Yeah, but it was the signature on the receipt that was of value. The signature on the card didn't do any good. The receipt is a per-transaction contract of sorts - offer, acceptance and consideration in one contained element. Since the buyer's contribution of consideration is a "promise to pay at a later date," the signature is a voluntary demonstration of the promise. Basically, this keeps the contract from being forced by the offeror. [Note- "forced" has a legal meaning in this context.]
By comparison, the signature on the card merely indicates acceptance of the terms of the card agreement. It has nothing to do with individual transactions - the credit card company can't legally obligate you to accept *any* charges to your account. Their business model is rooted in contract law, and they can't "pre-obligate" you in any manner... no matter how much they'd like to.
802.11whatever is an access point solution. Folks who expect it to be a backhaul or backbone solution are... not well versed in network architectures. I find it amusing that folks think an ad-hoc mesh of 802.11 nodes will *ever* have performance comparable to wired/fibered connections. Just the "shared medium" aspect should be enough to indicate performance will degrade as more connections are added. Shoveling more nodes into the mesh won't magically improve performance.
Eh, it doesn't surprise me. Evidence of this logical disassociation is everywhere - digital cameras, cars, appliances, computers, tools... Listen carefully and you'll hear the cries of the oppressed - "I don't want to know how it works, I just want to [do blah]."
Cable TV is not a utility. It's entertainment. Power, potable water, and sanitary sewer are necessary utilities for an urban and suburban environment. People can function just fine without Cable TV.
And yes, the R2D2 cable TV repeaters deprive me of access to a portion of my front yard, just like the big hulky U-Verse pedestals do. If I choose to put an addition on my house that requires the relocation of my driveway (which, btw, I did seven years ago,) I'm screwed if I can't get the cable company to move the frickin box out of my way. If they elect to tell me to piss off, I don't have much recourse other than to work around the obstruction. In the urban areas, someone wanting to put an extra off-street parking space (which would be a huge benefit in some places,) would be completely screwed if the U-Verse pedestal blocked the only available street access.
The companies derive benefit by exploiting the space to it's maximum potential. The property owner receives zero or negative benefit. Tragedy of the Commons, plain and simple. I don't like having any old company come crap up my property, in a situation where I'm ultimately accountable for said property. The companies are cost-shifting maintenance expense onto me. If the gas company decided to park an accumulator and pumping station in the middle of your front yard, you'd be okay with that? It is, after all, an easement they have rights to.
You people need to see things from the utility's point of view.
You people? Just because I'm unwilling to tolerate an unwelcome liability in my front yard doesn't automatically make me the bad guy... or does it?
I like the "work with them" part, because they're more than willing to work with me, right? See the Tragedy of the Commons link, above. Lemme expand on the details of the problem. First, the easement doesn't relieve me of property ownership. I'm still obligated to maintain the property in the easement, and I'm still taxed on it because I'm the owner. That's a nifty trick the local utilities got enacted - they don't want to pay property tax on the right-of-way, but they want unfettered access. Nice huh? So anyway, I'm not supposed to dig with power tools within 3 feet of the buried utilities, and I'm not supposed to obstruct the meters. I don't really have any objection to the gas or water access, as I use those utilities. However, my tolerance ends there. I do not have a cable subscription (DirecTV, thankyouverymuch.) Consequently, I have no tolerance of Comcast putting an R2D2 in my front yard. Cable TV is not a necessary municipal utility - gas, electric, water, sewer, and to a lesser extent telephone. Locally, the cable TV companies have been granted regional monopolies. Now they're exercising eminent domain and seizing property from me, for which I receive no benefit nor compensation. Why would I tolerate this?
If you look back at Apollo and Soyuz (and Corona and Yantar... ) you'll see blunt-cone and blunt-hemisphere structures. These are shapes that have a preferential orientation in gas flow - essentially unconditional stability. The craft in the video shows a rotational resonance that allows it to maintain the rotation - something that's completely unacceptable in this kind of vehicle. Once the parachute helps it regain some measure of stability, the rocking oscillation persists... on two different occasions. That's indicative of near-resonance or conditional-stability. During the free-fall period, the rotational rate increases. That's bad... very bad.
It doesn't matter that the vehicle got dumped out of the back of a C-17. The atmospheric conditions are an uncontrollable environmental variable, and need to be accounted for as such. Blaming "bad air" is no consolation when the mission fails.
You've hit the nail on the head as to why USB beat the pants off Firewire. It boiled down to economics. Still, the lack of real-time support is a software issue, and it should've been dealt with back in the 1.0 to 1.1 transition. Granted, getting good real-time support out of a non-real-time OS is difficult, but the interface spec shouldn't preclude such operation explicitly.
I want to know why we can't just make a super embeddable module with 100Mbps or 1Gbps ethernet. That meets most of your criteria, and I'm pretty sure I can make my real-time interface work over it (especially if I create a private physical segment.) The Lantronix device comes close, but it's not meant for high-bandwidth apps.
But then, the whole point of creating a "new" standard interface is to control the market. As I pointed out, the original USB was tweaked RS-485. The cable spec is a nightmare, but the marketing is superlative!
I don't consider myself a Firewire Fanboy, but I did have to choose one interface for a recent development. We needed periodic and deterministic response for servicing an external hardware device. USB is completely useless in that respect, even at 480Mbps. It is fundamentally impossible to schedule a timeslot with the spec as written. If you look at the spec, you'll see that they're bending over backwards to support real-time devices like gamepads (low latency requirements) and webcams (deterministic device-timed data transfers.) There's a thread on the Linux EMC forum indicating, in great detail, why USB is totally unsuitable for *any* type of real-time service.
Firewire is only marginally better. They do support scheduled data transfers, but unless you've got an 8kHz block-transfer basis, you're going to be SOL. The video apps can DMA burst on the 8kHz block basis and be fine with some buffering on each end. However, if you want to support something that has a 50kHz scheduled interval, that won't happen on Firewire either. Better, but still unsuitable.
The Firewire guys shot themselves in the collective foot by being greedy bastards. They could have beaten USB into insignificance, but they insisted on large license fees and peering structures, the latter forcing vendors to place an extra "smart" component on the device, raising costs. In all, Firewire was doomed by the economics. Apple buoyed it's existence by creating computers and peripherals that used the port, creating a not-market-driven basis for it's existence. Many PCs include Firewire now, but it's certainly outnumbered by the USB adoption.
There's absolutely nothing fancy about the USB interface - it's almost exactly the RS-485 PHY with some pull-up resistors and the ability to send a SE0 (Single Ended Zero). The problem is with the software behind the physical interface. It's already a root-controlled heirarchical structure, so they *could* coordinate the timing. They chose not to, and they didn't fix that deficiency from 1.0 to 1.1 to 2.0. The half-duplex nature of the medium makes device-driven interrupt events difficult, but not impossible. Again, this "problem" has been solved before in networks like Thicknet backbone ethernet (yes, old school shared-medium coax as thick as your index finger, viper taps, AUIs, 10base2... god I feel old now.)
Unfortunately, every local gub'ment has some form of "easement" clause in the title to your property. Initially intended for installation of sidewalks and public utility access corridors, it's being usurped by the private for-profit telecom companies. They've lobbied the city/county officials such that they get treatment like they're a public utility (e.g. universal telephone service, etc.) and then "embrace and extend" that access to the much more lucrative high-speed cable/fiber access. Unfortunately, the telecom companies are notoriously cheap, and wouldn't lift a finger to improve an installation's appearance if it meant spending an additional dollar. After all, they don't benefit from that expense, do they? Consider it part of the "Tragedy of the Commons," only the "commons" has been extended into your front yard.
If you haven't looked at the USB spec, please do. It's one of those well-intentioned structures that's suffering from design-by-committee. Unfortunately, the design committee was wearing blinders, and completely missed the requirements of any device that requires decent real-time response. Yes Virginia, your USB gamepad requires a very different interface structure than your USB hard drive. So there are exceptions... and the exceptions out number the spec requirements. That's generally a "bad thing," and indicates a fundamental problem with the specification. Similarly, there's no way to distribute any kind of timing marker via USB to support coordinated operation of peripherals.
Distributing power via the USB connector is a redeeming quality, but that's about it. The protocol overhead is insane. I can achieve better than 12MBps throughput with bone-stock RS-485 drivers. I can only assume that the corporate interests had to create a "new" interface spec so they could control it... can't really control RS-485, can you?
Firewire seems much better suited to doing... just about anything. The 8kHz timing bins are a bit restrictive, but that stands a chance of being rectified in future upgrades. The architecture makes explicit mention of real-time device support, which seems to be a healthy portion of the peripheral market. A live video feed over Firewire is possible because of the timeslot allocation structure. USB doesn't have one, and can only compensate by increasing the line rate and buffering the hell out of both ends to make up for the lack-of-timing-support. The USB guys are totally short-sighted, but have better Marketing people.
There's an additional profit motive - opportunity cost. If the telecom providers roll-out new and enhanced equipment, they're front-loading the costs. They won't see the break-even point on the new equipment for years. Today's private companies are completely driven by short-term profit evaluations.
Additionally, the telecom and cable companies have played a very delicate hand getting government-sanctioned monopolies for the delivery network. With only one or two players in a market, there is virtually no competition. Without competition, the typical market pressures don't apply. You, the customer, can't vote with your wallet because there isn't an alternative. If the only two players collude, even informally, there isn't any advantage for you to transfer to the other guy. Statistically, two competitors will see comparable churn on the customer base, resulting in a net-zero effect on the bottom line. Your service provider can tell you to piss off, and you don't have any recourse. Now why would they voluntarily spend lots of money to upgrade systems, when you'll just choke down what they decide is good enough?
The thing the incumbents should fear is an ad-hoc wideband wireless network. They'd lose control of the last-mile choke point, which is the foundation of their business model. The cellular phone guys already have the PoPs in place, and could outfit their towers without much expense.
Unfortnately, Verizon is the dominant wireless player near me, so I'm not gonna hold my breath.
I had my 7-year-old daughter playing Zork 1 a couple of weeks ago. At first, she was put off by the text interface. However, once she realized that there's a story embedded in the game, and it's responsive to her commands, she's completely into it.
She's also been playing WarZone 2100. So far, she's done the tutorial and the first sortie mission. She understands that the two games are different, and that one isn't necessarily better than the other. For example, Zork will wait as long as she likes to make her decisions.
Similarly, we've been running the VICE emulator on her Ubuntu machine. She has a blast running the C64 emulator, in spite of it's minimal capabilities. Writing her first few BASIC programs were great experiences - especially the ones that poked the SID chip. Instant gratification is a great learning tool.
My understanding was that the crew limitation was due to water availability. NASA never installed the recycling component of the ECLSS... thus requiring regular Shuttle resupply flights. They've been dumping waste water overboard (filling the Progress with "trash" for deorbit.) I've always thought it was criminal that NASA wasn't making self-sufficiency a primary goal of the ISS assembly process. It was pretty clear to me that they were delaying that capability as long as possible to justify additional Shuttle flights.
I may build one, even if it's not cost-effective. The kid's reaction has much more value. I think the big attraction is the instant-gratification of having low-level access to the machine. Kids like to demonstrate control over their environment, even if that's setting a register value and getting a horrible screech out of the speaker.
As you pointed out, used hardware in workable condition is a limited resource. I'm not emotionally attached to Apple, Commodore, etc, so I really don't care which architecture the target is. However, I have limited time to invest in this, so I can't say I'm particularly thrilled with the prospect of getting a machine that I'm unfamiliar with (say the Atari ST; never used one.)
The other night, I explained that the "load from tape image" option in VICE had to do with old-school data storage. My daughter was perplexed - she has audio cassettes, but the thought of using the same cassette for computer program storage was completely foreign. I'm gonna have to rig up some ancient tape-loader so she can share the experience.
Unfortunately, the C-One is $269. I looked at it, but it's definitely not geared toward use by young-uhns. They're terribly abusive little critters. Similarly with the C64DTV joysticks - the mods are fragile, and probably wouldn't survive rough handling. I remember beating the hell out of a 2600, and the VIC-20's keyboard got stepped on more than a dozen times. Every once in a while, the local Goodwill gets a C64. I'll keep my eye out.
My 7-year-old has been playing games on an old Dell running EduBuntu, but I found that the environment was too structured - power up, log in, menu, menu, menu, etc. I remember having an Apple ][ and a C64, and you just hit the power switch, and were greeted with "OK."
I considered building an FPGA module that contained all the necessary C64 or Apple hardware, and it's clear that today's devices are certainly up to the task (with a little help from an external SRAM.) In 100-piece quantities, MSRP would need to be nearly $100 to be viable though. I can buy a refurb desktop at that level. So I went down a different path - VICE. We're now running a C64 emulator on the linux box, and my daughter takes great pleasure in opening a terminal window and typing a command to launch a program. She still has all the hoo-haw to get to the desktop, but given the opportunity, about half the time she runs the x64 emulator. I've tossed a handful of BASIC programming examples at her, including my ancient C64 User's Guide. It has great examples that are dirt simple... something that is difficult to find these days. Poke-ing values directly at the SID chip has the "instant gratification" factor that's missing with today's desktop computers.
I'll probably end up buying an old C64 from eBay for her, so she can bang on it without all the Ubuntu overhead. There's a gap in the learning path - today's kids don't have the hands-on opportunities we did. Based on cost and performance, a modern equivalent of the C64 should retail somewhere around $20-$40 (relative to the mainstream desktop offerings.) I don't think that's going to happen, as there are more effective ways to spend that same money (i.e. I can buy a used C64 with the floppy and the joystick and a pile of discs for $40.)
The music industry (and the movie industry) has a business model where they control the conduit between the "talent" and the "customer." They make their money by controlling that conduit... we have a number of laws that outline the dirty tricks used by these folks to control the distribution conduit, right up to the control interface on your wallet. The Canadian blank-media tax basically siphons cash out of your wallet regardless of your music/entertainment purchases, and gives the lion's share of the funds to... wait for it... the distribution cartels. They have a plan for distributions to artists, but that's after they've taken their cut.
Any proposal that lessens their ability to control the market will be opposed quite vigorously. They already know they're obsolete. What makes you think they're going to give up voluntarily?
In this area, there is monopoly-backed privately-owned fiber (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) There is also dark fiber that's owned by the local municipalities (county and city governments installed ducts and fiber bundles during road maintenance work.) Certain areas allow private installs through an approved subcontractor (i.e. Covad.) Some new builders got smart and put community pedestals with access to the homes, which solves the most expensive part of the last-mile problem. So yes, there is a need to differentiate who owns what. We don't have "the phone company" with a simple demarcation point anymore.
I'm in a bit of a Catch-22. Verizon won't install the fiber drops unless they get enough connection density in the community. The community isn't dense enough even if everyone here wanted FIOS. Our dated 1950s-era utility installations don't work in modern times. Verizon has a state-sanctioned monopoly on the communications wires/fibers hanging on the poles, so I couldn't string my own fiber to somewhere they would drop a connection. My only recourse is to move... which is in the works.
Entitlement? No, not in the "I did noting to deserve this" sense. I'm more than willing to pay for the service, and two years ago I probably could have gotten my company to pay for Verizon's full installation costs (i.e. truck roll, fiber pull back to the CO, etc.)
Years ago, Verizon and their peers petitioned to get a right-of-way through my property to string their oh-so-valuable wires and fibers. In exchange, they are obligated to provide "universal" telephone service. They've been very careful to avoid a similar situation with broadband communications, as the "inconvenient" customers don't earn them enough profits. They've run the fiber down my street to another community. They are using the right-of-way through my property to provide the FIOS service to someone else. They refuse to provide it to me, but they're more than happy to drag the fibers through my neighborhood. Looking out my kitchen window, I can see them hanging from the poles, taunting me.
The reason I'm torqued is that I can almost touch the fibers. If they're going to use the right-of-way through my property, I expect to get something other than the finger.
In my neighborhood - suburb of DC - I can't get Verizon's FIOS because I live in a low-ish density single-family community. I live 7500 feet from the CO and have DSL. The townhouses on either side of me have FIOS, as do the apartments across the street. Apparently there isn't enough incentive to bring their fancy fibers my way. I'd love to run privately owned dark fiber to a co-lo where the bastards *would* take my money. I'd expect a better rate due to the need to use *my* infrastructure. I've been speaking to the Verizon customer service reps on and off for several years now, and they expect to have the service in my area "any day now." Uh huh...
Death is a fundamental part of life. Without death, no one would respect or value the life he has. Everyone will react to death differently. Some will be sad; others will celebrate the positive contributions.
As for the "time to show your weakness," I completely disagree. Dr. Pausch has a wife and three children. Did his terminal cancer suddenly absolve him of his responsibilities to them? This isn't about him satisfying some egotistical urge, it's about him providing future support for his family. His stories are entertaining, yes, but the entertainment aspect is the "head fake" to get his audience to listen to and comprehend the deeper philosophical message. He could have just blurted out "work hard, don't give up," but it wouldn't have had the same impact.
He has set the bar pretty high. I should hope to be as much a man as he.
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Yeah, but it was the signature on the receipt that was of value. The signature on the card didn't do any good. The receipt is a per-transaction contract of sorts - offer, acceptance and consideration in one contained element. Since the buyer's contribution of consideration is a "promise to pay at a later date," the signature is a voluntary demonstration of the promise. Basically, this keeps the contract from being forced by the offeror. [Note- "forced" has a legal meaning in this context.]
... no matter how much they'd like to.
By comparison, the signature on the card merely indicates acceptance of the terms of the card agreement. It has nothing to do with individual transactions - the credit card company can't legally obligate you to accept *any* charges to your account. Their business model is rooted in contract law, and they can't "pre-obligate" you in any manner
802.11whatever is an access point solution. Folks who expect it to be a backhaul or backbone solution are ... not well versed in network architectures. I find it amusing that folks think an ad-hoc mesh of 802.11 nodes will *ever* have performance comparable to wired/fibered connections. Just the "shared medium" aspect should be enough to indicate performance will degrade as more connections are added. Shoveling more nodes into the mesh won't magically improve performance.
... Listen carefully and you'll hear the cries of the oppressed - "I don't want to know how it works, I just want to [do blah]."
Eh, it doesn't surprise me. Evidence of this logical disassociation is everywhere - digital cameras, cars, appliances, computers, tools
It's the Phlogiston, released by the central furnace of the sun. Doesn't seem quite so funny now, does it Pinkerton?
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my Phrenologist.
Cable TV is not a utility. It's entertainment. Power, potable water, and sanitary sewer are necessary utilities for an urban and suburban environment. People can function just fine without Cable TV.
And yes, the R2D2 cable TV repeaters deprive me of access to a portion of my front yard, just like the big hulky U-Verse pedestals do. If I choose to put an addition on my house that requires the relocation of my driveway (which, btw, I did seven years ago,) I'm screwed if I can't get the cable company to move the frickin box out of my way. If they elect to tell me to piss off, I don't have much recourse other than to work around the obstruction. In the urban areas, someone wanting to put an extra off-street parking space (which would be a huge benefit in some places,) would be completely screwed if the U-Verse pedestal blocked the only available street access.
The companies derive benefit by exploiting the space to it's maximum potential. The property owner receives zero or negative benefit. Tragedy of the Commons, plain and simple. I don't like having any old company come crap up my property, in a situation where I'm ultimately accountable for said property. The companies are cost-shifting maintenance expense onto me. If the gas company decided to park an accumulator and pumping station in the middle of your front yard, you'd be okay with that? It is, after all, an easement they have rights to.
You people? Just because I'm unwilling to tolerate an unwelcome liability in my front yard doesn't automatically make me the bad guy ... or does it?
I like the "work with them" part, because they're more than willing to work with me, right? See the Tragedy of the Commons link, above. Lemme expand on the details of the problem. First, the easement doesn't relieve me of property ownership. I'm still obligated to maintain the property in the easement, and I'm still taxed on it because I'm the owner. That's a nifty trick the local utilities got enacted - they don't want to pay property tax on the right-of-way, but they want unfettered access. Nice huh? So anyway, I'm not supposed to dig with power tools within 3 feet of the buried utilities, and I'm not supposed to obstruct the meters. I don't really have any objection to the gas or water access, as I use those utilities. However, my tolerance ends there. I do not have a cable subscription (DirecTV, thankyouverymuch.) Consequently, I have no tolerance of Comcast putting an R2D2 in my front yard. Cable TV is not a necessary municipal utility - gas, electric, water, sewer, and to a lesser extent telephone. Locally, the cable TV companies have been granted regional monopolies. Now they're exercising eminent domain and seizing property from me, for which I receive no benefit nor compensation. Why would I tolerate this?
It'd be a shame if someone were to accidentally back his car into one of those boxes ... not that I'm advocating such behavior. I'm just sayin ...
If you look back at Apollo and Soyuz (and Corona and Yantar ... ) you'll see blunt-cone and blunt-hemisphere structures. These are shapes that have a preferential orientation in gas flow - essentially unconditional stability. The craft in the video shows a rotational resonance that allows it to maintain the rotation - something that's completely unacceptable in this kind of vehicle. Once the parachute helps it regain some measure of stability, the rocking oscillation persists ... on two different occasions. That's indicative of near-resonance or conditional-stability. During the free-fall period, the rotational rate increases. That's bad ... very bad.
It doesn't matter that the vehicle got dumped out of the back of a C-17. The atmospheric conditions are an uncontrollable environmental variable, and need to be accounted for as such. Blaming "bad air" is no consolation when the mission fails.
You've hit the nail on the head as to why USB beat the pants off Firewire. It boiled down to economics. Still, the lack of real-time support is a software issue, and it should've been dealt with back in the 1.0 to 1.1 transition. Granted, getting good real-time support out of a non-real-time OS is difficult, but the interface spec shouldn't preclude such operation explicitly.
I want to know why we can't just make a super embeddable module with 100Mbps or 1Gbps ethernet. That meets most of your criteria, and I'm pretty sure I can make my real-time interface work over it (especially if I create a private physical segment.) The Lantronix device comes close, but it's not meant for high-bandwidth apps.
But then, the whole point of creating a "new" standard interface is to control the market. As I pointed out, the original USB was tweaked RS-485. The cable spec is a nightmare, but the marketing is superlative!
I don't consider myself a Firewire Fanboy, but I did have to choose one interface for a recent development. We needed periodic and deterministic response for servicing an external hardware device. USB is completely useless in that respect, even at 480Mbps. It is fundamentally impossible to schedule a timeslot with the spec as written. If you look at the spec, you'll see that they're bending over backwards to support real-time devices like gamepads (low latency requirements) and webcams (deterministic device-timed data transfers.) There's a thread on the Linux EMC forum indicating, in great detail, why USB is totally unsuitable for *any* type of real-time service.
... god I feel old now.)
Firewire is only marginally better. They do support scheduled data transfers, but unless you've got an 8kHz block-transfer basis, you're going to be SOL. The video apps can DMA burst on the 8kHz block basis and be fine with some buffering on each end. However, if you want to support something that has a 50kHz scheduled interval, that won't happen on Firewire either. Better, but still unsuitable.
The Firewire guys shot themselves in the collective foot by being greedy bastards. They could have beaten USB into insignificance, but they insisted on large license fees and peering structures, the latter forcing vendors to place an extra "smart" component on the device, raising costs. In all, Firewire was doomed by the economics. Apple buoyed it's existence by creating computers and peripherals that used the port, creating a not-market-driven basis for it's existence. Many PCs include Firewire now, but it's certainly outnumbered by the USB adoption.
There's absolutely nothing fancy about the USB interface - it's almost exactly the RS-485 PHY with some pull-up resistors and the ability to send a SE0 (Single Ended Zero). The problem is with the software behind the physical interface. It's already a root-controlled heirarchical structure, so they *could* coordinate the timing. They chose not to, and they didn't fix that deficiency from 1.0 to 1.1 to 2.0. The half-duplex nature of the medium makes device-driven interrupt events difficult, but not impossible. Again, this "problem" has been solved before in networks like Thicknet backbone ethernet (yes, old school shared-medium coax as thick as your index finger, viper taps, AUIs, 10base2
Unfortunately, every local gub'ment has some form of "easement" clause in the title to your property. Initially intended for installation of sidewalks and public utility access corridors, it's being usurped by the private for-profit telecom companies. They've lobbied the city/county officials such that they get treatment like they're a public utility (e.g. universal telephone service, etc.) and then "embrace and extend" that access to the much more lucrative high-speed cable/fiber access. Unfortunately, the telecom companies are notoriously cheap, and wouldn't lift a finger to improve an installation's appearance if it meant spending an additional dollar. After all, they don't benefit from that expense, do they? Consider it part of the "Tragedy of the Commons," only the "commons" has been extended into your front yard.
If you haven't looked at the USB spec, please do. It's one of those well-intentioned structures that's suffering from design-by-committee. Unfortunately, the design committee was wearing blinders, and completely missed the requirements of any device that requires decent real-time response. Yes Virginia, your USB gamepad requires a very different interface structure than your USB hard drive. So there are exceptions ... and the exceptions out number the spec requirements. That's generally a "bad thing," and indicates a fundamental problem with the specification. Similarly, there's no way to distribute any kind of timing marker via USB to support coordinated operation of peripherals.
... can't really control RS-485, can you?
... just about anything. The 8kHz timing bins are a bit restrictive, but that stands a chance of being rectified in future upgrades. The architecture makes explicit mention of real-time device support, which seems to be a healthy portion of the peripheral market. A live video feed over Firewire is possible because of the timeslot allocation structure. USB doesn't have one, and can only compensate by increasing the line rate and buffering the hell out of both ends to make up for the lack-of-timing-support. The USB guys are totally short-sighted, but have better Marketing people.
Distributing power via the USB connector is a redeeming quality, but that's about it. The protocol overhead is insane. I can achieve better than 12MBps throughput with bone-stock RS-485 drivers. I can only assume that the corporate interests had to create a "new" interface spec so they could control it
Firewire seems much better suited to doing
There's an additional profit motive - opportunity cost. If the telecom providers roll-out new and enhanced equipment, they're front-loading the costs. They won't see the break-even point on the new equipment for years. Today's private companies are completely driven by short-term profit evaluations.
Additionally, the telecom and cable companies have played a very delicate hand getting government-sanctioned monopolies for the delivery network. With only one or two players in a market, there is virtually no competition. Without competition, the typical market pressures don't apply. You, the customer, can't vote with your wallet because there isn't an alternative. If the only two players collude, even informally, there isn't any advantage for you to transfer to the other guy. Statistically, two competitors will see comparable churn on the customer base, resulting in a net-zero effect on the bottom line. Your service provider can tell you to piss off, and you don't have any recourse. Now why would they voluntarily spend lots of money to upgrade systems, when you'll just choke down what they decide is good enough?
The thing the incumbents should fear is an ad-hoc wideband wireless network. They'd lose control of the last-mile choke point, which is the foundation of their business model. The cellular phone guys already have the PoPs in place, and could outfit their towers without much expense. Unfortnately, Verizon is the dominant wireless player near me, so I'm not gonna hold my breath.
I had my 7-year-old daughter playing Zork 1 a couple of weeks ago. At first, she was put off by the text interface. However, once she realized that there's a story embedded in the game, and it's responsive to her commands, she's completely into it.
She's also been playing WarZone 2100. So far, she's done the tutorial and the first sortie mission. She understands that the two games are different, and that one isn't necessarily better than the other. For example, Zork will wait as long as she likes to make her decisions.
Similarly, we've been running the VICE emulator on her Ubuntu machine. She has a blast running the C64 emulator, in spite of it's minimal capabilities. Writing her first few BASIC programs were great experiences - especially the ones that poked the SID chip. Instant gratification is a great learning tool.
My understanding was that the crew limitation was due to water availability. NASA never installed the recycling component of the ECLSS ... thus requiring regular Shuttle resupply flights. They've been dumping waste water overboard (filling the Progress with "trash" for deorbit.) I've always thought it was criminal that NASA wasn't making self-sufficiency a primary goal of the ISS assembly process. It was pretty clear to me that they were delaying that capability as long as possible to justify additional Shuttle flights.
I may build one, even if it's not cost-effective. The kid's reaction has much more value. I think the big attraction is the instant-gratification of having low-level access to the machine. Kids like to demonstrate control over their environment, even if that's setting a register value and getting a horrible screech out of the speaker.
As you pointed out, used hardware in workable condition is a limited resource. I'm not emotionally attached to Apple, Commodore, etc, so I really don't care which architecture the target is. However, I have limited time to invest in this, so I can't say I'm particularly thrilled with the prospect of getting a machine that I'm unfamiliar with (say the Atari ST; never used one.)
The other night, I explained that the "load from tape image" option in VICE had to do with old-school data storage. My daughter was perplexed - she has audio cassettes, but the thought of using the same cassette for computer program storage was completely foreign. I'm gonna have to rig up some ancient tape-loader so she can share the experience.
Unfortunately, the C-One is $269. I looked at it, but it's definitely not geared toward use by young-uhns. They're terribly abusive little critters. Similarly with the C64DTV joysticks - the mods are fragile, and probably wouldn't survive rough handling. I remember beating the hell out of a 2600, and the VIC-20's keyboard got stepped on more than a dozen times. Every once in a while, the local Goodwill gets a C64. I'll keep my eye out.
My 7-year-old has been playing games on an old Dell running EduBuntu, but I found that the environment was too structured - power up, log in, menu, menu, menu, etc. I remember having an Apple ][ and a C64, and you just hit the power switch, and were greeted with "OK."
... something that is difficult to find these days. Poke-ing values directly at the SID chip has the "instant gratification" factor that's missing with today's desktop computers.
I considered building an FPGA module that contained all the necessary C64 or Apple hardware, and it's clear that today's devices are certainly up to the task (with a little help from an external SRAM.) In 100-piece quantities, MSRP would need to be nearly $100 to be viable though. I can buy a refurb desktop at that level. So I went down a different path - VICE. We're now running a C64 emulator on the linux box, and my daughter takes great pleasure in opening a terminal window and typing a command to launch a program. She still has all the hoo-haw to get to the desktop, but given the opportunity, about half the time she runs the x64 emulator. I've tossed a handful of BASIC programming examples at her, including my ancient C64 User's Guide. It has great examples that are dirt simple
I'll probably end up buying an old C64 from eBay for her, so she can bang on it without all the Ubuntu overhead. There's a gap in the learning path - today's kids don't have the hands-on opportunities we did. Based on cost and performance, a modern equivalent of the C64 should retail somewhere around $20-$40 (relative to the mainstream desktop offerings.) I don't think that's going to happen, as there are more effective ways to spend that same money (i.e. I can buy a used C64 with the floppy and the joystick and a pile of discs for $40.)
The music industry (and the movie industry) has a business model where they control the conduit between the "talent" and the "customer." They make their money by controlling that conduit ... we have a number of laws that outline the dirty tricks used by these folks to control the distribution conduit, right up to the control interface on your wallet. The Canadian blank-media tax basically siphons cash out of your wallet regardless of your music/entertainment purchases, and gives the lion's share of the funds to ... wait for it ... the distribution cartels. They have a plan for distributions to artists, but that's after they've taken their cut.
Any proposal that lessens their ability to control the market will be opposed quite vigorously. They already know they're obsolete. What makes you think they're going to give up voluntarily?
In this area, there is monopoly-backed privately-owned fiber (Verizon, AT&T, etc.) There is also dark fiber that's owned by the local municipalities (county and city governments installed ducts and fiber bundles during road maintenance work.) Certain areas allow private installs through an approved subcontractor (i.e. Covad.) Some new builders got smart and put community pedestals with access to the homes, which solves the most expensive part of the last-mile problem. So yes, there is a need to differentiate who owns what. We don't have "the phone company" with a simple demarcation point anymore.
I'm in a bit of a Catch-22. Verizon won't install the fiber drops unless they get enough connection density in the community. The community isn't dense enough even if everyone here wanted FIOS. Our dated 1950s-era utility installations don't work in modern times. Verizon has a state-sanctioned monopoly on the communications wires/fibers hanging on the poles, so I couldn't string my own fiber to somewhere they would drop a connection. My only recourse is to move ... which is in the works.
Entitlement? No, not in the "I did noting to deserve this" sense. I'm more than willing to pay for the service, and two years ago I probably could have gotten my company to pay for Verizon's full installation costs (i.e. truck roll, fiber pull back to the CO, etc.)
Years ago, Verizon and their peers petitioned to get a right-of-way through my property to string their oh-so-valuable wires and fibers. In exchange, they are obligated to provide "universal" telephone service. They've been very careful to avoid a similar situation with broadband communications, as the "inconvenient" customers don't earn them enough profits. They've run the fiber down my street to another community. They are using the right-of-way through my property to provide the FIOS service to someone else. They refuse to provide it to me, but they're more than happy to drag the fibers through my neighborhood. Looking out my kitchen window, I can see them hanging from the poles, taunting me.
The reason I'm torqued is that I can almost touch the fibers. If they're going to use the right-of-way through my property, I expect to get something other than the finger.
In my neighborhood - suburb of DC - I can't get Verizon's FIOS because I live in a low-ish density single-family community. I live 7500 feet from the CO and have DSL. The townhouses on either side of me have FIOS, as do the apartments across the street. Apparently there isn't enough incentive to bring their fancy fibers my way. I'd love to run privately owned dark fiber to a co-lo where the bastards *would* take my money. I'd expect a better rate due to the need to use *my* infrastructure. I've been speaking to the Verizon customer service reps on and off for several years now, and they expect to have the service in my area "any day now." Uh huh ...
Don't forget the National Search Agency [sic]. I hear they have quite the computational capability.
Death is a fundamental part of life. Without death, no one would respect or value the life he has. Everyone will react to death differently. Some will be sad; others will celebrate the positive contributions.
As for the "time to show your weakness," I completely disagree. Dr. Pausch has a wife and three children. Did his terminal cancer suddenly absolve him of his responsibilities to them? This isn't about him satisfying some egotistical urge, it's about him providing future support for his family. His stories are entertaining, yes, but the entertainment aspect is the "head fake" to get his audience to listen to and comprehend the deeper philosophical message. He could have just blurted out "work hard, don't give up," but it wouldn't have had the same impact.
He has set the bar pretty high. I should hope to be as much a man as he.