Microsoft going back to scratch time and again doesn't necessarily mean anything is getting better.
That could be cultural. An aphorism attributed to Bill Gates as a younger exec:
"If we don't obsolete our own products, somebody else will".
Whether or not that's truth or UM I don't know (no citation handy) the meme is definitely a culture-bender, indicative of a pervasive go-ahead-and-change-it attitude.
I suspect that the reason the Registry (which has it's roots in RSTS-E virtual tables and VMS Sysgen) is still with us is the same reason we use the occasional DOS command window -- it works, it's familiar, and there's no inclination to revisit such an unsexy subject when the focus is elsewhere.
...Beautiful place, Croatia, and some smart people from the area. Think Nikola Tesla (a real border-spanner) and all those lovely cool rivers for Penguins to swim in.
Not really a "lot" in terms of say, petabytes of imaging data required for your backyard Google Earth clone, but a "lot" in terms of maybe 30GB per store per day (our average). Lots of little transactions happen every time the scanner-scale goes "beep", and there are many more behind the scenes.
The issue is not capacity or bandwidth, but convenience, cost and flexibility. Retail lanes have odd requirements, one of the major ones being rather severe constraints on cabling. Runs are long, you can't dig up the floor and you often can't use the ceiling either. Point-to-point wiring is the rule (security thing -- don't ask) running the famous "NoLanHereMeBucko" protocol, and running another cable from store back to store front can be problematic.
I've had designs quashed because they required one single more power outlet, because the cost multipliers can get scary -- (cost of cable) x (number of lanes) x (a few thousand stores) x (cost of getting the Electrician's out there)... if we can get a small wireless router for a couple of hundred bucks with enough local storage (who cares if 140GB goes unused?) then use slack time during the evenings to upload the price changes, local wiring at the C cabinet will serve just fine. And small is important because if you remove the space used by the store clerk's handbag they will (a) shove it in there anyway making room, or (b) go on strike because of reduced working conditions (this is Australia after all).
A reminder to all, that a threat shouted in jest is mob food nonetheless.
Yes, I appreciate good satire, sarcasm and finely wrought irony (like regular irony but a little twisted) -- but please watch your language on my favorite forum, too many hate-worshippers out there.
Actually, you can make a water-powered car in your own garage. You'll need a lot of water, though, and you'll constantly need to move the water from the bottom to the top of the engine.
Quite so. Or use it as the propellant in an exothermic engine. Stanley Steamer anyone?
Come to think of it, I think the meme might be at least that old (I remember a remark in a 1950's car magazine that referred to it as an "old con job"). I wonder if the original "Just put water in the fuel tank" scams had their origin in someone misinterpreting -- possibly via second or third-hand sources -- the technology of the steam driven cars of yesteryear? It would explain both the "water as fuel" and possibly the "conspiracy of the oil companies" idea, because exothermic engines do not strictly require the use of fossil fuels.
Migosh, I've just invented Paleoconspiratology! Or just an example of adaptive mimetics, I'm not sure.
'Nuff said? Wiki "Dean Drive". Besides the ref to SF origins of "impulse drive" you get a quick glimpse at original cover art that inspired "Star Blazers" and "Space Ship Yamamoto". Cool, eh?
It still doesn't work, but it's fun. Although the idea of a submarine for space ship is fairly valid if you ignore the horrible weight penalty. Maybe a few hundred Tesla spinning above it now... heh what the heck, let's give the SF writers something renewed to write about.
Just saw this last week. In retail grocery we pump a lot of data back and forth between head office, store back office, and the lanes. Anything -- and I mean anything that keeps us from having to lay another cable or put another piece of bulky hardware under the sales counter is a bonus. I could see these things used in the C racks at the front to stage price changes, etc. and being retail the fact that they are utterly dirt cheap will have a broad appeal.
Western Dynex drives -- 22mb or thereabouts, geez hard to remember, was the 70's -- time of the old Jumbogas (Jumbo GA's. Are you reading this Gregory? Jackson? LoL) On a disk-to-disk sector copy We used to pull the 6RU rack mount disk drives out on their rails to about 3/4 extension, then give them a pronounced twist to the right (this took MUSCLE) whenever the system stalled during a BMAG operation. Whack about 20 "retrys" on the old Decwriter and torque the drive until it read the sectors. Did the same thing to get it past the verify too. Always worked, and we wrote it into the support procedures.
What do you write to a 4 digit hex display when waiting for the fool thing to compile? FEED FACE DEAD FOOD DEDO DODO CACA and repeat.
Hah! Jackson, Gregory, I'm in Australia now and you can't find me. ROFL.
Once in the bad old Pathworks days, I had a user who used to slam the table with his fist because the screen went black, and that's how he got it up again.
Nobody wanted to tell him that moving the mouse by hand would have the same effect...
It would improve fighting skills if the fighting skills in real life involved managing a complex hand controller to move video images around. What gets trained is muscle memory. Soldiers who interact directly with other soldiers need the fitness and training that soldiers get, not game players.
On the other hand, target acquisition and management would be improved.
On the gripping hand, an uber gamester would be the ideal weapons management person in an attack aircraft; the nerd behind the pilot.
What about staging the images overnight and keeping the backup image on the user's local C drive? If the network's up, use it to update the local cache overnight, as needed. If the network's down, use the cached image. You don't have to refresh the image daily, just when you want to make a change. The beauty is in ease of rollback when someone stuffs up a change on the client.
Nope. Best reason for virtualisation is the ability to roll back an environment, instantly. My group looks after a network of about 2000 servers. We can't make them idiot-proof, but having a vm image to fall back on makes them at least idiot-tolerant. Stuff the graphics, we need our stores to stay open.
I'm just wondering why more applications aren't packaged pre-installed on data keys. Consultant who doesn't like Outlook or Thunderbird? Plug your Eudora into the USB port on the front of the machine and run it from there. No reason why software needs permanent residence to run.
Yes, I know, awkward, systems aren't written that way. But we can change the rules, can't we?
I don't mind when such lists come out -- at the very least it gives you a bit of insight into one columnist's background and interests. But I wish they'd get their facts straight first.
Not well researched, not authoritative, vendor-centric...IBM 360 as a "great software"? It was a hardware range. First general-purpose computer system? Even it's own predecessor was a GP computer system, and lets not talk about the CDC 6000's & CHRONOS O/S that preceeded them, shall we?
Not entirely, no. In Australia if someone is seen disabling or bypassing safety equipment for any reason, he'll see the error of his ways immediately via a sound clip on the ear from the first workmate who walks by. A bruised knuckle might result, and a form filed for that -- but you learn right quick. Lose a hand, your boss pays a big fine out of his own pocket and/or goes to jail, and your work mates look bad for not keeping an eye out. Not to mention the Union coming down on you like a tonne of bricks. It Ain't Done.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll see your black widows and raise you a redback
Snakes and crocodiles aren't really that much of a problem in Australia; the spiders pretty much keep them in line.
70% hype, 1% function, 29% dark matter. Why is this different? It's shrink-wrap around a buzzword around a marketing gap.
What do you want to bet there's a patent the company held that they were after?
What are the sync points? Curious from a multimedia production pov.
From here, they fly North for the winter. And it's because they have magnets in their heads (this was proven before P.E.T.A found out).
That could be cultural. An aphorism attributed to Bill Gates as a younger exec:
"If we don't obsolete our own products, somebody else will".
Whether or not that's truth or UM I don't know (no citation handy) the meme is definitely a culture-bender, indicative of a pervasive go-ahead-and-change-it attitude.
I suspect that the reason the Registry (which has it's roots in RSTS-E virtual tables and VMS Sysgen) is still with us is the same reason we use the occasional DOS command window -- it works, it's familiar, and there's no inclination to revisit such an unsexy subject when the focus is elsewhere.
...Beautiful place, Croatia, and some smart people from the area. Think Nikola Tesla (a real border-spanner) and all those lovely cool rivers for Penguins to swim in.
The issue is not capacity or bandwidth, but convenience, cost and flexibility. Retail lanes have odd requirements, one of the major ones being rather severe constraints on cabling. Runs are long, you can't dig up the floor and you often can't use the ceiling either. Point-to-point wiring is the rule (security thing -- don't ask) running the famous "NoLanHereMeBucko" protocol, and running another cable from store back to store front can be problematic.
I've had designs quashed because they required one single more power outlet, because the cost multipliers can get scary -- (cost of cable) x (number of lanes) x (a few thousand stores) x (cost of getting the Electrician's out there)... if we can get a small wireless router for a couple of hundred bucks with enough local storage (who cares if 140GB goes unused?) then use slack time during the evenings to upload the price changes, local wiring at the C cabinet will serve just fine. And small is important because if you remove the space used by the store clerk's handbag they will (a) shove it in there anyway making room, or (b) go on strike because of reduced working conditions (this is Australia after all).
(Sigh)
A reminder to all, that a threat shouted in jest is mob food nonetheless.
Yes, I appreciate good satire, sarcasm and finely wrought irony (like regular irony but a little twisted) -- but please watch your language on my favorite forum, too many hate-worshippers out there.
All our cows are outstanding in their field
Strunk & White, "Elements of Style".
Quite so. Or use it as the propellant in an exothermic engine. Stanley Steamer anyone?
Come to think of it, I think the meme might be at least that old (I remember a remark in a 1950's car magazine that referred to it as an "old con job"). I wonder if the original "Just put water in the fuel tank" scams had their origin in someone misinterpreting -- possibly via second or third-hand sources -- the technology of the steam driven cars of yesteryear? It would explain both the "water as fuel" and possibly the "conspiracy of the oil companies" idea, because exothermic engines do not strictly require the use of fossil fuels.
Migosh, I've just invented Paleoconspiratology! Or just an example of adaptive mimetics, I'm not sure.
It still doesn't work, but it's fun. Although the idea of a submarine for space ship is fairly valid if you ignore the horrible weight penalty. Maybe a few hundred Tesla spinning above it now... heh what the heck, let's give the SF writers something renewed to write about.
More to the point, which world?
This one's a winner, I think.
What do you write to a 4 digit hex display when waiting for the fool thing to compile? FEED FACE DEAD FOOD DEDO DODO CACA and repeat.
Hah! Jackson, Gregory, I'm in Australia now and you can't find me. ROFL.
Nobody wanted to tell him that moving the mouse by hand would have the same effect...
On the other hand, target acquisition and management would be improved.
On the gripping hand, an uber gamester would be the ideal weapons management person in an attack aircraft; the nerd behind the pilot.
What about staging the images overnight and keeping the backup image on the user's local C drive? If the network's up, use it to update the local cache overnight, as needed. If the network's down, use the cached image. You don't have to refresh the image daily, just when you want to make a change. The beauty is in ease of rollback when someone stuffs up a change on the client.
Nope. Best reason for virtualisation is the ability to roll back an environment, instantly. My group looks after a network of about 2000 servers. We can't make them idiot-proof, but having a vm image to fall back on makes them at least idiot-tolerant. Stuff the graphics, we need our stores to stay open.
Yes, I know, awkward, systems aren't written that way. But we can change the rules, can't we?
Not well researched, not authoritative, vendor-centric...IBM 360 as a "great software"? It was a hardware range. First general-purpose computer system? Even it's own predecessor was a GP computer system, and lets not talk about the CDC 6000's & CHRONOS O/S that preceeded them, shall we?
Meh.
Not entirely, no. In Australia if someone is seen disabling or bypassing safety equipment for any reason, he'll see the error of his ways immediately via a sound clip on the ear from the first workmate who walks by. A bruised knuckle might result, and a form filed for that -- but you learn right quick. Lose a hand, your boss pays a big fine out of his own pocket and/or goes to jail, and your work mates look bad for not keeping an eye out. Not to mention the Union coming down on you like a tonne of bricks. It Ain't Done.
Guys, this is the Internet. "Inter" as in "..national". Where was the factory? Bolivia? Guatemala? Nepal? California?
Liquid nitrogen and a bandsaw.