Has everyone forgotten that many browsers are set to spoof being IE?
When I was using Ibrowse on my Amiga, I had it set to spoof being IE, because if I didn't a lot of sites were set to not even show me the page. Yet, Ibrowse had no problem with the majority if those pages; it was just sheer (shear?) arrogance on the part of the webmasters to show a "download IE" link to non-IE browsers.
Yet somehow people look at the statistics based on what the browser reports to the website and think it means something.
Don't get me wrong; I'm sure IE does have a majority, I just don't think it's as high as reported.
...use a very thick pane of plastic (this won't work with touch screens, and if you can't figure out why I'm not going to explain it)...
There is more than one kind of touchscreen. I have a touchscreen monitor that has nothing special on the surface of the glass that can wear off, no it doesn't use IR. And if you can't figure out what it is I'm not going to explain it...
OK, I just can't troll, I'll explain it. It bounces ultrasonics across the glass. Your finger dampens it, and it detects where and how the soundwave was distorted.
Works with plastic too, and thick glass or plastic is better than thin.
And there are other types of touchscreens that can use thick plastic covers. QProx makes a good one.
http://www.qprox.com/
Be a shill? How about counteracting the shills giving positive reviews? Have you noticed that many of the positive reviews all sound like they were written by the same marketing person?
They read like the notes from a brainstorming session by the marketing department trying to decide on the best blurb for the book ad.
An example: "The middle school years are not always easy for pre-teens/teens, even those that appear to have it all. Katherine Tarbox was a 13 year old, eighth grade student in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. She was a nationally ranked swimmer, had excellent grades, and could have almost anything she wanted, except the attention of her workaholic mother and stepfather. She was lonely until she met "Mark" in a chat room on the internet."
Another: "Katie.com is a story of a teen named Katherine Tarbox going through true hardship. With swim meets everyday, no friends, and workaholic parents, Katie had no one to share her deepest thoughts and feelings with. However, "Mark" her 23-year-old online buddy was some how able to penetrate her mind, and understood her situation that everyone else didn't seem to notice."
Yet another: "When Katie Tarbox decided to chat with a stranger online, she did not realize the dangers. Katie met a 23 year old man named Mark, who seemed to love and care for her unlike any other guy had. Only after chatting and talking to Mark on the phone, Katie began to put her trust in Mark and even shared all of her problems with him, not knowing that he too was a big problem."
A lot of the positive reviews seem to be these market-speak things, most of the rest look like someone made it a class assignment to read and review the book.
Dave Bodger's Lazer Tag info. One of the first homebrew systems, compatible with the old Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag and Tiger Electronic Survivor Shot, with tons of options: http://www.cix.co.uk/~lasertag/lasertag.htm
Upgrading WoW guns and sensors by Public John aka Lazerbait- Faster rate of fire, linking gun to sensor, autofire, etc. by Public John of the Seattle Laser Tag group: http://members.aol.com/publicjohn/index.html
WoW/ESS signal format from Steradian- Helpful info on the signal format and frequency of WoW Lazer Tag/Survivor Shot guns and sensors. http://www.steradiantech.com/lasers/tech.html
I'm personally working on better sensor heads. 99.9% of the homebrew gear uses the Vishay remote control receiver modules, and their performance in sunlight is terrible. I am also thinking of building a system that is compatible with Survivor Shot while still supporting other options like shooter ID.
And as far as using real lasers- bad idea! Laser pointers are -not- eye safe. In fact the current crop of Class IIIa pointers are rated as a potential hazard from a -single- exposure. Even the older Class II/IIa are considered
"Laser Pointers Pose Risk For Children Following two reports of eye injuries from children's misuse of hand-held laser pointers, FDA warned parents and school officials about the risk.
Laser pointers are generally safe when used as intended by teachers and lecturers to highlight areas on a chart or screen. However, price reductions have led to wider marketing, and FDA is concerned about promotion and use of the products as children's toys.
Light energy from a laser pointer aimed into the eye can be more damaging than staring directly into the sun. Federal law requires a warning on the product label about this potential hazard from lasers. Momentary exposure, as from an inadvertent sweep of the light across a person's eyes, causes only temporary flash blindness. But even this can be dangerous to someone who is driving or performing some other activity for which vision is critical."
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/departs/1998/298_upd.htm l
"(6) Class IIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table I, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A of paragraph (d) of this section. \2-
\2\ Class IIa levels of laser radiation are not considered to be hazardous if viewed for any period of time less than or equal to 1x10\3\ seconds but are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard for any period of time greater than 1x10\3\ seconds. -
(7) Class II laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II of paragraph (d) of this section. \3-
\3\ Class II levels of laser radiation are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard."
10^3 seconds is just shy of 17 minutes. Add two Class II or IIa pointers together (a visible and an IR) and it's into Class III territory.
More:
"Class 2 lasers are low power visible (400- to 700-nm wavelength) lasers and laser systems which cannot emit radiation in excess of the AEL based on a 0.25 second exposure."
http://www.navylasersafety.com/faq/technical.htm
Note the warnings about them being a chronic exposure hazard.
And in the end, something going wrong with a laser pointer can potentially cause it to put out hazardous levels.... further info.... Bad turns to worse, I noticed that all the current laser pointers are class IIIa!
"(8) Class IIIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table III-A of paragraph (d) of this section. \4-
\4\ Class IIIa levels of laser radiation are considered to be, depending upon the irradiance, either an acute intrabeam viewing hazard or chronic viewing hazard, and an acute viewing hazard if viewed directly with optical instruments."
So the new Class IIIa laser pointers can potentially cause spot blindness from one exposure!
Looks like Apple's homepage? No more than a thousand other sites using the file folder look. I had a personal website long ago that used that look. So what?
The color scheme is different, placement of everything is different, and that reflective bubble look is done to death in everything. So what?
And more directly on topic: Didn't Apple already lose a "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft long, long ago?
Why do so many miss the point? There were more OS's and computer makers than IBM, Microsoft, and Mac.
Jean Lou Gasse (sp?) was Vice Pres of Sales for Apple when the Amiga 1000 came out. He later went on to start Be, Inc. In an interview in Amazing Computing, he said that when the Amiga came out, Apple was stunned and expected to be out of business within a year. The policy instituted was that no one at Apple was -ever- to allow the word "Amiga" to pass through their lips, that they were to avoid any comparisons from being drawn as they knew they could not win.
He went on to say that after a few years, they relaxed as Commodore had turned out to be marketing buffoons. It didn't help when Irving Gould pushed Jack Tramiel out and Irving Gould and Medhi Ali proceeded to gut the company to line their own pockets. If it happened now, it'd be in the news as Enron and Tyco are.
I feel you are missing the point. If MS had not driven so many companies out of existence by predatory practices and market placement, perhaps something else would have risen by technical merit.
Commodore were marketing idiots, but the Amiga OS was a brilliant piece of work, good enough that Amiga from A1000 to A4000 were used by JPL for years when launching rockets. An Amiga 1000 was tested with the killer business app of the time, a spreadsheet, and compared against the then-current IBM PC with MSDOS and blew it out of the water. The Amiga 3000 was listed as Best Buy of the year it came out by Consumer Reports (in spite of the existence of MS Windows). OS/2 (where does that / go?) was a brilliant piece of work, better than MS W3.1 and argueably better than MS W95. PC DOS and DR DOS were argueably better than MS DOS.
When MS Windows 95 came out, it was obvious to me that it was spurred by the Amiga OS. You can't tell me that MS didn't know about the Amiga, as they wrote Amiga Basic (and screwed it up), Microsoft Press published a gusher of a book about the Amiga 1000, Microsoft used Amiga Video Toasters to produce in-house videos, and when Commodore went bankrupt, most of the Amiga developers I knew were quickly recruited by Microsoft to become Windows developers.
You can't just compare MS Windows with what is left on the market now. The subject is "What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft", not "What Will The World Be Like Without Microsoft".
There is a good chance that IBM clones would have never happened, as it was uncharacteristic of IBM to allow that loophole that allowed Microsoft to sell MS DOS to anyone else. And those Beemer Clones was what allowed the explosion of Wintel clones later. While Linux may or may not exist, development of Macs and Amigas were -not- caused by the existence of Microsoft. I hardly see how Microsoft could be the stick when even by their own words they do not innovate.
> Personally I use windows because I choose to. > Why? Better hardware support, apps I don't > want to do without and the occasional game.
You are missing the point. You only have a very few choices of OS and software -because- of MS's predatory market practices. Saying you use MS Windows because it has the best support... well, it has the best (3rd party) support because most people use it. Most people use it because it has the best support. It's still running in a circle.
I consider MS Windows to be "death of a thousand cuts" in that there are a thousand little things that don't work quite right. Why does my mouse get jerky and pause even in Windows 2000, 768M of RAM, 1.2GHz? Would you pick an OS that makes the mouse stop working just because it's downloading a virus update? Or an OS that -requires- virtual memory useage, no matter how much RAM is installed? But due to -market- dominance, not technical merit, I'm forced to use MS Windows.
I know I'm probably going to get bashed for being another Amiga fanatic: On my 50MHz Amiga 3000 with 128M of RAM, just to see if I could I had it rendering 4 separate 3D scenes at 2400x3000 each, printing to two printers at once (a color inkjet and a Fargo dye sub with no internal processor), surfing websites and reading my mail. Rendering the scenes took longer than usual as expected, but printing was no slower and the mouse pointer stayed smooth and typing did not pause.
None of those processes used virtual memory, just the printer buffer (of course) and the browser's cache.
Why can't I do that on a 1.2GHz 768M RAM MS Windows 2000 computer? Could it be the operating system isn't as good?
Oh, and didn't MS switch to a different crash screen with W95? I haven't seen any blue screens since then, but I -have- seen MS Windows lock up or become useless and require a reboot plenty of times.
Benefit of standards?? Until Open Office could crack their proprietary "standards", the only way to open MS's files were to buy MS Office. That's not a "standard", that is a proprietary format. It doesn't even guarantee opening the same on another version of MS Office, sometimes it looks different even opened in the same version of MS Office on another computer.
There are plenty of true standard file formats out there. Do you understand that MS's newsspeak "embrace and extend" means "make proprietary"?
Standards... you keep on using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
I think MS had a hand in leaking it. Why? Because this is W2K and WinNT4 code. So now admins and their bosses will run in a panic to upgrade to WindowsXP.
And the first hack published? Only works in IE 5. Gee. So the fix is to upgrade to IE 6. Another upgrade.
The parent "Windows shouldn't be allowed as a trademark anyway" should be modded up as Informative.
Even Microsoft referred to "windowed operating systems" in the past. Windows was and is a generic term for a style of operating system that others did first, and others did better.
There were suspicious circumstances surrounding MS gaining a trademark on the word "Windows". Borland was paid off and the judge in the case reversed his decision to deny the trademark WITHOUT COMMENT! That's unheard of!
That post by Amix is much more informative than the one about Xircom par port Ethernet. There are no Amiga drivers for the Xircom par port ethernet boxes, I wish there were!
Windows is the death of a thousand cuts and requires trememdous hardware specs.
Amiga really multitasks and does it in barely anything, especially by todays standards.
I would like to see Mozilla ported to the Amiga OS for quite a few reasons.
That's my opinion in a nutshell.
Two button mice? MS Windows computers may have had 2 button mice attached to them for a long time, but it was only in W95 when the 2nd button actually -did- something for most people.
Yes, I know, even back in bad-old MSDOS there were professionals using all the mouse buttons in CAD programs and the like, but everyone else didn't start using the right mouse button 'til W95 and even then it took a while for people to get used to it.
On the other hand, Amiga computers used both mouse buttons from day 1, from the release of the Amiga 1000 in 1985. 3 button mice became quite common, with the middle button assigned by the user as needed.
Now it's gotten ridiculous and I've seen mice for MS Windows that have 5 or 6 buttons.
But what does this have to do with anything?
If MS copied everyone else and then won market share based on doing it better than everyone else, we'd all cheer. But they don't - First they say it isn't important, then they do a poor job of copying late in the game, and then act like they did it first. GUI, true multitasking, etc and more etc.
I agree with you about Macs and outside ideas.
Started a digital photography business using an Amiga 3000. With a 68060 at 50MHz and 128MB of RAM, it blew away Windows computers. Wasn't until my Windows computer was up to 450MHz that Windows started to feel faster. Yes, it was faster in raw CPU, 3D rendered faster but I couldn't do anything in Windows 95 or 98 while it was rendering.
I'm sure many will write this off as blowing smoke, but on my Amiga I could:
Load a 2400x3000 pixel image in ImageFX and start it printing to a Fargo Primera Pro (very CPU intensive, cannot pause or it ruins the print). Then -start- Real3D and set 3 separate scenes to rendering at high res. Then -start- my internet software, browser and email, read and send email and roam around the internet with 3 browser windows open.
The mouse pointer never stuck, not once, and the print did not pause and came out perfect. Only affect on printing was instead of 2 minutes to RIP it took 3 minutes. A friends Pentium 100, 128M ram, W95, took 20 to 40 minutes to RIP depending on the program and he literally could not so much as move the mouse or it would pause for several minutes before finally updating the mouse pointer. If that happened during the fixed 15 minute print time, a $3 print was ruined.
I could also print from ImageFX (it's a Photoshop-like program that is still commercially available) to an inkjet in color, while printing to a BW laser printer from PageStream (a DTP program still commercially available including versions for Windows, Mac, Amiga, and Linux). While on the internet, reading my mail and surfing sites, usually several browser windows open. Again, the mouse pointer did not get jerky, not once.
How is that insightful? The author obviously didn't get a humorous reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Re:Hurrah! WordPerfect's not Canadian-owned anymor
on
Corel Goes Private
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Word DOC format is not a standard. It is a proprietary format that requires you to own Windows to open them properly. Same with Wordperfect WPF files.
PDF, at least, has a free reader available. And isn't RTF an open standard? Somehow MS mucks that up, too, an RTF of the exact same text and formatting saved from Word is twice the file size as one saved from Final Writer from my Amiga. Hey, got in my obligatory "I miss my Amiga!" post!;') I am hoping when (crossing my fingers) the new PPC Amiga OS 4 comes out, the new Corel owners give some thought to coming out with Wordperfect for the Amiga again, and porting CorelDraw suite and Bryce over to it.
BEGIN RANT I get so sick of everyone sending me Word DOC files, assuming I have MS Word. The size is bloated, and loading across versions is buggy so even if I had Word installed I might not see it as intended if I don't have the same version as the sender. Oh, and let's not forget Viruses. Everything MS touches seems to be a Typhoid Mary. END RANT
Already been done, years ago, only for real
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Giant "Inkjet Printer"
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· Score: 3, Informative
Pixation came out with a -real- printer that can paint on walls, buildings, etc. using compressed air and any paint that you can put through an air paint sprayer. House paint, oil paint, anything.
Standard installation is 16 by 10 feet! It has 5 paint heads so you have black, white, cyan, magenta, and yellow. It is much cheaper than a wide format inkjet printer, and the ink costs -way- less than champagne!
OK, my birthday is coming up, who's going to pass 'round the office and get me one?;')
>Even in a classical sense, though, how about this: > if a rubber ball hits a wall and is reflected back > with exactly the same momentum as it had before it > hit, just in a different direction, it can't have > imparted any energy to the wall, because it is > carrying the same amount (relative to the wall) > that it was before. So if your reflected photons > are the same wavelength coming out as they are > going in, you can't gain any energy from them.
Yes, the rubber ball -has- imparted energy to the wall. Let's ignore the heat generated by the inelastic movement of the wall and the losses in the ball.
When you threw the ball, you and the earth moved backwards as you accelerated the ball and let it go. When the ball bounced off of the wall, the wall and the earth attached to it rebounded.
The movement of the earth due to this is so tiny there is no chance you'll ever notice it, but that doesn't make it any less real.
You are forgeting the conservation of momentum. If the ball bounces back it is reversing the direction of it's motion, so for the entire system to conserve momentum the wall and earth must gain momentum in the direction the ball was originally traveling.
It is pretty basic grade school physics.
As for the so-called physicist who claimed the solar sail wouldn't work, his science is flawed. If a particle system gives off a photon, the system rebounds from the direction the photon was emitted. If a particle system absorbes a photon, the system rebounds in the direction the photon was traveling when it as absorbed.
Is this not reflection, if an absorbed photon is emitted back in the direction whence it came? IANAP and I don't know if this is true.
As for a radiometer, I've always understood them to be in a less than perfect vacuum. Perhaps since the black side can both absorb and emit better than the reflective side, it is rebounding from the gas heated by it's surface. Radiation pressure would hardly seem sufficient on a one inch square surface.
As for the photon being unable to transfer energy since it goes away with the same energy- this is not true. The acceleration of the sail causes a tiny redshift in each reflected photon. So they do -not- leave with the same energy!
Slashdot Mirror
They've been doing this for many years. I recall Microsoft employees getting flushed out of Amiga forums many, many times.
:'/
Not that the Amiga community -needed- anyone to disrupt them...
Has everyone forgotten that many browsers are set to spoof being IE? When I was using Ibrowse on my Amiga, I had it set to spoof being IE, because if I didn't a lot of sites were set to not even show me the page. Yet, Ibrowse had no problem with the majority if those pages; it was just sheer (shear?) arrogance on the part of the webmasters to show a "download IE" link to non-IE browsers. Yet somehow people look at the statistics based on what the browser reports to the website and think it means something. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure IE does have a majority, I just don't think it's as high as reported.
And that the Amiga browsers have had full PNG support for a long, long time.
There is more than one kind of touchscreen. I have a touchscreen monitor that has nothing special on the surface of the glass that can wear off, no it doesn't use IR. And if you can't figure out what it is I'm not going to explain it...
OK, I just can't troll, I'll explain it. It bounces ultrasonics across the glass. Your finger dampens it, and it detects where and how the soundwave was distorted.
Works with plastic too, and thick glass or plastic is better than thin.
And there are other types of touchscreens that can use thick plastic covers. QProx makes a good one. http://www.qprox.com/
Be a shill? How about counteracting the shills giving positive reviews? Have you noticed that many of the positive reviews all sound like they were written by the same marketing person?
They read like the notes from a brainstorming session by the marketing department trying to decide on the best blurb for the book ad.
An example:
"The middle school years are not always easy for pre-teens/teens, even those that appear to have it all. Katherine Tarbox was a 13 year old, eighth grade student in New Canaan, Connecticut, one of the wealthiest towns in the United States. She was a nationally ranked swimmer, had excellent grades, and could have almost anything she wanted, except the attention of her workaholic mother and stepfather. She was lonely until she met "Mark" in a chat room on the internet."
Another:
"Katie.com is a story of a teen named Katherine Tarbox going through true hardship. With swim meets everyday, no friends, and workaholic parents, Katie had no one to share her deepest thoughts and feelings with. However, "Mark" her 23-year-old online buddy was some how able to penetrate her mind, and understood her situation that everyone else didn't seem to notice."
Yet another:
"When Katie Tarbox decided to chat with a stranger online, she did not realize the dangers. Katie met a 23 year old man named Mark, who seemed to love and care for her unlike any other guy had. Only after chatting and talking to Mark on the phone, Katie began to put her trust in Mark and even shared all of her problems with him, not knowing that he too was a big problem."
A lot of the positive reviews seem to be these market-speak things, most of the rest look like someone made it a class assignment to read and review the book.
How about some actual useful links? That should suprise the heck out of everyone. ;'P
The Lazer Tactical message board: http://members5.boardhost.com/lazertag/index.html
More technically oriented Laserforums: http://www.laserforums.com/forum
1 Source Laser Tag forums: http://blackbelt.novahq.net/forums/
1 Source Laser Tag website, home of FXonixs homebrew laser tag gear, classifieds, and loads of links: http://www.1sourcelasertag.com/
Miles Tag, a homebrew laser tag system in progress: http://lightbrain.8m.com/mtdesign.htm
Frag Tag, a homebrew laser tag system using the same protocols as Miles Tag: http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/fragtag/index.htm
Dave Bodger's Lazer Tag info. One of the first homebrew systems, compatible with the old Worlds of Wonder Lazer Tag and Tiger Electronic Survivor Shot, with tons of options: http://www.cix.co.uk/~lasertag/lasertag.htm
Tagcon Midwest- Stargate in King Arthur's Court: http://www.tagcon.org/mw/
Steradian Tech- pro laser tag gear, quite expensive: http://www.steradiantech.com/
Tag Tek- homebrew WoW/ESS compatible gear: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sparta/setup.htm
Fiat Lux ESS compatible kits- They don't sell outside the UK, but good reference site for the rest of us: http://www.fiat-lux.org.uk/
Lazer Skirmish- Commercial site, use for ideas and inspiration: http://www.laserskirmish.co.za/
The Complete Tagger- Hints and modifications, PDF file: http://img-srv.everestwebworks.com/w2/Pictures/My% 20Files/1022260.1/tct2.pdf
Upgrading WoW guns and sensors by Public John aka Lazerbait- Faster rate of fire, linking gun to sensor, autofire, etc. by Public John of the Seattle Laser Tag group: http://members.aol.com/publicjohn/index.html
Vishay Semiconductors- IR Receiver modules page. 36 to 56KHz: http://www.vishay.com/ir-receiver-modules/
Ward's Natural Science Lens page- Glass lenses, 38mm, various focal lengths. $1.50 each: http://wardsci.com/product.asp?pn=160433
WoW/ESS signal format from Steradian- Helpful info on the signal format and frequency of WoW Lazer Tag/Survivor Shot guns and sensors. http://www.steradiantech.com/lasers/tech.html
If you are anywhere near Seattle, WA, the Seattle Laser Tag Yahoogroup and website: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/seattlelaserta g/ http://www.seattlelasertag.com/
I'm personally working on better sensor heads. 99.9% of the homebrew gear uses the Vishay remote control receiver modules, and their performance in sunlight is terrible. I am also thinking of building a system that is compatible with Survivor Shot while still supporting other options like shooter ID.
And as far as using real lasers- bad idea! Laser pointers are -not- eye safe. In fact the current crop of Class IIIa pointers are rated as a potential hazard from a -single- exposure. Even the older Class II/IIa are considered
Real lasers are a really horrendously bad idea.
m l
c s/ cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?FR=1040.10
m
... further info .... Bad turns to worse, I noticed that all the current laser pointers are class IIIa!
Here's my stock answer:
"Laser Pointers Pose Risk For Children
Following two reports of eye injuries from children's misuse of hand-held laser pointers, FDA warned parents and school officials about the risk.
Laser pointers are generally safe when used as intended by teachers and lecturers to highlight areas on a chart or screen. However, price reductions have led to wider marketing, and FDA is concerned about promotion and use of the products as children's toys.
Light energy from a laser pointer aimed into the eye can be more damaging than staring directly into the sun. Federal law requires a warning on the product label about this potential hazard from lasers. Momentary exposure, as from an inadvertent sweep of the light across a person's eyes, causes only temporary flash blindness. But even this can be dangerous to someone who is driving or performing some other activity for which vision is critical."
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/departs/1998/298_upd.ht
"(6) Class IIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table I, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A of paragraph (d) of this section.
\2-
\2\ Class IIa levels of laser radiation are not considered to be hazardous if viewed for any period of time less than or equal to 1x10\3\ seconds but are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard for any period of time greater than 1x10\3\ seconds.
-
(7) Class II laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II-A, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II of paragraph (d) of this section.
\3-
\3\ Class II levels of laser radiation are considered to be a chronic viewing hazard."
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdo
10^3 seconds is just shy of 17 minutes. Add two Class II or IIa pointers together (a visible and an IR) and it's into Class III territory.
More:
"Class 2 lasers are low power visible (400- to 700-nm wavelength) lasers and laser systems which cannot emit radiation in excess of the AEL based on a 0.25 second exposure."
http://www.navylasersafety.com/faq/technical.ht
Note the warnings about them being a chronic exposure hazard.
And in the end, something going wrong with a laser pointer can potentially cause it to put out hazardous levels.
"(8) Class IIIa laser product means any laser product that permits human access during operation to levels of visible laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table II, but does not permit human access during operation to levels of laser radiation in excess of the accessible emission limits contained in table III-A of paragraph (d) of this section. \4-
\4\ Class IIIa levels of laser radiation are considered to be, depending upon the irradiance, either an acute intrabeam viewing hazard or chronic viewing hazard, and an acute viewing hazard if viewed directly with optical instruments."
So the new Class IIIa laser pointers can potentially cause spot blindness from one exposure!
I'd be more impressed if they could spell "defense" correctly. Not "defence". Or maybe they train people in the art of taking down fences? ;')
Looks like Apple's homepage? No more than a thousand other sites using the file folder look. I had a personal website long ago that used that look. So what?
The color scheme is different, placement of everything is different, and that reflective bubble look is done to death in everything. So what?
And more directly on topic: Didn't Apple already lose a "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft long, long ago?
I keep seeing people implying that a new Amiga is useless without Linux apps.
ImageFX is there for graphics, and has been there for years. It is supported and updated.
http://www.novadesign.com
Pagestream is there for DTP and has been in constant development since Amigas were new.
http://www.grasshopperllc.com/
There are several programs for simple word processing, multimedia presentations, database, spreadsheets, etc. and more etc.
Open source Linux apps have been ported to the Amiga before. But we really don't -need- them.
Why do so many miss the point? There were more OS's and computer makers than IBM, Microsoft, and Mac.
Jean Lou Gasse (sp?) was Vice Pres of Sales for Apple when the Amiga 1000 came out. He later went on to start Be, Inc. In an interview in Amazing Computing, he said that when the Amiga came out, Apple was stunned and expected to be out of business within a year. The policy instituted was that no one at Apple was -ever- to allow the word "Amiga" to pass through their lips, that they were to avoid any comparisons from being drawn as they knew they could not win.
He went on to say that after a few years, they relaxed as Commodore had turned out to be marketing buffoons. It didn't help when Irving Gould pushed Jack Tramiel out and Irving Gould and Medhi Ali proceeded to gut the company to line their own pockets. If it happened now, it'd be in the news as Enron and Tyco are.
I feel you are missing the point. If MS had not driven so many companies out of existence by predatory practices and market placement, perhaps something else would have risen by technical merit.
Commodore were marketing idiots, but the Amiga OS was a brilliant piece of work, good enough that Amiga from A1000 to A4000 were used by JPL for years when launching rockets. An Amiga 1000 was tested with the killer business app of the time, a spreadsheet, and compared against the then-current IBM PC with MSDOS and blew it out of the water. The Amiga 3000 was listed as Best Buy of the year it came out by Consumer Reports (in spite of the existence of MS Windows). OS/2 (where does that / go?) was a brilliant piece of work, better than MS W3.1 and argueably better than MS W95. PC DOS and DR DOS were argueably better than MS DOS.
When MS Windows 95 came out, it was obvious to me that it was spurred by the Amiga OS. You can't tell me that MS didn't know about the Amiga, as they wrote Amiga Basic (and screwed it up), Microsoft Press published a gusher of a book about the Amiga 1000, Microsoft used Amiga Video Toasters to produce in-house videos, and when Commodore went bankrupt, most of the Amiga developers I knew were quickly recruited by Microsoft to become Windows developers.
You can't just compare MS Windows with what is left on the market now. The subject is "What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft", not "What Will The World Be Like Without Microsoft".
There is a good chance that IBM clones would have never happened, as it was uncharacteristic of IBM to allow that loophole that allowed Microsoft to sell MS DOS to anyone else. And those Beemer Clones was what allowed the explosion of Wintel clones later. While Linux may or may not exist, development of Macs and Amigas were -not- caused by the existence of Microsoft. I hardly see how Microsoft could be the stick when even by their own words they do not innovate.
> Is Microsoft perhaps the stick?
Sounds like an apologist. Would you advise someone beaten by a parent that they were a better person for it, so it was OK?
"I am the wellspring from which you flow, for without me who would you be? When I am gone, it will be as if you had never been."
Isn't it time for Conan to chop off Microsoft's head?
What's karma?
> Personally I use windows because I choose to.
> Why? Better hardware support, apps I don't
> want to do without and the occasional game.
You are missing the point. You only have a very few choices of OS and software -because- of MS's predatory market practices. Saying you use MS Windows because it has the best support... well, it has the best (3rd party) support because most people use it. Most people use it because it has the best support. It's still running in a circle.
I consider MS Windows to be "death of a thousand cuts" in that there are a thousand little things that don't work quite right. Why does my mouse get jerky and pause even in Windows 2000, 768M of RAM, 1.2GHz? Would you pick an OS that makes the mouse stop working just because it's downloading a virus update? Or an OS that -requires- virtual memory useage, no matter how much RAM is installed? But due to -market- dominance, not technical merit, I'm forced to use MS Windows.
I know I'm probably going to get bashed for being another Amiga fanatic: On my 50MHz Amiga 3000 with 128M of RAM, just to see if I could I had it rendering 4 separate 3D scenes at 2400x3000 each, printing to two printers at once (a color inkjet and a Fargo dye sub with no internal processor), surfing websites and reading my mail. Rendering the scenes took longer than usual as expected, but printing was no slower and the mouse pointer stayed smooth and typing did not pause.
None of those processes used virtual memory, just the printer buffer (of course) and the browser's cache.
Why can't I do that on a 1.2GHz 768M RAM MS Windows 2000 computer? Could it be the operating system isn't as good?
Oh, and didn't MS switch to a different crash screen with W95? I haven't seen any blue screens since then, but I -have- seen MS Windows lock up or become useless and require a reboot plenty of times.
Benefit of standards?? Until Open Office could crack their proprietary "standards", the only way to open MS's files were to buy MS Office. That's not a "standard", that is a proprietary format. It doesn't even guarantee opening the same on another version of MS Office, sometimes it looks different even opened in the same version of MS Office on another computer.
There are plenty of true standard file formats out there. Do you understand that MS's newsspeak "embrace and extend" means "make proprietary"?
Standards... you keep on using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
I think MS had a hand in leaking it. Why? Because this is W2K and WinNT4 code. So now admins and their bosses will run in a panic to upgrade to WindowsXP.
And the first hack published? Only works in IE 5. Gee. So the fix is to upgrade to IE 6. Another upgrade.
I'm upgrading to Linux.
The parent "Windows shouldn't be allowed as a trademark anyway" should be modded up as Informative.
Even Microsoft referred to "windowed operating systems" in the past. Windows was and is a generic term for a style of operating system that others did first, and others did better.
There were suspicious circumstances surrounding MS gaining a trademark on the word "Windows". Borland was paid off and the judge in the case reversed his decision to deny the trademark WITHOUT COMMENT! That's unheard of!
That post by Amix is much more informative than the one about Xircom par port Ethernet. There are no Amiga drivers for the Xircom par port ethernet boxes, I wish there were! Windows is the death of a thousand cuts and requires trememdous hardware specs. Amiga really multitasks and does it in barely anything, especially by todays standards. I would like to see Mozilla ported to the Amiga OS for quite a few reasons. That's my opinion in a nutshell.
Two button mice? MS Windows computers may have had 2 button mice attached to them for a long time, but it was only in W95 when the 2nd button actually -did- something for most people. Yes, I know, even back in bad-old MSDOS there were professionals using all the mouse buttons in CAD programs and the like, but everyone else didn't start using the right mouse button 'til W95 and even then it took a while for people to get used to it. On the other hand, Amiga computers used both mouse buttons from day 1, from the release of the Amiga 1000 in 1985. 3 button mice became quite common, with the middle button assigned by the user as needed. Now it's gotten ridiculous and I've seen mice for MS Windows that have 5 or 6 buttons. But what does this have to do with anything? If MS copied everyone else and then won market share based on doing it better than everyone else, we'd all cheer. But they don't - First they say it isn't important, then they do a poor job of copying late in the game, and then act like they did it first. GUI, true multitasking, etc and more etc. I agree with you about Macs and outside ideas.
Said to be coming for decades, haven't seen it yet.
Started a digital photography business using an Amiga 3000. With a 68060 at 50MHz and 128MB of RAM, it blew away Windows computers. Wasn't until my Windows computer was up to 450MHz that Windows started to feel faster. Yes, it was faster in raw CPU, 3D rendered faster but I couldn't do anything in Windows 95 or 98 while it was rendering. I'm sure many will write this off as blowing smoke, but on my Amiga I could: Load a 2400x3000 pixel image in ImageFX and start it printing to a Fargo Primera Pro (very CPU intensive, cannot pause or it ruins the print). Then -start- Real3D and set 3 separate scenes to rendering at high res. Then -start- my internet software, browser and email, read and send email and roam around the internet with 3 browser windows open. The mouse pointer never stuck, not once, and the print did not pause and came out perfect. Only affect on printing was instead of 2 minutes to RIP it took 3 minutes. A friends Pentium 100, 128M ram, W95, took 20 to 40 minutes to RIP depending on the program and he literally could not so much as move the mouse or it would pause for several minutes before finally updating the mouse pointer. If that happened during the fixed 15 minute print time, a $3 print was ruined. I could also print from ImageFX (it's a Photoshop-like program that is still commercially available) to an inkjet in color, while printing to a BW laser printer from PageStream (a DTP program still commercially available including versions for Windows, Mac, Amiga, and Linux). While on the internet, reading my mail and surfing sites, usually several browser windows open. Again, the mouse pointer did not get jerky, not once.
How is that insightful? The author obviously didn't get a humorous reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Word DOC format is not a standard. It is a proprietary format that requires you to own Windows to open them properly. Same with Wordperfect WPF files.
;') I am hoping when (crossing my fingers) the new PPC Amiga OS 4 comes out, the new Corel owners give some thought to coming out with Wordperfect for the Amiga again, and porting CorelDraw suite and Bryce over to it.
PDF, at least, has a free reader available. And isn't RTF an open standard? Somehow MS mucks that up, too, an RTF of the exact same text and formatting saved from Word is twice the file size as one saved from Final Writer from my Amiga. Hey, got in my obligatory "I miss my Amiga!" post!
BEGIN RANT
I get so sick of everyone sending me Word DOC files, assuming I have MS Word. The size is bloated, and loading across versions is buggy so even if I had Word installed I might not see it as intended if I don't have the same version as the sender. Oh, and let's not forget Viruses. Everything MS touches seems to be a Typhoid Mary.
END RANT
Pixation came out with a -real- printer that can paint on walls, buildings, etc. using compressed air and any paint that you can put through an air paint sprayer. House paint, oil paint, anything.
And it has been out for many years.
http://www.pixation.com/
Standard installation is 16 by 10 feet! It has 5 paint heads so you have black, white, cyan, magenta, and yellow. It is much cheaper than a wide format inkjet printer, and the ink costs -way- less than champagne!
OK, my birthday is coming up, who's going to pass 'round the office and get me one? ;')
>Even in a classical sense, though, how about this:
> if a rubber ball hits a wall and is reflected back
> with exactly the same momentum as it had before it
> hit, just in a different direction, it can't have
> imparted any energy to the wall, because it is
> carrying the same amount (relative to the wall)
> that it was before. So if your reflected photons
> are the same wavelength coming out as they are
> going in, you can't gain any energy from them.
Yes, the rubber ball -has- imparted energy to the wall. Let's ignore the heat generated by the inelastic movement of the wall and the losses in the ball.
When you threw the ball, you and the earth moved backwards as you accelerated the ball and let it go. When the ball bounced off of the wall, the wall and the earth attached to it rebounded.
The movement of the earth due to this is so tiny there is no chance you'll ever notice it, but that doesn't make it any less real.
You are forgeting the conservation of momentum. If the ball bounces back it is reversing the direction of it's motion, so for the entire system to conserve momentum the wall and earth must gain momentum in the direction the ball was originally traveling.
It is pretty basic grade school physics.
As for the so-called physicist who claimed the solar sail wouldn't work, his science is flawed. If
a particle system gives off a photon, the system rebounds from the direction the photon was emitted. If a particle system absorbes a photon, the system rebounds in the direction the photon was traveling when it as absorbed.
Is this not reflection, if an absorbed photon is emitted back in the direction whence it came? IANAP and I don't know if this is true.
As for a radiometer, I've always understood them to be in a less than perfect vacuum. Perhaps since the black side can both absorb and emit better than the reflective side, it is rebounding from the gas heated by it's surface. Radiation pressure would hardly seem sufficient on a one inch square surface.
As for the photon being unable to transfer energy since it goes away with the same energy- this is not true. The acceleration of the sail causes a tiny redshift in each reflected photon. So they do -not- leave with the same energy!