I've yet to meet anyone who ever payed for an eBook. But thats besides the point.
Even if sales are low, B and N still makes a profit because the author/pubisher is the only one they have to pay, and they only pay them if they sell ebooks.
No, they have to pay to own and operate a bunch of servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for staff, pay beancounters to do the books, pay all the other trappings of any business venture. The only thing they save is the couple of bucks the real books would cost them wholesale.
They make great reference materials for techies, poor recreational reading, or even reference materials for anyone else. I mean an eBook gardening reference doesnt do you much good crawling around in the dirt.
B&N gave it a shot, and gave up. Kudos for trying.
The article talks about PDAs and cell phones, which doesn't blow my mind compared to flashram that we have now, except maybe 5% more battery life.
How does this stuff stack up against something like DDR? Can it come anywhere close to keeping a P4 with an 800mhz FSB full of data? Will it replace my system RAM, HDD, both, or neither?
Re:stop winging about clearing memory
on
MRAM in 2004?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And why cant this be done with flashram?
Well, it can. You can have a CompactFlash IDE drive as your boot device.
With power supplies averaging, oh, 300 or so watts, that can mean decent savings when you figure it running 24x7.
Arggh.. Someone else who doesn't know how a switching power supply works. 300Watts means thats the maximum amount of power it can deliver before it melts down. It doesn't mean your computer is using 300watts constantly.
And DRAM's power usage is miniscule compared to CPU or disk drive motors. But then, since the CPU is mostly idle (unless you run seti@home or something like that) and drives spin down when not in use, most of juice is being used by the CRT.
I dont know exactly what they're trying to pitch here, except something else to compete with flashram.
Is this the way to large, cheap, solid state storage devices?
Is the HDD on its way out?
Or is it just something else to compete with SD, CompactFlash, MemoryStick, etc? The article talks about cell phones and PDAs which makes me believe so.
Technically, it sounds like a miniature magnetic drum.
Though something I've been saying for ages is you should store 32 random bytes on a magstrip and use that as a "password".
That's called a smartcard, and they exist and are used all over the place. You may have seen them in the form of hotel keys. Support is even built into windows logon. Thing is, take that magstrip and now I'm you.
What you do is, you combine a password (whether stored in your head or on a card) and augment it with biometric data like a fingerprint. You hash the two together using some fancy crypto techniques to get something unique.
That way, it makes it much harder for someone to pretend to be me, and if by chance they did succeed, I can still change the password.
Not only that, the two are hashed together so that the fingerprint data is inextricable, that is, no worries about some rogue government agent mining the database looking to identify people or track you based on things you've touched in your life. You can take advantage of the unique ID in the form of fingerprint, yet it is not a tracking tool.
There are good and bad ways to use technology. Sweeping statements like "biometrics are always wrong" are right up there with "P2P is always bad".
Of course you're right, and it's absolutely idiotic. Whoever modded you as flamebait is one of those PC douchebags.
The problem with airport security is that we're giving so much power to some of the stupidest people alive. This isn't an insult, but a fact. Conventional airport security guards are no brighter or better paid than mall security guards.
I hear about an episode where some 65 year old woman who'd had a mastectamy is taken into the back and strip searched for setting off the metal detector. Another one had airport security guards making a woman drink her own breast milk (it was in a bottle, they wanted her to prove it wasnt some kind of flammable liquid). Women are groped by these jackasses all the time, and now they want a machine that would "see through" your clothes.
I have no problem with security measures at airports, but you have to ditch the untrained morons in charge of them first.
Teacher notices bruises on child's torso... entry in database... social services could now be investigating for child abuse when it could have been a simple injury from a fall... but the reason might not have been entered later after investigation by the teacher however that entry will be there forever... Same child misses school several days in a row for a perfectly valid reason some months later... yet again social services could put 2 and 2 together later on and make 5...
This happens now, at least in the US and Canada, a teacher or doctor is legally obligated to report any possible signs of abuse.
It is social services job to make that judgement call, whether or not they believe when mommy says "oh he's just a clumsy kid", not the teacher or doctor. Kids wind up dead because the teacher is a friend of dads, or the doctor doesn't want to lose a patient, etc..
It's an overworked and very flawed system, but the concern is the kids who still fall through the cracks and suffer ongoing abuse, not some parent who's wrongly accused.
As a parent, I have no problem with the fact that it means that one day a cop/social worker might show up to ask me questions if my kid shows up to school with a black eye. At least someones doing something. Violence against children is probably the most despicable aspect of society I can think of.
Compare the current estimate of a 6 month trip to Mars to the 6 months it would have taken Columbus to reach America. Now you can "cross the pond" in hours.
Noone knows what the future will bring, unless we just sit on our asses and do nothing - then we can be sure it'll bring nothing.
I have a 78 F150 that I use as a beater field truck, just for hogging around offroad and picking up firewood and whatnot. It's beaten to shit, and no "accessories" like heat, radio, windows work, but the damned old thing still drives like it should. Keep oil in the engine, it'll last forever.
I picture you sitting there with a "Go Capsules!" pennant in one hand and a giant foam hand with #1 written on it on the other. Wearing one of those dual beer-can hats, your shirt off and "Appolo" in written in greasepaint across your beergut.
I'm sure in the early days of the space program, people just like you said the exact same things.
Following your logic, why send anything to space? Who gives a shit what Mars is made of, or whether it has water in any form. Who cares how black holes work or about string theory. None of it is, or is likely to be, relevant in day to day life. Why did Columbus go looking for India in the wrong direction? Why would Lewis and Clark bother stomping around in the woods?
I mean there's nothing in space, if there was it wouldn't be called space, would it? So why bother sending anything into space?
Exploring is part of the human spirit. If you're going to send anything into space, it just has to be a human, or else it simply doesn't count.
I'm looking forward to the day when there's a guy walking around on Mars, and not some R/C car. It's pretty cool to look up at the moon, and realize some dude was actually there playing golf.
You mean it's a vehicle that takes people to and from some location? As in, it shuttles them back and forth?
If it's reusable, it's a shuttle.
YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD
Only fools don't learn from failure
on
The Return of Apollo?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Does that mean the last 30 years of space flight have been for naught?
No, it doesn't. We've learned a LOT about spaceflight in the last 30 years, from both successes and failures. The shuttle program had both hits and misses, and a lot of important research was conducted regardless.
And I don't think anyones going to mars in one of those little tin cans. Imagine a year in that thing?
The early F18s had a bug in the flight control software.
It was really a safety feature, where if the pilot suddenly jerked the stick down, it would compensate and only climb so slowly, as to prevent an accidental knock of the stick exposing the pilot to a zillion G's and knocking him out.
Some F18s flying towards a mountain, the pilots pulled up, the software said "nuh uh" and they smacked right into the side of it.
Or so goes the story I heard so long ago (which was told to me by a Canadian F18 pilot who visited my school on career day, needlessly he was infinitely more popular than the accountant but not as popular as the animator who worked on Ewoks, Droids and Inspector Gadget)
It's not, really. It's just a popular legend that people like to believe, like the one that Abner Doubleday invented baseball (noone knows who invented baseball or when since similar games had been played for centuries).
The word bug was in use in the manufacturing and industrial world, meaning what it means today - some little pain in the ass or defect with the system or product.
I guess this could be the origin of "computer bug", but thats kind of a stretch. It's just a cute story profs like to tell freshmen.
They weren't paying 29.95 a month for Kazaa, what the hell is that? They might have bought Kazaa, and they might pay 29.95 a month for internet service.
This issue probably could be resolved, if both sides were willing to meet in the middle. The way I see it, leeching mp3s is like listening to the radio, sharing is like broadcasting. So have leechers pay the same fees that a radio station would, which IIRC is something like 7 cents a song.
Of course, where "meet in the middle" comes in is song quality. FM radio is obviously not CD quality, so charge based on the quality of the shared files - radio fees for radio quality, maybe 50 cents for "CD quality", or a buck for a 1:1 true CD copy.
Just work out their own P2P engine or whatever tech is needed to make the system work. We get cheap convenient music, they get paid. Everyone's happy, except the lunatic fringe on either side, those that think they shouldnt have to pay for anything, and those that think they should pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to share a song.
Slashdot Mirror
"potentially lucrative"
I've yet to meet anyone who ever payed for an eBook. But thats besides the point.
Even if sales are low, B and N still makes a profit because the author/pubisher is the only one they have to pay, and they only pay them if they sell ebooks.
No, they have to pay to own and operate a bunch of servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for staff, pay beancounters to do the books, pay all the other trappings of any business venture. The only thing they save is the couple of bucks the real books would cost them wholesale.
They make great reference materials for techies, poor recreational reading, or even reference materials for anyone else. I mean an eBook gardening reference doesnt do you much good crawling around in the dirt.
B&N gave it a shot, and gave up. Kudos for trying.
Like access times and whatnot?
The article talks about PDAs and cell phones, which doesn't blow my mind compared to flashram that we have now, except maybe 5% more battery life.
How does this stuff stack up against something like DDR? Can it come anywhere close to keeping a P4 with an 800mhz FSB full of data? Will it replace my system RAM, HDD, both, or neither?
And why cant this be done with flashram?
Well, it can. You can have a CompactFlash IDE drive as your boot device.
With power supplies averaging, oh, 300 or so watts, that can mean decent savings when you figure it running 24x7.
Arggh.. Someone else who doesn't know how a switching power supply works. 300Watts means thats the maximum amount of power it can deliver before it melts down. It doesn't mean your computer is using 300watts constantly.
And DRAM's power usage is miniscule compared to CPU or disk drive motors. But then, since the CPU is mostly idle (unless you run seti@home or something like that) and drives spin down when not in use, most of juice is being used by the CRT.
I dont know exactly what they're trying to pitch here, except something else to compete with flashram.
Is this the way to large, cheap, solid state storage devices?
Is the HDD on its way out?
Or is it just something else to compete with SD, CompactFlash, MemoryStick, etc? The article talks about cell phones and PDAs which makes me believe so.
Technically, it sounds like a miniature magnetic drum.
Though something I've been saying for ages is you should store 32 random bytes on a magstrip and use that as a "password".
That's called a smartcard, and they exist and are used all over the place. You may have seen them in the form of hotel keys. Support is even built into windows logon. Thing is, take that magstrip and now I'm you.
What you do is, you combine a password (whether stored in your head or on a card) and augment it with biometric data like a fingerprint. You hash the two together using some fancy crypto techniques to get something unique.
That way, it makes it much harder for someone to pretend to be me, and if by chance they did succeed, I can still change the password.
Not only that, the two are hashed together so that the fingerprint data is inextricable, that is, no worries about some rogue government agent mining the database looking to identify people or track you based on things you've touched in your life. You can take advantage of the unique ID in the form of fingerprint, yet it is not a tracking tool.
There are good and bad ways to use technology. Sweeping statements like "biometrics are always wrong" are right up there with "P2P is always bad".
Of course you're right, and it's absolutely idiotic. Whoever modded you as flamebait is one of those PC douchebags.
The problem with airport security is that we're giving so much power to some of the stupidest people alive. This isn't an insult, but a fact. Conventional airport security guards are no brighter or better paid than mall security guards.
I hear about an episode where some 65 year old woman who'd had a mastectamy is taken into the back and strip searched for setting off the metal detector. Another one had airport security guards making a woman drink her own breast milk (it was in a bottle, they wanted her to prove it wasnt some kind of flammable liquid). Women are groped by these jackasses all the time, and now they want a machine that would "see through" your clothes.
I have no problem with security measures at airports, but you have to ditch the untrained morons in charge of them first.
Teacher notices bruises on child's torso... entry in database... social services could now be investigating for child abuse when it could have been a simple injury from a fall... but the reason might not have been entered later after investigation by the teacher however that entry will be there forever... Same child misses school several days in a row for a perfectly valid reason some months later... yet again social services could put 2 and 2 together later on and make 5...
This happens now, at least in the US and Canada, a teacher or doctor is legally obligated to report any possible signs of abuse.
It is social services job to make that judgement call, whether or not they believe when mommy says "oh he's just a clumsy kid", not the teacher or doctor. Kids wind up dead because the teacher is a friend of dads, or the doctor doesn't want to lose a patient, etc..
It's an overworked and very flawed system, but the concern is the kids who still fall through the cracks and suffer ongoing abuse, not some parent who's wrongly accused.
As a parent, I have no problem with the fact that it means that one day a cop/social worker might show up to ask me questions if my kid shows up to school with a black eye. At least someones doing something. Violence against children is probably the most despicable aspect of society I can think of.
Compare the current estimate of a 6 month trip to Mars to the 6 months it would have taken Columbus to reach America. Now you can "cross the pond" in hours.
Noone knows what the future will bring, unless we just sit on our asses and do nothing - then we can be sure it'll bring nothing.
Y'know FORD stands for Fix It Again, Tony!
Ah fuck it.
I have a 78 F150 that I use as a beater field truck, just for hogging around offroad and picking up firewood and whatnot. It's beaten to shit, and no "accessories" like heat, radio, windows work, but the damned old thing still drives like it should. Keep oil in the engine, it'll last forever.
I'm a big fan of capsules to go into space
What a goofy turn of phrase.
I picture you sitting there with a "Go Capsules!" pennant in one hand and a giant foam hand with #1 written on it on the other. Wearing one of those dual beer-can hats, your shirt off and "Appolo" in written in greasepaint across your beergut.
I'm so fucking bored it isn't even funny.
I'm sure in the early days of the space program, people just like you said the exact same things.
Following your logic, why send anything to space? Who gives a shit what Mars is made of, or whether it has water in any form. Who cares how black holes work or about string theory. None of it is, or is likely to be, relevant in day to day life. Why did Columbus go looking for India in the wrong direction? Why would Lewis and Clark bother stomping around in the woods?
I mean there's nothing in space, if there was it wouldn't be called space, would it? So why bother sending anything into space?
Exploring is part of the human spirit. If you're going to send anything into space, it just has to be a human, or else it simply doesn't count.
I'm looking forward to the day when there's a guy walking around on Mars, and not some R/C car. It's pretty cool to look up at the moon, and realize some dude was actually there playing golf.
You mean it's a vehicle that takes people to and from some location? As in, it shuttles them back and forth?
If it's reusable, it's a shuttle.
YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD
Does that mean the last 30 years of space flight have been for naught?
No, it doesn't. We've learned a LOT about spaceflight in the last 30 years, from both successes and failures. The shuttle program had both hits and misses, and a lot of important research was conducted regardless.
And I don't think anyones going to mars in one of those little tin cans. Imagine a year in that thing?
The early F18s had a bug in the flight control software.
It was really a safety feature, where if the pilot suddenly jerked the stick down, it would compensate and only climb so slowly, as to prevent an accidental knock of the stick exposing the pilot to a zillion G's and knocking him out.
Some F18s flying towards a mountain, the pilots pulled up, the software said "nuh uh" and they smacked right into the side of it.
Or so goes the story I heard so long ago (which was told to me by a Canadian F18 pilot who visited my school on career day, needlessly he was infinitely more popular than the accountant but not as popular as the animator who worked on Ewoks, Droids and Inspector Gadget)
You're watching something different than me, then.
I see him laughing, taking it in stride, and then making the joke "that must be why we aren't shipping it yet!"
Yeah, hate MSFT or Gates all you want, that video showed a little "grace under fire" IMO.
Yeah, no shit. It must be one of those 220VAC @ 20A vaccuum cleaners. Y'know, the kind that suck harder than CmdrTaco on prom night.
It's not, really. It's just a popular legend that people like to believe, like the one that Abner Doubleday invented baseball (noone knows who invented baseball or when since similar games had been played for centuries).
The word bug was in use in the manufacturing and industrial world, meaning what it means today - some little pain in the ass or defect with the system or product.
I guess this could be the origin of "computer bug", but thats kind of a stretch. It's just a cute story profs like to tell freshmen.
I mean GNU/Lunix
I thought he played cow bell.
At least, he should have, those songs needed more cow bell.
That was Websters adoptive parents last name.
Remember the one where Webster got sued by the RIAA? What a tearjerker.
You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
Let's see a good picture of you, Taco.
This guy looks like a GQ model compared to any given slashdot editor.
Is Sun even relevant anymore?
They weren't paying 29.95 a month for Kazaa, what the hell is that? They might have bought Kazaa, and they might pay 29.95 a month for internet service.
This issue probably could be resolved, if both sides were willing to meet in the middle. The way I see it, leeching mp3s is like listening to the radio, sharing is like broadcasting. So have leechers pay the same fees that a radio station would, which IIRC is something like 7 cents a song.
Of course, where "meet in the middle" comes in is song quality. FM radio is obviously not CD quality, so charge based on the quality of the shared files - radio fees for radio quality, maybe 50 cents for "CD quality", or a buck for a 1:1 true CD copy.
Just work out their own P2P engine or whatever tech is needed to make the system work. We get cheap convenient music, they get paid. Everyone's happy, except the lunatic fringe on either side, those that think they shouldnt have to pay for anything, and those that think they should pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to share a song.