I find this article puzzling. I get mailings from BECTA (government agency in the UK to do with education of ICT) and there was one about this a while back. Intel were going on about how succesful it was at a trade show & really was one stop short of saying that people were bending over backwards to buy one. Just the way it was written by their marketing goons showed they were pretty desperate for you to buy one (this was aimed at schools). However all the schools I know are quite happy to stick with their old fashioned non-computer linked microscopes so maybe it was one last ditch attempt by them to sell their remaining stock in the U.K.
And Babelfish does this for most web pages. As to the whole quote I reproduce it below:
"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the
oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not
from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all
unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to
nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its
carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious
thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech
centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical
upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear
you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of
language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the
brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel
fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything
so mind\-bog\-gin\-gly useful could have evolved purely by chance that
some thin\-kers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching
proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I
exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am
nothing.'
"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it?
It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so
therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly
vanished in a puff of logic.
"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to
prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next
zebra crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of
dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a
small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-
selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all
barriers to communication between different races and cultures,
has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the
history of creation."
Come on now - I mean they did say they were from "procurement" - and IT procurement at that! I mean actually having to have a bit of knowledge about IT would be stretching it a bit now! I mean heaven help us when people are actually have experience in what they were doing! Who would the rest of us at work have then for comic relief?
"global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place." - only because by the time people stop doing one of these activities they're either
1. annoyed
2. suffering from a short attention span
Yes - it's usually only new users or people who've got fed up of staring at the same screen each day that bother with anything but default skins. The problem is when people design skins that are designed for the aesthetic effect rather than a functional effect and obscure what are active/ inactive parts of the screen.
If I remember something correctly these concept cars are massively expensive prototypes anyway - partly because so much has to be invented. Even with mass production they're still going to work out to be more expensive in the short term.
" If, however, the decision came from management on the rationale that "nobody got sued for going with MS" or some other non-tech-related reason, and that decision was made against your own advice, then you shouldn't cop the heat for that"
If management is employing you for your tech-related expertise and advice then they should listen to it - whatever their prejudices about the matter are. However even when management actually made a bad decision contrary to advice they often want a scapegoat to blame.
which are (mostly) run by people who know what they're doing - however the general public has yet to embrace this concept and have open source OSes running at home & in the workplace in numbers big enough to matter.
It is possible to hide the task bar - just tick auto hide in properties (after right clicking with the mouse to bring up the menu). Then it only appears when you have the mouse over it.
In fact what about double sided CDs? One laser for the top, one for the bottom - then you could get twice the information without them having to spin any faster! As to rotating mirrors I doubt you could get them precise enough to work (although I'd be quite happy to be proved wrong).
"designed to destroy itself if it detects an intrusion attempt. " - sounds like something out of Mission Impossible - but seriously won't the FBI just cite something like "national security" or some other phrase to get what they want when they haven't got a valid case?
Slashdot Mirror
I find this article puzzling. I get mailings from BECTA (government agency in the UK to do with education of ICT) and there was one about this a while back. Intel were going on about how succesful it was at a trade show & really was one stop short of saying that people were bending over backwards to buy one. Just the way it was written by their marketing goons showed they were pretty desperate for you to buy one (this was aimed at schools). However all the schools I know are quite happy to stick with their old fashioned non-computer linked microscopes so maybe it was one last ditch attempt by them to sell their remaining stock in the U.K.
Does it affect anyone outside the OSes previously mentioned (apart from the people running the DNS servers of course)?
Reading this review makes me think of "If you don't want to see it you don't have to go" - then I realised that applied to a Jon Katz review too!
And Babelfish does this for most web pages. As to the whole quote I reproduce it below:
"The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind\-bog\-gin\-gly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thin\-kers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.
"`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best- selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God.
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloddier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
Come on now - I mean they did say they were from "procurement" - and IT procurement at that! I mean actually having to have a bit of knowledge about IT would be stretching it a bit now! I mean heaven help us when people are actually have experience in what they were doing! Who would the rest of us at work have then for comic relief?
"global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place." - only because by the time people stop doing one of these activities they're either
1. annoyed
2. suffering from a short attention span
or both!
Looks like the trolls have decided to start linking to another domain!
Yes - it's usually only new users or people who've got fed up of staring at the same screen each day that bother with anything but default skins. The problem is when people design skins that are designed for the aesthetic effect rather than a functional effect and obscure what are active/ inactive parts of the screen.
If I remember something correctly these concept cars are massively expensive prototypes anyway - partly because so much has to be invented. Even with mass production they're still going to work out to be more expensive in the short term.
" If, however, the decision came from management on the rationale that "nobody got sued for going with MS" or some other non-tech-related reason, and that decision was made against your own advice, then you shouldn't cop the heat for that"
If management is employing you for your tech-related expertise and advice then they should listen to it - whatever their prejudices about the matter are. However even when management actually made a bad decision contrary to advice they often want a scapegoat to blame.
which are (mostly) run by people who know what they're doing - however the general public has yet to embrace this concept and have open source OSes running at home & in the workplace in numbers big enough to matter.
It is possible to hide the task bar - just tick auto hide in properties (after right clicking with the mouse to bring up the menu). Then it only appears when you have the mouse over it.
have a Windows key on your keyboard - then you can just Windows+D to get back to the desktop quickly.
"and seek out some other form of entertainment, like going outside" - you mean there's *actually* an outside world? lol
"For some reason Japan isn't all that keen on nuclear weapons."
;o)
It's all those Godzilla films - they think if they start testing nuclear weapons they'll have massive mosters trampling downtown Tokyo!
New Error:
Your room has the wrong type of air for this network to function. Please remove the air and try again.
If you do why not submit it to Web Monkey?
Thought Joe Public was sole on the idea of DVDs - after all they look like CDs, play CDs & have a higher capacity!
In fact what about double sided CDs? One laser for the top, one for the bottom - then you could get twice the information without them having to spin any faster! As to rotating mirrors I doubt you could get them precise enough to work (although I'd be quite happy to be proved wrong).
It's the wrong award - Rowling is fantasy not sci-fi - where's the science in Harry Potter?
Well what do you expect when it's based on an original article written by a cDc member?
Postscript:
Sun: Now we have achieved two of our goals - 1) to become insane and 2) to get a story on slashdot!
portable as in the second obsolete meaning :
Portable \Port"a*ble\, a. [L. portabilis, fr. portare to carry: cf. F. portable. See {Port} demeanor.]
1. Capable of being borne or carried; easily transported; conveyed without difficulty; as, a portable bed, desk, engine. --South.
2. Possible to be endured; supportable. [Obs.]
How light and portable my pain seems now! --Shak.
In fact the video conferencing on net meeting is far more stable than audio conferencing (when you'd think it'd be the other way round).
"designed to destroy itself if it detects an intrusion attempt. " - sounds like something out of Mission Impossible - but seriously won't the FBI just cite something like "national security" or some other phrase to get what they want when they haven't got a valid case?