It's damn near impossible to get the liquid li-ion batteries into something the size of an iPod. Most of the internal volume is occupied by the hard drive, leaving precious little for the battery. An advantage of li-poly batteries is that they can be made flat instead of round, which allows them to substantially reduce the external dimensions of iPods.
A very long time indeed. A few years ago there were a lot of websites that only supported IE. You don't see that much anymore.
And that's mostly because people don't want to fire up a browser they already have for just one site. A hardware upgrade is a lot to ask compared to that. It'll take a killer app, and even then if there's an alternative implementation it has the potential to mess everything up.
Personally, I'd be willing to allow a Windows machine behind my firewall, even if I need to add another NIC to my firewall and make a private network for it.
from linux-0.01/kernel/sched.c:
* 'schedule()' is the scheduler function. This is GOOD CODE! There
* probably won't be any reason to change this, as it should work well
* in all circumstances (ie gives IO-bound processes good response etc).
* The one thing you might take a look at is the signal-handler code here.
It's not a big deal to admit one has written shitty code. It's a lot easier than defending shitty code. The main point here is that he's saying that he would have stolen something better if he was in a thieving mood.
Not to be the devils advocate here. but if they want to make a better product so they can compete with the competition, I've got no problem with that. I've also got no problem at all using a proprietary system if it meets my needs on my budget.
They've got a long way to go if they want to build a system that's enough better than what I have to justify the cost, but that's not my problem.
I like to be able to reinstall the OS without having to unplug the network until I've had a chance to enable the firewall. Or you know, not have to reinstall it at all. That would be cool.
I don't care if it's proprietary, but I'm not going to blow $300 on the OS for a half recycled $500 computer, or worse yet a scrap computer.
My firewall is in the crawlspace. I like it in the crawlspace. I shouldn't have to go down there and touch it to keep it working.
You must have had some pretty bad experiences with Apple product.
I have. As an owner of an iBook, I'm not exactly alone there. 5 of my 7 friends with iBooks have had warantee repairs, 2 of them multiple repairs. I've had it much worse: bad memory, two bad power adapters, and three bad logic boards. I've owned 4 desktops and 2 laptops since I got my first one in 1995, and I've needed a total of 4 warantee repairs on them combined.
The older systems are better. I haven't heard too much about the iPods, or the PowerBooks or newer desktop systems, but I'm not very interested in finding out more.
Apple just isn't good enough for me. I need more than they have to offer.
The complaints aren't important to Apple. All the other electronics vendors are have been cutting back, but Apple saw a chance to grab a market that didn't know it was recovering yet. QC isn't at the top of their list. They only cave when someone makes it impossible not to PR-wise.
I've been permanently de-switched due to the poor quality of Apples products, and their cavalier attitude towards making their products last. I don't want to buy a new computer every 18 months, or a new OS every year. The reality distortion field just isn't so pretty fromt the inside.
Better to stick with Windows or Linux or FreeBSD on commodity hardware that vendors can compete over, and that you can actually repair yourself. It's more of a pain up front, but you can maintain it yourself indeffinitely.
"Commercially viable fusion reactors, if they ever exist, will almost certainly produce radioactive byproducts. It will be a great improvement on fission power, as there will be less waste in total with a shorter half-life, but radioactive waste is radioactive waste. Like fission waste, fusion waste will be expensive to deal with and be around for many generations."
You're technically correct, but misleading. 50 years after being shut down, ITER will be less radioactive than a coal power plant, due to the thorium in coal. The volume of the waste is also comparatively tiny, it's basically just the reactor itself rather than all the fuel that's ever passed through the reactor.
Shaw (in Calgary) doesn't care. I've got their basic business package, 50 gigs/month up and down combined.
One of their techs told me that their modems can adapt to use more bandwidth for up when needed. I have no way to verify that. In my experience, uploads won't go faster than 60 k/s or so, while downloads can saturate the 10 megabit half-duplex line. Even if the modems can adapt, they probably devote more bandwidth to downloads for obvious reasons.
OT, their business support is absolutely first rate. Over the years I've dealt with them several times. I always offer (where appropriate) to hook up a computer with a supported OS directly to the modem, but they've never had me do it... I dunno what their Linux policy is, but when they hear OpenBSD they just go "No, that's fine.".
uhg. Oops. Should have been less ambiguous. I meant what are the differences to/etc between platforms (namely i386 and SPARC)? I don't use NetBSD, but I used to (1.6.1, stopped using it because that box died) and I currently use OpenBSD. I'm considering purchasing some SPARC hardware* for another OpenBSD system.
I'm assuming OpenBSD will have some more weird differences because of all the security.
I agree about the pkgsrc/ports thing. I used it on NetBSD and I use it now on OpenBSD. I also use Gentoo and it beats the crap out of Portage.
* - Before anyone says anything, yes I know I'll get more bang for my buck on x86, AMD64, POWER, PowerPC, and quite possibly Itanium.
"Oh, and once you get used to optical mice, going back to cleaning a ball is just annoying."
They don't have much of a mouse budget at work or at uni, so I've started using the mouse I originally got for my laptop everywhere else.
It's worth the weird looks. I've found that when tensions are running high in group situations, a shitty mouse can be the catalyst for someone losing it. "Would you like to use this instead?" has been the end of several conflicts for me in the last few months. The relief of a responsive, accurate mouse with a wheel actually calmed things down. Of course there have been many more conflicts that couldn't be diffused with anything so simple, but it was worth the investment, which is all you can really ask.
"What's wrong with a scroll wheel? Several things. First, most scroll mice aren't wide enough for three fingers to rest naturally. A two button scroll mouse that isn't any wider than a two button non-scroll mouse is too narrow."
I've got big hands and that little thing is fine... I shudder to think how much they spent on ergonomics consultants, because this thing is fantastic.
There's some SunOS 5.8 machines at work that it doesn't work on, but for the most part I prefer it to whatever mouse is already on a system that I'm using.
eh-- they say 5.3 will be the first stable release on the 5.x line. I would tend to take their word for it. Given how utterly rock solid previous FreeBSD-stable releases have proven, their opinions count for a lot.
Unfortunately my spare box at the moment is garbage, otherwise I'd jump at this. I haven't been able to get anything other than Windows working on it.
"Welll....not exactly. If the craft were to hit the surface of any Europa (wildly unlikely) and if Europa actually has liquid water oceans with ice-covered surfaces (not proven), then the reactor would melt through the ice, boil a large volume of water, and then sink to the bottom of the ocean, which would contaminate the deep structures of the moon more than the Jovian wind does."
errrmmm...
Would the impact not distribute the reactor fuel enough to make the results sub-critical? If the material were sufficiently active it might be able to melt, or more likely sublime a small distance into the ice. I think the bigger problem with that is that it might give Earth life a toehold.
Either way, the fact that it's a reactor instead of really active plutonium doesn't really affect the dangers very much.
"Require that anything that can process a digital media signal (hardware or software) be enclosed in a black box in which the only access to the signal is with a valid decryption key, and the only output is analog. Then you make "reverse engineering" of any such device illegal.
This, of course, makes Linux illegal. Unless all access to hard drives and similar hardware is enclosed in a closed-source, black-box interface layer. The effective end of open source."
I wouldn't worry about that juuust yet. I'm sure the RIAA would love to sacrifice general purpose computing at the alter of the almighty dollar, but any such measures wouldn't work, and wouldn't last for long.
First, it would take trillions of dollars to convert everyone to the new hardware, and it would take a long bloody time and everyone with a CD collection would be screaming bloody murder.
Second, it would put the US and American companies at a huge disadvantage. Innovation in the computer industry, proprietary or not, depends on kids fucking with computers in the basement. I'm sure big companies would support such restrictions, because it would be easier for them to get general purpose computer licenses, and they'd be able to dominate in the domestic market without worrying about upstarts, but they wouldn't be able to compete with the rest of the world because the general level of competence would be so low.
Third, it's just too fucking easy to smuggle stuff in, break protection, or build it oneself. 50 cent microcontrollers with like 5k gates are never going to get DRM, period. Hell, you'd have to put DRM in transistors because that's the only way you're going to make conversion between analog and digital too hard for anyone to bother. That would put the US and American companies at basically an impossible disadvantage, because the components would cost a fortune and they'd cost more to work with because there'd be more stuff to break.
The problem is that the cycle with Linux is so long... That's important because you can make major structural changes between releases, but it also means stuff takes way too long to get into the stable version in the normal course of events.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously.
She doesn't just have groupies. She has minions.
The other poster is correct.
It's damn near impossible to get the liquid li-ion batteries into something the size of an iPod. Most of the internal volume is occupied by the hard drive, leaving precious little for the battery. An advantage of li-poly batteries is that they can be made flat instead of round, which allows them to substantially reduce the external dimensions of iPods.
Uhg. OpenBSD as a desktop system? Not a good idea.
A very long time indeed. A few years ago there were a lot of websites that only supported IE. You don't see that much anymore.
And that's mostly because people don't want to fire up a browser they already have for just one site. A hardware upgrade is a lot to ask compared to that. It'll take a killer app, and even then if there's an alternative implementation it has the potential to mess everything up.
Personally, I'd be willing to allow a Windows machine behind my firewall, even if I need to add another NIC to my firewall and make a private network for it.
Linux is a station wagon with monster truck tires and a rocket engine.
hehehe this is fun
from linux-0.01/kernel/sched.c:
* 'schedule()' is the scheduler function. This is GOOD CODE! There
* probably won't be any reason to change this, as it should work well
* in all circumstances (ie gives IO-bound processes good response etc).
* The one thing you might take a look at is the signal-handler code here.
It's not a big deal to admit one has written shitty code. It's a lot easier than defending shitty code. The main point here is that he's saying that he would have stolen something better if he was in a thieving mood.
Not to be the devils advocate here. but if they want to make a better product so they can compete with the competition, I've got no problem with that. I've also got no problem at all using a proprietary system if it meets my needs on my budget.
They've got a long way to go if they want to build a system that's enough better than what I have to justify the cost, but that's not my problem.
I like to be able to reinstall the OS without having to unplug the network until I've had a chance to enable the firewall. Or you know, not have to reinstall it at all. That would be cool.
I don't care if it's proprietary, but I'm not going to blow $300 on the OS for a half recycled $500 computer, or worse yet a scrap computer.
My firewall is in the crawlspace. I like it in the crawlspace. I shouldn't have to go down there and touch it to keep it working.
We're not the main competition.
I have. As an owner of an iBook, I'm not exactly alone there. 5 of my 7 friends with iBooks have had warantee repairs, 2 of them multiple repairs. I've had it much worse: bad memory, two bad power adapters, and three bad logic boards. I've owned 4 desktops and 2 laptops since I got my first one in 1995, and I've needed a total of 4 warantee repairs on them combined.
The older systems are better. I haven't heard too much about the iPods, or the PowerBooks or newer desktop systems, but I'm not very interested in finding out more.
Apple just isn't good enough for me. I need more than they have to offer.
The complaints aren't important to Apple. All the other electronics vendors are have been cutting back, but Apple saw a chance to grab a market that didn't know it was recovering yet. QC isn't at the top of their list. They only cave when someone makes it impossible not to PR-wise.
I've been permanently de-switched due to the poor quality of Apples products, and their cavalier attitude towards making their products last. I don't want to buy a new computer every 18 months, or a new OS every year. The reality distortion field just isn't so pretty fromt the inside.
Better to stick with Windows or Linux or FreeBSD on commodity hardware that vendors can compete over, and that you can actually repair yourself. It's more of a pain up front, but you can maintain it yourself indeffinitely.
Shaw (in Calgary) doesn't care. I've got their basic business package, 50 gigs/month up and down combined.
One of their techs told me that their modems can adapt to use more bandwidth for up when needed. I have no way to verify that. In my experience, uploads won't go faster than 60 k/s or so, while downloads can saturate the 10 megabit half-duplex line. Even if the modems can adapt, they probably devote more bandwidth to downloads for obvious reasons.
OT, their business support is absolutely first rate. Over the years I've dealt with them several times. I always offer (where appropriate) to hook up a computer with a supported OS directly to the modem, but they've never had me do it... I dunno what their Linux policy is, but when they hear OpenBSD they just go "No, that's fine.".
uhg. Oops. Should have been less ambiguous. I meant what are the differences to /etc between platforms (namely i386 and SPARC)? I don't use NetBSD, but I used to (1.6.1, stopped using it because that box died) and I currently use OpenBSD. I'm considering purchasing some SPARC hardware* for another OpenBSD system.
I'm assuming OpenBSD will have some more weird differences because of all the security.
I agree about the pkgsrc/ports thing. I used it on NetBSD and I use it now on OpenBSD. I also use Gentoo and it beats the crap out of Portage.
* - Before anyone says anything, yes I know I'll get more bang for my buck on x86, AMD64, POWER, PowerPC, and quite possibly Itanium.
Don't use NetBSD myself, but I'm curious. What are the differences?
"Oh, and once you get used to optical mice, going back to cleaning a ball is just annoying."
They don't have much of a mouse budget at work or at uni, so I've started using the mouse I originally got for my laptop everywhere else.
It's worth the weird looks. I've found that when tensions are running high in group situations, a shitty mouse can be the catalyst for someone losing it. "Would you like to use this instead?" has been the end of several conflicts for me in the last few months. The relief of a responsive, accurate mouse with a wheel actually calmed things down. Of course there have been many more conflicts that couldn't be diffused with anything so simple, but it was worth the investment, which is all you can really ask.
"What's wrong with a scroll wheel? Several things. First, most scroll mice aren't wide enough for three fingers to rest naturally. A two button scroll mouse that isn't any wider than a two button non-scroll mouse is too narrow."
My mouse.
I've got big hands and that little thing is fine... I shudder to think how much they spent on ergonomics consultants, because this thing is fantastic.
There's some SunOS 5.8 machines at work that it doesn't work on, but for the most part I prefer it to whatever mouse is already on a system that I'm using.
lol apparently not
My limited experience has been with 4.x.
eh-- they say 5.3 will be the first stable release on the 5.x line. I would tend to take their word for it. Given how utterly rock solid previous FreeBSD-stable releases have proven, their opinions count for a lot.
Unfortunately my spare box at the moment is garbage, otherwise I'd jump at this. I haven't been able to get anything other than Windows working on it.
"Welll....not exactly. If the craft were to hit the surface of any Europa (wildly unlikely) and if Europa actually has liquid water oceans with ice-covered surfaces (not proven), then the reactor would melt through the ice, boil a large volume of water, and then sink to the bottom of the ocean, which would contaminate the deep structures of the moon more than the Jovian wind does."
errrmmm...
Would the impact not distribute the reactor fuel enough to make the results sub-critical? If the material were sufficiently active it might be able to melt, or more likely sublime a small distance into the ice. I think the bigger problem with that is that it might give Earth life a toehold.
Either way, the fact that it's a reactor instead of really active plutonium doesn't really affect the dangers very much.
That would be a major pita if they did it by default...
"Require that anything that can process a digital media signal (hardware or software) be enclosed in a black box in which the only access to the signal is with a valid decryption key, and the only output is analog. Then you make "reverse engineering" of any such device illegal.
This, of course, makes Linux illegal. Unless all access to hard drives and similar hardware is enclosed in a closed-source, black-box interface layer. The effective end of open source."
I wouldn't worry about that juuust yet. I'm sure the RIAA would love to sacrifice general purpose computing at the alter of the almighty dollar, but any such measures wouldn't work, and wouldn't last for long.
First, it would take trillions of dollars to convert everyone to the new hardware, and it would take a long bloody time and everyone with a CD collection would be screaming bloody murder.
Second, it would put the US and American companies at a huge disadvantage. Innovation in the computer industry, proprietary or not, depends on kids fucking with computers in the basement. I'm sure big companies would support such restrictions, because it would be easier for them to get general purpose computer licenses, and they'd be able to dominate in the domestic market without worrying about upstarts, but they wouldn't be able to compete with the rest of the world because the general level of competence would be so low.
Third, it's just too fucking easy to smuggle stuff in, break protection, or build it oneself. 50 cent microcontrollers with like 5k gates are never going to get DRM, period. Hell, you'd have to put DRM in transistors because that's the only way you're going to make conversion between analog and digital too hard for anyone to bother. That would put the US and American companies at basically an impossible disadvantage, because the components would cost a fortune and they'd cost more to work with because there'd be more stuff to break.
The problem is that the cycle with Linux is so long... That's important because you can make major structural changes between releases, but it also means stuff takes way too long to get into the stable version in the normal course of events.