> Exactly what got hit? A car catches on fire in a collision...what type of impact would cause that?
I thought the aggregate data would be more valuable, as they'd appear to be an accurate representation of the real safety hazards they have to design for. If the average collision is at 16kph, then we'd better see cars that can handle a 16kph impact gracefully.
If that's the aim, I would see it working best as a voluntary/rewarded system, like medical studies. "$200 off for research assistance"
>He could do what many hundreds of thousands of volunteers do each year: he could save his money while he is working so that he could take the time off to volunteer and support himself doing it.
That doesn't solve the problem of the volunteer having to get a job instead of spending that time volunteering. It just shunts the time he spends working and not volunteering to another time period.
If you have to work 8 hours a day for six months before you can volunteer 8 hours a day for six months, it's no different from working 4 hours and volunteering 4 each day for a year, in terms of hours.
Re:Problem with volunteer work:
on
Virtual Volunteering
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· Score: 2, Interesting
>I suspect you are missing the point of volunteerism.
I think what he's asking is perfectly reasonable. If nobody tends to his basic needs, he either has to:
1) Starve and rot 2) Get a job, siphoning off 40 or more hours each week.
Both put a substantial crimp in his ability to devote effort to the cause.
I admit the system he proposes is less than the pure model of volunteering, but it's a tradeoff. The sponsor will hand out some money and/or supplies to keep him fed, and he will be able to supply much more labour to the sponsor than he otherwise would be able to.
I'm personally just waiting for the cell phone providers to wake up and realize that if they were to drop their outrageous charges for air time in the cells covering people's homes (call it the "home area"),
BTDT. In some areas, there are definitely services like that. Here, there's one by the name of 'Cricket'-- unlimited local calls and a fixed allocation of long-distance for ~USD 40 a month. A second similar programme ('Boomerang') seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. They advertise on the premise that you no longer need a land-line.
The principal inconvinence with this system is that it's prepaid, and you have to add stored-value if you want to make additional long-distance calls.
You seem to believe that availability guarantees acceptance. Two flaws in that theory.
1. People aren't necessarily buying the HDTV-ready sets. It's hard for Joe Sixpack to resist the $99 25-inch set sold in his local low-end electronics warehouse or supermarket, even if it's made in Bourkina Faso and only takes SECAM signals, and the brand name means "Cow Spleen" in some language.
2. The churn rate on TVs is too low to guarantee widespread adoption in time. For someone with a 1-, 5- or 10-year old set, he's not going to see any impact until they start actually shutting down analogue transmitters. Why should he spend $x00 a second earlier than he has to?
Bonus reason: Seems to be a bit of uncertainty regarding HDTV around. I was under the impression that they weren't yet certain that today's HDTV tuners would be able to handle tomorrow's HDTV broadcasts. That sort of thinking is going to make people hesitant.
Counterexample to your claims can be found in the Commodore 64 [and several other 8-bit lines]. The hardware remained essentially constant, which benefitted both users (didn't need to worry about obsolescence) and developers (providing a stable platform). The first C64 is 99%+ compatible with the last one (bugfixes in the ROMs nonwithstanding), despite a production run of well over 10 million machines over many years.
A "reasonably powerful" Dragon box, perhaps featuring basic OS and utilities in flash, and sold cheap, could fill a similar role.
-"Your name, Bastard Operator From Hell". Done up exactly like the signs on executive offices.
-If two doors, label one "Garbage in" and the other "Garbage out"
-"This is a dump for salvage equipment". (Taken after sign at local university's computer repairs office, where they specifically deny a space being a dump for salvage equipment after years of it piling up there)
-Take the bathroom idea said before, but add a small handwritten sign that says "Enjoy the new low-water-use fixtures"
-"Beware of the Panther" -- wasn't that the sign in HHGG?
-Find a room name that outsiders might be invited to. A meeting room, the board room, the room where training sessions or the stockholder meeting occurs. Name the server room identical to that, or confusingly similar to that.
-On a similar principle, Room 226. Unless the room is originally numbered 226, in which case, call it Room 347. Bonus points if you give it the same number as the cafeteria, the bathroom, or some place you can otherwise waste time.
>Technology like this is useless for circumventing >unjust censorship. But running off a thousand >copies of something and passing them around >clandestinely will work as well today as it did >in the 1700's.
It can, however, be used as a fast assistant to getting the copies out there, especially over a geographically large area.
Let's say there are 50 interested copiers, spread out across a fair-sized nation. Your options are:
1. Let them each make a thousand copies of "something" independently, and hope they all get it right (consistent copy of the material and/or message).
2. Send around 50 copies for further reproduction. Lag time will likely be in the order of several days or more. Depending on how the transmission of the 50 copies is done (mail that could be intercepted), the distribution could be lossy and/or traceable. You also have to know who you're sending to.
3. Standard Internet placement ("Go to falungong.org and download the forbidden documents today!"). Easy to shut down or firewall off. Email is also awkward, as you'd have to first establish contact with the copiers to find their addresses, a potential exposure risk for both sides of the transaction.
4. P2P. Post it on Gnutella or the equal at breakfast-time, and the 50 interested people (and potentially many more) could easily download it and make a thousand copies locally. 50,000 copies in circulation by tea-time is a very legitimate possibility. The P2P networks could be engineered to encrypt transfers and spoof sources to make filtering and tracing again difficult.
Also, I can see where you might want electronic distribution to get the message (largely) exclusively to the upwardly-mobile, educated, and wealthier groups who may not necessarily be so concerned about the censorship (after all, the trains run on time for them.)
I really liked the promise of the Crusoe. I thought it was very clever technology.
The problem is that the marketing was terrible.
Crusoes were targeted at laptops. Problem: In a world where I can buy a Celeron 1500 laptop for USD 1000 or less, you'd better do something to impress me if you wanted me to buy a Crusoe. You can make it cheap, which you didn't (the only Crusoe laptop I see locally sells for ~USD 1800). You can make it last a long time on the battery, but I can get similar battery life for less money by throwing an external battery on the back of said $1000 Celeron. You can make it perform well, but you didn't.
Make it competitive, or make it cheap. Transmeta (or perhaps more likely those who made products out of Transmeta CPUs) chose neither.
I was surprised you didn't see the Crusoe landing on the corporate desktop too. There are plenty of places with 300-400-500MHz machines that are adequate (because they don't feel the need to play games). I would think that a Crusoe-based box would be ideal for that sort of role (as a replacement for dead boxes, or to put analogous boxes on more desks)... with limited cooling requirements it would be quiet, not belch out tonnes of heat, and save maintenence hassles by removing moving parts (fans).
I also assumed you'd get a lot more flexibility with the "morphing" technology than you actually did. When Transmeta made the necessary documentation to exploit this stuff hard to find, they cut off their nose to spite their face. Why doesn't that "new Amiga" someone promises every few years run on a Crusoe set to emulate a 400MHz 68060? Why don't you see one-off Crusoe boxes designed to simulate obscure and otherwise irreplacable hardware. Hell, why don't you see them set up for student projects at universities to emulate the architecture they want to use as a teaching tool?
What did get exploited was that 'Web Pad' deal which never materialised. Now, we have this 'Tablet PC' thing... which will probably immediately bloat its way out of the Crusoe's performance range.
I had hoped that someone would buy Transmeta and do something useful with the technology. Now, I hope that when Transmeta finishes circling the drain, the local dealers start dumping Crusoe laptops cheap.:)
>The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was >employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
Actually, its original purpose was to prevent counterfeiting.
Wonderful. People don't have enough faith in the currency that half of the $20s in circulation are smeared with "detection" pen, and they're devoting mapower to someone running off Britney Spears at 40x.
BTW, does this mean I can buy a slightly used 40x CD-RW cheap from the local law enforcement auction?:)
Re:New mod box ideas... add them here.
on
Hardware Bits
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Using a plastic prop for the cake is the sensible approach. Easy to work, and you don't need to worry about spoilage.
Ooo! I know! How about building the computer into some sort of diorama. Use fibre optics so the drive lights become building lights, have the CD tray rise from out of the middle of a street like some sort of evil monolith, and make that heatsink really a 'Volcano'.
The problem is that sometimes "cool" and "practical" would clash. I think a 50cm aluminium cube with no discernable features would be "cool", but I'd wreck ventilation, have to develop some clever approach to get to drives, and it wouldn't fit anywhere.
Perhaps a really well-done computer-in-the-keyboard, like an Amiga 600. It would have to be 1000% professional though. Great mini-ITX application.
Or an extremely flat desktop (like those 1U cases), but quite large so you can place it on the desk like a blotter and have your keyboard and mouse on it.
Of course, I like the "retro" modifications... the big huge AT tower with ATX board inside. Perhaps one of those with a big old AT desktop would be nice. You could put more drive bays up front because the ATX board is shorter in that dimension than an AT, and you could save much space by replacing the big AT PSU with a small ATX one and rearranging the back.
Odd materials might work. How about sheet brass? Easy to work, shiny, unusual colour, potential for nice patina over time.
Sometimes, all you really need though is a classy colour scheme or art. The Atari 600XL didn't need windows and blowholes to be cool. It just was, in silver, black, and white.
For fun, don't forget to use the case badge from your original 286.
A trick I did was to tie front-panel switches to motherboard jumpers. I did this for the multiplier jumpers on an Elitegroup K7S6A recently. Took up one 3.5" faceplate. Might be useful to have a momentary "CMOS clear" switch
The ultimate front-panel LCD: Bury an old Toshiba Libretto (remember those? Those little P75 laptops with the 5" screen, mass about 1kg) in the front panel, boot it to X, have it export a monitoring app from the "real" system. Colour and infinite display flexibility.
There's been a lot of work on lights and displays, but little in movement. How about a "heartbeat":
-rubber membrane over hole
-slow motor behind membrane
-off-centre cardboard/styrene oval on motor shaft
-oval presses membrane, creating "throb"
-For extra credit, tie it to system load
If you leave the networks insecure, would it be difficult to set up a few with monitoring to log who tries to access sensitive goodies?
If everyone secures their networks, such an unsecured honeypot would stick out like a sore thumb, nobody would be stupid enough to touch it, and you lose something that's potentially a useful security tool.
This assumes, in contrast to several posters, that the goal isn't to cut off cheap, decentralised wireless, and assumes that you'll get a better terrorist hit rate if you check only those who are downloading "easily-exploitable-security-holes-in-local-atomic -power-station.doc" rather than those looking for a cheap, quick way to xfree86.org
I just see it as very inefficient to create a "closed set" domain, because so much of the Web's usefulness depends on free linking.
Many news sites, for example, are essentially "link farms", pointing people to articles of interest. Is that not what/. is? If you wanted to make a kid-friendly one in.kids.us, you'd either have to mirror everything within the domain (logistical nightmare, possible lawsuits), or take your chances of being shut down for linking to the outside world. The effect would be that you'd have a hard time creating a high-quality specimen of that sort of site.
It would be difficult to make a valuable site in that domain without a lot of your own content.
Wonderful... a new playground, tailoring the flexibility of the Web for the needs of the large media concerns.
What happened to all those "site rating schemes" that were supposed to be built into our browsers many moons ago? You want kid business, set those flags, encourage the sites you link to to set their flags, and use the browser controls. If there's a problem with misleading flags (maliciously), consider a false-advertising claim.
I think it's been in the neighbourhood of 10 years since the first variations of this sort of thing were done. Remember? Lionel did one under the name Railscope. It ended up fairly similar... a camera car (mocked up to look like an Alco FA) that sucked back batteries like nobody's business and had to be pushed by an engine. It cost a fair amount... something like USD 300 back then IIRC.
I recall a big complaint in the early reviews was that you couldn't get it in whatever model you wanted... a DIY system could handle that nicely.
One of the problems mentioned, the variable track voltage as a power source, could be bypassed if you used a DCC wiring system-- those typically have 16vac on the rails at all times. Rectify, transform, and go.
It's surprising where the "gaps" in creating a quality model railroad are. We can put cameras in our engines, but the only cars we can put on the roads are static or limited in motion. Very few control panels have moved out of the "array of toggles on a sheet of board" level (why not electronic?) We can get about five different quality affordable implementations of the EMD F7, but you'll still pay a fortune (or spend hours starting with a crude kit) for a halfway-decent F59PH, SD50/60 or SD45, at least in 1:87.
I actually believe there would be a good market for custom "voodoo figurines" for layouts. One General Electric C44-9W, one Electro-Motive SD60M, and a 1:87 representation of the laptop that swallowed my notes. Wheee!
I remember Nomad. It was the last game I purchased for my 386/16 before I upgraded to something beefy enough (Wow! P75!) to play heavier games.
FWIW, I found it a bit annoying that it seemed that nothing you could do allowed you to break out of the model of "person generally friendly to the flesh beings and eventually to kill the Korok"
Still have the floppies. Tried it for a while on my 486 laptop recently. Ran smooth.
The problem is that it has to become much more sophisticated than the "dumb transmitter on every device" model to give the effects described in the article. Most notably, what happens when I leave a store and return with the parcel still in my hands?
At least, you need a "sold" flag that you can set when you leave, and only if you paid. You also need a mechanism to record purchase information (purchased 2/6/2012, price USD 399.99) for return purposes. Furthermore, what will you cut out and send in for the rebate?
That brings me to my prediction: Any electronics device you buy in 2012 will have no less than 9 mail-in rebates applying to it.
It's not that they're BAD, but that they're inconsistent. Some of their boards are downright decent (The M560TG was pretty good... did 83MHz bus speeds well... and the M830, under the guise of the Elitegroup K7S5A, is a legend)
They do have some things going for them:
1. They seem willing to try *anything* once. They were one of the very few firms that made a SiS735 board (the aforementioned M830), and the only firm I know of that sold a Baby-AT Socket A board (M812)
2. They supply a lot of downward price pressure on the industry
For a comparison, look at say, a VideoDisc (them big old record-like things). There's no way you'd ever confuse it with a VHS casette, and as such, not really expect it to work similarly. This, it looks like a CD, is marketed similarly to a CD, fills a similar niche to a CD, yet strangely isn't a CD.
If you want to do a DRM format, make it very different. How about the size and shape of a British two-pound coin? This benefits you in several ways:
1. Completely new and potentially propriatery player base, no need to worry about some old equipment designed in a way that can look through your attempts to maintain compatibility and DRM in one disc. I can easily see them giving away free DRM-disc players, perhaps with the purchase of some number of discs, to buy market share.
2. No problems with people returning "broken" discs because they thought they were CDs that work properly.
Consumers also win because they can make intelligent purchasing decisions, and not have to guess if a disc will work or not; it also allows them to see the true effect for them of DRM (because market penetration will probably never be 1000%, you'll probably see both CD and DRM-D releases together, and be able to compare sound quality and price.
>The difference is Ford company ain't getting >rich when you hop the train.
Interestingly, other firms (notably, GM) do get rich. (Google for 'F59PHI')
What I want to know is why we've been so phenominally unsuccessful at fighting capital with capital. There are numerous industries with a stake in the DRM issue... both in the obvious fields (hardware/software) and in non-obvious fields (data recovery services, law enforcement, archives... in general, anyone who might need to ever get to data through 'unapproved' channels) Yet, what we've gotten is certain large IC makers signing on with DRM-enabling schemes (based perhaps on a deluded belief that they'll sell new boxes, that will promptly tick off their purchasers) and the occasional "Gateway 2000 believes you should be allowed to make an MP3 of cows singing" or whatever that commercial said.
>So yes, I can supply all the functionality you need
I see you have made both broad and incorrect assumptions as to what I need.
First let's speak of drive bays: I recently used my 5.25" drive to play an old game I purchased. Many old games are surprisingly playable due to their low-flash high-content composition, and they sell for much less second-hand than the new graphical crud. My copy of Railroad Tycoon is on 5.25", 360k discs, for example. I wouldn't want to lose it.
It's easier to give someone who asks for a floppy a 3.5" floppy than trying to explain to him why he's getting a USB keychain or burned CD instead. And do I really want to risk giving a USD 90 USB keychain to someone who may damage or fail to return it? Finally, unless you'll buy me an iBook, I'm stuck with a circa-1992, 486, pre-PCMCIA laptop, with no Ethernet card. I'm not joking. How will I share files with it?
I use, and purchased, a Zip drive because a site which I wanted to interchange data with had them. At the time, they did not (and indeed may still not) have CD burners, and I'd expect they don't take kindly to people shunting around their boxes to get to the USB ports for a keychain.
Admittedly, I could combine the seperate CD reader and burner, but I do it this way because 1) I had the reader first and 2) it saves wear and tear on the burner, which costs more than the reader to replace if it goes bad.
It doesn't matter that my x86 box lacks four 3.5" drive bays, because I have exhausted the available IDE positions with other hardware. If I wanted more hard drives, I'd have to drop another peripheral just to free room on the bus, even without concerning yourself with drive bays. It would be the same with a Mac. However, if I wanted another hard drive, and freed the space for it on the bus, I could remove the device I didn't want anymore, and put the hard disc into the now-vacant 5.25" bay. I can't go the other way if all you give me is 3.5" bays.
At the best, I'd need a 3.5" floppy (admittedly, no 5.25" retrogaming there), a Zip, and a CD burner. Three devices. Two slots. Problem. And a problem I don't want to solve by settling for an external peripheral that's clunky, often slow (I've used a USB Zip-- truly awful) and further clutters my desk with cables.
Onto the ports issue: I'm not convinced USB is a good REPLACEMENT for any of the legacy ports. It's a good SUPPLEMENT for things that lacked a home before (notably digital cameras and scanners), but for things like printers, keyboards, and mice, it simply increases the internal complexity of the device. I'm sure it's really necessary to make the OS device support more complex and the devices more awkward (and often more expensive) to support the noble dream that we should be able to connect 43 keyboards and 19 printers to the same jack on the machine. I also don't like the idea of USB mass storage. You want a transportable storage device, use a removable media item and a fixed drive. Much less chance of little Timmy tearing the cable out in the middle of a fsck.
I respectfully withdraw my concern about the Apple monitor ports. I am only familiar with the older machines, which were often teamed with the sort of cute little Apple->VGA adaptor you know costs way more than it should.
Apple's policies always seem "like it or lump it", and forget about the consumers who don't want to hop on the next spaceship to the future. I'm sure plenty of people wanted, at various times: -Faster 680x0 Macs, for apps heavily tied to the 680x0 architecture or hardware design -Legacy ports on newer Macs, because of sunken investments in accessories -OS 9 support and delivery continuation, for those who aren't comfy with OS X (would a place with 10,000 installed OS 9 systems want an order of 100 new systems to be OS X-only)
I also don't want to deal with a manufacturer who I can't say "***** you! I'm buying {ECS|FIC|AOpen|Lucky-Star|Amalgamated Sweatshop|...} instead!" to.
>Need to swap out your optical drive with >something better? Find any IDE/ATAPI drive on >pricewatch, and swap it out, just like a PC
Do those standard drives match up appropriately with the Apple bezels? If I'm spending $1700 on a box, I want it not to look like a hack-job after the first upgrade.
I also notice you trumpet the two 5.25" bays (the Apple site mentions four 3.5" bays). My x86 case has no less than SIX 5.25" bays (but two 3.5"). I've seen cases with 6 5.25" and 6 3.5". I can use six 5.25" bays given the chance (two sizes floppy drive, LCD panel, CD reader, CD burner, Zip). Can you supply this?
Do you still have to buy an adapter box to plug in an affordable PC monitor?
Also, Apple's tendency to drop things they don't like (legacy ports) is troubling. Makes long-term investment risky. I have a Mac compatible laser printer. Because it's round-serial style, it won't work on a new Mac, at least not without an adaptor. If I had spent $3,000 on it a few years ago (instead of $2.50 nine months ago), I'd be quite ticked.
But we have had competition between federally funded projects and the gov't. Note especially the rail industry. Was not Conrail federally controlled/funded at its inception? Amtrak certainly was, and is, and it definitely competes (poorly) with private businesses (both Greyhound and American, and to a lesser extent, various public transit systems and a few private companies selling passenger rail service). Or is there an exception because they were taking over a struggling industry, or because they are set up as a semi-private firm?
Slashdot Mirror
> Exactly what got hit? A car catches on fire in a collision...what type of impact would cause that?
I thought the aggregate data would be more valuable, as they'd appear to be an accurate representation of the real safety hazards they have to design for. If the average collision is at 16kph, then we'd better see cars that can handle a 16kph impact gracefully.
If that's the aim, I would see it working best as a voluntary/rewarded system, like medical studies. "$200 off for research assistance"
Define "OK".
I ran Quake on a 486DX/40 as proof of concept. IIRC, it delivered 0.4 FPS.
486DX/33 overclocked to 40
SiS85C471-based mainboard
8Mb RAM
Trident TGUI9440AGI based VGA, 1Mb
Did you use a hardware-assisting video board, or does "DX" mean "DX5" (a/k/a 5x86)
>He could do what many hundreds of thousands of volunteers do each year: he could save his money while he is working so that he could take the time off to volunteer and support himself doing it.
That doesn't solve the problem of the volunteer having to get a job instead of spending that time volunteering. It just shunts the time he spends working and not volunteering to another time period.
If you have to work 8 hours a day for six months before you can volunteer 8 hours a day for six months, it's no different from working 4 hours and volunteering 4 each day for a year, in terms of hours.
>I suspect you are missing the point of volunteerism.
I think what he's asking is perfectly reasonable. If nobody tends to his basic needs, he either has to:
1) Starve and rot
2) Get a job, siphoning off 40 or more hours each week.
Both put a substantial crimp in his ability to devote effort to the cause.
I admit the system he proposes is less than the pure model of volunteering, but it's a tradeoff. The sponsor will hand out some money and/or supplies to keep him fed, and he will be able to supply much more labour to the sponsor than he otherwise would be able to.
BTDT. In some areas, there are definitely services like that. Here, there's one by the name of 'Cricket'-- unlimited local calls and a fixed allocation of long-distance for ~USD 40 a month. A second similar programme ('Boomerang') seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. They advertise on the premise that you no longer need a land-line.
The principal inconvinence with this system is that it's prepaid, and you have to add stored-value if you want to make additional long-distance calls.
You seem to believe that availability guarantees acceptance. Two flaws in that theory.
1. People aren't necessarily buying the HDTV-ready sets. It's hard for Joe Sixpack to resist the $99 25-inch set sold in his local low-end electronics warehouse or supermarket, even if it's made in Bourkina Faso and only takes SECAM signals, and the brand name means "Cow Spleen" in some language.
2. The churn rate on TVs is too low to guarantee widespread adoption in time. For someone with a 1-, 5- or 10-year old set, he's not going to see any impact until they start actually shutting down analogue transmitters. Why should he spend $x00 a second earlier than he has to?
Bonus reason: Seems to be a bit of uncertainty regarding HDTV around. I was under the impression that they weren't yet certain that today's HDTV tuners would be able to handle tomorrow's HDTV broadcasts. That sort of thinking is going to make people hesitant.
7-segment displays are unsuitable. Can't do letters well.
5x7 matrix displays, or 17(?)-segment displays would do the job.
>People buy PC's to last for years
Counterexample to your claims can be found in the Commodore 64 [and several other 8-bit lines]. The hardware remained essentially constant, which benefitted both users (didn't need to worry about obsolescence) and developers (providing a stable platform). The first C64 is 99%+ compatible with the last one (bugfixes in the ROMs nonwithstanding), despite a production run of well over 10 million machines over many years.
A "reasonably powerful" Dragon box, perhaps featuring basic OS and utilities in flash, and sold cheap, could fill a similar role.
-"Your name, Bastard Operator From Hell". Done up exactly like the signs on executive offices.
-If two doors, label one "Garbage in" and the other "Garbage out"
-"This is a dump for salvage equipment". (Taken after sign at local university's computer repairs office, where they specifically deny a space being a dump for salvage equipment after years of it piling up there)
-Take the bathroom idea said before, but add a small handwritten sign that says "Enjoy the new low-water-use fixtures"
-"Beware of the Panther" -- wasn't that the sign in HHGG?
-Find a room name that outsiders might be invited to. A meeting room, the board room, the room where training sessions or the stockholder meeting occurs. Name the server room identical to that, or confusingly similar to that.
-On a similar principle, Room 226. Unless the room is originally numbered 226, in which case, call it Room 347. Bonus points if you give it the same number as the cafeteria, the bathroom, or some place you can otherwise waste time.
>Technology like this is useless for circumventing >unjust censorship. But running off a thousand >copies of something and passing them around >clandestinely will work as well today as it did >in the 1700's.
It can, however, be used as a fast assistant to getting the copies out there, especially over a geographically large area.
Let's say there are 50 interested copiers, spread out across a fair-sized nation. Your options are:
1. Let them each make a thousand copies of "something" independently, and hope they all get it right (consistent copy of the material and/or message).
2. Send around 50 copies for further reproduction. Lag time will likely be in the order of several days or more. Depending on how the transmission of the 50 copies is done (mail that could be intercepted), the distribution could be lossy and/or traceable. You also have to know who you're sending to.
3. Standard Internet placement ("Go to falungong.org and download the forbidden documents today!"). Easy to shut down or firewall off. Email is also awkward, as you'd have to first establish contact with the copiers to find their addresses, a potential exposure risk for both sides of the transaction.
4. P2P. Post it on Gnutella or the equal at breakfast-time, and the 50 interested people (and potentially many more) could easily download it and make a thousand copies locally. 50,000 copies in circulation by tea-time is a very legitimate possibility. The P2P networks could be engineered to encrypt transfers and spoof sources to make filtering and tracing again difficult.
Also, I can see where you might want electronic distribution to get the message (largely) exclusively to the upwardly-mobile, educated, and wealthier groups who may not necessarily be so concerned about the censorship (after all, the trains run on time for them.)
>P2P networks have no legitimate uses at all that cannot be (better!) carried out with another tool.
1. Untrue. Decentralization is a major win for certain applications. I can see it being a useful tool for working around censorship, for example.
2. If we cut it off now, we don't know what future applications may develop.
I really liked the promise of the Crusoe. I thought it was very clever technology.
:)
The problem is that the marketing was terrible.
Crusoes were targeted at laptops. Problem: In a world where I can buy a Celeron 1500 laptop for USD 1000 or less, you'd better do something to impress me if you wanted me to buy a Crusoe. You can make it cheap, which you didn't (the only Crusoe laptop I see locally sells for ~USD 1800). You can make it last a long time on the battery, but I can get similar battery life for less money by throwing an external battery on the back of said $1000 Celeron. You can make it perform well, but you didn't.
Make it competitive, or make it cheap. Transmeta (or perhaps more likely those who made products out of Transmeta CPUs) chose neither.
I was surprised you didn't see the Crusoe landing on the corporate desktop too. There are plenty of places with 300-400-500MHz machines that are adequate (because they don't feel the need to play games). I would think that a Crusoe-based box would be ideal for that sort of role (as a replacement for dead boxes, or to put analogous boxes on more desks)... with limited cooling requirements it would be quiet, not belch out tonnes of heat, and save maintenence hassles by removing moving parts (fans).
I also assumed you'd get a lot more flexibility with the "morphing" technology than you actually did. When Transmeta made the necessary documentation to exploit this stuff hard to find, they cut off their nose to spite their face. Why doesn't that "new Amiga" someone promises every few years run on a Crusoe set to emulate a 400MHz 68060? Why don't you see one-off Crusoe boxes designed to simulate obscure and otherwise irreplacable hardware. Hell, why don't you see them set up for student projects at universities to emulate the architecture they want to use as a teaching tool?
What did get exploited was that 'Web Pad' deal which never materialised. Now, we have this 'Tablet PC' thing... which will probably immediately bloat its way out of the Crusoe's performance range.
I had hoped that someone would buy Transmeta and do something useful with the technology. Now, I hope that when Transmeta finishes circling the drain, the local dealers start dumping Crusoe laptops cheap.
>The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was >employed to protect high-ranking elected officials.
:)
Actually, its original purpose was to prevent counterfeiting.
Wonderful. People don't have enough faith in the currency that half of the $20s in circulation are smeared with "detection" pen, and they're devoting mapower to someone running off Britney Spears at 40x.
BTW, does this mean I can buy a slightly used 40x CD-RW cheap from the local law enforcement auction?
Using a plastic prop for the cake is the sensible approach. Easy to work, and you don't need to worry about spoilage.
Ooo! I know! How about building the computer into some sort of diorama. Use fibre optics so the drive lights become building lights, have the CD tray rise from out of the middle of a street like some sort of evil monolith, and make that heatsink really a 'Volcano'.
The problem is that sometimes "cool" and "practical" would clash. I think a 50cm aluminium cube with no discernable features would be "cool", but I'd wreck ventilation, have to develop some clever approach to get to drives, and it wouldn't fit anywhere.
Perhaps a really well-done computer-in-the-keyboard, like an Amiga 600. It would have to be 1000% professional though. Great mini-ITX application.
Or an extremely flat desktop (like those 1U cases), but quite large so you can place it on the desk like a blotter and have your keyboard and mouse on it.
Of course, I like the "retro" modifications... the big huge AT tower with ATX board inside. Perhaps one of those with a big old AT desktop would be nice. You could put more drive bays up front because the ATX board is shorter in that dimension than an AT, and you could save much space by replacing the big AT PSU with a small ATX one and rearranging the back.
Odd materials might work. How about sheet brass? Easy to work, shiny, unusual colour, potential for nice patina over time.
Sometimes, all you really need though is a classy colour scheme or art. The Atari 600XL didn't need windows and blowholes to be cool. It just was, in silver, black, and white.
For fun, don't forget to use the case badge from your original 286.
A trick I did was to tie front-panel switches to motherboard jumpers. I did this for the multiplier jumpers on an Elitegroup K7S6A recently. Took up one 3.5" faceplate. Might be useful to have a momentary "CMOS clear" switch
The ultimate front-panel LCD: Bury an old Toshiba Libretto (remember those? Those little P75 laptops with the 5" screen, mass about 1kg) in the front panel, boot it to X, have it export a monitoring app from the "real" system. Colour and infinite display flexibility.
There's been a lot of work on lights and displays, but little in movement. How about a "heartbeat":
-rubber membrane over hole
-slow motor behind membrane
-off-centre cardboard/styrene oval on motor shaft
-oval presses membrane, creating "throb"
-For extra credit, tie it to system load
A thought:
c -power-station.doc" rather than those looking for a cheap, quick way to xfree86.org
If you leave the networks insecure, would it be difficult to set up a few with monitoring to log who tries to access sensitive goodies?
If everyone secures their networks, such an unsecured honeypot would stick out like a sore thumb, nobody would be stupid enough to touch it, and you lose something that's potentially a useful security tool.
This assumes, in contrast to several posters, that the goal isn't to cut off cheap, decentralised wireless, and assumes that you'll get a better terrorist hit rate if you check only those who are downloading "easily-exploitable-security-holes-in-local-atomi
I just see it as very inefficient to create a "closed set" domain, because so much of the Web's usefulness depends on free linking.
/. is? If you wanted to make a kid-friendly one in .kids.us, you'd either have to mirror everything within the domain (logistical nightmare, possible lawsuits), or take your chances of being shut down for linking to the outside world. The effect would be that you'd have a hard time creating a high-quality specimen of that sort of site.
Many news sites, for example, are essentially "link farms", pointing people to articles of interest. Is that not what
It would be difficult to make a valuable site in that domain without a lot of your own content.
Wonderful... a new playground, tailoring the flexibility of the Web for the needs of the large media concerns.
What happened to all those "site rating schemes" that were supposed to be built into our browsers many moons ago? You want kid business, set those flags, encourage the sites you link to to set their flags, and use the browser controls. If there's a problem with misleading flags (maliciously), consider a false-advertising claim.
I think it's been in the neighbourhood of 10 years since the first variations of this sort of thing were done. Remember? Lionel did one under the name Railscope. It ended up fairly similar... a camera car (mocked up to look like an Alco FA) that sucked back batteries like nobody's business and had to be pushed by an engine. It cost a fair amount... something like USD 300 back then IIRC.
I recall a big complaint in the early reviews was that you couldn't get it in whatever model you wanted... a DIY system could handle that nicely.
One of the problems mentioned, the variable track voltage as a power source, could be bypassed if you used a DCC wiring system-- those typically have 16vac on the rails at all times. Rectify, transform, and go.
It's surprising where the "gaps" in creating a quality model railroad are. We can put cameras in our engines, but the only cars we can put on the roads are static or limited in motion. Very few control panels have moved out of the "array of toggles on a sheet of board" level (why not electronic?) We can get about five different quality affordable implementations of the EMD F7, but you'll still pay a fortune (or spend hours starting with a crude kit) for a halfway-decent F59PH, SD50/60 or SD45, at least in 1:87.
I actually believe there would be a good market for custom "voodoo figurines" for layouts. One General Electric C44-9W, one Electro-Motive SD60M, and a 1:87 representation of the laptop that swallowed my notes. Wheee!
I remember Nomad. It was the last game I purchased for my 386/16 before I upgraded to something beefy enough (Wow! P75!) to play heavier games.
FWIW, I found it a bit annoying that it seemed that nothing you could do allowed you to break out of the model of "person generally friendly to the flesh beings and eventually to kill the Korok"
Still have the floppies. Tried it for a while on my 486 laptop recently. Ran smooth.
The problem is that it has to become much more sophisticated than the "dumb transmitter on every device" model to give the effects described in the article. Most notably, what happens when I leave a store and return with the parcel still in my hands?
At least, you need a "sold" flag that you can set when you leave, and only if you paid. You also need a mechanism to record purchase information (purchased 2/6/2012, price USD 399.99) for return purposes. Furthermore, what will you cut out and send in for the rebate?
That brings me to my prediction: Any electronics device you buy in 2012 will have no less than 9 mail-in rebates applying to it.
It's not that they're BAD, but that they're inconsistent. Some of their boards are downright decent (The M560TG was pretty good... did 83MHz bus speeds well... and the M830, under the guise of the Elitegroup K7S5A, is a legend)
They do have some things going for them:
1. They seem willing to try *anything* once. They were one of the very few firms that made a SiS735 board (the aforementioned M830), and the only firm I know of that sold a Baby-AT Socket A board (M812)
2. They supply a lot of downward price pressure on the industry
3. Their Engrish manuals are hilarious!
The attempt to "slip it under the door."
For a comparison, look at say, a VideoDisc (them big old record-like things). There's no way you'd ever confuse it with a VHS casette, and as such, not really expect it to work similarly. This, it looks like a CD, is marketed similarly to a CD, fills a similar niche to a CD, yet strangely isn't a CD.
If you want to do a DRM format, make it very different. How about the size and shape of a British two-pound coin? This benefits you in several ways:
1. Completely new and potentially propriatery player base, no need to worry about some old equipment designed in a way that can look through your attempts to maintain compatibility and DRM in one disc. I can easily see them giving away free DRM-disc players, perhaps with the purchase of some number of discs, to buy market share.
2. No problems with people returning "broken" discs because they thought they were CDs that work properly.
Consumers also win because they can make intelligent purchasing decisions, and not have to guess if a disc will work or not; it also allows them to see the true effect for them of DRM (because market penetration will probably never be 1000%, you'll probably see both CD and DRM-D releases together, and be able to compare sound quality and price.
>The difference is Ford company ain't getting >rich when you hop the train.
Interestingly, other firms (notably, GM) do get rich. (Google for 'F59PHI')
What I want to know is why we've been so phenominally unsuccessful at fighting capital with capital. There are numerous industries with a stake in the DRM issue... both in the obvious fields (hardware/software) and in non-obvious fields (data recovery services, law enforcement, archives... in general, anyone who might need to ever get to data through 'unapproved' channels) Yet, what we've gotten is certain large IC makers signing on with DRM-enabling schemes (based perhaps on a deluded belief that they'll sell new boxes, that will promptly tick off their purchasers) and the occasional "Gateway 2000 believes you should be allowed to make an MP3 of cows singing" or whatever that commercial said.
>So yes, I can supply all the functionality you need
I see you have made both broad and incorrect assumptions as to what I need.
First let's speak of drive bays:
I recently used my 5.25" drive to play an old game I purchased. Many old games are surprisingly playable due to their low-flash high-content composition, and they sell for much less second-hand than the new graphical crud. My copy of Railroad Tycoon is on 5.25", 360k discs, for example. I wouldn't want to lose it.
It's easier to give someone who asks for a floppy a 3.5" floppy than trying to explain to him why he's getting a USB keychain or burned CD instead. And do I really want to risk giving a USD 90 USB keychain to someone who may damage or fail to return it? Finally, unless you'll buy me an iBook, I'm stuck with a circa-1992, 486, pre-PCMCIA laptop, with no Ethernet card. I'm not joking. How will I share files with it?
I use, and purchased, a Zip drive because a site which I wanted to interchange data with had them. At the time, they did not (and indeed may still not) have CD burners, and I'd expect they don't take kindly to people shunting around their boxes to get to the USB ports for a keychain.
Admittedly, I could combine the seperate CD reader and burner, but I do it this way because 1) I had the reader first and 2) it saves wear and tear on the burner, which costs more than the reader to replace if it goes bad.
It doesn't matter that my x86 box lacks four 3.5" drive bays, because I have exhausted the available IDE positions with other hardware. If I wanted more hard drives, I'd have to drop another peripheral just to free room on the bus, even without concerning yourself with drive bays. It would be the same with a Mac. However, if I wanted another hard drive, and freed the space for it on the bus, I could remove the device I didn't want anymore, and put the hard disc into the now-vacant 5.25" bay. I can't go the other way if all you give me is 3.5" bays.
At the best, I'd need a 3.5" floppy (admittedly, no 5.25" retrogaming there), a Zip, and a CD burner. Three devices. Two slots. Problem. And a problem I don't want to solve by settling for an external peripheral that's clunky, often slow (I've used a USB Zip-- truly awful) and further clutters my desk with cables.
Onto the ports issue:
I'm not convinced USB is a good REPLACEMENT for any of the legacy ports. It's a good SUPPLEMENT for things that lacked a home before (notably digital cameras and scanners), but for things like printers, keyboards, and mice, it simply increases the internal complexity of the device. I'm sure it's really necessary to make the OS device support more complex and the devices more awkward (and often more expensive) to support the noble dream that we should be able to connect 43 keyboards and 19 printers to the same jack on the machine. I also don't like the idea of USB mass storage. You want a transportable storage device, use a removable media item and a fixed drive. Much less chance of little Timmy tearing the cable out in the middle of a fsck.
I respectfully withdraw my concern about the Apple monitor ports. I am only familiar with the older machines, which were often teamed with the sort of cute little Apple->VGA adaptor you know costs way more than it should.
Apple's policies always seem "like it or lump it", and forget about the consumers who don't want to hop on the next spaceship to the future. I'm sure plenty of people wanted, at various times:
-Faster 680x0 Macs, for apps heavily tied to the 680x0 architecture or hardware design
-Legacy ports on newer Macs, because of sunken investments in accessories
-OS 9 support and delivery continuation, for those who aren't comfy with OS X (would a place with 10,000 installed OS 9 systems want an order of 100 new systems to be OS X-only)
I also don't want to deal with a manufacturer who I can't say "***** you! I'm buying {ECS|FIC|AOpen|Lucky-Star|Amalgamated Sweatshop|...} instead!" to.
>Need to swap out your optical drive with >something better? Find any IDE/ATAPI drive on >pricewatch, and swap it out, just like a PC
Do those standard drives match up appropriately with the Apple bezels? If I'm spending $1700 on a box, I want it not to look like a hack-job after the first upgrade.
I also notice you trumpet the two 5.25" bays (the Apple site mentions four 3.5" bays). My x86 case has no less than SIX 5.25" bays (but two 3.5"). I've seen cases with 6 5.25" and 6 3.5". I can use six 5.25" bays given the chance (two sizes floppy drive, LCD panel, CD reader, CD burner, Zip). Can you supply this?
Do you still have to buy an adapter box to plug in an affordable PC monitor?
Also, Apple's tendency to drop things they don't like (legacy ports) is troubling. Makes long-term investment risky. I have a Mac compatible laser printer. Because it's round-serial style, it won't work on a new Mac, at least not without an adaptor. If I had spent $3,000 on it a few years ago (instead of $2.50 nine months ago), I'd be quite ticked.
But we have had competition between federally funded projects and the gov't. Note especially the rail industry. Was not Conrail federally controlled/funded at its inception? Amtrak certainly was, and is, and it definitely competes (poorly) with private businesses (both Greyhound and American, and to a lesser extent, various public transit systems and a few private companies selling passenger rail service). Or is there an exception because they were taking over a struggling industry, or because they are set up as a semi-private firm?