Indeed. I had a chance to listen to Sirius for a few hours. I thought the point of satellite radio was uninterrupted music, right? Well, the stupid DJs came on after every other song and babbled away just to listen to the sound of their own voice. I found myself frequently changing stations to get away from the stupid DJs and get back to some music.
If I have to be a button-pusher, I might as well listen to terrestrial FM.
Was the game 'Trantor'? Picked it up from the $5 bin years ago, it came in a big box that was empty except for a naked 5.25" floppy that wasn't even in a sleeve. Impossibly difficult to survive for more than about 30 seconds, as I recall it didn't have a 'quit' option.
that's why the silver back on a glass mirror is so reflective, is very flat and conductive
Actually, a glass mirror is a poor example. Ever look at a reflection within a reflection etc in a glass mirror? Eventually goes dark because the light is passing through the imperfectly clear glass and then back through it again on each reflection.
On the other hand, a reflector telescope with a thin (few molecules) layer of aluminum on *top* of the mirror has some crazy 99.9% reflectivity (sorry, too lazy to google the exact number). So yeah, some types of mirrors do pretty good.
Kayaks? I wasn't aware HP was still making those (or maybe you're just commenting on 4-year-old PCs;) ). However we still have a bunch of Kayaks around that are probably more than 5 years old now, and none of them ever seem to die. They have been running nonstop 24/7/365 (except for power outages) since sometime before 2002.
I agree about the home consumer vs. business computer sentiment. HP's "workstation" XW line (particularly the XW8000) are quite nice... if expensive.
While rejecting HTML email is rather extreme and not really viable for a business, I think a better solution would be to text-ify the HTML at the mail server, such as with the PHP striptags() function. Another option would be to drop HTML type MIME attachments, as most (but not all) senders also include a plaintext version of the email that you could still read.
That way you can still see the content, yet not annoy the sender. Should be pretty easy with Sendmail and a Procmail rule. It would break PGP S/MIME, though, since you're "tampering" with the email body.
Can't believe I didn't see this one listed for anyone!
Amen! The other thing I love is that it runs on low-end hardware, so it's real easy to cobble together some old PIIs, a 10Mb hub, and have a LAN party.
That and the fact that "spawns" or multiplayer-only installs allow multiple people to legally play off one copy of the game... Starcraft rocks.
You mean, something like biodiesel? "Biodiesel functions in current diesel engines... Biodiesel can be distributed using today's infrastructure, and its use and production are increasing rapidly.... a gallon of biodiesel produces the effective energy of 2.25 gallons of ethanol"
Same here -- I run 2k both at work and at home. Tried XP at work for a time, but there were only a couple of minor UI improvements that I liked; otherwise, 2k seems 99% the same.
I won't be upgrading to XP/Vista unless there's some really great game or other app that I want, but won't run on 2k. In fact, that's the same -- and only -- reason I upgraded from 98.
I didn't say that you don't need any support -- I said that you wouldn't need support from *the authors*. Of course you should have an employee or a contractor that supports it.
You then decide on the risk of using software that IS NOT supported, and in many cases, the company who wrote it is 5-10 years out of business
On the other hand, any system that has run trouble-free for 5-10 years has established a track record for reliability and is unlikely to *need* support from the authors.
There's also that pesky inverse-square law to contend with.
Absolutely true, but usually obstructions are the limiting factor for ground-based communications. 1 to 2 watts (the GSM maximum) will go many, many miles in free space.
There are indeed distance limitations to GSM. Same problem with long runs of cable in Ethernet -- signals only travel at the speed of light, so there starts to be a lag between packet transmission and packet reception. IIRC, in GSM this limit is about 27 miles. When GSM was first deployed in Australia, some remote regions could get full signal, yet not maintain a call because the lag time was too great for the TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) timeslice to handle. In Ethernet this would be called a "late collision". A workaround was to cut cell tower capacity in half by doubling the TDMA timeslice, thus effectively doubling the range of the cell towers.
I think the main problem with phones at altititude is the farraday cage effect of the aluminum aircraft body. Signals can only exit via the windows, and at high altitude, your signals are going out horizontally instead of down to the ground and therefore the cell towers.
You and I have very different ideas about power. I drive a 1.6L, naturally aspirated diesel. 52HP at the crank and it's fast enough for me. When I want to go fast, that's what the motorcycle is for. As you alluded, it's all about the power-to-weight ratio.
Also, there are a number of diesel performance tuners. Even old 80s diesels can put over 150HP to the ground, see http://www.vwdiesel.net/phpBB/ (scroll down for English forums). Modern TDIs can do well over 200HP.
It's easy to do a cost-benefit analysis, calculating the number of miles you drive and finding out how much you save per year with diesel's better fuel economy in spite of its slightly higher fuel price. Then you compare that with the extra money you will spend on a diesel car, to see when you will break even and when you will start saving money with a diesel. I did it in an OpenOffice spreadsheet in about 10 minutes (and yes, my diesel is saving me money despite my low annual mileage).
All things taken into account, diesel is almost always cost effective for high mileage drivers. For the person who just needs a grocery-getter, diesel may be more expensive (unless you get an old diesel from the 80's to reduce your capital investment).
Are you really implying that the boss felt he had the right to order his workers to remove these "decorative" objects AND that the workers all acted like good little sheep and obeyed him?
Absolutely. A parking lot is private property, and the rights of the property owner trump any 1st, 2nd, or 4th amendment rights you have. That's why you can be fired for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt to work, you can be fired for carrying a self-defense tool at work, and your employer can have your desk/locker/you searched without a warrant.
Each time you enter private property, it's like entering a mini Communist Soviet Union. Check your rights at the door, please. If you don't like it, don't enter private property. Constitutional rights only protect you from the government, not private parties.
We can combine rsync and cp -al to create what appear to be multiple full backups of a filesystem without taking multiple disks' worth of space. Here's how, in a nutshell:
If the above commands are run once every day, then backup.0, backup.1, backup.2, and backup.3 will appear to each be a full backup of source_directory/ as it appeared today, yesterday, two days ago, and three days ago, respectively--complete, except that permissions and ownerships in old snapshots will get their most recent values. In reality, the extra storage will be equal to the current size of source_directory/ plus the total size of the changes over the last three days--exactly the same space that a full plus daily incremental backup with dump or tar would have taken.
Hundreds of VMWare virtual disks is one place compression comes in handy. Without compression you'd need a multi-terabyte array. With compression, you only need half a terabyte.
Another use is for backup servers, where storing hundreds of GB of data is important but speed is not (and you hate tapes).
Another use is when your server fills up and you don't have a budget for new hardware until the next quarter.
It all adds up to big hardware savings, and indeed is the only reason some of my servers -- sadly -- are Windows instead of Linux (which does not have a reliable on-the-fly-compression filesystem yet).
There is a short delay between hitting the switch and the light turning on.
Switch brands. I have some GE CFs that do this and it drives me nuts. The other brands (don't remember the names right now) I have come on just as fast as an incandescent.
You can find them in any number of colors, though granted most of them suck.
I don't know why so many people want yellow light. I actually prefer the white light (right up to 10,000K) that many CFs produce. Yeah it's different than sunlight, but that's not always a bad thing.
we haven't found CFLs to effectively last any longer than standard incandescent.
Hm, I wonder if its dirty power in your area -- I have some CFs going on 6 years now. I will admit that a small number of them do die after only a few months, but I chalk it up to manufacturing defects. The vast majority do last several years.
Slashdot Mirror
If I have to be a button-pusher, I might as well listen to terrestrial FM.
Just sayin'.
Was the game 'Trantor'? Picked it up from the $5 bin years ago, it came in a big box that was empty except for a naked 5.25" floppy that wasn't even in a sleeve. Impossibly difficult to survive for more than about 30 seconds, as I recall it didn't have a 'quit' option.
On the other hand, a reflector telescope with a thin (few molecules) layer of aluminum on *top* of the mirror has some crazy 99.9% reflectivity (sorry, too lazy to google the exact number). So yeah, some types of mirrors do pretty good.
Kayaks? I wasn't aware HP was still making those (or maybe you're just commenting on 4-year-old PCs ;) ). However we still have a bunch of Kayaks around that are probably more than 5 years old now, and none of them ever seem to die. They have been running nonstop 24/7/365 (except for power outages) since sometime before 2002.
I agree about the home consumer vs. business computer sentiment. HP's "workstation" XW line (particularly the XW8000) are quite nice... if expensive.
While rejecting HTML email is rather extreme and not really viable for a business, I think a better solution would be to text-ify the HTML at the mail server, such as with the PHP striptags() function. Another option would be to drop HTML type MIME attachments, as most (but not all) senders also include a plaintext version of the email that you could still read.
That way you can still see the content, yet not annoy the sender. Should be pretty easy with Sendmail and a Procmail rule. It would break PGP S/MIME, though, since you're "tampering" with the email body.
That and the fact that "spawns" or multiplayer-only installs allow multiple people to legally play off one copy of the game... Starcraft rocks.
Same here -- I run 2k both at work and at home. Tried XP at work for a time, but there were only a couple of minor UI improvements that I liked; otherwise, 2k seems 99% the same.
I won't be upgrading to XP/Vista unless there's some really great game or other app that I want, but won't run on 2k. In fact, that's the same -- and only -- reason I upgraded from 98.
I didn't say that you don't need any support -- I said that you wouldn't need support from *the authors*. Of course you should have an employee or a contractor that supports it.
There are indeed distance limitations to GSM. Same problem with long runs of cable in Ethernet -- signals only travel at the speed of light, so there starts to be a lag between packet transmission and packet reception. IIRC, in GSM this limit is about 27 miles. When GSM was first deployed in Australia, some remote regions could get full signal, yet not maintain a call because the lag time was too great for the TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) timeslice to handle. In Ethernet this would be called a "late collision". A workaround was to cut cell tower capacity in half by doubling the TDMA timeslice, thus effectively doubling the range of the cell towers.
I think the main problem with phones at altititude is the farraday cage effect of the aluminum aircraft body. Signals can only exit via the windows, and at high altitude, your signals are going out horizontally instead of down to the ground and therefore the cell towers.
You and I have very different ideas about power. I drive a 1.6L, naturally aspirated diesel. 52HP at the crank and it's fast enough for me. When I want to go fast, that's what the motorcycle is for. As you alluded, it's all about the power-to-weight ratio.
Diesel sports cars are coming. Just give it a few years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_R10
Also, there are a number of diesel performance tuners. Even old 80s diesels can put over 150HP to the ground, see http://www.vwdiesel.net/phpBB/ (scroll down for English forums). Modern TDIs can do well over 200HP.
It's easy to do a cost-benefit analysis, calculating the number of miles you drive and finding out how much you save per year with diesel's better fuel economy in spite of its slightly higher fuel price. Then you compare that with the extra money you will spend on a diesel car, to see when you will break even and when you will start saving money with a diesel. I did it in an OpenOffice spreadsheet in about 10 minutes (and yes, my diesel is saving me money despite my low annual mileage).
All things taken into account, diesel is almost always cost effective for high mileage drivers. For the person who just needs a grocery-getter, diesel may be more expensive (unless you get an old diesel from the 80's to reduce your capital investment).
Each time you enter private property, it's like entering a mini Communist Soviet Union. Check your rights at the door, please. If you don't like it, don't enter private property. Constitutional rights only protect you from the government, not private parties.
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshot
Think bigger.
Hundreds of VMWare virtual disks is one place compression comes in handy. Without compression you'd need a multi-terabyte array. With compression, you only need half a terabyte.
Another use is for backup servers, where storing hundreds of GB of data is important but speed is not (and you hate tapes).
Another use is when your server fills up and you don't have a budget for new hardware until the next quarter.
It all adds up to big hardware savings, and indeed is the only reason some of my servers -- sadly -- are Windows instead of Linux (which does not have a reliable on-the-fly-compression filesystem yet).
Sigh.
I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_scarcity says it best. A related topic is also Technocracy, which makes for an interesting read, even if you think they're all a bunch of crackpots.
Hm, I wonder if its dirty power in your area -- I have some CFs going on 6 years now. I will admit that a small number of them do die after only a few months, but I chalk it up to manufacturing defects. The vast majority do last several years.