That's very interesting. I had never heard of such a thing but a web search revealed that it's true. Check out this document from the USPS that explains how it works. It's a real shame that programs and institutions created to help the physically challenged are being abused because the only thing that can come from this is dissolution of the programs and institutions.
I saw this news posted elsewhere and was instantly confused by which versions were being released because the Japanese and North American numbering schemes are different. I had heard that what was released as Final Fantasy II in North America was called Final Fantasy IV in Japan and Final Fantasy III in North America was Final Fantasy VI in Japan. I did some web searching and came across an interesting site about the History of Final Fantasy that cleared up all my confusion. I highly recommend checking it out.
Numbering scheme aside, it's nice to see these games being (re)released so that fans can relive the good times and new RPGers can experience what all the fuss was about. And if Square Enix and Nintendo can make a few bucks, great. Everybody wins.
Yes, you're correct. It runs Yellow Dog Linux (or Debian or Gentoo or any other of the PowerPC variants of Linux) and there's no reason why you can't use Mac-On-Linux. I read a report from a guy doing just that. You may be able to run Mac OS X directly on the briQ but I've not heard of anyone doing that so I can't say so authoritatively. Regardless, it's a nifty device. Pity it costs as much as it does.
I realize you were making a joke but it reminded me of something that I think a lot of people around here will find interesting and intriguing. Check out the briQ. It's an entire PowerPC-based computer that has been squeezed into a 5.25" chassis (the size of an optical drive). So, while you can't have a Mac (per se) in your PC, you can have a computer that can run Mac OS. How freaky is that?
Hey James. It's Golan (think back, way way back). Your post took me on a journey down memory (no pun intended) lane. I have much stronger memories of the first Spence BBS program which was equally thrifty with memory. I remember trying to customize it for a friend and constantly banging my head on the desk because you guys had used every available byte of RAM (and then some). The fact that your program was easy to set up and could operate quite nicely with a single 1541 drive made it possible for anyone to run a BBS. It was quite an achievement. Say, what ever happened to Ken?
And for those who haven't figured the XP part out, X = Xmodem and P = Punter, the two most widely used download protocols at the time.
You may find the 64HDD of interest. It's a program that when used with an x1541 cable allows you to access your PCs hard disk from the Commodore 64. When you consider that a 5.25" floppy disk formatted on the 64 provided 170K of storage, even the smallest hard disk available today provides almost limitless storage.
So, dig your 64 out of your closet and have some fun.
When Apple released its first Panther beta, I was disappointed to discover that Chess was not included. However, Xcode was so I went to Apple, downloaded the source for Chess and had it up and running in under 5 minutes without reading any documentation (guilty). Suffice it to say, I was quite impressed with Xcode but that's another story. This is news, old news.
Rather than making a snarky post calling you a lazy bastard who should search Google (oops, I guess I did just make a snarky post) I will provide you with what you seek. Here are some decent images.
I've worked with the X68000 and they are/were very cool and quite advanced for their time. Trying to compare different platforms is ultimately pointless so I won't say it was more advanced than the Amiga or Atari ST but it certainly was a peer and shouldn't be overlooked.
I'm all for mice with breasts if only because it would be somewhat less disturbing than this. (And no, that isn't a gag photo. Scientists are a strange bunch of monkeys.)
Yeah, he worked for Atari but I'm not going to give his real name as he has chosen not to do so. Any boy detective can find it if they make the slightest effort. I'll even give you a clue. He wrote Super Pac-Man for the Atari 5200 before going on to operating systems. He's mentioned in this article too. Sadly, he's right about TOS, or TOS-off as we disaffectionatelly called it. It sucked. Oh how I wish the Atari ST had shipped with OS 9. If it had, I might still have my hair.
I've been meaning to thank him for his object code converter. I just never thought today would be that day.
Let me get this straight. We've got ATX, Extended ATX, FlexATX, WATX, Mini ATX, microATX and now Nano-ITX? How is anyone suppose to keep this straight? What a pain in the atx. I will say this, these boards are getting pretty small. The article gave the dimensions as 3.7 inches by 5.9 inches by 6.3 inches. Nanode must have invented a debigulator.
This could backfire in the vigilante's face.
on
eBay Fraud Vigilantes
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What is to stop me from putting up a suspcious looking auction for a generic item, an Apple Powerbook for instance (I understand there are a lot of fraudulent auctions for Apple hardware) and then waiting for a vigilante to bid it to a ridiculous level, lets say $50,000. When the auction closes, I got out and buy a Powerbook like the one listed in the auction and demand my payment. As I understand things, bids on eBay are contracts and I should be able to sue that individual because they weren't bidding in good faith. I may not get a judgement for $50,000 but I'm sure I could get a few thousand for the hassle they caused me.
I'm not suggesting anyone attempt this but I am curious if such a thing is possible.
You're joking but I can't help but point out what a bad idea it is to arbitrarily assign high values to shares. As soon as you formally declare that value of a share, even if you pulled the number out of your ear, the IRS will expect you to pay taxes on the capital gain resulting in a nasty surprise. The IRS, unlike Slashdot readers, have no sense of humour.
Rather than generating and then trying to store the power, have you considered selling it to your local utility? This would offset the cost of having to buy energy to run the air conditioner when it is required. Most of the time it won't be because, presumably, you'll need your air conditioner most when the sun is out. Perhaps I don't fully understand the question as it seems to me that you're over-engineering the problem.
That's what I say when non-technical friends and family ask me questions about what kind of computer they should buy.
"It doesn't matter."
I realize it sounds trite but these days, it's true. They can buy pretty much any new computer they can find and it's perfectly capable of doing what they want to do because, in truth, what they want to do rarely requires a state of the art machine. To simplify things further is the fact that comptuers are getting cheaper and you are getting way more for your money. Buying a new computer isn't the financial hardship it once was.
My mother doesn't care what kind of CPU is in her computer or how fast it is. She just wants to send email to her grandkids and play bridge and she can do that quite happily on a computer she can pick up at Wal*Mart for a few hundred bucks. Power to the people, indeed.
I use to have a guy that would describe everything on the screen for me so I wouldn't strain my eyes but the costs became prohibitive so I had to let him go. Now I have a guy in India doing it for a 1/10th the cost. It would be the perfect solution but the phone bills are killing me. Also, porn is not as stimulating.
Against my better judgement, I'm going to give you a couple of suggestions...
First off, this place is for discussion and it is generally a good idea to counter opinions with your own rather than trying to censure people. Let moderators decide what is and isn't appropriate. That's what the system is for.
Secondly, it appears as if you've created multiple accounts so you can make posts supporting yourself without it appearing as if you're doing (even though it's patently obvious). If this is not the case, I find it to be a remarkable coincidence that three new users with almost consecutive IDs, you (761169), laggerzero (761187) and Light Serif (761190) all commented in the same thread right after one another. Further, those comments were the only ones those users ever made. Quite a coincidence indeed.
Last but not least, and please take this as a constructive suggestion and not an insult: Take a deep breath and try to relax. You're working yourself into a lather unnecessarily and in the process, making yourself look a tad silly. Remember, this isn't a popularity contest. It's just Slashdot.
Rather than overclocking the 68000, he should consider upgrading the CPU. The Motorola 68010 is both pin and insstruction compatible and it has a slightly higher range of operational clock speeds. Way back in the day (I've always wanted to say that!) I upgrade dozens of Amiga 1000s without a problem. And yes, the upgrade was, for all intents and purposes, useless. I would tell people that and they would still want the upgrade so I let commerce take its natural course.
I can see the police report now: "Perpetrator entered the victim's home at which time he was impaled by a 'Master Sword'. Victim claimed he thought perpetrator was a 'boss' and was hoping his death would result in the release of someone named 'Zelda'. Further investigation required. Psychiatric evaluation of victim strongly recommended."
I saw the scrolling messages this weekend (on Spike, I love Powerblock TV) and I'm in Canada using Rogers Cable. I presume that means Viacom is overlaying the message on their 'base' signal. I wonder if anyone using a service other than DishNetwork seen the messages...
Clearly you didn't notice which department this story came from:
From the lemonade-stands-are-so-blaze dept.
For what it's worth, my first thought was also that they should start a lemonade stand but then I realized they would have to compete with all the IT people that were "surplused" when their jobs went overseas.
Semi-OT. I just saw Lou Dobbs tear Mark Andreessen about his company exporting jobs to India. Ouch.
Don't want to sound like a flame,but have you *ever* worked with end users?
I've admined corporate networks with between five hundred and a thousand clients and admined ISPs with five times as many so yeah, I've dealt with end users. It was my experience that you can either marvel at their stupidity and bang your head on your desk or marvel at their stupidity, try to help and educate them and then bang your head on your desk. I found the latter gave me the always heartwarming excuse, "I tried."
At any rate, I think that perhaps you've missed my point. You can't prevent all bad things from happening but by putting a block in place which causes people to pause and reflect, you _may_ aid them in helping themselves. This is why we have railings on stair cases, seatbelt warning lights in cars etc. I should also add that my suggestion does not in any way prevent an admin from also implementing some kind of server-side virus protection. The more protection, the merrier.
As for users just opening things in their browser which are configured to execute anything executable they come across, what's to stop the same script from changing.exe to.xex with a note telling users that in order to execute the program they will have to manually change it back?
Granted, you can't prevent a determinedly stupid person from being themselves but you can try to help those waivering on the edge. You also have to try to stay one step ahead of stupid because, contradictory to Darwin's teachings, stupid is evolving at a terrifying rate.
It would take a bit of server side scripting but it shouldn't be that hard to implement. If someone gets a piece of email with an attachement, any binary attachment, strip it out and save it out somewhere (~/mail/attachments or ~/public_html/mail/attachments, wherever is easiest given your system's configuration) and in its place include a text attachment that says something like, "This email came with an attachment. This could be a virus. We recommend you exercise caution when dealing attachments. You may download/view the attachment at [give URL pointing to wherever you saved it]."
If it's a picture or a word document from a friend or colleague then they'll probably end up viewing it in their browser and if it's a binary, provided it came from a trusted source, they can download it (make sure to give them an option to delete it if they'll feel it isn't benign). If it's something they don't recognize and/or from someone they don't recognize, they're going to be a bit more cautious. The idea is that the extra step prevents people who open all attachements without thinking or, worse yet, run email clients which allow attachments to rape their computer without their knowing, from harming themselves.
If anyone complains, tell them this is the email version of "Are you sure you want to delete that file?" -- it's a pause that forces reflection that may end up saving them grief. They'll learn to live with the added step and eventually, they'll be glad it's there to protect them.
Their influence was sufficiently strong enough to result in a Help key being added to an otherwise sparse Amiga 1000 keyboard (see it there above the cursor keys). Oddly, it was the only key I never used on my Amiga keyboard so I wrote a program to pop up a full screen graphic that said, "Don't Panic!" when it was pressed. Completely useless but it gave me no end of amusement. Kind of like my first girlfriend...
Sometimes I wonder if we'd "feel" a big difference in net responsiveness (browsing, file transfer, latency in online gaming, etc) if all spam stopped suddenly.
I was thinking about that the other day. Then I got to wondering how much CPU-time I was spending on spam filtering which led to my thinking about how much electricity I was using to filter spam. Then I started to think about all the electricity being used by computers moving the mail and routers between network points and so on. It didn't take long before my mind boggled.
Spam is often touted as being better than physical junk mail as it doesn't use all that paper. There are however, other costs. All that electricity has to be generated and that can't be good for the enviroment.
The next time someone says spam is a hassle but doesn't really cost them anything, remind them what went into getting that spam to them.
Slashdot Mirror
That's very interesting. I had never heard of such a thing but a web search revealed that it's true. Check out this document from the USPS that explains how it works. It's a real shame that programs and institutions created to help the physically challenged are being abused because the only thing that can come from this is dissolution of the programs and institutions.
Numbering scheme aside, it's nice to see these games being (re)released so that fans can relive the good times and new RPGers can experience what all the fuss was about. And if Square Enix and Nintendo can make a few bucks, great. Everybody wins.
Yes, you're correct. It runs Yellow Dog Linux (or Debian or Gentoo or any other of the PowerPC variants of Linux) and there's no reason why you can't use Mac-On-Linux. I read a report from a guy doing just that. You may be able to run Mac OS X directly on the briQ but I've not heard of anyone doing that so I can't say so authoritatively. Regardless, it's a nifty device. Pity it costs as much as it does.
I realize you were making a joke but it reminded me of something that I think a lot of people around here will find interesting and intriguing. Check out the briQ. It's an entire PowerPC-based computer that has been squeezed into a 5.25" chassis (the size of an optical drive). So, while you can't have a Mac (per se) in your PC, you can have a computer that can run Mac OS. How freaky is that?
And for those who haven't figured the XP part out, X = Xmodem and P = Punter, the two most widely used download protocols at the time.
So, dig your 64 out of your closet and have some fun.
When Apple released its first Panther beta, I was disappointed to discover that Chess was not included. However, Xcode was so I went to Apple, downloaded the source for Chess and had it up and running in under 5 minutes without reading any documentation (guilty). Suffice it to say, I was quite impressed with Xcode but that's another story. This is news, old news.
I've worked with the X68000 and they are/were very cool and quite advanced for their time. Trying to compare different platforms is ultimately pointless so I won't say it was more advanced than the Amiga or Atari ST but it certainly was a peer and shouldn't be overlooked.
I'm all for mice with breasts if only because it would be somewhat less disturbing than this. (And no, that isn't a gag photo. Scientists are a strange bunch of monkeys.)
I've been meaning to thank him for his object code converter. I just never thought today would be that day.
Let me get this straight. We've got ATX, Extended ATX, FlexATX, WATX, Mini ATX, microATX and now Nano-ITX? How is anyone suppose to keep this straight? What a pain in the atx. I will say this, these boards are getting pretty small. The article gave the dimensions as 3.7 inches by 5.9 inches by 6.3 inches. Nanode must have invented a debigulator.
I'm not suggesting anyone attempt this but I am curious if such a thing is possible.
You're joking but I can't help but point out what a bad idea it is to arbitrarily assign high values to shares. As soon as you formally declare that value of a share, even if you pulled the number out of your ear, the IRS will expect you to pay taxes on the capital gain resulting in a nasty surprise. The IRS, unlike Slashdot readers, have no sense of humour.
Rather than generating and then trying to store the power, have you considered selling it to your local utility? This would offset the cost of having to buy energy to run the air conditioner when it is required. Most of the time it won't be because, presumably, you'll need your air conditioner most when the sun is out. Perhaps I don't fully understand the question as it seems to me that you're over-engineering the problem.
"It doesn't matter."
I realize it sounds trite but these days, it's true. They can buy pretty much any new computer they can find and it's perfectly capable of doing what they want to do because, in truth, what they want to do rarely requires a state of the art machine. To simplify things further is the fact that comptuers are getting cheaper and you are getting way more for your money. Buying a new computer isn't the financial hardship it once was.
My mother doesn't care what kind of CPU is in her computer or how fast it is. She just wants to send email to her grandkids and play bridge and she can do that quite happily on a computer she can pick up at Wal*Mart for a few hundred bucks. Power to the people, indeed.
I use to have a guy that would describe everything on the screen for me so I wouldn't strain my eyes but the costs became prohibitive so I had to let him go. Now I have a guy in India doing it for a 1/10th the cost. It would be the perfect solution but the phone bills are killing me. Also, porn is not as stimulating.
First off, this place is for discussion and it is generally a good idea to counter opinions with your own rather than trying to censure people. Let moderators decide what is and isn't appropriate. That's what the system is for.
Secondly, it appears as if you've created multiple accounts so you can make posts supporting yourself without it appearing as if you're doing (even though it's patently obvious). If this is not the case, I find it to be a remarkable coincidence that three new users with almost consecutive IDs, you (761169), laggerzero (761187) and Light Serif (761190) all commented in the same thread right after one another. Further, those comments were the only ones those users ever made. Quite a coincidence indeed.
Last but not least, and please take this as a constructive suggestion and not an insult: Take a deep breath and try to relax. You're working yourself into a lather unnecessarily and in the process, making yourself look a tad silly. Remember, this isn't a popularity contest. It's just Slashdot.
Rather than overclocking the 68000, he should consider upgrading the CPU. The Motorola 68010 is both pin and insstruction compatible and it has a slightly higher range of operational clock speeds. Way back in the day (I've always wanted to say that!) I upgrade dozens of Amiga 1000s without a problem. And yes, the upgrade was, for all intents and purposes, useless. I would tell people that and they would still want the upgrade so I let commerce take its natural course.
I can see the police report now: "Perpetrator entered the victim's home at which time he was impaled by a 'Master Sword'. Victim claimed he thought perpetrator was a 'boss' and was hoping his death would result in the release of someone named 'Zelda'. Further investigation required. Psychiatric evaluation of victim strongly recommended."
I saw the scrolling messages this weekend (on Spike, I love Powerblock TV) and I'm in Canada using Rogers Cable. I presume that means Viacom is overlaying the message on their 'base' signal. I wonder if anyone using a service other than DishNetwork seen the messages...
From the lemonade-stands-are-so-blaze dept.
For what it's worth, my first thought was also that they should start a lemonade stand but then I realized they would have to compete with all the IT people that were "surplused" when their jobs went overseas.
Semi-OT. I just saw Lou Dobbs tear Mark Andreessen about his company exporting jobs to India. Ouch.
I've admined corporate networks with between five hundred and a thousand clients and admined ISPs with five times as many so yeah, I've dealt with end users. It was my experience that you can either marvel at their stupidity and bang your head on your desk or marvel at their stupidity, try to help and educate them and then bang your head on your desk. I found the latter gave me the always heartwarming excuse, "I tried."
At any rate, I think that perhaps you've missed my point. You can't prevent all bad things from happening but by putting a block in place which causes people to pause and reflect, you _may_ aid them in helping themselves. This is why we have railings on stair cases, seatbelt warning lights in cars etc. I should also add that my suggestion does not in any way prevent an admin from also implementing some kind of server-side virus protection. The more protection, the merrier.
As for users just opening things in their browser which are configured to execute anything executable they come across, what's to stop the same script from changing .exe to .xex with a note telling users that in order to execute the program they will have to manually change it back?
Granted, you can't prevent a determinedly stupid person from being themselves but you can try to help those waivering on the edge. You also have to try to stay one step ahead of stupid because, contradictory to Darwin's teachings, stupid is evolving at a terrifying rate.
If it's a picture or a word document from a friend or colleague then they'll probably end up viewing it in their browser and if it's a binary, provided it came from a trusted source, they can download it (make sure to give them an option to delete it if they'll feel it isn't benign). If it's something they don't recognize and/or from someone they don't recognize, they're going to be a bit more cautious. The idea is that the extra step prevents people who open all attachements without thinking or, worse yet, run email clients which allow attachments to rape their computer without their knowing, from harming themselves.
If anyone complains, tell them this is the email version of "Are you sure you want to delete that file?" -- it's a pause that forces reflection that may end up saving them grief. They'll learn to live with the added step and eventually, they'll be glad it's there to protect them.
Their influence was sufficiently strong enough to result in a Help key being added to an otherwise sparse Amiga 1000 keyboard (see it there above the cursor keys). Oddly, it was the only key I never used on my Amiga keyboard so I wrote a program to pop up a full screen graphic that said, "Don't Panic!" when it was pressed. Completely useless but it gave me no end of amusement. Kind of like my first girlfriend...
I was thinking about that the other day. Then I got to wondering how much CPU-time I was spending on spam filtering which led to my thinking about how much electricity I was using to filter spam. Then I started to think about all the electricity being used by computers moving the mail and routers between network points and so on. It didn't take long before my mind boggled.
Spam is often touted as being better than physical junk mail as it doesn't use all that paper. There are however, other costs. All that electricity has to be generated and that can't be good for the enviroment.
The next time someone says spam is a hassle but doesn't really cost them anything, remind them what went into getting that spam to them.