Ancient?! I just went from a ca. 2006 2Ghz Core2Duo to a 1.7Ghz i3 a few months back. I don't game or do anything particularly CPU-intensive, so I wasn't expecting big changes, but DAMN! I had no idea. I think the drastically improved memory bandwidth really shows, particularly in Chrome. These are both 4GB machines with an SSD too. Anyway, the i3 was really excellent bang/buck. No regrets.
The most infuriating thing lately is the inability to turn off scroll wheel acceleration on my Logitech trackball. 3 clicks never does the same thing twice.
My '07 MacBook still runs 10.6.8. I tried 10.7 when it came out and went back after about a month. They took out things I liked (PPC emulation, proper Spaces), and put in stuff I didn't like or need. That trend has continued through present day. (Twitter/FB integration in the OS?? Come. On!) IMO, 10.6.8 was the last "pure" version of OSX.
My HTPC is also on Windows 7. It is rock-solid. Setting up a reliable HTPC that can aggregate and play from multiple disparate sources is practically an artform. I feel like I'm messing with a Jenga tower if I so much as have to change a driver.
I only update my Android phone if the new version has been proven to not make things worse, or at least fixes some bug that annoys me.
I could drive to work in under 20 minutes and use very little gas. But my job subsidizes my public transit 100% and parking downtown costs an arm and a leg. So I use the hell out of public transit. I walk 20 minutes to the train stop and ride for 10. The walk is great exercise. All in all, I would be a fool not to use public transit.
Fortunately I live in one of the few US cities that really does it well (Portland, OR), and it's intimidating at first but you soon realize that all of the horror stories you hear from people that have driven all their lives are grossly exaggerated. You'd think the train would be full of people being stabbed and vomited on, and sketchy guys carrying TV's that they just stole from that affluent neighborhood they just opened a new stop near. No. It's mostly just tired people going to or from work, 80% of them with their faces buried in their phones. A few tourists. Some teenagers on their way to the park or the mall. Every now and then there will be a stinky guy or a loud phone talker or a screaming baby, or some guy (illegally) trying to sell you incense sticks. That's about the extent of it, and if it's too crowded, most of the time you can wait for the next one and it will be near empty.
At my previous two jobs I drove every day and eschewed public transit. Here it's gotten so that I actually dread the day I have to commute by car again and feel sorry for the people that have to. The next time I move, proximity to public transit will be very high on my list, probably above access to fast broadband.
This blew my mind. I always thought that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury were basically just two sides of the same coin (so to speak). That somehow value could be extracted from the exchange of money between the two is completely non-intuitive.
Ha. I did something similar on my C64. Made a battery backed 8K RAM cartridge mapped to the Autorun vector that would load some BASIC extension commands when I powered it up. I never had to LOAD "$",8 again for a directory listing. Native DIR, DELETE, and RENAME commands FTW!
When I was a teenager back in the 80's, I was into computers, electronics, and blowin' shit up. In the summers my cousin and I would sit at his mom's kitchen table and cut up packs of firecrackers for the powder. We'd then "supercharge" weaksauce firecrackers and large bottle rockets. Long story short, we eventually started making ones powerful enough that we were afraid to get close enough to light them because of the potential for shrapnel (We were also doing stuff like seeing how high we could make a bucket or a dog dish fly.) before we could achieve cover. I was also playing with model rocketry at this time and realized that we could probably use model rocket igniters instead of fuses. My cousin mused about being able to do it by remote control and that got the gears turning. I had an old Radio Shack remote controlled car that was broken some way or another. So I worked out a way to use a relay and a size-J camera battery to provide the current necessary to fire the igniter. Packed it all in one of those Radio Shack project boxes with a power switch and an alligator clip pigtail. We'd hook up the firework and go back to the other end of the cable and hook up the detonator and "arm" it. Then we'd go behind the stairs or sometimes even INSIDE, push the right turn lever and *BOOM*. A small crater and a dog dish 30 feet into the air. Good times.
Lately the most adventurous thing I've done was to [heavily] modify a Commodore A520 RF modulator for component output so I could hook my old Amiga 1200 to a modern TV.
Yes, I think only looking at public posts skews the results. The G+ customer is more likely to be there for the purpose of fine tuning their audience, both incoming and outgoing. I know that only maybe one in 10 of my posts is done as public. People who want to spray their thoughts and opinions at the widest possible audience gravitate toward... the widest possible audience!
If you want a bullhorn you go to Twitter, because that's not really what G+ is about. G+ is about friends and interest-communities, news with decent media embedding, and just generally having a much better S/N ratio than Facebook or Twitter.
I thought the 21 year old drinking law was leveraged on states by the threat of withholding federal highway funds from any state that didn't raise their drinking age. IIRC, they did the same thing with the 55mph speed limit back in the 70's.
If you're stuck on Comcast, look into "Digital Economy". It's many of these channels, plus locals, but no sports. Dish also offered something similar over satellite called "Welcome Pack".
Both of these are "secret menu" options that you have to call and specifically ask for.
Paddle controller games are pretty much un-emulatable unless somebody has come up with a Atari->USB interface that can handle paddle controllers and actually be compatible with emulators.
I use Dropbox's free service but they've never made a dime from me because they have no middle tier. I'd happily pay $5/mo for 35-50GB, but $10 for 100GB is too much for too much.
This! I don't mind an ad to pay for the video, but the ad should never be longer (or even more than half as long) as the video. Also if the video itself is an advertisement, like a movie trailer, then that is just egregious.
Hmmm... I agree with you about segmentation, but think that adding an octet or two to IP4 would be vastly preferable to the unreadable, unmemorizable, mess that is IP6 that makes us slaves to domain name servers. So make it a non-lethal shot, please!
I remember learning x86 assembly after knowing 6502, 68000, and 68HC11 and wondering what it was the Intel engineers were smoking when they came up with not just the addressing scheme, but little-endian (don't get me started), and destination, source! More importantly, WHY that became the most popular architecture. It's like everything was upside-down and backwards of what I learned.
Though from what I've seen, ARM is little-endian and dest,src too, probably to appease people coming over from Intel.
I'd upvote you if I could. Calculus (and to a lesser extent, C) was what got me booted out of CS. I was dumbfounded at the time because I was a programming and electronics fiend my whole teenagerhood and figured I could take on the major, no-sweat. After failing Calc-2 no less than 5 times, I should have gotten the hint. Fortunately, I had a friend who was a major in Computer Engineering Technology -- basically embedded controls design and programming. Hardware design and programming the hardware in (mostly) assembly. And best of all, NO full-on Calc! There was a special sequence of applied math courses specifically for majors in the *ET family. I did well there. If only I had swallowed my pride earlier and admitted that there were things I just sucked at.
I learned later in life that my affinity for programming came from an aptitude for the synthesis of logic and _language_, not symbolism or numbers. My brain's just wired for one set of abstractions and not another. So be it.
Computer technology is a commonplace enough realm now for there to be a whole array of majors catering to all aptitudes and interests. Using generic CS as a metric has lost its accuracy. In fact, I think it's a major best reserved for purists who will eventually seek a more specific graduate degree or those who are knowingly undecided and will change to something more specific midway.
What was the rationale for making the IPV6 address space so huge in the first place? Seems like simply going to 40 or 48 bits would have been sufficient for decades if not longer.
First off, I have both CF and incandescent fixtures in the bathroom (wife likes more light for makeup). If I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I actually _prefer_ the CF warmup time so it's not so harsh going in there.
BUT: I've actually found myself leaving certain CF lights on continuously whereas I wouldn't have with incandescents, because the warmup time is such an inconvenience. No net savings there!
Slashdot Mirror
Specifically with CRT monitors, because there were physical LC time constants that had to be observed, lest you blow a horizontal output transistor.
How do you go back and find the tab you're looking for when they're all shrunk down to one letter wide?
Ancient?! I just went from a ca. 2006 2Ghz Core2Duo to a 1.7Ghz i3 a few months back. I don't game or do anything particularly CPU-intensive, so I wasn't expecting big changes, but DAMN! I had no idea. I think the drastically improved memory bandwidth really shows, particularly in Chrome. These are both 4GB machines with an SSD too. Anyway, the i3 was really excellent bang/buck. No regrets.
Precisely. All of it.
The most infuriating thing lately is the inability to turn off scroll wheel acceleration on my Logitech trackball. 3 clicks never does the same thing twice.
My '07 MacBook still runs 10.6.8. I tried 10.7 when it came out and went back after about a month. They took out things I liked (PPC emulation, proper Spaces), and put in stuff I didn't like or need. That trend has continued through present day. (Twitter/FB integration in the OS?? Come. On!) IMO, 10.6.8 was the last "pure" version of OSX.
My HTPC is also on Windows 7. It is rock-solid. Setting up a reliable HTPC that can aggregate and play from multiple disparate sources is practically an artform. I feel like I'm messing with a Jenga tower if I so much as have to change a driver.
I only update my Android phone if the new version has been proven to not make things worse, or at least fixes some bug that annoys me.
I could drive to work in under 20 minutes and use very little gas. But my job subsidizes my public transit 100% and parking downtown costs an arm and a leg. So I use the hell out of public transit. I walk 20 minutes to the train stop and ride for 10. The walk is great exercise. All in all, I would be a fool not to use public transit.
Fortunately I live in one of the few US cities that really does it well (Portland, OR), and it's intimidating at first but you soon realize that all of the horror stories you hear from people that have driven all their lives are grossly exaggerated. You'd think the train would be full of people being stabbed and vomited on, and sketchy guys carrying TV's that they just stole from that affluent neighborhood they just opened a new stop near. No. It's mostly just tired people going to or from work, 80% of them with their faces buried in their phones. A few tourists. Some teenagers on their way to the park or the mall. Every now and then there will be a stinky guy or a loud phone talker or a screaming baby, or some guy (illegally) trying to sell you incense sticks. That's about the extent of it, and if it's too crowded, most of the time you can wait for the next one and it will be near empty.
At my previous two jobs I drove every day and eschewed public transit. Here it's gotten so that I actually dread the day I have to commute by car again and feel sorry for the people that have to. The next time I move, proximity to public transit will be very high on my list, probably above access to fast broadband.
Was scrolling through to see if anyone else made this joke before I did.
+1, good sir.
The real question here is: when did "compute" go from being a verb to an adjective?
This blew my mind. I always thought that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury were basically just two sides of the same coin (so to speak).
That somehow value could be extracted from the exchange of money between the two is completely non-intuitive.
Ha. I did something similar on my C64. Made a battery backed 8K RAM cartridge mapped to the Autorun vector that would load some BASIC extension commands when I powered it up. I never had to LOAD "$",8 again for a directory listing. Native DIR, DELETE, and RENAME commands FTW!
When I was a teenager back in the 80's, I was into computers, electronics, and blowin' shit up. In the summers my cousin and I would sit at his mom's kitchen table and cut up packs of firecrackers for the powder. We'd then "supercharge" weaksauce firecrackers and large bottle rockets. Long story short, we eventually started making ones powerful enough that we were afraid to get close enough to light them because of the potential for shrapnel (We were also doing stuff like seeing how high we could make a bucket or a dog dish fly.) before we could achieve cover. I was also playing with model rocketry at this time and realized that we could probably use model rocket igniters instead of fuses. My cousin mused about being able to do it by remote control and that got the gears turning. I had an old Radio Shack remote controlled car that was broken some way or another. So I worked out a way to use a relay and a size-J camera battery to provide the current necessary to fire the igniter. Packed it all in one of those Radio Shack project boxes with a power switch and an alligator clip pigtail. We'd hook up the firework and go back to the other end of the cable and hook up the detonator and "arm" it. Then we'd go behind the stairs or sometimes even INSIDE, push the right turn lever and *BOOM*. A small crater and a dog dish 30 feet into the air. Good times.
Lately the most adventurous thing I've done was to [heavily] modify a Commodore A520 RF modulator for component output so I could hook my old Amiga 1200 to a modern TV.
Yes, I think only looking at public posts skews the results. The G+ customer is more likely to be there for the purpose of fine tuning their audience, both incoming and outgoing. I know that only maybe one in 10 of my posts is done as public. People who want to spray their thoughts and opinions at the widest possible audience gravitate toward... the widest possible audience!
If you want a bullhorn you go to Twitter, because that's not really what G+ is about. G+ is about friends and interest-communities, news with decent media embedding, and just generally having a much better S/N ratio than Facebook or Twitter.
I thought the 21 year old drinking law was leveraged on states by the threat of withholding federal highway funds from any state that didn't raise their drinking age. IIRC, they did the same thing with the 55mph speed limit back in the 70's.
If you're stuck on Comcast, look into "Digital Economy". It's many of these channels, plus locals, but no sports.
Dish also offered something similar over satellite called "Welcome Pack".
Both of these are "secret menu" options that you have to call and specifically ask for.
What's wrong with Frodo? Granted, I only play H.E.R.O. on it, but it works well.
Paddle controller games are pretty much un-emulatable unless somebody has come up with a Atari->USB interface that can handle paddle controllers and actually be compatible with emulators.
I use Dropbox's free service but they've never made a dime from me because they have no middle tier. I'd happily pay $5/mo for 35-50GB, but $10 for 100GB is too much for too much.
This! I don't mind an ad to pay for the video, but the ad should never be longer (or even more than half as long) as the video. Also if the video itself is an advertisement, like a movie trailer, then that is just egregious.
Also, overlays are evil anywhere at any time.
Hmmm... I agree with you about segmentation, but think that adding an octet or two to IP4 would be vastly preferable to the unreadable, unmemorizable, mess that is IP6 that makes us slaves to domain name servers. So make it a non-lethal shot, please!
+1, sir, would that I could!
I remember learning x86 assembly after knowing 6502, 68000, and 68HC11 and wondering what it was the Intel engineers were smoking when they came up with not just the addressing scheme, but little-endian (don't get me started), and destination, source! More importantly, WHY that became the most popular architecture. It's like everything was upside-down and backwards of what I learned.
Though from what I've seen, ARM is little-endian and dest,src too, probably to appease people coming over from Intel.
I'd upvote you if I could. Calculus (and to a lesser extent, C) was what got me booted out of CS. I was dumbfounded at the time because I was a programming and electronics fiend my whole teenagerhood and figured I could take on the major, no-sweat. After failing Calc-2 no less than 5 times, I should have gotten the hint. Fortunately, I had a friend who was a major in Computer Engineering Technology -- basically embedded controls design and programming. Hardware design and programming the hardware in (mostly) assembly. And best of all, NO full-on Calc! There was a special sequence of applied math courses specifically for majors in the *ET family. I did well there. If only I had swallowed my pride earlier and admitted that there were things I just sucked at.
I learned later in life that my affinity for programming came from an aptitude for the synthesis of logic and _language_, not symbolism or numbers. My brain's just wired for one set of abstractions and not another. So be it.
Computer technology is a commonplace enough realm now for there to be a whole array of majors catering to all aptitudes and interests. Using generic CS as a metric has lost its accuracy. In fact, I think it's a major best reserved for purists who will eventually seek a more specific graduate degree or those who are knowingly undecided and will change to something more specific midway.
What was the rationale for making the IPV6 address space so huge in the first place? Seems like simply going to 40 or 48 bits would have been sufficient for decades if not longer.
Let the "Uranus" wisecracks commence.
Wow. I haven't watched ABC since V either. It's pretty much a wasteland, not that V was Shakespeare or anything, but it was pleasant enough.
First off, I have both CF and incandescent fixtures in the bathroom (wife likes more light for makeup). If I wake up in the middle of the night to pee, I actually _prefer_ the CF warmup time so it's not so harsh going in there.
BUT: I've actually found myself leaving certain CF lights on continuously whereas I wouldn't have with incandescents, because the warmup time is such an inconvenience. No net savings there!