I would guess the reason why not everyone is using a "Happy Hacker" keyboard is because they're priced between $70 and $120.
That and the fact the layout is very different to your standard PC and is designed for, well, hacking with.
Anyone who's into using their computer for more mundane things or (like me) is simply used to the standard PC layout (good or not) isn't going to want to relearn the whole thing again.
Ironically in the latter case, the Happy Hacking keyboard layout more closely resembles the 8-bit microcomputers I grew up with, and it looks very cute and compact. But compared to a PC keyboard, not only are half the keys missing, but the likes of the Enter key is the wrong shape and position, ditto backspace, ditto backslash, backquote....
I'm sure the Escape key is in a more convenient position for vi, but that doesn't justify spending that much money on a new keyboard you're going to have to spend ages relearning. I'm assuming it's not aimed at touch-typists....
Dec keyboards I believe are made in much the same way [as an IBM 'Model M' mechanical keyboard]
Depends which DEC keyboard you mean; I got an old DEC keyboard secondhand. It was *by far* the bulkiest keyboard I've ever seen, although not because of the keys; they were normal-sized PC keys in a standard 104-key PC layout. It had the old-fashioned telephone-cable style curl in its cable.
And what made this so annoying was that it *wasn't* a quality mechanical keyboard. It was *very* obviously a cheap membrane-based keyboard, and possibly one of the worst examples of that type I've ever seen; very strange and obvious "deforming rubber dome" feel to the keys. Not to mention that the keys themselves were a somewhat odd shape and not pleasant to type on.
I agree with your point about 'clicky' keyboards (assuming you mean the type personified by the IBM PS/2's 'Model M'). Some people seem to love them; I found the midway pressure point of the microswitch very unnatural and offputting. I suspect that people who used them a lot will love them a lot; and those who aren't used to them won't.
I mention this because I wanted a new mechanical keyboard, but one with "linear" action that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom; the 'quality' feel that a good mechanical keyboard has. I had to import the **** thing (a Cherry G80-3000) from Germany with German labelling; UK stockists only had the 'clicky' version. Fortunately I can touch-type, and to some extent I'm used to "wrong labels" because I use a US layout despite living in the UK; but it did still cause some initial frustration.
Was it worth it? Probably; it's miles better than the cheapest membrane keyboards, although the springs on the keys provide a bit more resistance than I'd have liked, given the choice. But I'm being picky here.
And actually, some membrane keyboards really aren't that bad; my last Mitsumi was pretty nice for a UKP 10.00 thing; compared to other membrane-jobs (including, ironically, an older Mitsumi I have) it's very usable. More importantly, I had my old 8-bit Atari machines with "real" keyboards out a few nights back....
My God, they were *horrible* to type on... and from what I remember, the C64's keyboard was even worse. I'd rather use all but the very worst modern membrane keyboards than that. "Good" old keyboards are still pretty good, but never fall into the trap of believing "mechanical good, membrane bad".
I also suspect that the reason some dislike membrane keyboards is simply that they're used to the action of a mechanical keyboard. I found myself asking whether the 'deep' travel that most real keyboards have is necessary; my Compaq Armada laptop's keyboard has (by necessity) far less travel, and a distinctly different feel to most desktop keyboards, but it's really quite nice to type on for what it is. I actually find myself able to type faster, if anything, on that than I can on my expensive mechanical keyboard.
And frankly, for the kind of person that takes a couple of seconds to hunt and peck, and uses their computer for five minutes a day, pretty much any keyboard should keep them happy.
people who call them the 7/7 attacks are branding them to promote fear
Maybe I'm being callous because I don't really live anywhere near London... but when I heard the news, I remember thinking "Well, this is bad, but it's not 9/11". And then having watched the news and found out most of what I needed to know, got back to what I was doing.
If anything, I was more worried about the government using it as an excuse to promote more ways to take away peoples' freedom. In all honesty, it was tragic for the people involved, but to let it dictate how the public go about their lives would have been *exactly* to play into the terrorist's hands.
That 7/7 bullshit doesn't seem to be taking off; most people are just calling them the 'London bombings'.
There are too many British actors on Battlestar Galactica.
Well, that's probably because there are a lot of bad guys in Battlestar Galactica...
Actually, I'm not sure that was intended to be 'funny'. (Spoiler follows for those who haven't seen the first hour of the new Battlestar Galactica mini-series); I noticed that they had an English guy play the unheroic self-preserving computer geek who inadvertantly lets the Cylons into the defence computer.
Yep, there's always a 'British' actor with the required accent (whether they're a good actor or not takes second place to the accent) willing to take the part of the bad guy. They did it in Firefly too, though I found myself warming to the character forced to be the English/British (*) baddie in the middle of a strange western-in-space mythologisation of America's past.
Truth be told, I watch just over an hour of Battlestar Galactica, then didn't bother with the rest. Well-made or not, I wasn't interested in seeing a very militaristic reflection of America's paranoia on terrorism (and make no bones about it, Battlestar Galactica is very much the Earth-representing-America school of sci-fi); I'm not American, and I don't have a repressed desire to indulge my military side.
It wasn't especially badly made, and it looked like they were taking things more seriously than the original series... but in truth, I wasn't interested in watching it.
Simple fact is, most sci-fi on TV in Britain is American, about America and designed to American tastes. Of course, that's the largest target audience, and I'm sure the American producers are interested in reflecting their own society; that's understandable. However, it's also understandable that most TV sci-fi doesn't appeal to me for the same reason (oh yeah, that and the fact it's cliched and cheesey).
As for Dr. Who... I know you were joking, but the new Dr. Who really won't appeal to your average American viewer. They tried it with the 1996 TV-movie, diluted the concept and it still didn't get the viewing figures needed. In short, if you could make a 'Doctor Who' that mainstream America would watch, it wouldn't be Doctor Who.
Just out of curiosity (and this *is* a question, not an implied criticism), did the fact he was Jewish have any bearing, directly or indirectly on his anti-authoritarian nature?
Yeah, it's not *that* bad a machine; my criticism was really the time of release and pricepoint. As a straight replacement for the A500 (which it pretended to be; the real replacement was the A1200), it was stupid and ill-conceived.
As a price-reduced machine (UKP 150-230 max), with the A1200 taking over the A500's pricepoint (UKP 300 IIRC), it might have been justifiable. It would still have had the A500's software compatibility, and the hardware incompatibility would have been more palatable because some redesign would have been necessary to cut the A500's production cost and it wasn't a straight replacement.
Quite honestly, if it hadn't been so blatantly symptomatic of C='s inability to come out with a proper A500-successor quickly enough, I would have considered it quite cute; rather like the Oric Atmos, albeit in slightly boring beige. In a way, it's a shame what should have been a bargain Amiga A300 was pressurised into being something it shouldn't have been.
How does 3d make a better film... Whatever happened to plot, cinematics and suspense...
They'll use it for pr0n first; expect more in-your-face schlongs (cough) and beach-ball style fake breasts rubbed against the camera.
As for plot, cinematics and suspense.... frankly, most porn does this so badly, you wish they didn't bother.
If they're going to do those at all, I wish they'd do them properly. Personally, I can't stand watching most porn with the sound turned up because it's very badly (and more importantly very *obviously*) dubbed by two people in a studio- typically a woman whose job it is to do some fake moaning and suck her fingers, and a guy who has to occasionally grunt and spout crap like "Oh yeah, baby".
That aside, it *will* be used for porn, although I doubt it'll improve the quality of most of it.
No, the 'e' (prefixed at birth by divine forces to your name) allows you to work in the exciting (cough) world of Information Technology.
However; (a) It should be capitalised 'eJacqui', and (b) That 'e' is kind of dated now; consider replacing it with an 'i' to become 'iJacqui' instead.
No, on second thoughts, leave it as 'eJacqui'. Replacing the 'e' with an 'i' would automatically associate you with iPod/iMac owners, thus nullifying any technical skills you have. (^_^)
Actually, her name really is Jacqui and she has a B.S. from Purdue University. She could also totally kick your ass.
Surely you mean she could totally kick my ars(e). Geddit... ass, arse, ars.... ah, never mind;-)
Anyhow, if you reread the post, you'll see that it's making fun of the careers officer's inability to see past a supersmart girl's name, not poor Jacqui herself (as well as being a cheap piece of humour at the expense of someone's name (-_^)V ) I thought it was pretty obviously silly myself, but... oh well.
I mean, I wasn't seriously suggesting that your writer should seriously *have* to be a hairdresser.
With a name like that, she'd be equally cut out for life as a beautician as well...;-)
Yeah, this may be few-to-no girls slashdot and all, but the reviewer's called Jacqui.
Jacqui sounds like a hairdresser's name. No offense intended, but it does.
I bet she went to the careers officer at school, and he started rifling through her notes.
"Hmm.... it says here you've got straight A*s in Maths, Physics, English, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Computing and Woodworking. And that you're a major pop star in Eastern Europe and have built your own 4-qbit quantum computer at home using parts from a recovered Apple II computer.
Looks like you have the world ahead of you, uh....."
(Checks front of file for the girl's name)
"'Jacqueline'?! Well, that solves all our problems; you're going to be a hairdresser.... no, stop complaining. It's the law anyway. I'll arrange for you to leave school tommorow and start working in the 'Curlz-n'-Sizzers' salon just up the road.... no, I *don't* care if you're 8 years old. You're a Jacqui, and there's no point staying in school when you could be out hairdressing."
I wouldn't even waste my time considering learning VCR repair; you can pick up a new VCR for less than what any reasonable repair person would have to charge to fix the majority of faults.
Additionally, they'll be dead for pretty much any purpose in the next couple of years, as DVD recorders and PVRs (*especially* PVRs) take over.
In short, utterly pointless business to consider even working in; doubly stupid if you have to learn the skills first.
TVs may be different, but they're still semi-disposable, and the technology is fast moving away from CRTs (yeah, CRTs will still be in use for years to come, but the people using them will mostly be those at the bottom of the market, and they'll replace their old CRTs, rather than paying to have them fixed. Anything else will probably be very niche, high-end CRT apps...)
"Wants" does not fit what I consider to be valid anthropomorphism as I described, because the concept of "information" is so generalised that there is no underlying logic to *all* of it except that it is "useful to someone".
Anthropomorphising software is valid, because it reflects (or reflects against) the underlying thought processes of that particular piece of software. Generally, "information" does not have that level of consistent thought process behind it.
And what is "information" anyway? Does it have any meaning before we extract or require it? No. It isn't free then. In addition, claiming that "information wants to be free" once it is freed is flawed, because until it is freed, it does not necessarily tend to reproduce; on the contrary, it can die off.
Saying that information wants to be free once it is free is kind of flawed...
> > > That information wants to be set free.
> > No it doesn't, and please stop anthropomorphizing it.
> Is every one in your family that literal? It must be difficult to use metaphors, metonome, etc.
No, anthropomorphisation of computer (and information) concepts is valid when there is some sort of logic or structure behind that particular piece or type of information.
When (for example) we say a flawed computer program "will happily read as much input as you feed it and not worry about overflowing the buffer", we're not implying the program is sentient, let alone "thinks" in human terms. We're either describing the logic behind its design, or (in this case) the implications of its *actual* behaviour against the *intended* behaviour (the latter "intelligence" and "purpose" being that of the programmer/designer).
Now, to apply the same technique to information and say that "information wants to be free" is completely meaningless; information is (a) A very generalised concept, and (b) In the eye of the beholder.
Why does information "want to be free"? This is doing no more than projecting your pseudo-"libertarian" desires onto some abstract concept.
It has nothing to do with being "literal" or "metaphorical" (let's skip the "metonome", since I don't have a clue what the hell that's meant to be). As I said above, if there is a specific human meaning behind a specific piece of information (including a computer program), it's valid to anthropomorphise.
"Information wants to be free" is nothing *but* touchy-feely ideological anthropomorphism. It has no basis in fact, and isn't necessarily desirable when you consider all the implications.
As one of the other replies said, "you can begin by publicizing all of your personal, medical, and financial records, including your mother's maiden name, your card and PIN numbers, email addresses, account passwords, treatments for any STD's, and so forth".
Sheesh.... it wasn't really an anti-AIX joke, you know. Stop taking it so seriously!
It was just something I came across when I was messing around with Google; oddly, I wasn't looking for pr0n at the time, nor was I looking for AIX. (^_^)
The difference is, we actually have jobs and run our own businesses, and because our economy is mature we can buy our freedom, while China's economy is just getting started.
The USA did not gain freedom through economic prosperity; the freedom came first, then the prosperity.
If you want human rights for China then support their economy because freedom and economics are combined as one.
Well, economic importance hasn't done much for personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia; on the contrary, the oil is the reason the Saudi Royal family is being propped up by the west (espec. the USA).
Which, not coincidentally is also where Wahabi Muslim extremism is being bred- not Iraq. I mean, really, anyone paying even the remotest bit of attention to Middle East politics could figure out that Saudi Arabia is a million times more relevant to Al Qaeda than a dictator in a relatively secular country ever was.
Anyway, I'm sorry, I don't buy that economic 'prosperity' automatically implies freedom. It's probably hard to have freedom in an extremely impoverished society, but the converse doesn't always follow. Look how far China's got already without significantly increasing its level of freedom.
And lets not forget, once China gets their human rights issues resolved, there's tons of profit to be made.
There's tons of profit to be made *without* them resolving their human rights issues. If you're implying that profit will improve Chinese human rights, I'm not convinced of that, for the reason I've just given.
I didn't get the impression you were saying that Western companies could wait until China had resolved its human rights issues before investing and reaping profit...
It is after all the largest market area in the world, and currently growing at fastest pace compared to the rest of the world.
And although many westerners can see a vast pool of profit in the Chinese market, the Chinese government and friends (i.e. the strata for whose benefit the country is run; let's not kid ourselves that China today is *anything* but an uber-capitalistic plutocracy) have a vested interest in keeping that money and power for themselves.
Hence the changing over; and I still had trouble with some packages failing to install using dependencies for reasons that aren't entirely clear.
I had Freesbie beforehand (live FreeBSD-based CD with option to install); that was easy to install, but it lacked some ports stuff I needed to get my printer working, yadda yadda. So I've literally just finished installing 'proper' FreeBSD. Can't say how well it's worked yet...
...and it started malfunctioning shortly afterwards; even when I wasn't running FreeBSD on it.
Then I realised the sad truth; my *Box was dying.... Netcraft confirmed it.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week...
(Sorry, but I had to get that one in, and yeah, I really have just finished installing FreeBSD, albeit on my PC, so I can make jokes about it now (^_^)....anyway, what *is* that with all the CD changing... would I "like" to change the CD now?? Are you saying I *have* to change the CD, or that you can install the stuff on the other CD later.... no, I would *not* like to change the CDs round 347 times.... aaaawwwrgh!)
I made a 7 inch floppy disc turntable 2 years ago with an old tape deck head as the stylus.
That's pretty damn cool, actually. Did you consider doing it with the original 7 inch (*) mechanism and read/write head, hacking the head movement and electrical in/out for the magnetic head?
Strikes me as being two potential problems with that;
(a) Tracking; no physical groove nor 'intelligence' to keep the head over the spiral track would be a major problem and
(b) The motors in the floppy drive are probably steppers, which is unsuited to doing spiral recording (in theory you could record a track, 'step' to the next when it was complete and do the same on playback; this is likely to be nightmarish to implement for recording and ten times worse to get the thing to playback in synch, and a hundred times worse to do it without making the sound unlistenable due to the track jumps).
BTW, IIRC the late 80s Sony Mavica still-video camera did analogue recording on a floppy disk; I assume this was possible because it was storing a TV picture, thus the gap between one line and the next could correspond to the stepper moving between tracks; or maybe it stored one picture per track. I don't know; I'm too lazy to look it up and it's more fun speculating anyway (^_^)
(*) 7 inch drive? Is this some obscure failed format; I've heard of 8", 5 1/4", 3 1/2" and (far less commonly, but used in many Amstrad machines) 3" disks. But never 7"...
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I would guess the reason why not everyone is using a "Happy Hacker" keyboard is because they're priced between $70 and $120.
That and the fact the layout is very different to your standard PC and is designed for, well, hacking with.
Anyone who's into using their computer for more mundane things or (like me) is simply used to the standard PC layout (good or not) isn't going to want to relearn the whole thing again.
Ironically in the latter case, the Happy Hacking keyboard layout more closely resembles the 8-bit microcomputers I grew up with, and it looks very cute and compact. But compared to a PC keyboard, not only are half the keys missing, but the likes of the Enter key is the wrong shape and position, ditto backspace, ditto backslash, backquote....
I'm sure the Escape key is in a more convenient position for vi, but that doesn't justify spending that much money on a new keyboard you're going to have to spend ages relearning. I'm assuming it's not aimed at touch-typists....
Dec keyboards I believe are made in much the same way [as an IBM 'Model M' mechanical keyboard]
Depends which DEC keyboard you mean; I got an old DEC keyboard secondhand. It was *by far* the bulkiest keyboard I've ever seen, although not because of the keys; they were normal-sized PC keys in a standard 104-key PC layout. It had the old-fashioned telephone-cable style curl in its cable.
And what made this so annoying was that it *wasn't* a quality mechanical keyboard. It was *very* obviously a cheap membrane-based keyboard, and possibly one of the worst examples of that type I've ever seen; very strange and obvious "deforming rubber dome" feel to the keys. Not to mention that the keys themselves were a somewhat odd shape and not pleasant to type on.
I agree with your point about 'clicky' keyboards (assuming you mean the type personified by the IBM PS/2's 'Model M'). Some people seem to love them; I found the midway pressure point of the microswitch very unnatural and offputting. I suspect that people who used them a lot will love them a lot; and those who aren't used to them won't.
I mention this because I wanted a new mechanical keyboard, but one with "linear" action that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom; the 'quality' feel that a good mechanical keyboard has. I had to import the **** thing (a Cherry G80-3000) from Germany with German labelling; UK stockists only had the 'clicky' version. Fortunately I can touch-type, and to some extent I'm used to "wrong labels" because I use a US layout despite living in the UK; but it did still cause some initial frustration.
Was it worth it? Probably; it's miles better than the cheapest membrane keyboards, although the springs on the keys provide a bit more resistance than I'd have liked, given the choice. But I'm being picky here.
And actually, some membrane keyboards really aren't that bad; my last Mitsumi was pretty nice for a UKP 10.00 thing; compared to other membrane-jobs (including, ironically, an older Mitsumi I have) it's very usable. More importantly, I had my old 8-bit Atari machines with "real" keyboards out a few nights back....
My God, they were *horrible* to type on... and from what I remember, the C64's keyboard was even worse. I'd rather use all but the very worst modern membrane keyboards than that. "Good" old keyboards are still pretty good, but never fall into the trap of believing "mechanical good, membrane bad".
I also suspect that the reason some dislike membrane keyboards is simply that they're used to the action of a mechanical keyboard. I found myself asking whether the 'deep' travel that most real keyboards have is necessary; my Compaq Armada laptop's keyboard has (by necessity) far less travel, and a distinctly different feel to most desktop keyboards, but it's really quite nice to type on for what it is. I actually find myself able to type faster, if anything, on that than I can on my expensive mechanical keyboard.
And frankly, for the kind of person that takes a couple of seconds to hunt and peck, and uses their computer for five minutes a day, pretty much any keyboard should keep them happy.
people who call them the 7/7 attacks are branding them to promote fear
Maybe I'm being callous because I don't really live anywhere near London... but when I heard the news, I remember thinking "Well, this is bad, but it's not 9/11". And then having watched the news and found out most of what I needed to know, got back to what I was doing.
If anything, I was more worried about the government using it as an excuse to promote more ways to take away peoples' freedom. In all honesty, it was tragic for the people involved, but to let it dictate how the public go about their lives would have been *exactly* to play into the terrorist's hands.
That 7/7 bullshit doesn't seem to be taking off; most people are just calling them the 'London bombings'.
There are too many British actors on Battlestar Galactica.
Well, that's probably because there are a lot of bad guys in Battlestar Galactica...
Actually, I'm not sure that was intended to be 'funny'. (Spoiler follows for those who haven't seen the first hour of the new Battlestar Galactica mini-series); I noticed that they had an English guy play the unheroic self-preserving computer geek who inadvertantly lets the Cylons into the defence computer.
Yep, there's always a 'British' actor with the required accent (whether they're a good actor or not takes second place to the accent) willing to take the part of the bad guy. They did it in Firefly too, though I found myself warming to the character forced to be the English/British (*) baddie in the middle of a strange western-in-space mythologisation of America's past.
Truth be told, I watch just over an hour of Battlestar Galactica, then didn't bother with the rest. Well-made or not, I wasn't interested in seeing a very militaristic reflection of America's paranoia on terrorism (and make no bones about it, Battlestar Galactica is very much the Earth-representing-America school of sci-fi); I'm not American, and I don't have a repressed desire to indulge my military side.
It wasn't especially badly made, and it looked like they were taking things more seriously than the original series... but in truth, I wasn't interested in watching it.
Simple fact is, most sci-fi on TV in Britain is American, about America and designed to American tastes. Of course, that's the largest target audience, and I'm sure the American producers are interested in reflecting their own society; that's understandable. However, it's also understandable that most TV sci-fi doesn't appeal to me for the same reason (oh yeah, that and the fact it's cliched and cheesey).
As for Dr. Who... I know you were joking, but the new Dr. Who really won't appeal to your average American viewer. They tried it with the 1996 TV-movie, diluted the concept and it still didn't get the viewing figures needed. In short, if you could make a 'Doctor Who' that mainstream America would watch, it wouldn't be Doctor Who.
Just out of curiosity (and this *is* a question, not an implied criticism), did the fact he was Jewish have any bearing, directly or indirectly on his anti-authoritarian nature?
Yeah, it's not *that* bad a machine; my criticism was really the time of release and pricepoint. As a straight replacement for the A500 (which it pretended to be; the real replacement was the A1200), it was stupid and ill-conceived.
As a price-reduced machine (UKP 150-230 max), with the A1200 taking over the A500's pricepoint (UKP 300 IIRC), it might have been justifiable. It would still have had the A500's software compatibility, and the hardware incompatibility would have been more palatable because some redesign would have been necessary to cut the A500's production cost and it wasn't a straight replacement.
Quite honestly, if it hadn't been so blatantly symptomatic of C='s inability to come out with a proper A500-successor quickly enough, I would have considered it quite cute; rather like the Oric Atmos, albeit in slightly boring beige. In a way, it's a shame what should have been a bargain Amiga A300 was pressurised into being something it shouldn't have been.
How much 'depth' was "Oh yeah, suck it baby" going to have in the first place?! ;-)
How does 3d make a better film... Whatever happened to plot, cinematics and suspense...
They'll use it for pr0n first; expect more in-your-face schlongs (cough) and beach-ball style fake breasts rubbed against the camera.
As for plot, cinematics and suspense.... frankly, most porn does this so badly, you wish they didn't bother.
If they're going to do those at all, I wish they'd do them properly. Personally, I can't stand watching most porn with the sound turned up because it's very badly (and more importantly very *obviously*) dubbed by two people in a studio- typically a woman whose job it is to do some fake moaning and suck her fingers, and a guy who has to occasionally grunt and spout crap like "Oh yeah, baby".
That aside, it *will* be used for porn, although I doubt it'll improve the quality of most of it.
No, the 'e' (prefixed at birth by divine forces to your name) allows you to work in the exciting (cough) world of Information Technology.
However; (a) It should be capitalised 'eJacqui', and (b) That 'e' is kind of dated now; consider replacing it with an 'i' to become 'iJacqui' instead.
No, on second thoughts, leave it as 'eJacqui'. Replacing the 'e' with an 'i' would automatically associate you with iPod/iMac owners, thus nullifying any technical skills you have. (^_^)
Actually, her name really is Jacqui and she has a B.S. from Purdue University. She could also totally kick your ass.
;-)
;-)
Surely you mean she could totally kick my ars(e). Geddit... ass, arse, ars.... ah, never mind
Anyhow, if you reread the post, you'll see that it's making fun of the careers officer's inability to see past a supersmart girl's name, not poor Jacqui herself (as well as being a cheap piece of humour at the expense of someone's name (-_^)V ) I thought it was pretty obviously silly myself, but... oh well.
I mean, I wasn't seriously suggesting that your writer should seriously *have* to be a hairdresser.
With a name like that, she'd be equally cut out for life as a beautician as well...
Yeah, this may be few-to-no girls slashdot and all, but the reviewer's called Jacqui.
Jacqui sounds like a hairdresser's name. No offense intended, but it does.
I bet she went to the careers officer at school, and he started rifling through her notes.
"Hmm.... it says here you've got straight A*s in Maths, Physics, English, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Computing and Woodworking. And that you're a major pop star in Eastern Europe and have built your own 4-qbit quantum computer at home using parts from a recovered Apple II computer.
Looks like you have the world ahead of you, uh....."
(Checks front of file for the girl's name)
"'Jacqueline'?! Well, that solves all our problems; you're going to be a hairdresser.... no, stop complaining. It's the law anyway. I'll arrange for you to leave school tommorow and start working in the 'Curlz-n'-Sizzers' salon just up the road.... no, I *don't* care if you're 8 years old. You're a Jacqui, and there's no point staying in school when you could be out hairdressing."
TV/VCR repair is in danger of becoming extinct
I wouldn't even waste my time considering learning VCR repair; you can pick up a new VCR for less than what any reasonable repair person would have to charge to fix the majority of faults.
Additionally, they'll be dead for pretty much any purpose in the next couple of years, as DVD recorders and PVRs (*especially* PVRs) take over.
In short, utterly pointless business to consider even working in; doubly stupid if you have to learn the skills first.
TVs may be different, but they're still semi-disposable, and the technology is fast moving away from CRTs (yeah, CRTs will still be in use for years to come, but the people using them will mostly be those at the bottom of the market, and they'll replace their old CRTs, rather than paying to have them fixed. Anything else will probably be very niche, high-end CRT apps...)
"Wants" does not fit what I consider to be valid anthropomorphism as I described, because the concept of "information" is so generalised that there is no underlying logic to *all* of it except that it is "useful to someone".
Anthropomorphising software is valid, because it reflects (or reflects against) the underlying thought processes of that particular piece of software. Generally, "information" does not have that level of consistent thought process behind it.
And what is "information" anyway? Does it have any meaning before we extract or require it? No. It isn't free then. In addition, claiming that "information wants to be free" once it is freed is flawed, because until it is freed, it does not necessarily tend to reproduce; on the contrary, it can die off.
Saying that information wants to be free once it is free is kind of flawed...
> > > That information wants to be set free.
> > No it doesn't, and please stop anthropomorphizing it.
> Is every one in your family that literal? It must be difficult to use metaphors, metonome, etc.
No, anthropomorphisation of computer (and information) concepts is valid when there is some sort of logic or structure behind that particular piece or type of information.
When (for example) we say a flawed computer program "will happily read as much input as you feed it and not worry about overflowing the buffer", we're not implying the program is sentient, let alone "thinks" in human terms. We're either describing the logic behind its design, or (in this case) the implications of its *actual* behaviour against the *intended* behaviour (the latter "intelligence" and "purpose" being that of the programmer/designer).
Now, to apply the same technique to information and say that "information wants to be free" is completely meaningless; information is (a) A very generalised concept, and (b) In the eye of the beholder.
Why does information "want to be free"? This is doing no more than projecting your pseudo-"libertarian" desires onto some abstract concept.
It has nothing to do with being "literal" or "metaphorical" (let's skip the "metonome", since I don't have a clue what the hell that's meant to be). As I said above, if there is a specific human meaning behind a specific piece of information (including a computer program), it's valid to anthropomorphise.
"Information wants to be free" is nothing *but* touchy-feely ideological anthropomorphism. It has no basis in fact, and isn't necessarily desirable when you consider all the implications.
As one of the other replies said, "you can begin by publicizing all of your personal, medical, and financial records, including your mother's maiden name, your card and PIN numbers, email addresses, account passwords, treatments for any STD's, and so forth".
...Harold Shipman
Oh my God! Harold Shipman has come back from the dead and is breaking into my network!
Sheesh.... it wasn't really an anti-AIX joke, you know. Stop taking it so seriously!
It was just something I came across when I was messing around with Google; oddly, I wasn't looking for pr0n at the time, nor was I looking for AIX. (^_^)
The difference is, we actually have jobs and run our own businesses, and because our economy is mature we can buy our freedom, while China's economy is just getting started.
The USA did not gain freedom through economic prosperity; the freedom came first, then the prosperity.
If you want human rights for China then support their economy because freedom and economics are combined as one.
Well, economic importance hasn't done much for personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia; on the contrary, the oil is the reason the Saudi Royal family is being propped up by the west (espec. the USA).
Which, not coincidentally is also where Wahabi Muslim extremism is being bred- not Iraq. I mean, really, anyone paying even the remotest bit of attention to Middle East politics could figure out that Saudi Arabia is a million times more relevant to Al Qaeda than a dictator in a relatively secular country ever was.
Anyway, I'm sorry, I don't buy that economic 'prosperity' automatically implies freedom. It's probably hard to have freedom in an extremely impoverished society, but the converse doesn't always follow. Look how far China's got already without significantly increasing its level of freedom.
Somebody out there is still running AIX
Yeah, I hear that AIX has a large lesbian following...
And lets not forget, once China gets their human rights issues resolved, there's tons of profit to be made.
There's tons of profit to be made *without* them resolving their human rights issues. If you're implying that profit will improve Chinese human rights, I'm not convinced of that, for the reason I've just given.
I didn't get the impression you were saying that Western companies could wait until China had resolved its human rights issues before investing and reaping profit...
It is after all the largest market area in the world, and currently growing at fastest pace compared to the rest of the world.
And although many westerners can see a vast pool of profit in the Chinese market, the Chinese government and friends (i.e. the strata for whose benefit the country is run; let's not kid ourselves that China today is *anything* but an uber-capitalistic plutocracy) have a vested interest in keeping that money and power for themselves.
omg amazon can eat me, I am so sick of thier bogus bullshit patents. soon we will all be paying them royalties for every breath we take.
Indeed, if Amazon are charging this much for every breath you take, it will soon mount up horribly.
You installed it from the CD?
CDs.
Hence the changing over; and I still had trouble with some packages failing to install using dependencies for reasons that aren't entirely clear.
I had Freesbie beforehand (live FreeBSD-based CD with option to install); that was easy to install, but it lacked some ports stuff I needed to get my printer working, yadda yadda. So I've literally just finished installing 'proper' FreeBSD. Can't say how well it's worked yet...
...and it started malfunctioning shortly afterwards; even when I wasn't running FreeBSD on it.
Then I realised the sad truth; my *Box was dying.... Netcraft confirmed it.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week...
(Sorry, but I had to get that one in, and yeah, I really have just finished installing FreeBSD, albeit on my PC, so I can make jokes about it now (^_^)....anyway, what *is* that with all the CD changing... would I "like" to change the CD now?? Are you saying I *have* to change the CD, or that you can install the stuff on the other CD later.... no, I would *not* like to change the CDs round 347 times.... aaaawwwrgh!)
I'd say the fact you got the thing working at all is pretty damn impressive in my book :)
I made a 7 inch floppy disc turntable 2 years ago with an old tape deck head as the stylus.
That's pretty damn cool, actually. Did you consider doing it with the original 7 inch (*) mechanism and read/write head, hacking the head movement and electrical in/out for the magnetic head?
Strikes me as being two potential problems with that;
(a) Tracking; no physical groove nor 'intelligence' to keep the head over the spiral track would be a major problem and
(b) The motors in the floppy drive are probably steppers, which is unsuited to doing spiral recording (in theory you could record a track, 'step' to the next when it was complete and do the same on playback; this is likely to be nightmarish to implement for recording and ten times worse to get the thing to playback in synch, and a hundred times worse to do it without making the sound unlistenable due to the track jumps).
BTW, IIRC the late 80s Sony Mavica still-video camera did analogue recording on a floppy disk; I assume this was possible because it was storing a TV picture, thus the gap between one line and the next could correspond to the stepper moving between tracks; or maybe it stored one picture per track. I don't know; I'm too lazy to look it up and it's more fun speculating anyway (^_^)
(*) 7 inch drive? Is this some obscure failed format; I've heard of 8", 5 1/4", 3 1/2" and (far less commonly, but used in many Amstrad machines) 3" disks. But never 7"...