No of course not. The city runs a wire from A to B. Customer at A gets to buy service from B who puts equipment in the central office to do X. Doesn't matter who B is or what X is. All the city has to do is lay the cable and auction the space in the CO.
This isn't how a MAN works. In a MAN, the city operates the physical infrastructure but the networking is up to the customers entirely. It really is comparable to a road. The public pays for the road but they don't control where or when you travel.
I just got back from the Macworld Expo keynote address by Steve Jobs and there could not be more contrast. Apple is putting all of there efforts into software and hardware to let customers make and share digital media. Moxi and Microsoft and the rest are trying to build devices that maximize the consumption of digital media.
"They" have been saying that since the Gil Amelio days. That is how the Mac rumor mill works: come up with as much outrageous bullshit as possible, and repeat it in a tight loop. If ANY of it EVER comes true, they will shout "SEE. We TOLD you so!".
I'm constantly swapping PCMCIA cards in and out of my Powerbook G4, so I know it is useful. First, I have to use a Cisco aironet card for 802.11b because the airport implementation in the Powerbook G4 sucks shit. Range is horrible with the built-in antenna to I use the Aironet.
Second, I have to use a SCSI controller because the Powerbook has no SCSI port, and I have a lot of SCSI peripherals (that I mainly bought because Macs used to come with SCSI ports...grr). My scanners are the essential things here but also removable storage. And no, I can't just haul off and replace all that stuff with 1394 gear.
Third, you have to use the PCMCIA card if you want a modem that works with Linux. I guess you could use a USB modem, but let me know when you get that to work with Linux and for someone who goes on the road a lot it is too painful to carry another box.
I had some problems getting CUPS setup on my Debian installation because it wasn't perfectly clear what packages to install to get everything working. But, after I poked around in dselect for a while, I figured it out and once it is running, CUPS is a breeze.
My perception is that most people have problems not with printing, but with their printer. People buy printers that only work with oddball command languages or expect the host CPU to do absolutely everything and send them raster lines. Whem I am asked about these marginal printers at LUG meetings and installfests, I advise people to get postscript or pcl/hpgl printers. These are standard printer languages. I have never seen a printing situation that postcript couldn't handle.
But people still buy these cheapo printers and when they find out that Linux mostly supports elegant, standard printer interfaces they jump directly into "Linux sucks" rants.
One way to convince these people to buy "real" printers is to point out that a printer with some specialized driver might not be supported in the future. Suppose the manufacturer made a driver for printer yzx-ii for Windows 3.11. They discontinued the printer in 1994 but they still released a driver for Win95. They updated their driver for Win98, but they never did bother porting it to WinNT. Now they don't support Windows 2000 or XP, and you can't expect them to keep writing drivers for printers they last sold eight years ago.
Now look at the alternative case. Instead of yzx-ii you layed out a little more cash for a postscript printer. This printer is going to work with any past, present, or future operating system until the hardware falls to pieces. The buyer of a postscript (or pcl) printer never has to worry about printer drivers. He's got a postscript printer! It's just like HTML, TeX, and so on: the standard is out there, you can't kill it, and it will be supported for eternity.
My printer is an Apple LaserWriter II NTR, which I found in the trash. It has a postscript processor, so I can use it with Linux and like operatings systems, Windows [3,95,NT,XP], OS/2, and vintage of MacOS, and so forth. This printer was introduced in 1992 and it still works great, without software problems of any kind. I'll never need a new "driver" for it because I already have the postscript printer description file and I don't believe the hardware is changing! If I had paid money for this printer, I would consider it a wonderful purchase.
I still don't see how this scheme is supposed to prevent ripping. If the CD player is able to error-correct these discs, and the CD player has a digital output, then the user has an error-free digital stream. Further, it is really trivial to make a black box to strip the copy protection bits out of the AES stream, so both casual and massive replication will be possible.
Aw, c'mon. Insightful? It's easy to build a highly regulated DC power supply from arbitrarily noisy AC power mains. High capacitance, quality power transformers, noise chokes, power entry modules: all these components on a modern power supply are there to filter out noise. In low-power components like DACs and preamplifiers, the regulated power rails should have a VERY high noise rejection from ~0 into the low MHz. IC regulation isn't practical in power amplifiers, but really impressive capacitors are practical and a good design will have power supply noise well below signal level or throughout the audible band.
In other words, I wouldn't sweat it for audio uses. If it really bothers you, power your audio equipment through a real UPS with a lead-acid battery and inverter. That should brick-wall filter any noise from your mains.
In 1995 David LaMacchia, a student at MIT, was cleared of federal (US) wire fraud charges. The charges were brought because LaMacchia was operating two bulletin boards to distribute pirated software, cracks, and other warez. He was not convicted because the courts determined that there was no crime if the defendant hadn't profitted from the alleged copyright violations.
Obviously this is pertinent to the case of these busted warez organizations. From my humble participation in the scene in '94 and thereabouts, I never saw anyone from the larger groups (Razor, DoD, PwA, RTS) selling CDs, selling FTP access, or otherwise trying to make a buck from warez. Everybody just wanted to get the biggest and best 0-day releases, the coolest demos, and the hardest cracks, then spend all night in IRC bragging about it and trying to take over channels (yay EFnet).
Have there been any laws since the LaMacchia case that make priacy without profit a federal crime?
If you haven't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about, Google for David LaMacchia and Harvey Silverglate (civil libertarian and author of The Shadow University)
There are plenty of advantages to an external. First: an external must by SCSI, 1394, or USB, so it won't use up one of your limited motherboard IDE ports. Second: you can swap an external between many systems -- beats having to transfer gigabytes of data over a network. Third: you can turn an external off when you aren't using it. My external CD-RW has probably been on for less than 2 days in the three years I've owned it. This will extend its life. It also saves energy. Fourth: with all external drives, you can have a pizza-box computer. If you want hard disks, cd, cd-rw, dvd, and dvd-+rw in the same case, it has to be an enormous tower.
Yeah I think Gnumeric is great, even if Guppi is still a pile of sh*t. I wasn't trying to rah-rah for Excel, just find at least ONE positive thing to say about Office.
...visuals are half the battle, content is the other.
I don't buy that. Content is everything. If you have no content and great visuals, you don't have 1/2 a presentation, you have nothing. Powerpoint is horrible, even for presentations. The display medium is usually a projection, and that means typically an 800x600 distorted trapezodioal projection on a distant wall. Further, Powerpoint encourages you to waste what little precious space you have to work with. Logos, patterns, colored polygons, and bullets use space and add nothing. Here's a mockup PowerPoint slide:
Management Plan:
* Execute Global Synergy
* Synergize Global Execution
* Globalize Synergistic Executives
Damn, that was useful. Can we go over it again?
Next thing: Powerpoint leaves no traces. You can't take it with you unless the presenter prints it out, which is an insult to the information carrying ability of paper. You can't refer to something that used to be projected up on a wall but now isn't. Often, the presentation itself is of little use if the presenter isn't speaking any more.
A lot of businesses would do themselves a favor by getting rid of Powerpoint. A really well executed 1-page paper handout can carry enough information to accompany an hour-long presentation or class. Computer printouts are 1200dpi. 2400dpi offset printing is considered low tech. If you print a chart at 1200dpi someone might actually be able to make sense of it.
Some businesses are clued into this already. 3M has a worldwide effort to burn powerpoint at the stake. Other large companies are watching. If I were an executive, I'd fire any and all employees who invited me to a powerpoint presentation. It doesn't doesn't respect the intelligence or the value of the time of the victim...er... audience.
Here's an exercise. Go to google. Search for powerpoint presentations. Find one that's really great. One that is really informative and beautiful. Then come back here and post the URL.
How cheap are we talking about here? You can get a Tektronix 465 with a probe for $200 or less and this is a nice featureful scope. There's a reason the 465 was in production for decades. It's many times better than some sound card hack.
Most places are going to snub an office replacement because most places -- by which I assume you mean most businesses -- will also continue to exist in a stagnant past, drifting in the doldrums of mismanagement in a sea of flickering flourescent lights or foul coffee, without a breath of wind to blow their wayward enterprises into the waters of success.
The truth is this: there is very little business value added by Microsoft Office. Word is a very substandard document editor which focuses on layout over content, and at the same time is almost useless for layout. Powerpoint can only be used to create presentations to waste company time at tedious meetings. "Management Plan: Part A" can definitely be drawn on a chalk board faster than it can be written in powerpoint. Access should not be used to store any data your business actually needs, which implies that your business doesn't need Access. Excel is the sole component of Office that does anything useful. This is probably the best spreadsheet for financial and scientific applications out there, and has been since the first release on the MacOS Back in the Day. Too bad it is now bundled with all that other tripe.
My point: a "100% office replacement" really means a replacement for Excel in any business where the management retains frontal lobe function.
Not exactly. The DMCA restricts speech that was previously unrestricted. In the DMCA USA, you can't say "The method to decrypt a DVD is to XOR with 0xcafebabe", without regard that this nugget of knowledge was obtained through independent scientific inquiry. You'll get thrown in prison and/or slapped with civil penalties. see dvdcca v everybody, universal, et al v corley, usa v sklyarov, felten v riaa.
Not all cars these days are so complicated. Yeah, a 2001 BMW M3 has 10E6 moving parts and OBD-II computers so you can't even change the ignition map. But, a Mazda Miata is so simple that significant performance changes can be seen by simply changing the ignition advance. Seriously! And the Miata is the kind of car where you can still change out the bottom end before lunch on Saturday.
Also you don't have to go back very far to shed a whole lot of technology. A 1991 BMW M3 is *very* hackable: mechanics, computers, everything. It is also modern enough to have all the safety, emissions, and convenience features we take for granted these days. Perhaps this was the golden age of the automobile.
Yeah I can't imaging what possible use a school-issued computer has for these kids other than to indoctrinate them into the mindset of writing all documents with Word and using Excel as a spreadsheet, database, address book, and everything else. Outside of computer programming classes and use of computers for scientific data collection or media production, I really don't see the need for lots of computers in a school. You could, for example, issue each school a smattering of computers with 486-class performance which would be perfectly acceptable for use producing documents or using the WWW. Add to that a dozen hot rod machines for things like video production, newspaper/book layout, and scientific computing. I think that might come in a hair under $11M, and still teach kids how to really put computer tools to work.
Well its actually worse than that right? If you build the intelligence agency in your capital, you get the star, the dot, and the pentagon superimposed.
When you click the E button for Espionage, you only get two choices: Investigate City and Steal Technology. If you double click on the little pentagon in the city where you built the Intelligence Agency, you get options to plant spies and do other Espionage stuff. I'm on my third full game and I just figured out what this obscure little pentagon means.
I think the answer is that the Sorenson codec kicks ass over all other codecs. People will use it because when they export from Final Cut Pro that's what they get.
If you have a quadruple PhD in math and you would like to create a codec that is not encumbered by intellectual property toll booths, join the Ogg Tarkin project.
Quicktime is a system. The system manages codecs, input, output, and time domain synchronization. Sorenson is a codec for Quicktime. Quicktime is not based on Sorenson.
DOS still has a use, even on powerful desktop systems. Flashing the PC BIOS, or the BIOS of an expansion card, can usually only be done from DOS. If you are a Linux user, you are kind of stuck with your existing BIOS. With a free DOS implementation, you can update your BIOS.
I've been nursing a DOS 6 boot diskette for seven years, just so I can flash ROMs. If that disk ever bites it, I'll switch to this open DR-DOS.
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No of course not. The city runs a wire from A to B. Customer at A gets to buy service from B who puts equipment in the central office to do X. Doesn't matter who B is or what X is. All the city has to do is lay the cable and auction the space in the CO.
This isn't how a MAN works. In a MAN, the city operates the physical infrastructure but the networking is up to the customers entirely. It really is comparable to a road. The public pays for the road but they don't control where or when you travel.
Hmm.
"They" have been saying that since the Gil Amelio days. That is how the Mac rumor mill works: come up with as much outrageous bullshit as possible, and repeat it in a tight loop. If ANY of it EVER comes true, they will shout "SEE. We TOLD you so!".
I'm constantly swapping PCMCIA cards in and out of my Powerbook G4, so I know it is useful. First, I have to use a Cisco aironet card for 802.11b because the airport implementation in the Powerbook G4 sucks shit. Range is horrible with the built-in antenna to I use the Aironet.
Second, I have to use a SCSI controller because the Powerbook has no SCSI port, and I have a lot of SCSI peripherals (that I mainly bought because Macs used to come with SCSI ports...grr). My scanners are the essential things here but also removable storage. And no, I can't just haul off and replace all that stuff with 1394 gear.
Third, you have to use the PCMCIA card if you want a modem that works with Linux. I guess you could use a USB modem, but let me know when you get that to work with Linux and for someone who goes on the road a lot it is too painful to carry another box.
My perception is that most people have problems not with printing, but with their printer. People buy printers that only work with oddball command languages or expect the host CPU to do absolutely everything and send them raster lines. Whem I am asked about these marginal printers at LUG meetings and installfests, I advise people to get postscript or pcl/hpgl printers. These are standard printer languages. I have never seen a printing situation that postcript couldn't handle.
But people still buy these cheapo printers and when they find out that Linux mostly supports elegant, standard printer interfaces they jump directly into "Linux sucks" rants.
One way to convince these people to buy "real" printers is to point out that a printer with some specialized driver might not be supported in the future. Suppose the manufacturer made a driver for printer yzx-ii for Windows 3.11. They discontinued the printer in 1994 but they still released a driver for Win95. They updated their driver for Win98, but they never did bother porting it to WinNT. Now they don't support Windows 2000 or XP, and you can't expect them to keep writing drivers for printers they last sold eight years ago.
Now look at the alternative case. Instead of yzx-ii you layed out a little more cash for a postscript printer. This printer is going to work with any past, present, or future operating system until the hardware falls to pieces. The buyer of a postscript (or pcl) printer never has to worry about printer drivers. He's got a postscript printer! It's just like HTML, TeX, and so on: the standard is out there, you can't kill it, and it will be supported for eternity.
My printer is an Apple LaserWriter II NTR, which I found in the trash. It has a postscript processor, so I can use it with Linux and like operatings systems, Windows [3,95,NT,XP], OS/2, and vintage of MacOS, and so forth. This printer was introduced in 1992 and it still works great, without software problems of any kind. I'll never need a new "driver" for it because I already have the postscript printer description file and I don't believe the hardware is changing! If I had paid money for this printer, I would consider it a wonderful purchase.
(end of rant)
I still don't see how this scheme is supposed to prevent ripping. If the CD player is able to error-correct these discs, and the CD player has a digital output, then the user has an error-free digital stream. Further, it is really trivial to make a black box to strip the copy protection bits out of the AES stream, so both casual and massive replication will be possible.
In other words, I wouldn't sweat it for audio uses. If it really bothers you, power your audio equipment through a real UPS with a lead-acid battery and inverter. That should brick-wall filter any noise from your mains.
Obviously this is pertinent to the case of these busted warez organizations. From my humble participation in the scene in '94 and thereabouts, I never saw anyone from the larger groups (Razor, DoD, PwA, RTS) selling CDs, selling FTP access, or otherwise trying to make a buck from warez. Everybody just wanted to get the biggest and best 0-day releases, the coolest demos, and the hardest cracks, then spend all night in IRC bragging about it and trying to take over channels (yay EFnet).
Have there been any laws since the LaMacchia case that make priacy without profit a federal crime?
If you haven't got the faintest idea what I'm talking about, Google for David LaMacchia and Harvey Silverglate (civil libertarian and author of The Shadow University)
A massively parallel version of LOGO? Presumably to control your massive army of one-axis robots?!?
There are plenty of advantages to an external. First: an external must by SCSI, 1394, or USB, so it won't use up one of your limited motherboard IDE ports. Second: you can swap an external between many systems -- beats having to transfer gigabytes of data over a network. Third: you can turn an external off when you aren't using it. My external CD-RW has probably been on for less than 2 days in the three years I've owned it. This will extend its life. It also saves energy. Fourth: with all external drives, you can have a pizza-box computer. If you want hard disks, cd, cd-rw, dvd, and dvd-+rw in the same case, it has to be an enormous tower.
Yeah I think Gnumeric is great, even if Guppi is still a pile of sh*t. I wasn't trying to rah-rah for Excel, just find at least ONE positive thing to say about Office.
I don't buy that. Content is everything. If you have no content and great visuals, you don't have 1/2 a presentation, you have nothing. Powerpoint is horrible, even for presentations. The display medium is usually a projection, and that means typically an 800x600 distorted trapezodioal projection on a distant wall. Further, Powerpoint encourages you to waste what little precious space you have to work with. Logos, patterns, colored polygons, and bullets use space and add nothing. Here's a mockup PowerPoint slide:
Management Plan:
Damn, that was useful. Can we go over it again?
Next thing: Powerpoint leaves no traces. You can't take it with you unless the presenter prints it out, which is an insult to the information carrying ability of paper. You can't refer to something that used to be projected up on a wall but now isn't. Often, the presentation itself is of little use if the presenter isn't speaking any more.
A lot of businesses would do themselves a favor by getting rid of Powerpoint. A really well executed 1-page paper handout can carry enough information to accompany an hour-long presentation or class. Computer printouts are 1200dpi. 2400dpi offset printing is considered low tech. If you print a chart at 1200dpi someone might actually be able to make sense of it.
Some businesses are clued into this already. 3M has a worldwide effort to burn powerpoint at the stake. Other large companies are watching. If I were an executive, I'd fire any and all employees who invited me to a powerpoint presentation. It doesn't doesn't respect the intelligence or the value of the time of the victim ...er... audience.
Here's an exercise. Go to google. Search for powerpoint presentations. Find one that's really great. One that is really informative and beautiful. Then come back here and post the URL.
How cheap are we talking about here? You can get a Tektronix 465 with a probe for $200 or less and this is a nice featureful scope. There's a reason the 465 was in production for decades. It's many times better than some sound card hack.
The truth is this: there is very little business value added by Microsoft Office. Word is a very substandard document editor which focuses on layout over content, and at the same time is almost useless for layout. Powerpoint can only be used to create presentations to waste company time at tedious meetings. "Management Plan: Part A" can definitely be drawn on a chalk board faster than it can be written in powerpoint. Access should not be used to store any data your business actually needs, which implies that your business doesn't need Access. Excel is the sole component of Office that does anything useful. This is probably the best spreadsheet for financial and scientific applications out there, and has been since the first release on the MacOS Back in the Day. Too bad it is now bundled with all that other tripe.
My point: a "100% office replacement" really means a replacement for Excel in any business where the management retains frontal lobe function.
Not exactly. The DMCA restricts speech that was previously unrestricted. In the DMCA USA, you can't say "The method to decrypt a DVD is to XOR with 0xcafebabe", without regard that this nugget of knowledge was obtained through independent scientific inquiry. You'll get thrown in prison and/or slapped with civil penalties. see dvdcca v everybody, universal, et al v corley, usa v sklyarov, felten v riaa.
Yes there really is a 20MHz z80.
Also you don't have to go back very far to shed a whole lot of technology. A 1991 BMW M3 is *very* hackable: mechanics, computers, everything. It is also modern enough to have all the safety, emissions, and convenience features we take for granted these days. Perhaps this was the golden age of the automobile.
Yeah I can't imaging what possible use a school-issued computer has for these kids other than to indoctrinate them into the mindset of writing all documents with Word and using Excel as a spreadsheet, database, address book, and everything else. Outside of computer programming classes and use of computers for scientific data collection or media production, I really don't see the need for lots of computers in a school. You could, for example, issue each school a smattering of computers with 486-class performance which would be perfectly acceptable for use producing documents or using the WWW. Add to that a dozen hot rod machines for things like video production, newspaper/book layout, and scientific computing. I think that might come in a hair under $11M, and still teach kids how to really put computer tools to work.
These aren't the toilet seat ibooks these are the ice cube ibooks.
Well its actually worse than that right? If you build the intelligence agency in your capital, you get the star, the dot, and the pentagon superimposed.
When you click the E button for Espionage, you only get two choices: Investigate City and Steal Technology. If you double click on the little pentagon in the city where you built the Intelligence Agency, you get options to plant spies and do other Espionage stuff. I'm on my third full game and I just figured out what this obscure little pentagon means.
If you have a quadruple PhD in math and you would like to create a codec that is not encumbered by intellectual property toll booths, join the Ogg Tarkin project.
Quicktime is a system. The system manages codecs, input, output, and time domain synchronization. Sorenson is a codec for Quicktime. Quicktime is not based on Sorenson.
DOS still has a use, even on powerful desktop systems. Flashing the PC BIOS, or the BIOS of an expansion card, can usually only be done from DOS. If you are a Linux user, you are kind of stuck with your existing BIOS. With a free DOS implementation, you can update your BIOS. I've been nursing a DOS 6 boot diskette for seven years, just so I can flash ROMs. If that disk ever bites it, I'll switch to this open DR-DOS.