First, though I must agree with you that Win98 certainly does not "just work," it does offer a "stable" platform in the sense that you know what its problems are, and you can modify your behaviour to work around those problems. This is not an endorsement for using Win98; I do not use it, and I don't tell anyone else to use it. However, there are several people I know who do use it without my blessing, and they use it for the simple reason that they prefer the devil they know to the horrendous Microsoft concept of "change is our most important feature."
Along this line, your statement about Windows people being the only ones who want to hang on to their applications for decades if utter rubbish. I myself firmly cling to many such applications I have been using since 1995 on my [Linux] box. There is tremendous benefit of not having to relearn the use of various applications each time a company wants to make a little more money.
Although I must second the value of water as a replacement, I must strongly disagree with the statement of tastelessness. Though water itself may be tasteless, you never get pure water.
What most people object to in water is, in fact, its _taste_. Caffeine, I can take or leave, but I usually go with a Coke at most restaurants simply because their water tastes terrible. At home, it is usually water.
The problem is that there is no standard for the taste of water. Different people seem to like it different ways, and different people can taste the various additives differently. Indeed, even the ionization of water can make a large difference in its taste. I am lucky that, where I am, the tap water after filteration with a good Pür filter is quite acceptable, but I have been places where a filter simply will not cut it.
Further, bottled waters are very definitely not all the same. For instance, I have never yet met a "mineral water" that I have liked. If water is filtered too much, it can obtain a charcoal-like tast or develop a hard quality that clenches my throat after drinking it. Distilled water, for instance, is usually too pure.
Another factor that is often overlooked is the glass the water is served in. Make no mistake, you should _never_ serve water in plastic. Water grabs all of the foul taste of the plastic and everything else that has ever been in contact with it. If you doubt me, go to a restaurant the uses those hard plastic cups for everything and just _try_ to tolerate the water. Nothing is fouler, even straight tap water from downtown Atlanta is not so bad as some of those. A good, clean, thick glass is the only way to enjoy good water. Of course, metal or wood cups can also be good, though they each impart their own flavour into the water. Metal and glass both cause the water to become a little ionized, which is definitely a good thing, IMHO.
If you are in the Atlanta, GA, area, go to R. Thomas on Peachtree Rd. and drink their water. It is exceptional. I do not believe I have ever had water so good as theirs, and I have been known to go in simply to drink water (of course, I always leave a good tip in such a case). Their food is also great, though. I wouldn't recommend skipping out on their cuisine.
The point is, water can, in fact, be an excellent drink, provided that it is served correctly. However, serving it correctly is a very difficult hurdle rarely managed by the average restaurant.
I am using the Ultra-fast DMA 100 Promise IDE driver right now. It is in the kernel.
Make sure you have Generic PCI IDE chipset, Generic PCI bus-master DMA, and Use PCI DMA by default when available all on.
Something is fishy about this
on
Beaming Money
·
· Score: 2
Since they do not specify these in their page, I can only speculate on my major concerns.
1) As someone has already mentioned, what are they getting out of this?
I can only think of a few ways to make money on this, but none of them seem overly viable.
a) invest the deposits and the government concurrency, like as the banks.
i) my guess would be that these are going to be very small accounts with rapidly changing balances, which would give a fairly low margin.
ii) even so, this seems the most likely: if enough people deposit, the variance on the total gets smaller (but higher risk)
b) kickbacks for financial information
i) sell to credit companies
ii) aww. They'lll do this anyway
c) charge interest on deposited funds for "availability services"
i) their page only mentions that they will not charge for deposits or withdrawals, not for the storage
ii) this would sort-of be shooting themselves in the foot... no one would want balances, so this would exclude a)
d) offer credit at some interest rate
i) like as credit cards, loans, etc.
e) public service, register non-profit, get donations and government support
i) yeah, right
2) How is the transaction accounted? Obviously, they must use both payee-dependence and payer-dependence. If only payee, the payee could get as much as they want. If only payer, the payer could --- oops --- reset --- his pilot. So, the two must agree. Further, the limit of accountability must be either based on the pre-deposited funds or some credit financing scheme as above. If they do it this way, it seems fairly well accountable, from three axes. Of course, they'll need encryption and authentication and all of that, but that looks fairly sound otherwise... if they do it this way...
That, of couse, is the final concern: They don't tell us, the future customers, their methods, accountability, and financial interests.
A year or so ago, I gave my wee brother my old BASIC book that I got with my TI 99/4A. It was made for really young kids, having little figures going about helping you learn. It has good, fun programs, and has a good learning curve. I don't know, however, where you'd find one now, except maybe at an antique store.
Slashdot Mirror
Beware! I am one of those basement-dwelling neckbeards, and I, too, waited until after the opening weekend. I will haunt you this weekend as well!
First, though I must agree with you that Win98 certainly does not "just work," it does offer a "stable" platform in the sense that you know what its problems are, and you can modify your behaviour to work around those problems. This is not an endorsement for using Win98; I do not use it, and I don't tell anyone else to use it. However, there are several people I know who do use it without my blessing, and they use it for the simple reason that they prefer the devil they know to the horrendous Microsoft concept of "change is our most important feature."
Along this line, your statement about Windows people being the only ones who want to hang on to their applications for decades if utter rubbish. I myself firmly cling to many such applications I have been using since 1995 on my [Linux] box. There is tremendous benefit of not having to relearn the use of various applications each time a company wants to make a little more money.
Although I must second the value of water as a replacement, I must strongly disagree with the statement of tastelessness. Though water itself may be tasteless, you never get pure water.
What most people object to in water is, in fact, its _taste_. Caffeine, I can take or leave, but I usually go with a Coke at most restaurants simply because their water tastes terrible. At home, it is usually water.
The problem is that there is no standard for the taste of water. Different people seem to like it different ways, and different people can taste the various additives differently. Indeed, even the ionization of water can make a large difference in its taste. I am lucky that, where I am, the tap water after filteration with a good Pür filter is quite acceptable, but I have been places where a filter simply will not cut it.
Further, bottled waters are very definitely not all the same. For instance, I have never yet met a "mineral water" that I have liked. If water is filtered too much, it can obtain a charcoal-like tast or develop a hard quality that clenches my throat after drinking it. Distilled water, for instance, is usually too pure.
Another factor that is often overlooked is the glass the water is served in. Make no mistake, you should _never_ serve water in plastic. Water grabs all of the foul taste of the plastic and everything else that has ever been in contact with it. If you doubt me, go to a restaurant the uses those hard plastic cups for everything and just _try_ to tolerate the water. Nothing is fouler, even straight tap water from downtown Atlanta is not so bad as some of those. A good, clean, thick glass is the only way to enjoy good water. Of course, metal or wood cups can also be good, though they each impart their own flavour into the water. Metal and glass both cause the water to become a little ionized, which is definitely a good thing, IMHO.
If you are in the Atlanta, GA, area, go to R. Thomas on Peachtree Rd. and drink their water. It is exceptional. I do not believe I have ever had water so good as theirs, and I have been known to go in simply to drink water (of course, I always leave a good tip in such a case). Their food is also great, though. I wouldn't recommend skipping out on their cuisine.
The point is, water can, in fact, be an excellent drink, provided that it is served correctly. However, serving it correctly is a very difficult hurdle rarely managed by the average restaurant.
Umm. That is the solution for a _different_ picture.
The problem, unfortunately, if that the success rate drops sharly the worse vision you have.
Therefore, if you have _really_ bad vision (I cannot focus farther than 3/4 the length of my nose), like me, the success rate is a little above 50%.
Not for me...
For DSL:
Telocity/DirecTV www.directvdsl.com
NEGIA www.negia.com
Atlanta Internet Networks www.atlnet.com
All three of these fully support Linux.
I am using the Ultra-fast DMA 100 Promise IDE driver right now. It is in the kernel.
Make sure you have Generic PCI IDE chipset, Generic PCI bus-master DMA, and Use PCI DMA by default when available all on.
1) As someone has already mentioned, what are they getting out of this?
I can only think of a few ways to make money on this, but none of them seem overly viable.
2) How is the transaction accounted?
Obviously, they must use both payee-dependence and payer-dependence. If only payee, the payee could get as much as they want. If only payer, the payer could --- oops --- reset --- his pilot. So, the two must agree. Further, the limit of accountability must be either based on the pre-deposited funds or some credit financing scheme as above.
If they do it this way, it seems fairly well accountable, from three axes. Of course, they'll need encryption and authentication and all of that, but that looks fairly sound otherwise... if they do it this way...
That, of couse, is the final concern:
They don't tell us, the future customers, their methods, accountability, and financial interests.
I know it isn't from aliens or UFO's, but Elerium-118 is so well-commed already...
Not that that is so much better than CE, but the article indicated embedded NT 4.0
A year or so ago, I gave my wee brother my old BASIC book that I got with my TI 99/4A. It was made for really young kids, having little figures going about helping you learn. It has good, fun programs, and has a good learning curve. I don't know, however, where you'd find one now, except maybe at an antique store.