Serious question here:
How is it that in Al's famous equation e=mc^2 that the units of measure make this work with the common metric measure of distance. After all, the meter and kilometer (as well as the second) are rather arbitrary units, I've never had a reasonable explination of how such an equation could work without a fudge factor and still use pre-existing units. To the extent that it says "a small amount of matter would have to be multiplied by a huge number to get the ammout of energy", fine, but am I to believe that the meter/kilometer just happens to be the right size to express the speed of light (c)? And what if we measured things in light seconds or in light years? e=mc^2 wouldn't look so impressive if C was 1, would it?
This has been bugging me for a while, and now that it's on-topic I hope someone a little more knowledgable than me will point me in the right direction here.
OK, I can now buy the software for personal use, but I can download the source for free (for review, yada yada yada). Anyone see a problem with this logic?
The site includes aggregate maps, and those created by individuals, including a subway driver,
I'll admit I can't view the site because of the/. effect, but Amsterdam has a subway? I sure missed seeing that while I was there. Doesn't seem like a likely thing for a city reclaimed from the ocean to have, and less likely for a GPS receiver to be able to track a subway driver.
I don't really read enough si-fi to comment on a best author, for me it might be Larry Niven or Paul Hogan. What makes it good for me? An interesting story and good plot twists naturally come to mind, but just as important is an author who doesn't preach and doesn't write down to me. I couldn't believe that The Foundation series by Asimov was listed as a canidate for a favorite, the man couldn't resist sending clue after clue about what was going to happen to the point where reading it became painful, and then, when he sprang his big "plot twist" on you had the nerve to further insult your inteligence by explaining all of the clues. Clearly he thought he was writing for morons; I did too and never read him again.
Come on, even if you loathed them, they were good for jokes at least."
Much more than that. I could write an application for DOS, start it running on a dedicated PC, provide a UPS, and reasonably expect that it would
still be running a month or a year later. Doesn't happen with any version of Win I've used. With the potential exception of XP (which I don't use for other reasons, mostly privacy and security), Windows just can't be used for mission critical applications.
The total amount of down time, both human and system, that has been wasted because Microsoft decided that frequent crashes were good enough for it's customers is truly criminal. How this can happen and Bill Gates still becomes the richest man in the world amazes me.
It runs a new version of XP (Media Center Edition) and displays pictures, movies and plays DVDs.
Wow! It displays pictures! Not only that, but it plays DVD's and movies! I bet it even makes sounds!
Gee Wizz! It does all that, which of course I can do on my two year old system, and it runs a new version of Windows that gives Bil Gates the right to disable whatever software he wants (even though you may have paid good money for it). And not only was Cyno01 willing to say "If I
had the cash for it i would definitly ditch my 160Gb HD and Radeon AIW card." but/. thought this remark was worthy of front page attention!
Cost - perhaps 3-5% on the gross bill, but you have already saved some money in the warehouse, now more at the checkout.
Don't forget about the biggest money making part of this technology - with bar code I can watch the register and (sometimes) catch it when they overcharge me. I could catch it if they undercharged me too, but somehow that never happens. With technology to read the entire cart
as it passes by the checkout point in a fraction of a second, the overcharging problem isn't likly to improve - at least from the comsumer's viewpoint.
I'm surprised this theft hasn't attracted
more attention in the mainstream media, since "Principia" is generally considered the most important scientific works in history."
I think it's particularly telling but not at all suprising that this hasn't gotten the attention that a theft of other items such as art would get. The media and liberal arts people who would make a fuss don't understand or care about science, so they would give a lot more attention to the scribblings of a second rate artist than to a scientific work. Scientists value the information, not the paper, and know that can't be taken, and the media gives them little attention anyway unless a giant rock is heading towards Earth. It's a shame to have the artifact vanish, but I'm not at all surprised that more attention is given when a thief breaks in and steals from Madonna.
That's an absurd price for what little there is to be gained from this. Clearly the cash would be better spent on a new MB with an extra 2 gig on it - it could be used as a ram disk if you really wanted, or as a cache, or for any number of uses beyond a silly-cone hard drive. Better to be able to deal with the memory as memory than memory pretending to be disk. And for a lot less money.
If you leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition in N.Y.C., it's at risk.
What a lame report! The sparse on details is that the remote management feature is not enabled by default. Well, doh!, if I turn on remote management someone can get in and affect my system (particularly if I don't change the password). Imagine that!
My question, after visiting the website, is "can this device store any file and let it be retreived from the 128M memory, or can I strictly download to it (and only the stated file types)?
It's not as dumb a question as it sounds, I already have a MP3 player that I can only download to, and that the software restricts to MP3 files. If this is a MP3 player and 128 megs of memory available for file transfer, then it would be pretty handy. That and, of course, the timer.
It's not really an issue of what it's called. PVR is good enough for me, although I expect marketing will come up with something better.The important issue to me is if I can buy the thing at a reasonable cost and then use it without paying a monthly fee. That is something I hate about Tivo and a reason I'll never own one (and I'm not about to give the an excessive amount of cash up front for a lifetime subscription and then wonder how long their lifetime will be). The nice thing about the growth of the PRV options is that certainly someone will, if they haven't already, make one that doesn't need a monthly subscription fee to use it. Hopefully it will be a decent unit and that company will get rich by sellinh product, not by locking in customers to subscriptions.
All cable modems sold in stores are DOCSIS compliant. DOCSIS requires that they support throttling. If they weren't DOCSIS certified, they would not be able to connect to the network and would probably be illegal. Any questions?
This is the first mention I've seen of this "DOCSIS" thing. Now I finally have something I can do a meaningfull search on. Yes, lots of questons, but you've given me what I need to start tracking down the answers. Should have been mentioned long ago, or at least in the article that started this.
I can go to Circuit City or any of several other computer stores and buy a cable modem. If I don't happen to buy one that is as crippled as the one the local cable company provides, just what crime have I commited? These modems are apparently legal, as they are sold and advertised very
openly (and in fact are much more available than DSL modems). It doesn't seem likely that Linksys, Actiontec and the rest will all strive to make the slowest cable modem. How do you keep gun ho yahoos who weren't unstable enough to get into the ATF from breaking down your door if you use a retail purchased cable modem?
This is pretty much as expected from the company who, when the first computers were built, predicted that the world would need no more than a total of 5. IBM has pretty much demonstrated an amazing lack of insight into what the customer wants; this is certainly a good example.
Re:Completely Worthless Post....
on
Open Blade Servers?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'll agree, but I'll give a reason to back it up:
How did Google roll out 10,000 servers
at such a low cost?" Am I supposed to know what timothy is talking about here? I sure don't. Google hasn't informed me of any "low cost" and the article and timothy's write-up don't say anything (else) about it. Perhaps if he's going to make a big deal of something he should explain what is revolutionary or amazing here, or at least do more than imply a special amazing but unmentioned price.
Not only that, but the last line of the ZDNEt write-up says The new 800MHz chip, which uses ServerWorks' LE3 chipset, will list for $289 each in 1,000 unit quantities. OK, low power is nice, dual processors are OK, but hardly anything special, particularly when they only run at 800 mhz. After all, the reason for a dual processor is to gain more processing power and speed, but a dual processor 800 meg chip will not perform as well as a simple single processor 1600 mhz chip and is more complex to program for. A single processor 1600mhz AMD chip is less expensive and will outperform this chip. I see no reason to get excited if the cpu chip price is $289!
Longhorn doesn't work unless all parts of the system employ DRM. That Longhorn is already stated as the oficial point of support for serial ATA, while the drives already work under current Windows, tells me that there is a Longhorn related feature waiting for us.
Why put it into a drive? Part of the cradle to grave DRM philosphy. To keep you from storing something "they" don't want you to. To control how you can use something that you do store (it's only accessable by some DRM approved applications). To limit how long you can retain some files. To limit the number of times you can view a file and to keep you from making a copy. Basically to decide what you do with your computer.
You need to do a little research, DRM built into a drive has been talked about for a while, but it looks like it's in the serial ATA drives, just not a marketing feature they want to advertise to the people who actually end up with them!
from the article:
and although it wont officially be supported until Microsoft's Longhorn OS
This seems to say something that I've never seen admitted about serial ATA: that it has DRM built in! If you want to buy hard drives that get to decide what you can and can't store on them, go ahead, but I'm not going to buy into any DRM technology. Extra speed and a smaller cable will not tempt me into doing it; I'll stock up on the last of the regular ATA drives as the serial ATA's replace them.
It claims adding information to an image without distortion, but in reality the story actually tells of distorting the image in a way that, if needed, could later be reversed and removed. But the distortion is there none the less until it is removed, which removes the "signature".
While it claims that any editing of the image would be detectable (because it modifies the encoded watermark), a reversable system solves this problem nicely: Reverse the process and take out the watermark. Edit the image any way you want (change Britney's dalmation to a poodle, for example). Then apply the watermark to the new image. I saw no proof or even claim that, if the watermake is reversable (which is the whole point of having the technology) then it wouldn't be easy to mark false images with the same watermark.
I would suggest switching brands and stores. If you're really talking about CDRW media and not rewritable DVD media (and the writeup makes it clear that you are), then you are paying way too much. I see spindles of CDRW media at 25 for $9.99 frequently and sometimes see it on sale for less (quite a change from my first 5 CDRW for $75).
On the other hand, CDR media is much much less, often "free" after rebates. If you're really getting as few as 30 writes on a $2.50 media then writing to CDR might not only be less expensive, but you could build up a nice collection of old movies and TV shows.
There is an awful ambiguity here between flat screen displays such as LCD displays, and flat screen monitors, which are still big bulky CRT based monitors, but have a flat screen rather than the slightly curved screens on earlier CRT monitors. Many manufacturers, including mainstream names like NEC and Viewsonic market Flat Screen Monitors . If these are getting into the count of expected sales then of course they will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, but it will not do much to make space available on your desk.
So, what is Amazon and E-bay doing in order to invalidate these ridiculous patents??
I don't think one-click Amazon has any interest in invalidating ridiculous patents, and I don't think this ridiculous patent holder has any intention of harassing the big guys. At least not until someone not capable of putting up a sound legal defense looses in court first, setting a precident.
The old SWTP microprocessor kits used to output a single * as a prompt. I prety much knew how the day was going to go when I saw one that, the first time it was powered up, type out FU
Slashdot Mirror
This has been bugging me for a while, and now that it's on-topic I hope someone a little more knowledgable than me will point me in the right direction here.
OK, I can now buy the software for personal use, but I can download the source for free (for review, yada yada yada). Anyone see a problem with this logic?
I'll admit I can't view the site because of the /. effect, but Amsterdam has a subway? I sure missed seeing that while I was there. Doesn't seem like a likely thing for a city reclaimed from the ocean to have, and less likely for a GPS receiver to be able to track a subway driver.
I don't really read enough si-fi to comment on a best author, for me it might be Larry Niven or Paul Hogan. What makes it good for me? An interesting story and good plot twists naturally come to mind, but just as important is an author who doesn't preach and doesn't write down to me. I couldn't believe that The Foundation series by Asimov was listed as a canidate for a favorite, the man couldn't resist sending clue after clue about what was going to happen to the point where reading it became painful, and then, when he sprang his big "plot twist" on you had the nerve to further insult your inteligence by explaining all of the clues. Clearly he thought he was writing for morons; I did too and never read him again.
Much more than that. I could write an application for DOS, start it running on a dedicated PC, provide a UPS, and reasonably expect that it would still be running a month or a year later. Doesn't happen with any version of Win I've used. With the potential exception of XP (which I don't use for other reasons, mostly privacy and security), Windows just can't be used for mission critical applications.
The total amount of down time, both human and system, that has been wasted because Microsoft decided that frequent crashes were good enough for it's customers is truly criminal. How this can happen and Bill Gates still becomes the richest man in the world amazes me.
Wow! It displays pictures! Not only that, but it plays DVD's and movies! I bet it even makes sounds!
Gee Wizz! It does all that, which of course I can do on my two year old system, and it runs a new version of Windows that gives Bil Gates the right to disable whatever software he wants (even though you may have paid good money for it). And not only was Cyno01 willing to say "If I had the cash for it i would definitly ditch my 160Gb HD and Radeon AIW card." but /. thought this remark was worthy of front page attention!
Don't forget about the biggest money making part of this technology - with bar code I can watch the register and (sometimes) catch it when they overcharge me. I could catch it if they undercharged me too, but somehow that never happens. With technology to read the entire cart as it passes by the checkout point in a fraction of a second, the overcharging problem isn't likly to improve - at least from the comsumer's viewpoint.
I think it's particularly telling but not at all suprising that this hasn't gotten the attention that a theft of other items such as art would get. The media and liberal arts people who would make a fuss don't understand or care about science, so they would give a lot more attention to the scribblings of a second rate artist than to a scientific work. Scientists value the information, not the paper, and know that can't be taken, and the media gives them little attention anyway unless a giant rock is heading towards Earth. It's a shame to have the artifact vanish, but I'm not at all surprised that more attention is given when a thief breaks in and steals from Madonna.
That's an absurd price for what little there is to be gained from this. Clearly the cash would be better spent on a new MB with an extra 2 gig on it - it could be used as a ram disk if you really wanted, or as a cache, or for any number of uses beyond a silly-cone hard drive. Better to be able to deal with the memory as memory than memory pretending to be disk. And for a lot less money.
What a lame report! The sparse on details is that the remote management feature is not enabled by default. Well, doh!, if I turn on remote management someone can get in and affect my system (particularly if I don't change the password). Imagine that!
It's not as dumb a question as it sounds, I already have a MP3 player that I can only download to, and that the software restricts to MP3 files. If this is a MP3 player and 128 megs of memory available for file transfer, then it would be pretty handy. That and, of course, the timer.
It's not really an issue of what it's called. PVR is good enough for me, although I expect marketing will come up with something better.The important issue to me is if I can buy the thing at a reasonable cost and then use it without paying a monthly fee. That is something I hate about Tivo and a reason I'll never own one (and I'm not about to give the an excessive amount of cash up front for a lifetime subscription and then wonder how long their lifetime will be). The nice thing about the growth of the PRV options is that certainly someone will, if they haven't already, make one that doesn't need a monthly subscription fee to use it. Hopefully it will be a decent unit and that company will get rich by sellinh product, not by locking in customers to subscriptions.
No. Last price I heard was $199.99 US for the X-box. Selling at a loss is not the same as giving away.
This is the first mention I've seen of this "DOCSIS" thing. Now I finally have something I can do a meaningfull search on. Yes, lots of questons, but you've given me what I need to start tracking down the answers. Should have been mentioned long ago, or at least in the article that started this.
I can go to Circuit City or any of several other computer stores and buy a cable modem. If I don't happen to buy one that is as crippled as the one the local cable company provides, just what crime have I commited? These modems are apparently legal, as they are sold and advertised very openly (and in fact are much more available than DSL modems). It doesn't seem likely that Linksys, Actiontec and the rest will all strive to make the slowest cable modem. How do you keep gun ho yahoos who weren't unstable enough to get into the ATF from breaking down your door if you use a retail purchased cable modem?
This is pretty much as expected from the company who, when the first computers were built, predicted that the world would need no more than a total of 5. IBM has pretty much demonstrated an amazing lack of insight into what the customer wants; this is certainly a good example.
How did Google roll out 10,000 servers at such a low cost?" Am I supposed to know what timothy is talking about here? I sure don't. Google hasn't informed me of any "low cost" and the article and timothy's write-up don't say anything (else) about it. Perhaps if he's going to make a big deal of something he should explain what is revolutionary or amazing here, or at least do more than imply a special amazing but unmentioned price.
Not only that, but the last line of the ZDNEt write-up says The new 800MHz chip, which uses ServerWorks' LE3 chipset, will list for $289 each in 1,000 unit quantities. OK, low power is nice, dual processors are OK, but hardly anything special, particularly when they only run at 800 mhz. After all, the reason for a dual processor is to gain more processing power and speed, but a dual processor 800 meg chip will not perform as well as a simple single processor 1600 mhz chip and is more complex to program for. A single processor 1600mhz AMD chip is less expensive and will outperform this chip. I see no reason to get excited if the cpu chip price is $289!
Why put it into a drive? Part of the cradle to grave DRM philosphy. To keep you from storing something "they" don't want you to. To control how you can use something that you do store (it's only accessable by some DRM approved applications). To limit how long you can retain some files. To limit the number of times you can view a file and to keep you from making a copy. Basically to decide what you do with your computer.
You need to do a little research, DRM built into a drive has been talked about for a while, but it looks like it's in the serial ATA drives, just not a marketing feature they want to advertise to the people who actually end up with them!
This seems to say something that I've never seen admitted about serial ATA: that it has DRM built in! If you want to buy hard drives that get to decide what you can and can't store on them, go ahead, but I'm not going to buy into any DRM technology. Extra speed and a smaller cable will not tempt me into doing it; I'll stock up on the last of the regular ATA drives as the serial ATA's replace them.
It claims adding information to an image without distortion, but in reality the story actually tells of distorting the image in a way that, if needed, could later be reversed and removed. But the distortion is there none the less until it is removed, which removes the "signature".
While it claims that any editing of the image would be detectable (because it modifies the encoded watermark), a reversable system solves this problem nicely: Reverse the process and take out the watermark. Edit the image any way you want (change Britney's dalmation to a poodle, for example). Then apply the watermark to the new image. I saw no proof or even claim that, if the watermake is reversable (which is the whole point of having the technology) then it wouldn't be easy to mark false images with the same watermark.
On the other hand, CDR media is much much less, often "free" after rebates. If you're really getting as few as 30 writes on a $2.50 media then writing to CDR might not only be less expensive, but you could build up a nice collection of old movies and TV shows.
There is an awful ambiguity here between flat screen displays such as LCD displays, and flat screen monitors, which are still big bulky CRT based monitors, but have a flat screen rather than the slightly curved screens on earlier CRT monitors. Many manufacturers, including mainstream names like NEC and Viewsonic market Flat Screen Monitors . If these are getting into the count of expected sales then of course they will top sales of bulkier traditional models this year, but it will not do much to make space available on your desk.
Now if we could only get the courts to realize that this law goes way to far and fix it's abuses in the real world too, like paying $50,000 for wheelchair ramps in wilderness areas that can't be accessed by wheelchairs. This law is a kneejerk bleeding heart reaction to a real and serious problem, but one that can't always be fixed by laws.
I don't think one-click Amazon has any interest in invalidating ridiculous patents, and I don't think this ridiculous patent holder has any intention of harassing the big guys. At least not until someone not capable of putting up a sound legal defense looses in court first, setting a precident.
The old SWTP microprocessor kits used to output a single * as a prompt. I prety much knew how the day was going to go when I saw one that, the first time it was powered up, type out FU