I remember the Arbys (on El Camino in Sunnyvale CA) had these things, with touch screen displays, in the early 90s (IIRC the machine says copyright 90).
It seemed to work pretty well... some people used them, computer shy people ordered in-person... It was kinda like the fast-track-toll-paying-thingies on bridges here.
The systems were frequently out-of-order, though. I guess the average fast-food employee of the '90s not too good at troubleshooting computers.
Optimistically, this may have changed now that the.com crash has many Comp Sci grads working fast food jobs.:-):-)
Actually, I thought practically all emails with important messages embedded in images are spam. For that matter practically all html email is spam as well...
I'm having great luck with a spam filter that simply bounces HTML to a junk-mail folder.
Google really did get slashdotted?!?
on
Internet Emulator
·
· Score: 1
I got an error page from that google link.
When I clicked it, google retunred:
<html><head><title>502 Server Error</title><style><!--body {font-family: arial,sans-serif}div.nav {margin-top: 1ex}div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif}span.nav {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-weight: bold}div.nav A,span.big {font-size: 12pt; color: #0000cc}div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; color: black}A.l:link {color: #6f6f6f}A.u:link {color: green}//--></style></head><body text=#000000 bgcolor=#ffffff><table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td rowspan=3 width=1% nowrap><b><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>G</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#f3c518 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>g</font><font face=times color=#30a72f size=10>l</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>e</font> </b><td> </td></t r><tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><font face=arial,sans-serif color=#ffffff><b>Error</b></td></tr><tr><td> </td></tr></table><blockquote><H1>Serv er Error</H1>The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.<p>Please try again in 30 seconds.<p></blockquote><table width=100% cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><img alt="" width=1 height=4></td></tr></table></body></html>
here's is an ISP that's playing with IPV6 today, and has a IPv6 Tunnel Broker that enables you to reach the IPv6 Internet by tunnelling over existing IPv4 connections from your IPv6 enabled host or router to one of their routers.
"If you think you have bad breath, just be thankful you're not a cow -- with breath that allegedly harms Earth's ozone layer and contributes to global warming.
would q's like "when a slashcode site scales does it (HW, bandwidth, etc) become prohibitively expensive / would a lighterweight discussion framework scale more cheaply" be too close to a biz questions?
I don't think anyone doubts slashcode's technical scaling merits; so for a high-traffic web site the main issues are scaling financially.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/06/11/HNrav_1. html
"
Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product...
The acquisition has observers questioning Microsoft's ultimate intentions and wondering what the Redmond, Washington, software maker wants with technology that powers leading virus scanning tools for e-mail servers on Linux platforms, rivals to Microsoft's Windows and Exchange products.
"I don't know why Microsoft bought a Linux company, GeCAD's Windows business is really small compared to their Linux business," said Andreas Marx, an antivirus software expert at the University of Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany.
Marx has just completed a test of GeCAD's antivirus software for Linux and found that GeCAD "is really the best antivirus solution for Linux."...
"
On the other hand, there's a nice half-full aspect to Microsoft valuing strong developers & technologies regardless of what OS they're written for.
Wonder how many hours of Linux/AIX user time has been wasted worrying about this. Wonder what the dollar amount of that time is worth.
Perhaps that's the strategy.:-)
Vandil X wrote:
"Kind of like how Firebird may be technically superior to, say, Internet Explorer, but very few people know of Firebird, and few among those who do know about it would know how to use all its features."
I thought firebird was superior to SqlServer, not IE.
Back on topic, both PNG and Firebird (InterBase's relational DB, after it went open source in 2000) show how marking of open source projects is important.
The same lack of awareness that hurts PNG, also hurt Firebird so badly that other open source projects picked colliding names, just adding to the confusion.
The time it takes to fully understand other code is often as large as the time to create code in-house. For code created internally, there's someone who understands everything about the module being used. Because of this, if there's a bug in internally developed code, it can often be easier to find and fix than third party code.
More on gecko glue... The nature article (below) has cool pictures of gecko feet.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020826/020826-2.html
Aug 2002...
"Researchers have created two prototype glues after confirming that geckos owe their amazing ability to scamper across ceilings and cling to polished glass solely to many thousands of tiny, spatula-tipped split hairs on their toes.hese bond weakly with the molecules in any surface on which the lizards run.
The scientists, based at the University of California at Berkeley, cast two sets of imitation gecko toe hairs. Their mould was a microfilter with which biologists usually remove bacteria from solutions. They then tipped the hairs with silicon rubber or polyester.
In the lab, both materials adhered as well to most surfaces as the natural wall-crawlers. "
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020826/geck o.html
"Aug. 27 [2002] -- Research into the gravity-defying acts of geckos, which can scale smooth walls in seconds and support their weight by a single toe, has led to a prototype "gecko glue" that one day may help a small robot walk surfaces in spac"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/18/03840/816 Oct 18th, 2002...
"And if it [mass producing synthetic gecko glue] doesn't, we can harvest setae from geckos as they shed their skin and setae every few months. It's not mass-production, but it would provide plenty of setae for the micro-applications."
On multi-threaded systmes, it can outperform malloc/free based allocation because less locking of the heap is required.
Re:Lindows joins the fight
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I'm very amused to see that the banner running on top of the ofb.biz article you posted, was an ad by a "SCO Premier Reseller" advertising "
SCO Linux WorkStation(TM)" and "
SCO Linux Server(TM)"
Wierd.
http://www.sysintegrators.com/caldera/?source=goog le
statusbar wrote "Part of the problem with HTTP is the very fact that the RFC uses the word SHOULD. A standards document should never use the word SHOULD. It should always use the word 'MUST'."
Not true. Should is OK in specs. From Fowler's "The King's English" on the subject of "Shall and Will"
"Roughly speaking, should follows the same rules as shall, and would as will; ...
Shall had the meaning of command or obligation, and will of wish. "
In much the same way, isn't it written "shalt not steal" instead of "mustn't steal".
[credit where credit's due... a few days ago Andrew Sullivan pointed this out on the postgresql list where talking about the SQL spec]
Interesting to compare the 3DFX perspective...
on
Future of 3d Graphics
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Gary Tarolli (Chief Technical Officer of 3dfx) has an interesting interview on a similar subject.
Interestingly he thinks it'll be specialized hardware that will do ray-tracing, etc.
"Is there a future for radiosity lighting in 3D hardware? Ray-tracing? When would it become available?
Gary: Yes, but probably just in specialized hardware as it's a very different problem. Ray-tracing is nasty because of it's non-locality, so fast localized hacks will probably prevail as long as people are clever. Especially for real-time rendering on low-cost hardware. It's interesting that RenderMan has managed to do amazing CGI without ray-tracing. That's an existence proof that a hack in the hand, is worth ray-tracing in the bush.
Oh... and for people who haven't seen it before, here's a cool detailed paper about how the pipeline of a traditional 3d accellerators can be tweaked used to do ray tracing...
Reading that shows how programming a graphics pipeline is quite different (more interesting? more complicated?) than programming a general purpose CPU.
Slashdot Mirror
As you can read on their new web site, the founders struck a deal with the creditors to buy the software for 100,000 euros.
They reached the goal in about 4 weeks!!! As can be seen in their MoneyMeter report.
Sure they should have...
This is probaby one of the most cost-effective marketing programs they could have run.
Good PR in the community & an attempt to get SCO to show their hand == 2 birds with one stone.
A fun experiment...
- create a "container" by folding aluminum foil into a little cup/spoon shape.
- Put a new penny in the foil.
- Put this container directly on the heating element of a stove.
- Turn it on until it glows. About the time it glows, the penny will melt from the inside.
- Bonus points... pour the zinc into a glass of water to make a cool sculpture.
I suppose a container other than foil might work, but it'd take a long time for the heat to get through.Ironically one of the two identical posts, both posted at the smae minute got modded +4, the other 0.
The systems were frequently out-of-order, though. I guess the average fast-food employee of the '90s not too good at troubleshooting computers.
Optimistically, this may have changed now that the .com crash has many Comp Sci grads working fast food jobs. :-) :-)
Basically I went from really complicated keyword based filtering with different weights on each keyword to just these rules.
Actually, I thought practically all emails with important messages embedded in images are spam. For that matter practically all html email is spam as well... I'm having great luck with a spam filter that simply bounces HTML to a junk-mail folder.
I got an error page from that google link.
t r><tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><font face=arial,sans-serif color=#ffffff><b>Error</b></td></tr><tr><td> </td></tr></table><blockquote><H1>Serv er Error</H1>The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.<p>Please try again in 30 seconds.<p></blockquote><table width=100% cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=#3366cc><img alt="" width=1 height=4></td></tr></table></body></html>
When I clicked it, google retunred:
<html><head><title>502 Server Error</title><style><!--body {font-family: arial,sans-serif}div.nav {margin-top: 1ex}div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif}span.nav {font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-weight: bold}div.nav A,span.big {font-size: 12pt; color: #0000cc}div.nav A {font-size: 10pt; color: black}A.l:link {color: #6f6f6f}A.u:link {color: green}//--></style></head><body text=#000000 bgcolor=#ffffff><table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td rowspan=3 width=1% nowrap><b><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>G</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#f3c518 size=10>o</font><font face=times color=#0039b6 size=10>g</font><font face=times color=#30a72f size=10>l</font><font face=times color=#c41200 size=10>e</font> </b><td> </td></
what matters is if the right person from IBM (or probably more importantly, the right person from Cravath Swaine & Moore) has the information.
Demos here
This might help it happen sooner than we think.
according to this article from cnn
"If you think you have bad breath, just be thankful you're not a cow -- with breath that allegedly harms Earth's ozone layer and contributes to global warming.
Sheep, termites implicated too "
I don't think anyone doubts slashcode's technical scaling merits; so for a high-traffic web site the main issues are scaling financially.
" Microsoft to kill popular Linux antivirus product...
The acquisition has observers questioning Microsoft's ultimate intentions and wondering what the Redmond, Washington, software maker wants with technology that powers leading virus scanning tools for e-mail servers on Linux platforms, rivals to Microsoft's Windows and Exchange products.
"I don't know why Microsoft bought a Linux company, GeCAD's Windows business is really small compared to their Linux business," said Andreas Marx, an antivirus software expert at the University of Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany.
Marx has just completed a test of GeCAD's antivirus software for Linux and found that GeCAD "is really the best antivirus solution for Linux." ...
"
On the other hand, there's a nice half-full aspect to Microsoft valuing strong developers & technologies regardless of what OS they're written for.
Wonder how many hours of Linux/AIX user time has been wasted worrying about this. Wonder what the dollar amount of that time is worth. Perhaps that's the strategy. :-)
I thought firebird was superior to SqlServer, not IE.
Back on topic, both PNG and Firebird (InterBase's relational DB, after it went open source in 2000) show how marking of open source projects is important.
The same lack of awareness that hurts PNG, also hurt Firebird so badly that other open source projects picked colliding names, just adding to the confusion.
The time it takes to fully understand other code is often as large as the time to create code in-house. For code created internally, there's someone who understands everything about the module being used. Because of this, if there's a bug in internally developed code, it can often be easier to find and fix than third party code.
If I understand right, Berkeley made moulds of gecko feet, while CMU made the mould via lithography.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020826/020826-2.html
Aug 2002... "Researchers have created two prototype glues after confirming that geckos owe their amazing ability to scamper across ceilings and cling to polished glass solely to many thousands of tiny, spatula-tipped split hairs on their toes.hese bond weakly with the molecules in any surface on which the lizards run.
The scientists, based at the University of California at Berkeley, cast two sets of imitation gecko toe hairs. Their mould was a microfilter with which biologists usually remove bacteria from solutions. They then tipped the hairs with silicon rubber or polyester.
In the lab, both materials adhered as well to most surfaces as the natural wall-crawlers. "
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020826/geck o.html
"Aug. 27 [2002] -- Research into the gravity-defying acts of geckos, which can scale smooth walls in seconds and support their weight by a single toe, has led to a prototype "gecko glue" that one day may help a small robot walk surfaces in spac"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/18/03840/816
...
"And if it [mass producing synthetic gecko glue] doesn't, we can harvest setae from geckos as they shed their skin and setae every few months. It's not mass-production, but it would provide plenty of setae for the micro-applications."
Oct 18th, 2002
"Surely you're not claiming that there exists a garbage collector for C++ that can work with arbitrary C++ code?"
Of course there is.
The Boehm-Demers-Weiser conservative garbage collector works very well.
On multi-threaded systmes, it can outperform malloc/free based allocation because less locking of the heap is required.
I'm very amused to see that the banner running on top of the ofb.biz article you posted, was an ad by a "SCO Premier Reseller" advertising " SCO Linux WorkStation(TM)" and " SCO Linux Server(TM)" Wierd. http://www.sysintegrators.com/caldera/?source=goog le
Cornell had 60% outgoing and 50% incoming traffic as filesharing. Lots of pretty graphs, etc. on those pages.
Not true. Should is OK in specs.
From Fowler's "The King's English" on the subject of "Shall and Will"
"Roughly speaking, should follows the same rules as shall, and would as will;
Shall had the meaning of command or obligation, and will of wish. "
In much the same way, isn't it written "shalt not steal" instead of "mustn't steal".
[credit where credit's due... a few days ago Andrew Sullivan pointed this out on the postgresql list where talking about the SQL spec]
Interestingly he thinks it'll be specialized hardware that will do ray-tracing, etc.
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/rev iews/1721/1/
"Is there a future for radiosity lighting in 3D hardware? Ray-tracing? When would it become available?
Gary: Yes, but probably just in specialized hardware as it's a very different problem. Ray-tracing is nasty because of it's non-locality, so fast localized hacks will probably prevail as long as people are clever. Especially for real-time rendering on low-cost hardware. It's interesting that RenderMan has managed to do amazing CGI without ray-tracing. That's an existence proof that a hack in the hand, is worth ray-tracing in the bush.
Oh... and for people who haven't seen it before, here's a cool detailed paper about how the pipeline of a traditional 3d accellerators can be tweaked used to do ray tracing...
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/rtongfx/rtongf x.pdf
Reading that shows how programming a graphics pipeline is quite different (more interesting? more complicated?) than programming a general purpose CPU.
I thought Neal Stephenson documented these things in Snow Crash back in '92.
If you don't know the reference, it's worth reading. Snow Crash got at 9.5 rating on slashdot