They could have stayed with the rolling stones - "Can't get no satisfaction", "As tears go by", "All over now", "19th Nervous Breakdown". Or if they wanted to be ahead of the times - "Get off my cloud"
10 mins? Really. The last disk I decommissioned took 24 hours to shred (4 passes, the longest time being for the 2 random writes). OK that was a failing Seagate 2TiB drive but for sensitive data, more passes is standard.
For a mere 8GB acting as cache in the drive, I'd rather spend $30 on RAM and let the OS use it for buffering/caching data (which Linux at least will do pretty intelligently for me even without changing/proc/sys/kernel/whatever).
I love my SSD but that's way more than 8GB. As an extra bonus, the RAM can be allocated as necessary, is faster, and there are no write/erase issues with it.
Now, come up with say 2TB on platters and 128GB flash and we're talking a different proposition.
8GB might be sufficient for those who care about how quickly they boot up (assuming the bulk of the kernel etc ends up in the flash cache and stays there until shutdown) but I only reboot about once a month at most.
I wonder if you also have to pay tax on Prime? It's main function is to cover shipping & handling for all orders, I cannot see why it would not count. But since it's not part of any one order, perhaps it does not..
Yes, you pay sales tax on Prime subscription (I subscribed just after my state's "agreement" with Amazon kicked in and was charged). It is an order in itself.
Except you end up paying sales tax on the prime subscription. OTOH you probably would be expected to pay 'use tax' if sales tax isn't charged so the only difference (assuming your tax return is a true statement) is whether you pay when you order or pay in April.
Replying to undo accidental moderation (sticky trackpad)
Sadly I see way too many corporate 'documents' that subscribe to the putative logic 'if it has numbers, it must be a spreadsheet; if it has pictures, it goes into powerpoint'. Where's the 'Ironic' moderation option
I had a similar experience when I picked up a used B&W G3. After trying the 'specialist' yellow-dog (and finally finding a free download rather than a buy it link), it was problematic.
The network card was incorrectly identified as sun happymeal (hme) when infact it was bigmac chipset (bmac) - a 30 min fix. Followed by editing XFree86.org to get out of 1024x768 to the native 1280x1024 my LCD screen defaults to. Change the firewall settings to enable sshd and load that in. I never got round to getting sound to work.
Found the packages I wanted were pretty old (Octave for example) after a while, thought I'd try Ubuntu.
Network autodetection and setup - check Screen resolution ok - check Sound - 75% ok (xmms needs working; other packages ok) Getting packages ok - both apt-get and the gui version work (minor tweak to enable the universal packages).
For me, the free volunteer-based distro got me up and running faster than the commercial flavor.
For those with US-Navy sized budgets, prepared to pay for support and build-to-order, probably a different story.
(formatting messed up in an attempt to get round the lame lameness filter).
One of the main limitations to doing this in the past is that the rf and baseband sections typically were fabricated using different technology - CMOS wasn't up to amplifying/(de)modulating signals in the GHz range for the 'off the shelf' fab processes. Hence you needed at least two IC's - one CMOS for the baseband & CPU/DSP stuff and a SiGe for the RF amplifiers and demodulator.
With fabs dropping feature size, incorporating low-k dielectric etc, this has become no big deal to fab in CMOS. Further, from this, the converters (ADC and DAC) can run faster - up to the broadband freqs so they can do 'direct conversion' and then demodulate etc using DSP. This pushes the burden over to software but makes it easier to have dual band or tri-band phones without lots of oscillator circuits in there. Other standards such as EDGE/GPRS can be done in software which is expensive to design but it's easier to re-program flash memory than to re-spin an IC. All this means more integration and lower unit cost.
I was on a Lufthansa flight from Munich to Boston last week. Seemed to get about 270kb/s down & a not so good 40kb/s up. Latency was around 650ms to us and about 1.5% of packets were dropped.
I still managed to be productive, send somebody a bug fix 2 hours after take-off, IM, email etc. Definitely worth the $30 (and would have been worth $100 if the person in front didn't think he was at the dentist).
In reality the cost of manufacturing a cellphone is not much more than that.
The main (and glossed over) here is being able to put the RF section (modulation & amp) as part of the main (baseband etc) IC. Historically the RF has been discreet since the carrier is in the 0.9-1.9GHz range, and has been fabricated using SiGe or GaAs
That they've managed to implement this in CMOS (and using the same design rules as the baseband processor) is the achievement. Hence it's one less device to source, package, test, and solder to the PCB. In terms of reducing the cost of the cellphone, it probably saves a couple of bucks.
Nokia being an "earlier adopter" is not a big deal either - they've been using TI for their baseband ICs for a (relatively) long time.
The big deal is that some marketing person has decreed that $25 is a pricepoint that consumers go for. Keeps them (the marketing types) employed, I guess.
Part of the problem with using cable modem + VOIP (current setup Comcast + Voicepulse) is that (generalisation here - maybe other cable providers are better), whilst the download rates are pretty good (3 Mb/s typ), the upload sucks. I'm supposed to get 256kb/s upload but it regularly (read 5:30PM - 9PM) drops to under 100kb/s. Voicepulse normally require 80kb/s for their codec so it doesn't take much other activity to hit the upload limits. Voicepulse let me use a 'lower quality' (and hence lower bitrate) codec which works with comcast most of the time.
Comparison. In my previous house, I had DSL 1500/750 spec - typically I saw ~1300/650 with little variation. There the voip was pretty solid. Now it isn't. It could be that the service is worse, or it could be that it doesn't play ball so welll with comcast.
I'm tempted to blame comcast because this week, I'm seeing 40% packet loss every early evening.
MBNA have a system called "shopsafe" (www.mbnanetaccess.com) which permits generation of one-time or multi-use cc# with preset limit and expiry date.
Every on-line retailer I use gets a different card #. Any weird charges - it can be traced to which retailer it was used for.
Also I can kill a single card individually while keeping my main account active.
For those sites that want a cc# for verification purposes (not porn - free email addresses etc), I generate one with a $1 limit with a 1 month expiry date (and disable it the next day).
SCO would appear to have some of Linux code kicking around - their webserver appears to be running Apache on Linux (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=sco.com )
The site sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.3.2-RC on Linux
Re:Instead, better choices from current companies?
on
Build-to-Order Cars?
·
· Score: 1
So why do big trucks (40+ Ton) all have stick shift?
or is it just that a lot of people buy engines with more power/torque than their driving ability?
Slashdot Mirror
They could have stayed with the rolling stones - "Can't get no satisfaction", "As tears go by", "All over now", "19th Nervous Breakdown". Or if they wanted to be ahead of the times - "Get off my cloud"
10 mins? Really. The last disk I decommissioned took 24 hours to shred (4 passes, the longest time being for the 2 random writes). OK that was a failing Seagate 2TiB drive but for sensitive data, more passes is standard.
Verizon seem to have a different idea as to the cheapest and fastest way to replace their damaged copper lines and poles - go wireless:
see (for example) http://www.app.com/article/20130503/NJBIZ/305020135/Verizon-Wireless-Mantoloking and http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Tells-More-Sandy-Victims-Theyll-Never-See-DSL-Repaired-124166
For a mere 8GB acting as cache in the drive, I'd rather spend $30 on RAM and let the OS use it for buffering/caching data (which Linux at least will do pretty intelligently for me even without changing /proc/sys/kernel/whatever).
I love my SSD but that's way more than 8GB. As an extra bonus, the RAM can be allocated as necessary, is faster, and there are no write/erase issues with it.
Now, come up with say 2TB on platters and 128GB flash and we're talking a different proposition.
8GB might be sufficient for those who care about how quickly they boot up (assuming the bulk of the kernel etc ends up in the flash cache and stays there until shutdown) but I only reboot about once a month at most.
Oops. Replying to undo accidental down mod
I wonder if you also have to pay tax on Prime? It's main function is to cover shipping & handling for all orders, I cannot see why it would not count. But since it's not part of any one order, perhaps it does not..
Yes, you pay sales tax on Prime subscription (I subscribed just after my state's "agreement" with Amazon kicked in and was charged). It is an order in itself.
Problem solved.
Except you end up paying sales tax on the prime subscription. OTOH you probably would be expected to pay 'use tax' if sales tax isn't charged so the only difference (assuming your tax return is a true statement) is whether you pay when you order or pay in April.
Either way, the state gets its cut.
Replying to undo accidental moderation (sticky trackpad)
Sadly I see way too many corporate 'documents' that subscribe to the putative logic 'if it has numbers, it must be a spreadsheet; if it has pictures, it goes into powerpoint'. Where's the 'Ironic' moderation option
There already is a website dedicated to tracking spouses. http://www.sat-gps-locate.com/english/index.html
I had a similar experience when I picked up a used B&W G3. After trying the 'specialist' yellow-dog (and finally finding a free download rather than a buy it link), it was problematic.
The network card was incorrectly identified as sun happymeal (hme) when infact it was bigmac chipset (bmac) - a 30 min fix. Followed by editing XFree86.org to get out of 1024x768 to the native 1280x1024 my LCD screen defaults to. Change the firewall settings to enable sshd and load that in. I never got round to getting sound to work.
Found the packages I wanted were pretty old (Octave for example) after a while, thought I'd try Ubuntu.
Network autodetection and setup - check
Screen resolution ok - check
Sound - 75% ok (xmms needs working; other packages ok)
Getting packages ok - both apt-get and the gui version work (minor tweak to enable the universal packages).
For me, the free volunteer-based distro got me up and running faster than the commercial flavor.
For those with US-Navy sized budgets, prepared to pay for support and build-to-order, probably a different story.
(formatting messed up in an attempt to get round the lame lameness filter).
With fabs dropping feature size, incorporating low-k dielectric etc, this has become no big deal to fab in CMOS. Further, from this, the converters (ADC and DAC) can run faster - up to the broadband freqs so they can do 'direct conversion' and then demodulate etc using DSP. This pushes the burden over to software but makes it easier to have dual band or tri-band phones without lots of oscillator circuits in there. Other standards such as EDGE/GPRS can be done in software which is expensive to design but it's easier to re-program flash memory than to re-spin an IC. All this means more integration and lower unit cost.
I was on a Lufthansa flight from Munich to Boston last week. Seemed to get about 270kb/s down & a not so good 40kb/s up. Latency was around 650ms to us and about 1.5% of packets were dropped.
I still managed to be productive, send somebody a bug fix 2 hours after take-off, IM, email etc. Definitely worth the $30 (and would have been worth $100 if the person in front didn't think he was at the dentist).
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh &story=Monkey_Lives.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date &detail=medium&search=monkey
In reality the cost of manufacturing a cellphone is not much more than that.
The main (and glossed over) here is being able to put the RF section (modulation & amp) as part of the main (baseband etc) IC. Historically the RF has been discreet since the carrier is in the 0.9-1.9GHz range, and has been fabricated using SiGe or GaAs
That they've managed to implement this in CMOS (and using the same design rules as the baseband processor) is the achievement. Hence it's one less device to source, package, test, and solder to the PCB. In terms of reducing the cost of the cellphone, it probably saves a couple of bucks.
Nokia being an "earlier adopter" is not a big deal either - they've been using TI for their baseband ICs for a (relatively) long time.
The big deal is that some marketing person has decreed that $25 is a pricepoint that consumers go for. Keeps them (the marketing types) employed, I guess.
Part of the problem with using cable modem + VOIP (current setup Comcast + Voicepulse) is that (generalisation here - maybe other cable providers are better), whilst the download rates are pretty good (3 Mb/s typ), the upload sucks. I'm supposed to get 256kb/s upload but it regularly (read 5:30PM - 9PM) drops to under 100kb/s. Voicepulse normally require 80kb/s for their codec so it doesn't take much other activity to hit the upload limits.
Voicepulse let me use a 'lower quality' (and hence lower bitrate) codec which works with comcast most of the time.
Comparison. In my previous house, I had DSL 1500/750 spec - typically I saw ~1300/650 with little variation. There the voip was pretty solid. Now it isn't. It could be that the service is worse, or it could be that it doesn't play ball so welll with comcast.
I'm tempted to blame comcast because this week, I'm seeing 40% packet loss every early evening.
For those who need advise on using the e-voting terminals, see mms:streamingmediacysonlcysonlVotingMachinewmv
http://www.speakeasy.net/residential/onelink/
That's exactly what I do.
MBNA have a system called "shopsafe" (www.mbnanetaccess.com) which permits generation of one-time or multi-use cc# with preset limit and expiry date.
Every on-line retailer I use gets a different card #. Any weird charges - it can be traced to which retailer it was used for.
Also I can kill a single card individually while keeping my main account active.
For those sites that want a cc# for verification purposes (not porn - free email addresses etc), I generate one with a $1 limit with a 1 month expiry date (and disable it the next day).
I bought mine from eta engineering (see http://www.etaengineering.com/killawatt.html) for $35.
SCO would appear to have some of Linux code kicking around - their webserver appears to be running Apache on Linux (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=sco.com )
The site sco.com is running Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 PHP/4.3.2-RC on Linux
So why do big trucks (40+ Ton) all have stick shift?
or is it just that a lot of people buy engines with more power/torque than their driving ability?
I used Deltagraph back in 99 and it sucked. The good thing was I was able to return the media and get a refund.
Main issues were that it had a few bugs causing crashes and x,y,z plots always came out squiffy.
Had they fixed those bugs I would have paid for it willingly.
I wanted to use it as an alternative to uniras through an xterm. Uniras did the job but was slow, crap gui, and X11 only (and pricey I suspect).
There is a 30-day demo version available but only for windblows.