts of steam coming off it. Personally I would prefer if this state remained a natural-disaster-free zone.
Bucket of Lawyers? I thought lawyers came in cans? Maybe it's a costco thing. Guess I need to get a costco card again...
Come on people! This is funny! If I had mod points...
One thing the article (and everyone posting here) seems to miss is that Wal-mart doesn't track their supply chain by RFIDs on the individual items. The RFIDs go on the pallets/case boxes/ect. The individual items on the shelves still have barcodes that are scanned at the register. Walmart tried RFIDs on individual items and abandoned the idea. The reasoning I heard was that while incredibly cheap, RFID tags are alot more expensive then simply printing a bar-code on a box that you are already printing. The net of efficency gain vs. cost of putting RFIDs on everything was a negative number so they went to the case/pallet level where it makes more sense.
Moral of this story? RFIDs are cool and have their place, but can never replace the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of barcodes for identification of huge lots of items.