These aren't the worst hoaxes
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
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· Score: 2
The hoaxes like these, get a gift certificate from the Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch, etc., Bill Gates will give you money for testing his email traking system aren't the worst of the bunch. Most people (I hope) realize that they aren't really true, but forward them for the fun of it. On the other hand, a recent rash of "URGENT: Email virus XXXXX strikes" type messages went flying through my company, down from some senior-type IT folks who should know better. When it found its way into my mailbox, being the diligent skeptic that I am, quickly discovered that it was a typical hoax virus warning. I replyed to the higher-up folks that warnings of email viruses should be treated with the utmost skepticism, it is unlikely that they are a "real" threat. It actually took some convincing, and pointing them to some sources who confirmed my suspician before they actually believed me, but I'm sure the next urgent virus warning that comes along will have them madly forwarding again. Oh well, what can you do?
Why do we want Mac OS X running on PC hardware? Its long been known to assembly programers and hardware designers that the PowerPC (and previous Motorola 68000 processors) were far superior to the Intel x86 family from their birth in the early 80's. The 68000 series was designed with 32 bits of memory address (4 gigs of RAM!) in 1980! Intel foolishly left only 16 bits of memory addressing space (64k) causing them to continually change addressing modes to make up for their lack of forsight. Only because intel is unwilling to give up their stranglehold on 32 bit processors have they failed to release a new processor that would "fix" these historical problem.
Granted, all this will be made irrelevant by the release of Motorola and Intel 64-bit processors coming soon to the server market, which are *not* backward compatable, and hence will have none of the inherent historical issues. But for the present, I see absolutly no reason to desire Mac OS X to run on x86 processors, its perfectly happy where it is, as you said, "if its not broken don't fix it."
I'm sure this is the sentiment expressed by most slashdot readers, arresting these students is entirely unecessary. A conviction goes on your record permanantly, so what that its only a misdemeanor. It is still entirely unecessary. The proper thing for the school to have done was to inform them that they could not "steal" the net access and tell them to remove the cable, and possibly disable whatever ports they were connecting too. Arrests should follow reasonable attempts to inform the students of the problem, yet no mention was made of this in either article.
On a side note, when selecting the college I was too attend two years ago, one of my top priorities was ethernet in the residence halls. It doesn't look good for a school, first, to not have sufficient access, and not be willing to to extend it, and second, to prosecute some creative students for trying to get it anyway.
Actually I disagree, people ARE expensive. even J. Random Grunt. Sure you've got food, clothing, feeding, housing, medical!, pension... etc... Technology, once its developed (thats the expensive part) is relatively cheap to maintain (no food, less maintenence compared to a person), doesn't age... so forth a so on. Lets do a little math.
Lets say it costs $5M each to build a suit, and it costs $100k a year to maintain it, the development cost is spread out and included in the cost. Also, suits last 10 years, so we'll try a 10 year simulation. Lets say it costs $50k a year to provide for a soldier (salary, food, housing, etc. I think this estimate is VERY low).
If an armoured suit can take the place of 10 soldiers...
Then we have $5M + 10 years *(50k for solider + 100k for maintenence) Thats $6.5M.
The alternative, 10 men for 50k times 10 years, is $5M
So the suit is more expensive by my numbers (which are very round, but show that its not ridiculously out of proportion), but now you have 9 men who aren't soldiers, who will contribute the economy in ways they wouldn't have if they were grunts in the military. Plus less causualties, etc. Think about it... I don't know if its a good idea, but its definitely interesting, and I don't think its too far-fetched...
After reading this article, and the article at lawnewsnetwork, I can only say that I see no argument to the side that thinks the current patent laws are fine for software and high tech business methods. Sure some guys, like the patent office issue a statement like "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies." Okaaaay. Care to give us any reason why?
There are a lot of very cogent arguments why the current software patent law is impractical and even detrimental. See RMS for some extreme views or Bezos for a more moderate plan. However, in my brief searches I've really found no argument that really supports the other side. Saying that Bezos suggested changes "could be absolutely devastating" to this country's high-tech economy. "If you look at companies that live and die by their intellectual property, these changes would be their worst nightmare," Sure, some companies definitely have something to lose if you change the laws, but if they've been relying on laws that are unjust, and likely to change, thats their own fault for not coming up with some other plans to sustain them when they do change. What about all the companies that have something to gain by patent laws being changed? Doesn't that outweigh the cost? These are just a few thoughts of mine. If anyone really knows a good reason that the current patent laws should be kept the way they are with regard to software, please tell us, i'm willing to listen.
I just finished Starship Troopers a few weeks ago (super quick read, read it at the bookstore!) and this was the first thing i thought when I read this book. Sure we need another half century of development, but its not far-fetched at this point.
The thing thats really neat about Starship Troopers is that the coordinated team of MI (mobile infantry), maybe a few dozen, doesn't really give specifics, in their suits, can level a whole city.
What it means in practical terms is a single (expensive) suit and a well trained mobile infantry men can take the place of 10s maybe hundreds of infantry men. Making for a much smaller military, and military budget (its people who are expensive after all). Really neat stuff, will be really interesting to see what happens during out lifetimes.
Unfortunately I am inclined to take you with an even larger grain of salt. I attempted to find a definition of mono- or dihydritic and found nothing. Besides, perhaps the fast growing nature and root structure of poplar trees outweigh any such disadvantages
Cool stuff, but why is he focused entirely on trees?
From reading the article, I can only speculate that the reason for using trees is because of their root structure. In order to really clean an area, you have to have a plant that can reach several feet down into the soil, and draw nutrients and process chemicals. The idea behind some of this guys doctorate research apparently was finding ways to plant Poplar trees (fast growing and can grow roots from the bark) to create a deep and dense enough root structure. I wish there was a bit more scientific detail to this article. Perhaps someone can point us to some research papers or something to supplement the interview?
From reading others informative posts, I've discerned that TopClick as yet has no method of creating revenue. Their planned services center around providing better privacy for their (paying I assume) customers. The current search site will be discontinued (In Feb 2000, so I guess they are a bit late). So presumably, they are just providing the search service for free to generate traffic to their site, which will later change focus to actually have some method of generating focus, and the search engine will be removed. It seems to me they would be wiser to leave the search engine running and instead add some links to entice users to take a look at their advanced services. That way they would continue to generate traffic to their site. Instead of users who find that their new favorite search engine disappeared have no intention of using the services of a company who pulled such a dirty trick on them. Just my $.02.
Seeing the success of recently IPOed linux companies (Redhat and others are still going quite strongly, more then 6 monthes after the release). Is there any plan for Slackware, now a seperate company, to persue additional funding with a public stock offering?
I'd rather see research into fabricating memory that ran at core processor speeds. That would speed up every memory access, not just the malloc()s and free()s. There is no technical problem with implementing memory at the processor core speed. The problem is econonics. Thats the reason we have small fast (and expensive) on-chip cache memory, and large (but cheap) off-chip main memory. So the problem is not in the fabrication of such high speed memory (although it would require being physically on the same chip as the processor to attain such speeds), but rather the economic feasability of producing such chips in high quantity. I'm sorry, but it just isn't going to happen, we are going to be stuck with slow main memory, and fast on-chip cache, and no amount of research is going to find a way to make it economical any time soon. Rather, research *should* be done in small but realistically achievable goals, like better hardware caching algorithms (greater hit ratio) and things like implementing hardware memory allocation/deallocation. Spyky
I'm about 5'10 and went to college weighing around 130, (obviously thats not *as* extreme, but still...) I gained 15 pounds my freshman year, which I think is a pretty healthy amount. Eating cafeteria food (and lots of it) and working out regularly really helped me out. I'm on of those ultra-high metabolisers, sometimes I envy those who can gain weight. Its not healthy to be that skinny, so please do try to eat more. I've found that if I keep myself from ever getting hungry by eating snacks all day, I actually get hungrier the more I try to keep myself full. I've managed to put another 5 pounds on with the "never get full" method.
Spyky
The other reason these are better then plasma
on
38-Inch LCD Panels
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· Score: 1
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but 42" plasma screens, or whatever size they have now, have a resolution of maybe 1600X1200. However, if you fuse 4 19 inch LCD panels together (each with an assumed 1024X768 resolution) you have a total resolution of 2048X1536, which is quite a bit denser then the plasma screen. Plus you don't have the inevitable failure of plasma screens, which can only operate for so long before the screen "dies" and it becomes a $10k wall hanging. I think they've improved the life on more recent models, but its still a problem. Now if only they can produce this display for the same $10k. Or preferably, a lot less.
A lot of the posts here seem to think that bluetooth is for wireless networking. From what I understand thats not entirely the idea. The range is very very short (10m) and thats under good conditions, going through walls is going to cut that range a lot. The idea as I understand it, is too replace a lot of items that currently use infrared (because this doesn't require line of sight, goes a bit farther). That means things like cell phones communicating with PDAs, laptops communicating with printers, maybe someday video game controllers communicating with base units. I can't wait for the day that I can carry my palm in my pocket and have it automatically hotsync with my pc every time I walk close. Thats bluetooth.
Also the other benfit is that it uses a communication system similar to what cellphones use, ie, no crazy modifications of currently manufactured cell phones to make them "blue tooth" compatible, and be able to sync with your palm or whichever.
Instead of flaming Bob, who doubtlessly is getting congratulated over at infoworld for such a successful article, I suggest we inform the publishers and editors of infoworld that Bob Metcalfe is seriously missinformed, and is feeding the flames of ignorance with his poorly researched article. Here is the letters to the editor address at info world, and here is Editor-in-chief Michael Vizard's email address. Direct politely worded flames to these addresses, not to bob metcalfe.
This is hardly new. Products like this have been on the market for years. There has been a computer controlled turntable that first analyzes the surface of the record with the aid of a computer and laser pickup, then a traditional tonearm (but computer controlled) moves across the surface to play the music. Whacked out products are all over the "audiophile" industry. Wanna see an 8' pair of speaker wire that costs $20k. They got 'em. Not to mention speakers that cost more then $100k. There is a wonderful CD player from Krell Industries (a mere $20k) that has an amazing real time interpolation filter, that generates a smoother signal then those awful jagged digital signals. Of course this will be rendered obsolete by Sony's SACD player, which, based on DVDs has a higher bitrate, word length and hence, smoother signal and costs $14k less. You just have to wait until your favorite recording is available. Pick up a copy of sterophile magazine (subscription $12.99, montly issue $7.00, ouch!) to see some crazy products that are out there. Just don't fall for all the hype.
I just sat down to write some more in motorola 68000 series assembler (for class, not fun) and I couldn't understand what the hell I wrote last night, until I realized I'm a god damn genius, and everything I wrote while well-rested this afternoon messed up the perfect code I wrote last night. Must have been that higher brain functionality:-)
The last few times I have moderated, I spent 4 out of 5 points moderating down trolls. That is really annoying
Me too. Its frustrating, because when I read articles, I look primarily at 2+ articles (automatically expand them) and I'm sure I miss a lot of good (but not stellar) items that other people *don't* moderate up because they are busy dealing with obnoxious trolls. I think the moderation system is wonderful but something definitely could be done that would help the troll issue, and subsequently, make it more useful because GOOD articles would be moderated up, instead of ignored.
$95 a chip in quanity translates to at least 4 or 5 times that for a card. However, thats still about half what gigabit cards currently cost. It will be another year or two and more price drops and maybe we'll start seeing them on desktops:-)
This is true, the way I read the previous authors comments, calling it a "chain" I considered it to be a serial linking. However, either combination causes certain problems with size if you are trying to do anything useful, so perhaps a combination of both is the best approach. At any rate, we are way off topic here;-)
Man that sounds like it must be fast;-) Too bad they don't really tell us what the specs are (processor/memory). Judging by their lack of english skills, and one solitary page devoted to the creatively named "Multimedia PDA" I'm not holding my breath waiting to have one in my hand. Oh well, its a nice thought.
Well this a nice abstract idea. The problem you have, is that with these motors in a chain, the tension in the entire chain is equal to the tension in each individual solenoid. ie, if your goal is to be able to lift 375 pounds, requiring lets say 75 soleniods, the tension in each solenoid is still 375 lbs. The tension isn't distrubted evenly among the chain like you think, so though multiple solenoids can handle a larger load then a single one, they aren't rated to be "chained". Most likely you will not gain much benefit from adding more then a few solenoids in a chain. In order to lift that much you have to redesign the motor to handle a larger tension.
On the news last night, they made this announcement from ford, along with a icon over the newcaster's shoulder, with the Ford logo, and the HP logo. I certainly think its great that Ford is providing computer to employees. They have the resources to provide computers to their employees far cheaper then their employees could purchase them alone. However, I thought this news announcement was rather humorous, because they made it a point that the computers were Hewlett Packard TM, and the package also include a Hewlett Packard TM inkjet printer. The next blurb immediately following on my local news was ALSO about HP! Announcing some partnership (I can't even remember who it was with). So some HP marketing guys are congratulating everyone involved on this:-)
I hope I'm not just stating whats been said already, because obviously, any vender, let alone IBM, releasing something for linux, and under the GPL! is good. However, this has more benefits then what immediately meets the eye.
Linux has become a powerful and economical choice for a entry to midlevel server. However, you will find very few interested in using Linux for large scale, mission critical file serving when there are so many proprietary, Sun Servers, HP, IBM, Compaq Tru64... high end unix-based servers that have tried and true journaling file systems. With a GPLed journaling file system, Linux can begin to take notice from those who might have used proprietary systems. Which also hopefully will encourage other developments previously found only on such high end and proprietary servers (hot swappable NICS comes to mind, tho I think this may be more of a hardware feature then anything, I dunno, I've never tried putting linux on the compaq proliant at work, if only they'd let me:-) even that is technically a mid-level server).
Anyway, for all of those who say, oh wow, journaling filing, i want that on my slashdot-viewing box. You don't really need it. A journaling file system is a complex and processor demanding file system. Linux runs faster with plain old EXT2, despite its shortcomings. But for server applications, transaction journaling is the only way to go.
On a side note, does anyone know the status of XFS (another journaling file system) taking EXT2s place? I heard that that was a possibility. However, to me its unecessary to implement a full fledged journaling system (IBM or SGI) unless you really need it. But thats just my take on it.
At any rate, thanks to IBM for supporting open source.
Heartfelt letters to your representatives are certainly ideal, if they ever get read. No representative has the budget to be able to read and respond to every email. However, a auto response and tabulation system is very effective, because it is capable of informing the representative of popular opinion (which is what matters to them anyway). Sure, they may miss out on the personal statements if no one is there to read them, but are personal statements from constituents going to sway their heart anyway? Most likely not. View auto-responders rather as a way of "voting" on individual issues.
Slashdot Mirror
The hoaxes like these, get a gift certificate from the Gap, Abercrombie and Fitch, etc., Bill Gates will give you money for testing his email traking system aren't the worst of the bunch. Most people (I hope) realize that they aren't really true, but forward them for the fun of it. On the other hand, a recent rash of "URGENT: Email virus XXXXX strikes" type messages went flying through my company, down from some senior-type IT folks who should know better. When it found its way into my mailbox, being the diligent skeptic that I am, quickly discovered that it was a typical hoax virus warning. I replyed to the higher-up folks that warnings of email viruses should be treated with the utmost skepticism, it is unlikely that they are a "real" threat. It actually took some convincing, and pointing them to some sources who confirmed my suspician before they actually believed me, but I'm sure the next urgent virus warning that comes along will have them madly forwarding again. Oh well, what can you do?
Spyky
Why do we want Mac OS X running on PC hardware? Its long been known to assembly programers and hardware designers that the PowerPC (and previous Motorola 68000 processors) were far superior to the Intel x86 family from their birth in the early 80's. The 68000 series was designed with 32 bits of memory address (4 gigs of RAM!) in 1980! Intel foolishly left only 16 bits of memory addressing space (64k) causing them to continually change addressing modes to make up for their lack of forsight. Only because intel is unwilling to give up their stranglehold on 32 bit processors have they failed to release a new processor that would "fix" these historical problem.
Granted, all this will be made irrelevant by the release of Motorola and Intel 64-bit processors coming soon to the server market, which are *not* backward compatable, and hence will have none of the inherent historical issues. But for the present, I see absolutly no reason to desire Mac OS X to run on x86 processors, its perfectly happy where it is, as you said, "if its not broken don't fix it."
Spyky
I'm sure this is the sentiment expressed by most slashdot readers, arresting these students is entirely unecessary. A conviction goes on your record permanantly, so what that its only a misdemeanor. It is still entirely unecessary. The proper thing for the school to have done was to inform them that they could not "steal" the net access and tell them to remove the cable, and possibly disable whatever ports they were connecting too. Arrests should follow reasonable attempts to inform the students of the problem, yet no mention was made of this in either article.
On a side note, when selecting the college I was too attend two years ago, one of my top priorities was ethernet in the residence halls. It doesn't look good for a school, first, to not have sufficient access, and not be willing to to extend it, and second, to prosecute some creative students for trying to get it anyway.
Spyky
Actually I disagree, people ARE expensive. even J. Random Grunt. Sure you've got food, clothing, feeding, housing, medical!, pension... etc... Technology, once its developed (thats the expensive part) is relatively cheap to maintain (no food, less maintenence compared to a person), doesn't age... so forth a so on. Lets do a little math.
Lets say it costs $5M each to build a suit, and it costs $100k a year to maintain it, the development cost is spread out and included in the cost. Also, suits last 10 years, so we'll try a 10 year simulation. Lets say it costs $50k a year to provide for a soldier (salary, food, housing, etc. I think this estimate is VERY low).
If an armoured suit can take the place of 10 soldiers...
Then we have $5M + 10 years *(50k for solider + 100k for maintenence) Thats $6.5M.
The alternative, 10 men for 50k times 10 years, is $5M
So the suit is more expensive by my numbers (which are very round, but show that its not ridiculously out of proportion), but now you have 9 men who aren't soldiers, who will contribute the economy in ways they wouldn't have if they were grunts in the military. Plus less causualties, etc. Think about it... I don't know if its a good idea, but its definitely interesting, and I don't think its too far-fetched...
Spyky
After reading this article, and the article at lawnewsnetwork, I can only say that I see no argument to the side that thinks the current patent laws are fine for software and high tech business methods. Sure some guys, like the patent office issue a statement like "We believe the existing patent law works very well for all technologies." Okaaaay. Care to give us any reason why?
There are a lot of very cogent arguments why the current software patent law is impractical and even detrimental. See RMS for some extreme views or Bezos for a more moderate plan. However, in my brief searches I've really found no argument that really supports the other side. Saying that Bezos suggested changes "could be absolutely devastating" to this country's high-tech economy. "If you look at companies that live and die by their intellectual property, these changes would be their worst nightmare," Sure, some companies definitely have something to lose if you change the laws, but if they've been relying on laws that are unjust, and likely to change, thats their own fault for not coming up with some other plans to sustain them when they do change. What about all the companies that have something to gain by patent laws being changed? Doesn't that outweigh the cost? These are just a few thoughts of mine. If anyone really knows a good reason that the current patent laws should be kept the way they are with regard to software, please tell us, i'm willing to listen.
Spyky
I just finished Starship Troopers a few weeks ago (super quick read, read it at the bookstore!) and this was the first thing i thought when I read this book. Sure we need another half century of development, but its not far-fetched at this point.
The thing thats really neat about Starship Troopers is that the coordinated team of MI (mobile infantry), maybe a few dozen, doesn't really give specifics, in their suits, can level a whole city.
What it means in practical terms is a single (expensive) suit and a well trained mobile infantry men can take the place of 10s maybe hundreds of infantry men. Making for a much smaller military, and military budget (its people who are expensive after all).
Really neat stuff, will be really interesting to see what happens during out lifetimes.
Spyky
Unfortunately I am inclined to take you with an even larger grain of salt. I attempted to find a definition of mono- or dihydritic and found nothing. Besides, perhaps the fast growing nature and root structure of poplar trees outweigh any such disadvantages
Spyky
Cool stuff, but why is he focused entirely on trees?
From reading the article, I can only speculate that the reason for using trees is because of their root structure. In order to really clean an area, you have to have a plant that can reach several feet down into the soil, and draw nutrients and process chemicals. The idea behind some of this guys doctorate research apparently was finding ways to plant Poplar trees (fast growing and can grow roots from the bark) to create a deep and dense enough root structure. I wish there was a bit more scientific detail to this article. Perhaps someone can point us to some research papers or something to supplement the interview?
Spyky
From reading others informative posts, I've discerned that TopClick as yet has no method of creating revenue. Their planned services center around providing better privacy for their (paying I assume) customers. The current search site will be discontinued (In Feb 2000, so I guess they are a bit late).
So presumably, they are just providing the search service for free to generate traffic to their site, which will later change focus to actually have some method of generating focus, and the search engine will be removed. It seems to me they would be wiser to leave the search engine running and instead add some links to entice users to take a look at their advanced services. That way they would continue to generate traffic to their site. Instead of users who find that their new favorite search engine disappeared have no intention of using the services of a company who pulled such a dirty trick on them. Just my $.02.
Spyky
Seeing the success of recently IPOed linux companies (Redhat and others are still going quite strongly, more then 6 monthes after the release). Is there any plan for Slackware, now a seperate company, to persue additional funding with a public stock offering?
Spyky
I'd rather see research into fabricating memory that ran at core processor speeds. That would speed up every memory access, not just the malloc()s and free()s. There is no technical problem with implementing memory at the processor core speed. The problem is econonics. Thats the reason we have small fast (and expensive) on-chip cache memory, and large (but cheap) off-chip main memory. So the problem is not in the fabrication of such high speed memory (although it would require being physically on the same chip as the processor to attain such speeds), but rather the economic feasability of producing such chips in high quantity. I'm sorry, but it just isn't going to happen, we are going to be stuck with slow main memory, and fast on-chip cache, and no amount of research is going to find a way to make it economical any time soon. Rather, research *should* be done in small but realistically achievable goals, like better hardware caching algorithms (greater hit ratio) and things like implementing hardware memory allocation/deallocation. Spyky
I'm about 5'10 and went to college weighing around 130, (obviously thats not *as* extreme, but still...) I gained 15 pounds my freshman year, which I think is a pretty healthy amount. Eating cafeteria food (and lots of it) and working out regularly really helped me out. I'm on of those ultra-high metabolisers, sometimes I envy those who can gain weight.
Its not healthy to be that skinny, so please do try to eat more. I've found that if I keep myself from ever getting hungry by eating snacks all day, I actually get hungrier the more I try to keep myself full. I've managed to put another 5 pounds on with the "never get full" method.
Spyky
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but 42" plasma screens, or whatever size they have now, have a resolution of maybe 1600X1200. However, if you fuse 4 19 inch LCD panels together (each with an assumed 1024X768 resolution) you have a total resolution of 2048X1536, which is quite a bit denser then the plasma screen. Plus you don't have the inevitable failure of plasma screens, which can only operate for so long before the screen "dies" and it becomes a $10k wall hanging. I think they've improved the life on more recent models, but its still a problem. Now if only they can produce this display for the same $10k. Or preferably, a lot less.
Spyky
A lot of the posts here seem to think that bluetooth is for wireless networking. From what I understand thats not entirely the idea. The range is very very short (10m) and thats under good conditions, going through walls is going to cut that range a lot. The idea as I understand it, is too replace a lot of items that currently use infrared (because this doesn't require line of sight, goes a bit farther). That means things like cell phones communicating with PDAs, laptops communicating with printers, maybe someday video game controllers communicating with base units. I can't wait for the day that I can carry my palm in my pocket and have it automatically hotsync with my pc every time I walk close. Thats bluetooth.
Also the other benfit is that it uses a communication system similar to what cellphones use, ie, no crazy modifications of currently manufactured cell phones to make them "blue tooth" compatible, and be able to sync with your palm or whichever.
Spyky
Instead of flaming Bob, who doubtlessly is getting congratulated over at infoworld for such a successful article, I suggest we inform the publishers and editors of infoworld that Bob Metcalfe is seriously missinformed, and is feeding the flames of ignorance with his poorly researched article. Here is the letters to the editor address at info world, and here is Editor-in-chief Michael Vizard's email address. Direct politely worded flames to these addresses, not to bob metcalfe.
Spyky
This is hardly new. Products like this have been on the market for years. There has been a computer controlled turntable that first analyzes the surface of the record with the aid of a computer and laser pickup, then a traditional tonearm (but computer controlled) moves across the surface to play the music.
Whacked out products are all over the "audiophile" industry. Wanna see an 8' pair of speaker wire that costs $20k. They got 'em. Not to mention speakers that cost more then $100k. There is a wonderful CD player from Krell Industries (a mere $20k) that has an amazing real time interpolation filter, that generates a smoother signal then those awful jagged digital signals. Of course this will be rendered obsolete by Sony's SACD player, which, based on DVDs has a higher bitrate, word length and hence, smoother signal and costs $14k less. You just have to wait until your favorite recording is available.
Pick up a copy of sterophile magazine (subscription $12.99, montly issue $7.00, ouch!) to see some crazy products that are out there. Just don't fall for all the hype.
Spyky
I do my best coding after 2PM ;-)
:-)
I just sat down to write some more in motorola 68000 series assembler (for class, not fun) and I couldn't understand what the hell I wrote last night, until I realized I'm a god damn genius, and everything I wrote while well-rested this afternoon messed up the perfect code I wrote last night. Must have been that higher brain functionality
Peace
Spyky
The last few times I have moderated, I spent 4 out of 5 points moderating down trolls. That is really annoying
Me too. Its frustrating, because when I read articles, I look primarily at 2+ articles (automatically expand them) and I'm sure I miss a lot of good (but not stellar) items that other people *don't* moderate up because they are busy dealing with obnoxious trolls. I think the moderation system is wonderful but something definitely could be done that would help the troll issue, and subsequently, make it more useful because GOOD articles would be moderated up, instead of ignored.
Spyky
$95 a chip in quanity translates to at least 4 or 5 times that for a card. However, thats still about half what gigabit cards currently cost. It will be another year or two and more price drops and maybe we'll start seeing them on desktops :-)
Spyky
This is true, the way I read the previous authors comments, calling it a "chain" I considered it to be a serial linking. However, either combination causes certain problems with size if you are trying to do anything useful, so perhaps a combination of both is the best approach. At any rate, we are way off topic here ;-)
Spyky
Man that sounds like it must be fast ;-) Too bad they don't really tell us what the specs are (processor/memory). Judging by their lack of english skills, and one solitary page devoted to the creatively named "Multimedia PDA" I'm not holding my breath waiting to have one in my hand. Oh well, its a nice thought.
Spyky
Well this a nice abstract idea. The problem you have, is that with these motors in a chain, the tension in the entire chain is equal to the tension in each individual solenoid. ie, if your goal is to be able to lift 375 pounds, requiring lets say 75 soleniods, the tension in each solenoid is still 375 lbs. The tension isn't distrubted evenly among the chain like you think, so though multiple solenoids can handle a larger load then a single one, they aren't rated to be "chained". Most likely you will not gain much benefit from adding more then a few solenoids in a chain. In order to lift that much you have to redesign the motor to handle a larger tension.
Spyky
On the news last night, they made this announcement from ford, along with a icon over the newcaster's shoulder, with the Ford logo, and the HP logo. I certainly think its great that Ford is providing computer to employees. They have the resources to provide computers to their employees far cheaper then their employees could purchase them alone. However, I thought this news announcement was rather humorous, because they made it a point that the computers were Hewlett Packard TM, and the package also include a Hewlett Packard TM inkjet printer. The next blurb immediately following on my local news was ALSO about HP! Announcing some partnership (I can't even remember who it was with). So some HP marketing guys are congratulating everyone involved on this :-)
Spyky
I hope I'm not just stating whats been said already, because obviously, any vender, let alone IBM, releasing something for linux, and under the GPL! is good. However, this has more benefits then what immediately meets the eye.
:-) even that is technically a mid-level server).
Linux has become a powerful and economical choice for a entry to midlevel server. However, you will find very few interested in using Linux for large scale, mission critical file serving when there are so many proprietary, Sun Servers, HP, IBM, Compaq Tru64... high end unix-based servers that have tried and true journaling file systems. With a GPLed journaling file system, Linux can begin to take notice from those who might have used proprietary systems. Which also hopefully will encourage other developments previously found only on such high end and proprietary servers (hot swappable NICS comes to mind, tho I think this may be more of a hardware feature then anything, I dunno, I've never tried putting linux on the compaq proliant at work, if only they'd let me
Anyway, for all of those who say, oh wow, journaling filing, i want that on my slashdot-viewing box. You don't really need it. A journaling file system is a complex and processor demanding file system. Linux runs faster with plain old EXT2, despite its shortcomings. But for server applications, transaction journaling is the only way to go.
On a side note, does anyone know the status of XFS (another journaling file system) taking EXT2s place? I heard that that was a possibility. However, to me its unecessary to implement a full fledged journaling system (IBM or SGI) unless you really need it. But thats just my take on it.
At any rate, thanks to IBM for supporting open source.
Spyky
Heartfelt letters to your representatives are certainly ideal, if they ever get read. No representative has the budget to be able to read and respond to every email. However, a auto response and tabulation system is very effective, because it is capable of informing the representative of popular opinion (which is what matters to them anyway). Sure, they may miss out on the personal statements if no one is there to read them, but are personal statements from constituents going to sway their heart anyway? Most likely not. View auto-responders rather as a way of "voting" on individual issues.
Spyky