Corbin motors also made the "Merlin Roadster" which was a gas-powered convertable with the same three-wheeled design. The problem I have with one passanger cars such as the Merlin and the Sparrow was that they were one passanger. If you want to go out with your wife, or girlfriend you need to have another vehicle. Both the Sparrow and the Merlin were comperable in price to a full-fledged car (I think the Sparrow was $14k and the Merlin was $24k) and you could not do any financing. Corbin's website also gave you the impression that there was a long waiting list, or at least a long time between initial payment and delivery, either because they didn't keep anything in stock, or because there was a waiting list.
Overall Corbin made vehicles that were interesting, but not practical. They probably sold vehicles only to hobbyists.
Re:Think outside the box
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
This isn't the answer I had in mind. The book I got this problem out of wanted you to do it in base 8. But don't worry, base 8 is real the same as base 10, if you're missing two fingers.
In comparing a Bachelor's of Arts degree and a Bechelor's of Science degree the principle difference is in the degree of specialization. The "Arts" degrees, which encompass huge feilds including computer science, are, in general, designed to create someone with a general skill set which will later be refined with additional training. The "Science" degrees are ussually designed so that the graduate will have somewhat less general knowledge, but will be ready to work, ussually in a fairly narrow field, immediately after graduation.
Many engeneers actually have "arts" degrees for their bachelor's degree. They follow up with a Masters of Science (or a PhD), so I'm not trying to insult engeneers. However, there is a potential problem with the "science" bachelor's degree. Because the knowledge is narrow and deep, if there are no jobs avalible in that field, the graduate ussually has trouble getting a job. The "arts" bachelor has the opposite problem. Because their knowledge is somewhat shallow, they ussually are outcompeted for the starting level jobs in their immediate specialization. However, they can get a job in a related field.
The reason why I say people with BS degrees will likely end up working for people with BAs is that schools such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth (etc.) primarially grant BA's to their undergraduates (err...AB's but that is because they grant latin degrees). The people who goto these schools are very well connected and tallented so they are likely to be the heads of corporations.
FYI BA = Bachelor's of Arts. MBA = Masters of Business Administration, a graduate degree.
Don't forget about "Gate's Law." Not that Mr. Gates said it, but M$ software seems to double in size and complexity and clock cycles every year and a half, or so. Office XP takes just as long (or longer) to start on a new computer today as Wordperfect for Windows took to start on a new computer in 1996.
GNU/Linux distributions seem to get bigger and bigger as well. However, Redhat 9 takes about half the time to start as Redhat 8.0 on the same machine (running the same services) as does Mandrake 9.1.
Back to GNU/Linux being the next great surge. I think it is more likely that GNU/Linux is like to be the manefestation of the "mature" stage of the business cycle. Corporations (and individuals) will stop paying huge amounts of money for technology which is avalible for free. Specialized machines will come down in price and find common use (like a home music/video/web server or a cash register which is tied into the inventory of both the store and the chain or video game consoles (PS2, Game^3, or XBox).
The problem with RIAA and MPAA going after the people who are actually stealling the music/movies/whatever is that for the most part these are their best customers as well. The person who downloads 30+ hours of REM mp3's is likely to have 30+ albums/singles/imports of REM music. If RIAA goes after this person, they will loose a good customer. This is why they are so desparate to block the music/movies/etc. from getting into illegal circulation in the first place.
I never thought I'ld be saying it, but they need to follow Apple's lead. To stop theft, make a service that is faster and more convinient than stealing. What the MPAA and RIAA want to do is way too much like the British Salt Laws. They'ld like to have licenses which say "only you may listen to this song only on this copy of this medium."
How do you know where _you_ would have been had you had a BS degree? Your BA degree obviously opened enough doors to satisfy your appetite, but maybe the
BS degree would have opened more or better doors and there is not way to find that out but speculation.
Considering the vein of conversation, I think that I'm on the "young" side. However, in the time that I've been around, I have noticed some things. First, most people with good jobs at least used their contacts to get their foot in the door, if not to get the job. Therefore for job hunting, a Bachelor's degree from a good school is much better than one from a not-so-good school, regaurdless of the "S" or "A" associated with it. Second, the people whom I respect the most as programmers are officially trained, and officially work in other fields. They write (or modify) software which has a direct applicaiton to their work. While their is definitely some market for programming tools, not all CS majors can persue CS exclusively. Third, the pay scales for programmers has really crashed in the last 5 years. I think this has to do with programming being a relatively easy and low stress field (compaired to say, nuclear physics or actuarial work(for difficulty) or medicine and law (for stress)) with a low barrier to entry (you have to be willing to think logically), causing the supply of programmers to go through the roof. Unfortunately, most people who went into computer science four (or five) years ago when enrolling in college cannot expect to make the money, or have the jobs, that inspired them to go into computer science. Finally, those with just a BS degree probably shouldn't look down on those with a BA degree, you're probably going to end up working for one.
If you arn't on a university network you're probably already paying $40 (or more) a month for high speed internet. If all you're using it for is music downloads $100 a month seems a bit steep. Now if someone offered unlimited MP3's and high speed internet for $60 a month, I'ld probably go for it.
Also the limitations on ethernet (distance and number of hubs) are between switches and routers. If you get too far from the previous switch, just put another one in. Certainly, one switch per floor would do it.
As a side note, if you are going to wire the whole building together with ethernet, you probably want to do some degree of electrical issolation between units. It would really suck if one power surge took out all the networking equiptment and all the computers in the building. Certainly the minimum should be fiber optics (instead of copper wires) between the switches.
Does anyone use a MAC as an enterprise level
server?
As far as a comparison between GNU/Linux and Windows, GNU/Linux patches have a couple of big advantages. First, they don't require turning off the machine, so there is much less downtime. Second, you can install them so that they can be "undone" in case there is a problem. Third, they ussually come out much faster when a security flaw is discovered relative to Windows patches. For example, there was a flaw which afflicted Konqueror (or was it Mozilla?) and Internet Explorer. The open source one had the patch avalible the next day, Microsoft at first denied it, and then took three months to provide the patch. Finally, if you are sufficiently familiar with a system running an OSS OS you can fix the problem yourself instead of waiting for someone in Redmond to figure it out (or get around to it).
You may have a point if all albums were like Pink Floyd's The Wall or The Who's Tommy or musicals such as Chess or Chicago. Unfortunately, they are not. Most of the music sold is of the "pop" variety which are purchased on the strength of one "hit" song.
The only thing which might save the Anime channel from the doom faced by Themed movie channels is the same things that have saved Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics (themed movie channels). The corporation running the channel will also own the copyrights to the content. Therefore it won't cost them extra money to run the good stuff. Of course, not all Anime is owned by one corporation. The two big features that will definitely be missing are "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away" which are both controled by Disney in the USA.
Related: I think that Disney is trying to intentionally kill the US Anime market. They have purchased two of the biggest Anime movies and then promoted them horrably. For example, Princess Mononoke previews aired before a Winnie the Poo movie. When I saw it, there were 12 20-50 something anime fans and about 50 mother's with young children in the theater. After the first decapitation, there were 50 fewer people in the movie.
I dispise what Walt Disney did for the state of animation in America. Before Disney came to dominate the American animation scene there was animation aimed at all age groups (Betty Boop anyone?). Fortunately, this never happened in Japan. Japanesse animation, Anime, repersents a wide variety of Genres everything from Hamtaro and Pokemon to gothic horror such as Vampire Hunter D to historical documents such as Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen to pornography such as Legend of the Overfiend. While you may be a member of Mensa (another discussion), your catagorization of Anime as childish TV comics shows your ignorance. The subject material in Anime is easily as deep as Holywood movies.
On a related subject, good children's programming actually works on two levels. There is a surface layer which appeals to the children, and there is a deeper level which serves to entertain the parents. The best examples of this are the 1960's Batman series (kids love the superheroes, parents laugh), Rugrats (kids identify with the Rugrats, parents get to identify with and laugh at the older people), and Spongebob Squarepants (which works on many levels).
I think that the major threat to Kazaa and other file sharing services is actually the $.99 downloads of pretty much all music (not just the "popular" stuff). If I can download a song that I want for $.99 quickly and easily (and without restricitons on how I use it, Apple's model), I won't be inclined to take the time to steal it.
However, while the $.99 per song quick and easy download will probably kill off Kazaa and similar services, it will also deal some serious damage to the music industry. The music industry pretty much relies on "blind buying" to get people to shell out $18 per CD when they have only heard one song, and there is only one good song on most albums. I'm pretty sure that this is a technical violation of the Anti-Trust acts. The Movie industry got into a lot of trouble in the 1940's for similar practices (forcing movie houses to buy all their products for a season in order to get access to the one or two big movies). Even if the music industry is successful with the $.99 downloads the era of the "pop-queens" and "pop-kings" is over since a single big name will no longer be enough to get people to shell out $18 per album.
The EPIA-M has built in MPEG-2 direct decoding. Apparently, it is not supported under GNU/Linux though (but I'm not really having any problems). I'm pretty sure that the Eden 600Mhz (fanless), and 800Mhz (fan), 900Mhz (fan), and 1000Mhz (quietest fan of the three) versions of the C3 chips are avalible. I'm running a EPIA-M with a 600Mhz Eden for MP3/OGG/Streaming/TV purposes and appart from my frustrations with the gyration keyboard/mouse thing I'm pretty happy.
Unlike HAL the Planet Express Delivery Ship cannot read lips.
Fry, Leela, and Bender are hiding out in the shower discussing how to turn of Planet Express Delivery Ship. The little red light is on, the screen is scrolling back and forth between the lips as Leela gives orders and Bender objects. Then the ship says, "Oh, if only I could read lips!"
Actually Social Security Benefits were designed to get people to stop working when jobs were scarce (therefore creating new job openings). Because most working class people didn't have sufficient retirement savings in the 1930's, and jobs were hard to find, the 65+ set wasn't leaving jobs, therefore the 20-40 set couldn't get jobs. By taxing everyone that was working and giving benefits to the 65+ set to stop working jobs were created for the 20-40 set. Social Security is much more like a bribe to your grandfather to get him to give you his job (in theory). Social Security is supposed to be a perimnate lifestyle change.
The problem with Social Security will occur when the Baby Boom generation retires (unless they seriously raise the minimum age for retirment benefits, to 75 or so). This is because the number of people working vs the number of people drawing benefits will be something like 5 to 1 (or less).
In contrast unemployment insurance is supposed to be a (very) stopgap measure, and is funded much more through a "banking" type mechanism. Additionally, unemployement insurance (as well as other emergency entitlements) is really aimed at low income people. Wealthier people (persumeably anyone who is maxing out what Unemployement insurance will give you) are supposed to have sufficient savings, and enough "fat" in their lifestyle, so that through some thrift they can make it through a dry spell. Unfortunately, I don't think that many people in late 90's IT industry (or other "boom" markets) saved enough money and the demands on the local economies near the "boom" centers drove the costs of living through the roof so these people never felt rich.
Re:Obligatory
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
assuming the volume of a "standard" beige box PC is the same as mine, we could probably get about 20 of these into the same volume. This would end up drawing about 120 watts of power, but if we assume that each processor is equivalent to about a 300 Mhz Intel machine (pessamistic estimate since that is less than 50% efficiency and the EPIA-M is actually a well integrated MB) it would have about twice the processing power of a 3Ghz Intel machine. This ends up being much more efficient power wise than the equivalent Intel solution (by about a factor of 2).
Cost wise, the EPIA-M MB's are actually pretty good since they can do the boot-off network thing so you only need one harddrive. You will need to buy a lot of RAM though. The total cost would probably end up pretty close to 4000$, much less efficent than a single processor/motherboard computer.
You'ld also be able to drive about 20 monitors off of the cluster of EPIA's. Try building that into a single board computer, I bet it costs more. Really though, who needs to drive 20 monitors?
They can run Linux, but sometimes sound is an issue (although that is basically fixed now, thanks to ALSA). The VIA EPIA-M motherboards support direct MPEG-2 playback so they can play DVDs back pretty much regaurdless of processor. Hauptpage and others now make tv-encoder cards which do direct MPEG-2 encoding so that can also be made pretty much processor independant. The review which was featured on slashdot (maybe there has been one more recently) featured the previous generation of EPIA motherboards.
If you look I think you'll find that quite a few of the "super-small" computers are running on the EPIA-something motherboards and you can check those out independantly.
Re:Almost great for lan parties
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 1
Each hard disk takes about 17 watts, so that is more than half. The EPIA-M motherboard with an Eden processor (admitadly slower and less power consuming than the 800Mhz C3) draws about 6 watts, leaving 60 - 34 - 6 = 20 watts for the RAM. The figure is probably more like 10-15 watts left for the ram because of the difference between the C3 and Eden.
I've been running an EPIA-M with a 600 Mhz Eden + CDRW/DVD drive + 7200 RPM harddrive + TVEncoder off of a 40 Watt power supply for about a month and there havn't been any problems.
I'm not sure about doing it for less than 200$, but I recently made a silent miniitx system for home to use as an MP3/PVR/Fileserver and it did run about 500$. However, if you wanted just a harddisk/case/processor you could probably build it for about 300$. Here is the breakdown:
EPIA-M with 600Mhz processor - $150
Ugly but quiet case - $50
Harddisk - $80
128Mhz RAM - $30
total - 310$. Note that I left out the CDROM/DVDROM drive. This is because the EPIA-M supports boot from network. If you really want one you could spend another 20$ for a generic.
The Minibox seems to run the EPIA-M motherboards from VIA with either their 600Mhz Eden or faster C3 processors. The EPIA-M motherboards support direct MPEG-2 playback so DVD playback should be no problem. For more info on Mini-Itx stuff check out mini-itx's website.
Re:power consumption/size
on
Mini-Box M-100
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Power consumption is measured in watts, not volts.
I think that you'll find that most computers run with even lower core voltages. The 12 volt input means that you can do the AC to DC power conversion outside of the case saving yourself volume and heat required for said conversion. Another major advantage of the 12volt power input is that it is easy to regulate your Automobile's voltage output to 12 volts and run the computer there, perhaps for an MP3/OGG server.
The power for the computer is apparently about 10 watts, which is impressive. 6 of those watts are used by the EPIA-M motherboard + Eden 600 Mhz processor. The faster processor uses quite a bit more energy. Interestingly, a desktop harddrive consumes about 17 watts in typical operation. So the 10 Watt figure is likely optimistic and/or when no peripheral devices are being used.
Just did some checking, the other really small case is from casetronic which is 5.1cmx17.8cmx25.4cm is about 400 mL larger than the 20cmx4.4cmx22cm mini-box case. They both take a 12 volt input. Form factor wise, the casetronic case is actually exactly the same size as most car stereos, guess what market it is aimed at.
Slashdot Mirror
Overall Corbin made vehicles that were interesting, but not practical. They probably sold vehicles only to hobbyists.
--- Tom Lehrer
Many engeneers actually have "arts" degrees for their bachelor's degree. They follow up with a Masters of Science (or a PhD), so I'm not trying to insult engeneers. However, there is a potential problem with the "science" bachelor's degree. Because the knowledge is narrow and deep, if there are no jobs avalible in that field, the graduate ussually has trouble getting a job. The "arts" bachelor has the opposite problem. Because their knowledge is somewhat shallow, they ussually are outcompeted for the starting level jobs in their immediate specialization. However, they can get a job in a related field.
The reason why I say people with BS degrees will likely end up working for people with BAs is that schools such as Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth (etc.) primarially grant BA's to their undergraduates (err...AB's but that is because they grant latin degrees). The people who goto these schools are very well connected and tallented so they are likely to be the heads of corporations.
FYI BA = Bachelor's of Arts. MBA = Masters of Business Administration, a graduate degree.
GNU/Linux distributions seem to get bigger and bigger as well. However, Redhat 9 takes about half the time to start as Redhat 8.0 on the same machine (running the same services) as does Mandrake 9.1.
Back to GNU/Linux being the next great surge. I think it is more likely that GNU/Linux is like to be the manefestation of the "mature" stage of the business cycle. Corporations (and individuals) will stop paying huge amounts of money for technology which is avalible for free. Specialized machines will come down in price and find common use (like a home music/video/web server or a cash register which is tied into the inventory of both the store and the chain or video game consoles (PS2, Game^3, or XBox).
I never thought I'ld be saying it, but they need to follow Apple's lead. To stop theft, make a service that is faster and more convinient than stealing. What the MPAA and RIAA want to do is way too much like the British Salt Laws. They'ld like to have licenses which say "only you may listen to this song only on this copy of this medium."
Considering the vein of conversation, I think that I'm on the "young" side. However, in the time that I've been around, I have noticed some things. First, most people with good jobs at least used their contacts to get their foot in the door, if not to get the job. Therefore for job hunting, a Bachelor's degree from a good school is much better than one from a not-so-good school, regaurdless of the "S" or "A" associated with it. Second, the people whom I respect the most as programmers are officially trained, and officially work in other fields. They write (or modify) software which has a direct applicaiton to their work. While their is definitely some market for programming tools, not all CS majors can persue CS exclusively. Third, the pay scales for programmers has really crashed in the last 5 years. I think this has to do with programming being a relatively easy and low stress field (compaired to say, nuclear physics or actuarial work(for difficulty) or medicine and law (for stress)) with a low barrier to entry (you have to be willing to think logically), causing the supply of programmers to go through the roof. Unfortunately, most people who went into computer science four (or five) years ago when enrolling in college cannot expect to make the money, or have the jobs, that inspired them to go into computer science. Finally, those with just a BS degree probably shouldn't look down on those with a BA degree, you're probably going to end up working for one.
If you arn't on a university network you're probably already paying $40 (or more) a month for high speed internet. If all you're using it for is music downloads $100 a month seems a bit steep. Now if someone offered unlimited MP3's and high speed internet for $60 a month, I'ld probably go for it.
As a side note, if you are going to wire the whole building together with ethernet, you probably want to do some degree of electrical issolation between units. It would really suck if one power surge took out all the networking equiptment and all the computers in the building. Certainly the minimum should be fiber optics (instead of copper wires) between the switches.
--- Homer Simpson
Does anyone use a MAC as an enterprise level server?
As far as a comparison between GNU/Linux and Windows, GNU/Linux patches have a couple of big advantages. First, they don't require turning off the machine, so there is much less downtime. Second, you can install them so that they can be "undone" in case there is a problem. Third, they ussually come out much faster when a security flaw is discovered relative to Windows patches. For example, there was a flaw which afflicted Konqueror (or was it Mozilla?) and Internet Explorer. The open source one had the patch avalible the next day, Microsoft at first denied it, and then took three months to provide the patch. Finally, if you are sufficiently familiar with a system running an OSS OS you can fix the problem yourself instead of waiting for someone in Redmond to figure it out (or get around to it).
You may have a point if all albums were like Pink Floyd's The Wall or The Who's Tommy or musicals such as Chess or Chicago. Unfortunately, they are not. Most of the music sold is of the "pop" variety which are purchased on the strength of one "hit" song.
Related: I think that Disney is trying to intentionally kill the US Anime market. They have purchased two of the biggest Anime movies and then promoted them horrably. For example, Princess Mononoke previews aired before a Winnie the Poo movie. When I saw it, there were 12 20-50 something anime fans and about 50 mother's with young children in the theater. After the first decapitation, there were 50 fewer people in the movie.
On a related subject, good children's programming actually works on two levels. There is a surface layer which appeals to the children, and there is a deeper level which serves to entertain the parents. The best examples of this are the 1960's Batman series (kids love the superheroes, parents laugh), Rugrats (kids identify with the Rugrats, parents get to identify with and laugh at the older people), and Spongebob Squarepants (which works on many levels).
Then it wouldn't be Anime.
However, while the $.99 per song quick and easy download will probably kill off Kazaa and similar services, it will also deal some serious damage to the music industry. The music industry pretty much relies on "blind buying" to get people to shell out $18 per CD when they have only heard one song, and there is only one good song on most albums. I'm pretty sure that this is a technical violation of the Anti-Trust acts. The Movie industry got into a lot of trouble in the 1940's for similar practices (forcing movie houses to buy all their products for a season in order to get access to the one or two big movies). Even if the music industry is successful with the $.99 downloads the era of the "pop-queens" and "pop-kings" is over since a single big name will no longer be enough to get people to shell out $18 per album.
The EPIA-M has built in MPEG-2 direct decoding. Apparently, it is not supported under GNU/Linux though (but I'm not really having any problems). I'm pretty sure that the Eden 600Mhz (fanless), and 800Mhz (fan), 900Mhz (fan), and 1000Mhz (quietest fan of the three) versions of the C3 chips are avalible. I'm running a EPIA-M with a 600Mhz Eden for MP3/OGG/Streaming/TV purposes and appart from my frustrations with the gyration keyboard/mouse thing I'm pretty happy.
More likely the "Classic" beetle (also designed by Porsche).
Fry, Leela, and Bender are hiding out in the shower discussing how to turn of Planet Express Delivery Ship. The little red light is on, the screen is scrolling back and forth between the lips as Leela gives orders and Bender objects. Then the ship says, "Oh, if only I could read lips!"
The problem with Social Security will occur when the Baby Boom generation retires (unless they seriously raise the minimum age for retirment benefits, to 75 or so). This is because the number of people working vs the number of people drawing benefits will be something like 5 to 1 (or less).
In contrast unemployment insurance is supposed to be a (very) stopgap measure, and is funded much more through a "banking" type mechanism. Additionally, unemployement insurance (as well as other emergency entitlements) is really aimed at low income people. Wealthier people (persumeably anyone who is maxing out what Unemployement insurance will give you) are supposed to have sufficient savings, and enough "fat" in their lifestyle, so that through some thrift they can make it through a dry spell. Unfortunately, I don't think that many people in late 90's IT industry (or other "boom" markets) saved enough money and the demands on the local economies near the "boom" centers drove the costs of living through the roof so these people never felt rich.
Cost wise, the EPIA-M MB's are actually pretty good since they can do the boot-off network thing so you only need one harddrive. You will need to buy a lot of RAM though. The total cost would probably end up pretty close to 4000$, much less efficent than a single processor/motherboard computer.
You'ld also be able to drive about 20 monitors off of the cluster of EPIA's. Try building that into a single board computer, I bet it costs more. Really though, who needs to drive 20 monitors?
If you look I think you'll find that quite a few of the "super-small" computers are running on the EPIA-something motherboards and you can check those out independantly.
I've been running an EPIA-M with a 600 Mhz Eden + CDRW/DVD drive + 7200 RPM harddrive + TVEncoder off of a 40 Watt power supply for about a month and there havn't been any problems.
EPIA-M with 600Mhz processor - $150
Ugly but quiet case - $50
Harddisk - $80
128Mhz RAM - $30
total - 310$. Note that I left out the CDROM/DVDROM drive. This is because the EPIA-M supports boot from network. If you really want one you could spend another 20$ for a generic.
The Minibox seems to run the EPIA-M motherboards from VIA with either their 600Mhz Eden or faster C3 processors. The EPIA-M motherboards support direct MPEG-2 playback so DVD playback should be no problem. For more info on Mini-Itx stuff check out mini-itx's website.
The power for the computer is apparently about 10 watts, which is impressive. 6 of those watts are used by the EPIA-M motherboard + Eden 600 Mhz processor. The faster processor uses quite a bit more energy. Interestingly, a desktop harddrive consumes about 17 watts in typical operation. So the 10 Watt figure is likely optimistic and/or when no peripheral devices are being used.
Just did some checking, the other really small case is from casetronic which is 5.1cmx17.8cmx25.4cm is about 400 mL larger than the 20cmx4.4cmx22cm mini-box case. They both take a 12 volt input. Form factor wise, the casetronic case is actually exactly the same size as most car stereos, guess what market it is aimed at.