Listening on the train, listening while walking home, listening while studying, etc.
Whoopee, I had a walkman that did pretty much all of that for about 1/10th the cost 10 years ago. My iRiver ifp390t does it for 1/2 the cost (also 1/2 the size and 2x battery life). The Rio Karma does it for 3/4s the cost.
So what is your iPod giving you over the others apart from cool factor and a bigger hole in your wallet?
I keep a small stack, Im down to my last 50 cards now. I used them to keep notes on, its quite impressive when you are in an interview and you have your questions written in the back of a punched card.
I never used them in real life, but I understand theres a company that still prints them for some applications, probably time clocks or museum stuff.
- I'll just IPL (reboot) the test partition to test out some changes Ive made. Opps, wrong partition.
- I'm on this test partition with this new OS ready for testing. Hmm this security database copy tool appears to corrupt the database. I'll take diagnostics and send the results off to IBM. Oops Ive just copied onto the live production database and corrupted it, and now everything is failing security checks. I cant switch to the backup database cos I cant work out which security message is the one for the database switch.
- I'm a dumb bulding subcontractor, I'm in the basement drilling into walls, but I dont want to electrocute myself, so I'll go and throw that big switch with the red mnessages over there.
- I'm an even dumber contractor, some idiot has thrown the main 3 phase power switch and walked off, so I'll just throw it back again. BANG!!
- The power has been rather unreliable of late, and the UPS has been continually taking short 5 minute loads whilst the generators kick in. Now the power has gone for the 10th time this weekend, and the UPS has run dry, and the generator cant kick in in time.
It is possible to bring a mainframe down, but it requires stupidity, superuser proviledges, access to the poser supply, or a large axe.
I think the tape robots are actually controlled by a PC. The actual tape drives are connected to the mainframe, probably via a PC based controller that does caching and whatnot.
Ive just run it through a spell checker, didnt make much sense even then.
I think he's saying:
The ruling ish irrelevant because the MicroSsoft eshMB APIsh are not documented. Evurp'n when they are, the MicroShoft eshMB APIsh achually work differently than the documentation shuggesgsh, hic.
But even magazines that are happy putting everything else on coverdisks get cold feet when they see this license. I think its the (iv) and (v) clauses that scrare them: (iv) You can only do stuff persuant to Suns interest, but we havent specified that, so you are going to have to get your expensive lawyers to talk to our lawyers to discover exactly what you can and cant do, and by the time theve finished chatting, the legal fees will have buried your company. (v) If Suns installer turns out to wipe out your registry/your photo collection/a small city, well, thats your problem, not ours. BTW, no peeking to see what the installer actually does, we arnt open source you know.
Another problem is the click through agreement in the installer. Its a useability problem. Joe Sixpack wants to insert disk, press OK, next thing he sees is a fuully installed system. He doesnt want to get bogged down in click thoughs for every installable.
And yet another problem is the inability to change the installer. You cant change where it installs to. You cant even add something to the rpm to place a java.sh into profile.d that adds the java bin to your path. So Joe Sixpack has to start writing sh scripts, or the java rpm has to have some other package as a dependancy, except you cant change the rpm to add a dependancy.
I dont get what is so yuck about simple readable code. Perhaps you need to ask why Unix has sh bash tch perl python ruby, wheras z/OS has clist rexx rexx rexx rexx and rexx.
I do alot of Rexx stuff on Mainframes, and I far prefer Rexx to the C based stuff like Perl. Ive pottered with Rexx on Linux, and its far easier to use than bash, you can always use 'address SH' if you want to use the power of a shell command. I also had a play with NetRexx, but gave up when it became obvious that Java itself had serious problems on the client side.
Rexx does have some weaknesses: - Maths performance can be a bit slow. - Lack of extensive libraries (this isnt a problem on z/OS where ISPF and TSO supply most of the functionality you need) - 'return' only returns a single string, it should be more like the multiple parms passed on 'call'. - 'call' and function calls dont pass stem variables (a stemmed variable is like a sparse array). Its possible to write Rexx functions in ASM that take stems, but thats not quite the same thing. - procedures and thier exposing (globalising) of variables need fixing. Ive seen too many programmers fail to use procedures and go on to create unmaintainable messes. - It still doesnt have a regexp function.
Last time I looked, someone at VIA (or whereever) were working with the mplayer guys to allow mplayer to use the hardware accelleration. The 1Ghz chip was 'just' capable of playing a dvd without skipping, although heat became a problem.
Some info here: http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=373#libddmpeg
I know of so many people who will get up to answer a phone even if they are busy (eating dinner for example) rather then let it ring for the 20 or 30 seconds most callers will wait.
But it might be my mother, who will quite happily camp out, letting it ring for 5 minutes, then hanging up and trying again. At midnight. To ask me what I want for my Birthday.
then there is the printer I bought last year BECAUSE OF THE PENGUIN ON THE BOX! (can you tell I'm still peeved about that one?)...a Lexmark Z55
These days, I find doing some research on the company is as effective as researching the device. Lexmark are one of the worst for 'difficult' behaviour. Ive found that some other unhelpful souls in the past have been Realtek, Turtle Beach and Lucent.
Some companies either co-operate, release specs, or release an open source driver, these are the ones you want to look out for. nVidia, Intel, Via, Atmel, HP are all good in this area.
I had a Nex ia player, within the first week the Microdrive stopped working (click whirrr click whirrr click whirrr), the drive was quite hot when I removed it. The player was lying flat on the desk at the time, so it wasnt shock damage. I guess it was crappy firmware driving the device too hard, its got other bugs.
The drive worked fine in my camera for a year, but died within hours of being used in the player.
If it is a Microdrive vulnerability when driven continuously for long periods, I forsee a large bill for Apple. But it will be nice to see egg on the faces of all those pundits who are loving it to bits on looks alone.
Were you the one that went backwards, forwards, turned a bit, bumped into the gate post, realised they couldnt drive and ran away to join the battle on foot?
Next time I'll have a microphone, so I can try the 'Put it in gear, love. Now turn the wheel, bit more, bit more. Now go forward. STOP!!!' routine.
This is known as 'eliminate the assholes', of Dilbert fame.
Trouble is, are you being given this job to elimiate the assholes in the team, or are you the asshole they want to eliminate.
Also, is your organisation healthy or is it a beaurocratic nightmare? If I got a job 3 rungs up, I'd be CEO, but your place sounds a bit like a 'Yes Minister' sketch:
"I'm the Permanent Secretary, I report to the Cabinet Secretary, Bernard is your Principal Private Secretary he works for you, but reports to me. Bernard has 2 Private Secretaries, I have 3 Assistant Permanent Secretaries."
"Do you all type?"
"Gosh no, Mrs Briggs does that, shes the secretary"
So it sounds like you might do well to get a bit Machiavelian, and take your new job on the condition that you can move sideways to a safe harbour if it doesnt work out. Say you are only doing the new job to get a bit of experiance. Perhaps you need to work out who is supporting this promotion, do they dislike you, are they using you to get at the guy you will be replacing, or is it a genuine offer?
Would that be enough to protect from microwaves. I think the enormous power would fry the rfid circuit, decoupled anntena or not. The decoupling is probably enough to protect agiainst those sparky gas lighter things.
Even the dead bugs will be dessicated and scattered by the wind, so if we fing old bugs after man has wandered around a landscape, we will have no idea if they are native to mars.
Its not about contamination with live bugs, its about not destroying the evidence of old dead ones.
14 dBA (if I read the product name right) is way quieter than anything else in the market. I guess the best of the rest come in at 20-25 dBA.
My rig at home is 'quiet' (as opposed to silent). Its fitted with passive coolers and 5 throttled/temperature sensitive fans that generate about 20dB each.
The components that generate the most noise now is the PSU (25ish dB) and the CD/DVD reader. This 14dB PSU means I can eliminate the loudest contant source of noise from my PC.
My name is Joe Frederick Bloggs. My userid is JFB. My email is Joe@bloggs.com
Clearly these are a simple transform between two namespaces, and any other schemes that are just a tranform between two namespaces should be covered by this prior art.
From that point, there's about 20 minutes, give or take, for the porn site to display the copy of the captcha and ask for the user's input. On a site seeing any amount of traffic at all, that should be more than enough.
Or just wait for a punter to hit your pr0n site, and launch the email signup thing at the Yahoo! target whilst they are reading your T&Cs.
Or just always have a signup in the queue, getting a new one every 10 minutes. I'm sure Yahoo! get a load of abbandoned signups anyway.
I guess that Mr Golstein is one of those Lawyers who collect or submit bogus patents. If he is, doesnt he have to conform to certain ethical guidelines or risk being defrocked/disbarred or having his licence revoked.
Is there a regulatory body in the US, similar to The Law Society in the UK?
Im a 33 yr old programmer in that environment, its all Cobol and Assembler and 50 year olds who still think in terms of 20 year old interfaces. Just showing them a markup language or a checkbox melts their tiny minds.
Oddly enough, there are a couple of *really* hot guys around who code on a green screen, but produce XML parsers, green screen web browsers, assorted servers, rpc-alike services.
Even worse are the users. Banks have been dumbing down thier staff for so long now that the redknoeck in the parent seems like a well adjusted individual compared to some Ive come across.
I think the problem of grid/utility computing is the problem of micropayments.
If I have to confirm a penny charge every time I run a program, thats just useless. But on the other hand, I could just say I'll pay for everything. But now I have to monitor the CPU company bills for overcharging, Ive got to monitor my useage to stop me spending too much, Ive got to set up diect debit accounts, its faff faff faff all the way.
Utilities provide a service that you just cant get in-house. If a technology comes along that allows folks to install a quiet maintenence free generator in the basement, then the power companies would have to adapt or die just like the laundry services of yore had too.
The not entirely unrelated science of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging found its way into medical imaging devices, leading to early detection and cure of many cancers.
Its possible that this technology could end up in some very sensitive detectors (see previous threads for the possiblility of perfect amplifiers) that allow Doctors to view biochemical processes as they happen in a living organism. This would lead to a complete revolution in medicine, understanding protein folding, alzheimers, MS, etc would happen almost overnight.
Slashdot Mirror
Really, how fast does it go?
Whoopee, I had a walkman that did pretty much all of that for about 1/10th the cost 10 years ago. My iRiver ifp390t does it for 1/2 the cost (also 1/2 the size and 2x battery life). The Rio Karma does it for 3/4s the cost.
So what is your iPod giving you over the others apart from cool factor and a bigger hole in your wallet?
I keep a small stack, Im down to my last 50 cards now. I used them to keep notes on, its quite impressive when you are in an interview and you have your questions written in the back of a punched card.
I never used them in real life, but I understand theres a company that still prints them for some applications, probably time clocks or museum stuff.
Ways Ive seen an IBM mainframe fail:
- I'll just IPL (reboot) the test partition to test out some changes Ive made. Opps, wrong partition.
- I'm on this test partition with this new OS ready for testing. Hmm this security database copy tool appears to corrupt the database. I'll take diagnostics and send the results off to IBM. Oops Ive just copied onto the live production database and corrupted it, and now everything is failing security checks. I cant switch to the backup database cos I cant work out which security message is the one for the database switch.
- I'm a dumb bulding subcontractor, I'm in the basement drilling into walls, but I dont want to electrocute myself, so I'll go and throw that big switch with the red mnessages over there.
- I'm an even dumber contractor, some idiot has thrown the main 3 phase power switch and walked off, so I'll just throw it back again. BANG!!
- The power has been rather unreliable of late, and the UPS has been continually taking short 5 minute loads whilst the generators kick in. Now the power has gone for the 10th time this weekend, and the UPS has run dry, and the generator cant kick in in time.
It is possible to bring a mainframe down, but it requires stupidity, superuser proviledges, access to the poser supply, or a large axe.
I think the tape robots are actually controlled by a PC. The actual tape drives are connected to the mainframe, probably via a PC based controller that does caching and whatnot.
Ive just run it through a spell checker, didnt make much sense even then.
I think he's saying:
The ruling ish irrelevant because the MicroSsoft eshMB APIsh are not documented. Evurp'n when they are, the MicroShoft eshMB APIsh achually work differently than the documentation shuggesgsh, hic.
But even magazines that are happy putting everything else on coverdisks get cold feet when they see this license. I think its the (iv) and (v) clauses that scrare them:
(iv) You can only do stuff persuant to Suns interest, but we havent specified that, so you are going to have to get your expensive lawyers to talk to our lawyers to discover exactly what you can and cant do, and by the time theve finished chatting, the legal fees will have buried your company.
(v) If Suns installer turns out to wipe out your registry/your photo collection/a small city, well, thats your problem, not ours. BTW, no peeking to see what the installer actually does, we arnt open source you know.
Another problem is the click through agreement in the installer. Its a useability problem. Joe Sixpack wants to insert disk, press OK, next thing he sees is a fuully installed system. He doesnt want to get bogged down in click thoughs for every installable.
And yet another problem is the inability to change the installer. You cant change where it installs to. You cant even add something to the rpm to place a java.sh into profile.d that adds the java bin to your path. So Joe Sixpack has to start writing sh scripts, or the java rpm has to have some other package as a dependancy, except you cant change the rpm to add a dependancy.
I dont get what is so yuck about simple readable code. Perhaps you need to ask why Unix has sh bash tch perl python ruby, wheras z/OS has clist rexx rexx rexx rexx and rexx.
I do alot of Rexx stuff on Mainframes, and I far prefer Rexx to the C based stuff like Perl. Ive pottered with Rexx on Linux, and its far easier to use than bash, you can always use 'address SH' if you want to use the power of a shell command. I also had a play with NetRexx, but gave up when it became obvious that Java itself had serious problems on the client side.
Rexx does have some weaknesses:
- Maths performance can be a bit slow.
- Lack of extensive libraries (this isnt a problem on z/OS where ISPF and TSO supply most of the functionality you need)
- 'return' only returns a single string, it should be more like the multiple parms passed on 'call'.
- 'call' and function calls dont pass stem variables (a stemmed variable is like a sparse array). Its possible to write Rexx functions in ASM that take stems, but thats not quite the same thing.
- procedures and thier exposing (globalising) of variables need fixing. Ive seen too many programmers fail to use procedures and go on to create unmaintainable messes.
- It still doesnt have a regexp function.
Last time I looked, someone at VIA (or whereever) were working with the mplayer guys to allow mplayer to use the hardware accelleration. The 1Ghz chip was 'just' capable of playing a dvd without skipping, although heat became a problem.
Some info here: http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=373#libddmpeg
But it might be my mother, who will quite happily camp out, letting it ring for 5 minutes, then hanging up and trying again. At midnight. To ask me what I want for my Birthday.
These days, I find doing some research on the company is as effective as researching the device. Lexmark are one of the worst for 'difficult' behaviour. Ive found that some other unhelpful souls in the past have been Realtek, Turtle Beach and Lucent.
Some companies either co-operate, release specs, or release an open source driver, these are the ones you want to look out for. nVidia, Intel, Via, Atmel, HP are all good in this area.
I had a Nex ia player, within the first week the Microdrive stopped working (click whirrr click whirrr click whirrr), the drive was quite hot when I removed it. The player was lying flat on the desk at the time, so it wasnt shock damage. I guess it was crappy firmware driving the device too hard, its got other bugs.
The drive worked fine in my camera for a year, but died within hours of being used in the player.
If it is a Microdrive vulnerability when driven continuously for long periods, I forsee a large bill for Apple. But it will be nice to see egg on the faces of all those pundits who are loving it to bits on looks alone.
Unless Apple are selling ipods at cost, hoping to recoup loses at the iTunes store.
Were you the one that went backwards, forwards, turned a bit, bumped into the gate post, realised they couldnt drive and ran away to join the battle on foot?
Next time I'll have a microphone, so I can try the 'Put it in gear, love. Now turn the wheel, bit more, bit more. Now go forward. STOP!!!' routine.
This is known as 'eliminate the assholes', of Dilbert fame. Trouble is, are you being given this job to elimiate the assholes in the team, or are you the asshole they want to eliminate. Also, is your organisation healthy or is it a beaurocratic nightmare? If I got a job 3 rungs up, I'd be CEO, but your place sounds a bit like a 'Yes Minister' sketch: "I'm the Permanent Secretary, I report to the Cabinet Secretary, Bernard is your Principal Private Secretary he works for you, but reports to me. Bernard has 2 Private Secretaries, I have 3 Assistant Permanent Secretaries." "Do you all type?" "Gosh no, Mrs Briggs does that, shes the secretary" So it sounds like you might do well to get a bit Machiavelian, and take your new job on the condition that you can move sideways to a safe harbour if it doesnt work out. Say you are only doing the new job to get a bit of experiance. Perhaps you need to work out who is supporting this promotion, do they dislike you, are they using you to get at the guy you will be replacing, or is it a genuine offer?
Would that be enough to protect from microwaves. I think the enormous power would fry the rfid circuit, decoupled anntena or not. The decoupling is probably enough to protect agiainst those sparky gas lighter things.
Even the dead bugs will be dessicated and scattered by the wind, so if we fing old bugs after man has wandered around a landscape, we will have no idea if they are native to mars.
Its not about contamination with live bugs, its about not destroying the evidence of old dead ones.
14 dBA (if I read the product name right) is way quieter than anything else in the market. I guess the best of the rest come in at 20-25 dBA.
My rig at home is 'quiet' (as opposed to silent). Its fitted with passive coolers and 5 throttled/temperature sensitive fans that generate about 20dB each.
The components that generate the most noise now is the PSU (25ish dB) and the CD/DVD reader. This 14dB PSU means I can eliminate the loudest contant source of noise from my PC.
Heres some prior art.
My name is Joe Frederick Bloggs.
My userid is JFB.
My email is Joe@bloggs.com
Clearly these are a simple transform between two namespaces, and any other schemes that are just a tranform between two namespaces should be covered by this prior art.
Or just wait for a punter to hit your pr0n site, and launch the email signup thing at the Yahoo! target whilst they are reading your T&Cs.
Or just always have a signup in the queue, getting a new one every 10 minutes. I'm sure Yahoo! get a load of abbandoned signups anyway.
I guess that Mr Golstein is one of those Lawyers who collect or submit bogus patents. If he is, doesnt he have to conform to certain ethical guidelines or risk being defrocked/disbarred or having his licence revoked.
Is there a regulatory body in the US, similar to The Law Society in the UK?
They've not managed it on their nforce drivers. Maybe its too hard in some cases.
Im a 33 yr old programmer in that environment, its all Cobol and Assembler and 50 year olds who still think in terms of 20 year old interfaces. Just showing them a markup language or a checkbox melts their tiny minds.
Oddly enough, there are a couple of *really* hot guys around who code on a green screen, but produce XML parsers, green screen web browsers, assorted servers, rpc-alike services.
Even worse are the users. Banks have been dumbing down thier staff for so long now that the redknoeck in the parent seems like a well adjusted individual compared to some Ive come across.
I think the problem of grid/utility computing is the problem of micropayments.
If I have to confirm a penny charge every time I run a program, thats just useless.
But on the other hand, I could just say I'll pay for everything. But now I have to monitor the CPU company bills for overcharging, Ive got to monitor my useage to stop me spending too much, Ive got to set up diect debit accounts, its faff faff faff all the way.
Utilities provide a service that you just cant get in-house. If a technology comes along that allows folks to install a quiet maintenence free generator in the basement, then the power companies would have to adapt or die just like the laundry services of yore had too.
The not entirely unrelated science of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging found its way into medical imaging devices, leading to early detection and cure of many cancers.
Its possible that this technology could end up in some very sensitive detectors (see previous threads for the possiblility of perfect amplifiers) that allow Doctors to view biochemical processes as they happen in a living organism. This would lead to a complete revolution in medicine, understanding protein folding, alzheimers, MS, etc would happen almost overnight.