Back in the days of MS-DOS and 5Mhz 8088 CPU's with 640M of memory Advanced Voice, the company I worked for, ran an 8 port voice mail on an XT and it worked just fine. Matter of fact, when the ultra-fast 8Mhz and 12Mhz 80286's came out we ran a 24 port voice mail that worked great. The interesting thing is that every one else was trying to run C-coded voice mails, and struggling like hell to get them to work, our stuff just chugged along like the Energizer Bunny. And what was it programmed in? PC-Bus, aka Datapoint's Databus, an intrepreted database language. The actual source code is compiled into bytecode, which is intrepreted by a runtime interpreter. Note that 1CTI, the company that now uses that code, still runs it and it's evolved additions, except they're now compiled/run using the Sunbelt PL/B compiler/interpreter. Note that there are two versions, one for Windows and one for Linux. The basic code is the same, the difference being one uses Windows calls for some specialized stuff and the other uses Linux calls. Other than that, the code is the same. FYI, the code is an event-driven single-thread state machine.
Back in the last century (1974-1978) I worked for TVA on the Bellfonte Nuclear Power Plant. I did the main control room design supervision, as well as the plant computer, another computer called SEAMS(Status Environmental Alarm Monitoring System), the annunciator system, and instrumentation for 11 other systems. Needless to say all that stuff is obsolete now (PDP-11 computers), but if I remember right they did get the building and cooling towers constructed. And there should be ASL of stuff that isn't nuclear-grade that can be used in the new plant, such as water pumps of various kinds. I also remember seeing a couple of compressed air tanks that were about the size of Cleveland!!!
Note that I predicted they would restart construction on it about the time I go on social security. That starts in April!
The fact is we'll never get anywhere in space. The US Governemnt has a law that dates back to the 1930's which will confiscate any high tech stuff the government deems to be of military significance. So, got your Star Trek Implulse Drive or your Star Trek Warp Drive ready to patent? Too Bad! They'll declare it Top Secret and confiscate it. It'll never see the light of day, except as a weapons delivery system.
Therefore, if you've got a new truly revolutionary propulsion system, do NOT, repeat, DO NOT, attempt to patent it in the US!!! And, I suspect that if you placed it in the public domain they'd arrest you as an "Enemy Combatant," and you'd never be seen again!
The net result is no space exploration because we have no space propulsion system other than rockets. Fuck Bush and everybody that stands with him!
I've asked this time and again, and I've still not found anyone that can help me. How do you post a comment to the main article and not a comment to the comment? Help, please! And, yes, I've looked at the FAQ, which is no help at all.
"I'm curious how else you could make something move in the vacuum of space (within the realm of known physics). Can you think of anything? Do the "impulse engines" on the Enterprise have any grounding in real science, however tenuous?"
If we had stuck to what was "within the realm of known physics" we'd still be living in caves. It's the "unknown physics" that will give us the advanced propulsion system. Where are the big bucks being spent on that? They aren't. That's "pure science," which is not what gets you a grant to do study since it doesn't have any known money-making application.
FYI, none of the stuff we take for granted nowadays had any basis within the "known physics" of the time.
We're pissing in the wind in trying to get to Mars, or anywhere else in the solar system, using rockets. Where is the big money for research into something that doesn't require you to throw mass out the ass end to make the thing move?
From what I've seen of NASA they never pass up a chance to drop spending on any new propulsion system in order to preserve the bureaucracy, and thus the pork for DeLay, et al, to brag about.
The only way we'll ever get anywhere in our solar system is if some crazy genius finally figures out how to get the equivalent of the Star Trek "Impulse Drive" to work. Until we can lift large amount of mass with very little effort you can kiss off Mars.
You guys are thinking too small! What I want is the ability to connect some serious objects together and make them all fly in formation. Think of it as a reverse english version of a network. The network is the main thing and the objects connected to it organize themselves together. A simple example: A display object, a control object, an audio object(s), a video object and storage object(s) connected to a network to form an audio/video playback network. The network API (software objects) are all written in p-code so that whatever CPU a particular object is using will be able to interpret it and use it. If my humungous A/V system had that I could get rid of all the remote controls and just have one remote control object to control everything. FYI, this is not my original idea. I got it from "The Mote In God's Eye." The Moties built their whole technology on modules.
Want to make me program with a gun to my head? Yeah, try that and see how far it gets you? I'm a programmer, and an experienced one, and 63 years old and diabetic (among other things), but the clincher is that I'm the most recalcitrant son of a bitch you've ever seen! I can guarantee that no program I write with a gun to my head will ever do anything other than print out obscenities directed at the US Government. So shoot me, Government Mutherfucker!
"Problem here is that many open source projects for Microsoft Windows will compile only on Microsoft Visual Studio, which costs over 1,000 USD for one seat."
It cost $1,000 if you just buy Visual Studio. If you go to eBay you can get the MSDN Universal Subscription for around $850, which contains not only Visual Studio but all the OS's, Office Pro and ASL of other stuff. It pays to shop around.
"Most machines not terribly bright when compared to LCD." Say, what? I've got a 56" Samsung DLP that you could use to light the living room with!
BTW, I am writing this on a Hitachi 19" CRT running 1600x1200 that is over five years old, has never been converged and still has so much detail that it can read the froghair print on just about anything.
The fact is that you know what you're doing when you do computer stuff and ASL of other people don't. They pay for their ignorance by coughing up extra money to pay the folks(like me) who have the knowledge. Yep, they could buy the equipment (computer, voice boards, etc.), write a voice mail application and maintain it, but they don't know how, so they buy my stuff, along with my knowledge. That's the way it is!
As to the plot, use a simple device to fix it: Figure out the ending and work backwards. Dialog gets fixed by carrying around a notepad of some sort and writing down things as you think of them. Write them down NOW, otherwise you'll forget them! Do the same thing for scenes.
There is a movie scripting package (or two) that gives you the organizing tools to do this. I've found that a bunch of 3x5 cards carried in my pocket does it quite well. Then use a posterboard and some pins to organize it.
There is also these little recorders that sell for less than $100 that can record stuff into folders for use later. Or even the Palm Pilots that can record stuff.
The key is to record whatever thoughts you have immediately! Otherwise you end up forgetting it and it drives you nuts trying to recapture the idea or dialog. Been there and done that too many times.
Besides the jungle transmitter, the exhibits include a robotic catfish, a remote-controlled dragonfly and a camera strapped to the chests of pigeons and released over enemy targets in the 1970s. The secret gadgets currently used by CIA are left to the imagination of visitors."
"The pigeons' missions remain classified, made possible only after the CIA secretly developed a camera weighing only as much as a few coins. An earlier test with a heavier camera in the skies over Washington failed after two days when the overburdened pigeon was forced to walk home."
"...when the overburdened pigeon was forced to walk home!!!!!" I can just picture it: A pidgeon walking down the sidewalk in front of the White House with a camera strapped to it's neck. Hell, it would fit right in. Just another strange tourist, right?
There are really only three ways to design something: Top Down (think out all the possibilities, make a plan and then execute it), Bottom Up (put pieces together in hopes that the whole thing will eventually work) or a combination of the two. I tend to do the latter, which is to say, think about the overall idea, make a couple of prototypes, figure out what will work, repeat the process until I've got the answer.
I have noticed that things, from physical objects to software, are generally more complex than they should be. I think the problem is that people stop working on it when it works and don't do the final refinement that would take the product to it's most efficient form.
Now this is what I call a Christmas Present!!! Ole Saddam looks like a homeless critter, which he is! A fine comuppance for a major murdering sleazeball. I bet that George can't keep from smiling!
"...As for people with religious objections, while have have respect for their views..." Why? If it's fucking stupid from the get-go, then calling it a "religious view" doesn't elevate it's status. Religion is the biggest plague that the human race faces. We have a planet-wide religious war going on now because of a religion created a thousand years ago by a psychopath called Mohammed. The Christian religion has went off into all these idiotic paths of "preserving life", never mind that it has in the past tortured and murdered people who wouldn't kowtow to it's psycho beliefs and, if left unchecked, would do the same thing right now. In the end, if the human race is to survive, it will have to rid itself of all these religions. Will it survive? That's still up for grabs...
I stopped watching TNN (aka Spike) because of the irritating popup ads. I also sent a bitchin email to the local station that kept doing it on their regular programming. It's enough to make me want to have the government regulate how programs are presented and how advertising can occur! And that alone shows just how pissed off it makes me!!!!!!
What is needed is a robot that will help disabled people get in and out of bed. My aunt has a disabled child who is wheelchair bound and needs help getting in and out of bed. So when they get an all-purpose walking/moving/assisting robot that will do those tasks, then they'll have something with a BIG market!
An Independent Artist actually selling music to be on TV? Boy does that ever piss off Universal!!! After all, they were flacking their in-house slaves music for the same show. They've got to stop that at all costs!!!
FYI, one of my jobs at the voice mail company I work for is to design and write the Product Activation code. My stuff works consistently. Why? Because I don't examine the general computer hardware. I look for a piece of hardware (the voice board) that has a serial number in it that I can retrieve. Using that I can get a hard confirmation that I'm looking at the correct thing that enables my license file. It allows us to determine how many ports of voice mail are running, what sort of integration is enabled for what the VM is connected to, and ASL of other extra-money features we have for sale. All the software is on the system we well and it is activated on a per-feature basis by the license file. What happens when the voice board fails, as they've been known to do? Well, we send them a new voice board and a new license file, they send back the voice board.
The fallacy of all this "product activation" stuff is that it is trying to do a generalization from stuff that doesn't have hard serial numbers available. And so it works right up until the time that the hardware starts getting changed, at which time it fails. My stuff also fails if the specific piece of hardware I'm looking at fails.
The only solution I see to the hardware lock is to have a standard device that every software vendor uses and a standard way for the end user to get a replacement when theirs craps out. And the stuff has to work for some specific period of time after the hardware device fails to give the user time to get a replacement.
While I suspect that anything can be hacked, including my stuff, it would take a while to do it. I don't know that there is any one Final Solution, so I just thought I'd throw in mine.
The sad fact is that for any product you should spend 80% of the money in marketing and %20 in development/testing. I've worked off and on for over a decade for a voice mail company that has a good product, but can't market it worth a damn. If you can't sell it, then it's worthless.
BTW, I created the phrase "The Magic Is In The Marketing!" over a decade ago and it's still the absolute truth.
According to a NYT column there has been a huge drop off in the 18-24 adult male viewers the networks crave. I wonder just how much all this Broadcast Flag crap has to do with it?
Considering the fact that I have a lot of stuff that I record during the day to scan through at night and that if I can't record stuff then I won't ever see it at all and that I've been doing this for years, what is it now that has their drawers kinked? Well, exactly what it is is pay-per-view, total control, forever and ever, which is what they've been trying to get since the VCR was invented. So CBS is going to stop transmitting in HDTV, let them! Matter of fact, let them ALL stop transmitting in HDTV! Then watch as the Congress, after being attacked by a few million of the voters, tells CBS to transmit in HDTV or go out of business! If they can't provide an HDTV signal, then the stations that are affiliated with CBS can't transmit the signal, hence zero revenue for CBS and ASL of pissed-off viewers! They want hard-ball, then they'll get hard-ball!
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Back in the days of MS-DOS and 5Mhz 8088 CPU's with 640M of memory Advanced Voice, the company I worked for, ran an 8 port voice mail on an XT and it worked just fine. Matter of fact, when the ultra-fast 8Mhz and 12Mhz 80286's came out we ran a 24 port voice mail that worked great. The interesting thing is that every one else was trying to run C-coded voice mails, and struggling like hell to get them to work, our stuff just chugged along like the Energizer Bunny. And what was it programmed in? PC-Bus, aka Datapoint's Databus, an intrepreted database language. The actual source code is compiled into bytecode, which is intrepreted by a runtime interpreter. Note that 1CTI, the company that now uses that code, still runs it and it's evolved additions, except they're now compiled/run using the Sunbelt PL/B compiler/interpreter. Note that there are two versions, one for Windows and one for Linux. The basic code is the same, the difference being one uses Windows calls for some specialized stuff and the other uses Linux calls. Other than that, the code is the same. FYI, the code is an event-driven single-thread state machine.
Note that I predicted they would restart construction on it about the time I go on social security. That starts in April!
Therefore, if you've got a new truly revolutionary propulsion system, do NOT, repeat, DO NOT, attempt to patent it in the US!!! And, I suspect that if you placed it in the public domain they'd arrest you as an "Enemy Combatant," and you'd never be seen again! The net result is no space exploration because we have no space propulsion system other than rockets. Fuck Bush and everybody that stands with him!
I've asked this time and again, and I've still not found anyone that can help me. How do you post a comment to the main article and not a comment to the comment? Help, please! And, yes, I've looked at the FAQ, which is no help at all.
If we had stuck to what was "within the realm of known physics" we'd still be living in caves. It's the "unknown physics" that will give us the advanced propulsion system. Where are the big bucks being spent on that? They aren't. That's "pure science," which is not what gets you a grant to do study since it doesn't have any known money-making application.
FYI, none of the stuff we take for granted nowadays had any basis within the "known physics" of the time.
From what I've seen of NASA they never pass up a chance to drop spending on any new propulsion system in order to preserve the bureaucracy, and thus the pork for DeLay, et al, to brag about.
The only way we'll ever get anywhere in our solar system is if some crazy genius finally figures out how to get the equivalent of the Star Trek "Impulse Drive" to work. Until we can lift large amount of mass with very little effort you can kiss off Mars.
You guys are thinking too small! What I want is the ability to connect some serious objects together and make them all fly in formation. Think of it as a reverse english version of a network. The network is the main thing and the objects connected to it organize themselves together. A simple example: A display object, a control object, an audio object(s), a video object and storage object(s) connected to a network to form an audio/video playback network. The network API (software objects) are all written in p-code so that whatever CPU a particular object is using will be able to interpret it and use it. If my humungous A/V system had that I could get rid of all the remote controls and just have one remote control object to control everything. FYI, this is not my original idea. I got it from "The Mote In God's Eye." The Moties built their whole technology on modules.
Want to make me program with a gun to my head? Yeah, try that and see how far it gets you? I'm a programmer, and an experienced one, and 63 years old and diabetic (among other things), but the clincher is that I'm the most recalcitrant son of a bitch you've ever seen! I can guarantee that no program I write with a gun to my head will ever do anything other than print out obscenities directed at the US Government. So shoot me, Government Mutherfucker!
"Problem here is that many open source projects for Microsoft Windows will compile only on Microsoft Visual Studio, which costs over 1,000 USD for one seat." It cost $1,000 if you just buy Visual Studio. If you go to eBay you can get the MSDN Universal Subscription for around $850, which contains not only Visual Studio but all the OS's, Office Pro and ASL of other stuff. It pays to shop around.
BTW, I am writing this on a Hitachi 19" CRT running 1600x1200 that is over five years old, has never been converged and still has so much detail that it can read the froghair print on just about anything.
The fact is that you know what you're doing when you do computer stuff and ASL of other people don't. They pay for their ignorance by coughing up extra money to pay the folks(like me) who have the knowledge. Yep, they could buy the equipment (computer, voice boards, etc.), write a voice mail application and maintain it, but they don't know how, so they buy my stuff, along with my knowledge. That's the way it is!
There is a movie scripting package (or two) that gives you the organizing tools to do this. I've found that a bunch of 3x5 cards carried in my pocket does it quite well. Then use a posterboard and some pins to organize it.
There is also these little recorders that sell for less than $100 that can record stuff into folders for use later. Or even the Palm Pilots that can record stuff.
The key is to record whatever thoughts you have immediately! Otherwise you end up forgetting it and it drives you nuts trying to recapture the idea or dialog. Been there and done that too many times.
"The pigeons' missions remain classified, made possible only after the CIA secretly developed a camera weighing only as much as a few coins. An earlier test with a heavier camera in the skies over Washington failed after two days when the overburdened pigeon was forced to walk home."
"...when the overburdened pigeon was forced to walk home!!!!!" I can just picture it: A pidgeon walking down the sidewalk in front of the White House with a camera strapped to it's neck. Hell, it would fit right in. Just another strange tourist, right?
I have noticed that things, from physical objects to software, are generally more complex than they should be. I think the problem is that people stop working on it when it works and don't do the final refinement that would take the product to it's most efficient form.
Now this is what I call a Christmas Present!!! Ole Saddam looks like a homeless critter, which he is! A fine comuppance for a major murdering sleazeball. I bet that George can't keep from smiling!
"...As for people with religious objections, while have have respect for their views..." Why? If it's fucking stupid from the get-go, then calling it a "religious view" doesn't elevate it's status. Religion is the biggest plague that the human race faces. We have a planet-wide religious war going on now because of a religion created a thousand years ago by a psychopath called Mohammed. The Christian religion has went off into all these idiotic paths of "preserving life", never mind that it has in the past tortured and murdered people who wouldn't kowtow to it's psycho beliefs and, if left unchecked, would do the same thing right now. In the end, if the human race is to survive, it will have to rid itself of all these religions. Will it survive? That's still up for grabs...
I stopped watching TNN (aka Spike) because of the irritating popup ads. I also sent a bitchin email to the local station that kept doing it on their regular programming. It's enough to make me want to have the government regulate how programs are presented and how advertising can occur! And that alone shows just how pissed off it makes me!!!!!!
What is needed is a robot that will help disabled people get in and out of bed. My aunt has a disabled child who is wheelchair bound and needs help getting in and out of bed. So when they get an all-purpose walking/moving/assisting robot that will do those tasks, then they'll have something with a BIG market!
An Independent Artist actually selling music to be on TV? Boy does that ever piss off Universal!!! After all, they were flacking their in-house slaves music for the same show. They've got to stop that at all costs!!!
FYI, one of my jobs at the voice mail company I work for is to design and write the Product Activation code. My stuff works consistently. Why? Because I don't examine the general computer hardware. I look for a piece of hardware (the voice board) that has a serial number in it that I can retrieve. Using that I can get a hard confirmation that I'm looking at the correct thing that enables my license file. It allows us to determine how many ports of voice mail are running, what sort of integration is enabled for what the VM is connected to, and ASL of other extra-money features we have for sale. All the software is on the system we well and it is activated on a per-feature basis by the license file. What happens when the voice board fails, as they've been known to do? Well, we send them a new voice board and a new license file, they send back the voice board. The fallacy of all this "product activation" stuff is that it is trying to do a generalization from stuff that doesn't have hard serial numbers available. And so it works right up until the time that the hardware starts getting changed, at which time it fails. My stuff also fails if the specific piece of hardware I'm looking at fails. The only solution I see to the hardware lock is to have a standard device that every software vendor uses and a standard way for the end user to get a replacement when theirs craps out. And the stuff has to work for some specific period of time after the hardware device fails to give the user time to get a replacement. While I suspect that anything can be hacked, including my stuff, it would take a while to do it. I don't know that there is any one Final Solution, so I just thought I'd throw in mine.
The sad fact is that for any product you should spend 80% of the money in marketing and %20 in development/testing. I've worked off and on for over a decade for a voice mail company that has a good product, but can't market it worth a damn. If you can't sell it, then it's worthless.
BTW, I created the phrase "The Magic Is In The Marketing!" over a decade ago and it's still the absolute truth.
According to a NYT column there has been a huge drop off in the 18-24 adult male viewers the networks crave. I wonder just how much all this Broadcast Flag crap has to do with it?
Considering the fact that I have a lot of stuff that I record during the day to scan through at night and that if I can't record stuff then I won't ever see it at all and that I've been doing this for years, what is it now that has their drawers kinked? Well, exactly what it is is pay-per-view, total control, forever and ever, which is what they've been trying to get since the VCR was invented. So CBS is going to stop transmitting in HDTV, let them! Matter of fact, let them ALL stop transmitting in HDTV! Then watch as the Congress, after being attacked by a few million of the voters, tells CBS to transmit in HDTV or go out of business! If they can't provide an HDTV signal, then the stations that are affiliated with CBS can't transmit the signal, hence zero revenue for CBS and ASL of pissed-off viewers! They want hard-ball, then they'll get hard-ball!
Is this voice mail called Messenger? By a company called Advanced Voice? If so, I wrote part of that!
Here's a url of something called "ZigBee." It might be what is needed. http://www.zigbee.org/