Where are the 1600x1200 LED S-IPS business screens?
Amen! My second monitor at home is my old Hitachi 751 because I can't find an affordable ($250) LCD that will do 1600x1200. At work I'll probably wind up making some kind of stand so I can use my 22" in portrait mode.
a '90s Atmel microcontroller isn't all what's out there...
Indeed. I just bought a TI Launchpad for US$4.30 (with free shipping!). It's a complete development board for the MSP430 MCU, and you can download a free IDE (not open-source, but you can use mspgcc too). Nowhere near the third-party support the Arduino has, but it's a capable little chip and only costs a (US) quarter in quantity.
It's basically old-school flash, with the benefits that it doesn't stop working after awhile and it's radiation-hard. It's also a lot slower than flash (possibly slower than a modern HDD, I don't recall the r/w timing), so I doubt we'll see it resurgent. I also believe it was hand-assembled up to the end, because there was no way to reliably automate the intricate threading process.
If I'm doing simple calculations, I'd much rather just pull out a calculator than open up another window (or even worse, wait for an IDE to load). It's also handier when reviewing drawings, as I don't have to leave my drafting table and go over to my desk where the laptop is.
Yeah, when I heard that HP was going to stop making calculators, I picked up an HP-49(gx?). I hate it. It's my "emergency" calculator, my last line of defense if my 34C, 41CV, 16C and 32SII are all missing or dead. And since I found an 11C emulator that runs on my phone, I doubt I'll ever use the 49gx again.
I still have my first HP calculator, a 34C. The battery pack died ten years ago, and I just muscled it open and replaced the dead NiCads with fresh ones from Radio Shack. Hmmm, now that I think of it, I should probably snag another set of those to keep in my parts bin, before NiCads disappear and I have to replace both the batteries and the charger....
Not sure I really see the point of this. If you already have a computer to plug this device in to, what's the point of adding another one? Why not just get a simple USB WiFi dongle?
The truth is, a lot of people don't even have TVs where blu-ray would matter, even if they did care about the difference between really good (DVD) and super good (blu-ray).
That's where I'm currently stuck. We had to replace our "flat screen" (projector) TV just when flat panels were becoming popular, so we shelled out big bucks (for us) on a 42" plasma with "enhanced definition" (same resolution as a DVD). I'd love to replace it with a bigger HDTV, but even though prices have come down quite a bit, I can't justify replacing a perfectly good TV (and DVD player) for something as minimal as "better definition". That and all the DRM issues surrounding BR just make it an unattractive proposition.
It's not just "crazy over-spec'ed stuff", it's also the small production runs that drive prices up. They wind up paying $600 for a toilet seat because it's a custom size to fit in a B-2 bomber, so they have to amortize the design, mold-making, and set-up (production line, test fixtures, QC and packaging) just to produce 200 seats. Even in-stock stuff can suffer from this, because lots of suppliers have minimum order quantities. So even though they're buying (say) some standard gasket, if the manufacturer has a minimum order quantity, the military pays it because they only need 400 of them and the minimum order is 1000.
Yep. Amateurs understand they are "secondary users" of this spectrum. And it's always a good idea to defer to primary users who have attack helicopters and radio-direction-finding equipment...;)
There's also no reason for them to make the textbook "subscription" network dependent. If you want updates, you can purchase the updated revisions to your already-purchased book, if you don't, then you can continue reading your old version of the book whenever you like, on any compatible device.
And where's the profit in that? Is there a reason for publishers to be able to remove purchased books from your reader ("This is exactly how the Kindle works today.")? Is there a reason why songs downloaded from iTunes will only play on your iPod? For consumers, no, there isn't. But for content providers there certainly is. It's called "preserving the revenue stream". Remember, we're talking about companies that derive revenue from rearranging chapters and regenerating an index to create a "new version", thereby forcing thousands of students to pay for a new book instead of re-using an old copy with the same information in it. You think they wouldn't *love* to have older versions simply disappear?
I'm not against e-books, I'm against dependence on reference materials that aren't under my control.
So then... ebooks don't solve the problem, but they don't create a new problem either (simply drop DRM, or unlock the book if you're going out of business, these things could easily be required by law)
DRM'd e-books can create a huge problem. What's to prevent a publisher from requiring you to enroll in an "update agreement", in which you agree to pay $X/year for any updates and new versions, or you lose the ability to access the book? Or what's to prevent publishers from removing or redacting sections just because some vocal minority claims it offends them? What if you buy the US version of a textbook and find you can't access it overseas? And how will you access your information ten years from now when your iPad dies and your book is in an iPad-only format?
Sorry, but a lot of my textbooks cover basic principles that don't really change that much (discrete math, data structures, etc) and I'd rather keep them handy than depend on some on-line resource that may or may not cover the subject with the level of detail I need.
I was thinking of HF, not a 2M. A good mobile transceiver (say a Yaesu 897D) and a screwdriver antenna could reach Europe or anywhere in the Middle East easily.
Or had a mobile transceiver. Lots of people mount 100W transceivers in their cars, and the antenna isn't terribly bulky. And it's not like you have to get a signal to orbit or anything, a few hundred miles is all, and people do that every day.
Why not leave the VM running on some proper hardware and just use the phone and/or TV as UI? I mean, if I'm in the middle of a firefight in Black Ops, the last thing I'll want to do is shift my game from my quad-core 3GHz TV and start running it on a dual-core 1GHz phone...
Heh. Just a couple weeks ago I ran across an old ZIP disk from 1994 that has the files I restored from an old VMSBACKUP tape from 1982. It wasn't too bad, I was able to read the tape on an HP-9000, and groveled over the file with a hex editor until I was able to grok enough of the format to extract the individual files. I hooked up my old ZIP drive (a clunky parallel-port model), loaded the driver for it (which fortunately I was smart enough to copy from the original floppy to a CD), and was able to peruse my old DCL command procedures, Pascal projects, MACRO-32 programs and DAL code. I'm tempted to get a VMS emulator up and running, but the only thing I'd really care to get running is the DAL stuff, and I don't think that software's available (in fact, I'm not sure it was ever released as an official product).
ISTR that PL/I had a 128-character limit, but if you exceeded that limit it named the identifier by concatenating the first and last 64 characters. I always use something similar if I'm designing a language, albeit with smaller limits (I think that after a point, identifiers get harder to read as they get longer).
Yeah, home computers were non-existant (I remember reading an article in Popular Mechanics about the cray 1 in 1976).
We got our first home computer (a TRS-80 model I) in 1978, and we were hardly the first. I was quite amused to read an article (one of Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls) some years later that showed that a TRS-80 could actually be faster than a Cray-1 (assuming the Cray-1 was using a sufficiently poor algorithm and the TRS-80 wasn't).
Seriously? Who did you guys manage to piss off? I mean, your main religions are pretty peaceful, you don't seem to participate much in "peacekeeping missions", you don't oppress your neighbors (except maybe Pakistan, but that's been going on since day 1, so no points there). What have you been doing that terrorists want to stop?
You are entitled to your opinion, but sometimes it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. In most cases a programmer does not have a choice on using spaces or tabs for indentation - their company coding style guidelines or FOSS project coding style guidelines completely determines that.
FFS, we had a Perl script that ran interference for us, transparently converting between personal and project indenting style on check-in and check-out. So you worked with code that looked the way you wanted, and code that got checked in followed the project standard.
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Where are the 1600x1200 LED S-IPS business screens?
Amen! My second monitor at home is my old Hitachi 751 because I can't find an affordable ($250) LCD that will do 1600x1200. At work I'll probably wind up making some kind of stand so I can use my 22" in portrait mode.
a '90s Atmel microcontroller isn't all what's out there...
Indeed. I just bought a TI Launchpad for US$4.30 (with free shipping!). It's a complete development board for the MSP430 MCU, and you can download a free IDE (not open-source, but you can use mspgcc too). Nowhere near the third-party support the Arduino has, but it's a capable little chip and only costs a (US) quarter in quantity.
It's basically old-school flash, with the benefits that it doesn't stop working after awhile and it's radiation-hard. It's also a lot slower than flash (possibly slower than a modern HDD, I don't recall the r/w timing), so I doubt we'll see it resurgent. I also believe it was hand-assembled up to the end, because there was no way to reliably automate the intricate threading process.
If I'm doing simple calculations, I'd much rather just pull out a calculator than open up another window (or even worse, wait for an IDE to load). It's also handier when reviewing drawings, as I don't have to leave my drafting table and go over to my desk where the laptop is.
Yeah, when I heard that HP was going to stop making calculators, I picked up an HP-49(gx?). I hate it. It's my "emergency" calculator, my last line of defense if my 34C, 41CV, 16C and 32SII are all missing or dead. And since I found an 11C emulator that runs on my phone, I doubt I'll ever use the 49gx again.
I still have my first HP calculator, a 34C. The battery pack died ten years ago, and I just muscled it open and replaced the dead NiCads with fresh ones from Radio Shack. Hmmm, now that I think of it, I should probably snag another set of those to keep in my parts bin, before NiCads disappear and I have to replace both the batteries and the charger....
Not sure I really see the point of this. If you already have a computer to plug this device in to, what's the point of adding another one? Why not just get a simple USB WiFi dongle?
The truth is, a lot of people don't even have TVs where blu-ray would matter, even if they did care about the difference between really good (DVD) and super good (blu-ray).
That's where I'm currently stuck. We had to replace our "flat screen" (projector) TV just when flat panels were becoming popular, so we shelled out big bucks (for us) on a 42" plasma with "enhanced definition" (same resolution as a DVD). I'd love to replace it with a bigger HDTV, but even though prices have come down quite a bit, I can't justify replacing a perfectly good TV (and DVD player) for something as minimal as "better definition". That and all the DRM issues surrounding BR just make it an unattractive proposition.
I want to fly on a plane with these, and I want the view to be what I'd see if the plane was flying at an altitude of about 50 feet. Whoosh!
It's not just "crazy over-spec'ed stuff", it's also the small production runs that drive prices up. They wind up paying $600 for a toilet seat because it's a custom size to fit in a B-2 bomber, so they have to amortize the design, mold-making, and set-up (production line, test fixtures, QC and packaging) just to produce 200 seats. Even in-stock stuff can suffer from this, because lots of suppliers have minimum order quantities. So even though they're buying (say) some standard gasket, if the manufacturer has a minimum order quantity, the military pays it because they only need 400 of them and the minimum order is 1000.
I think he meant a million gigawatts. Hyperbole is the best thing EVER!
Yep. Amateurs understand they are "secondary users" of this spectrum. And it's always a good idea to defer to primary users who have attack helicopters and radio-direction-finding equipment... ;)
IIRC, that was actually a military transmitter they were receiving, not an amateur.
Disclaimer: I only read the book, I didn't see the movie.
There's also no reason for them to make the textbook "subscription" network dependent. If you want updates, you can purchase the updated revisions to your already-purchased book, if you don't, then you can continue reading your old version of the book whenever you like, on any compatible device.
And where's the profit in that? Is there a reason for publishers to be able to remove purchased books from your reader ("This is exactly how the Kindle works today.")? Is there a reason why songs downloaded from iTunes will only play on your iPod? For consumers, no, there isn't. But for content providers there certainly is. It's called "preserving the revenue stream". Remember, we're talking about companies that derive revenue from rearranging chapters and regenerating an index to create a "new version", thereby forcing thousands of students to pay for a new book instead of re-using an old copy with the same information in it. You think they wouldn't *love* to have older versions simply disappear?
I'm not against e-books, I'm against dependence on reference materials that aren't under my control.
So then... ebooks don't solve the problem, but they don't create a new problem either (simply drop DRM, or unlock the book if you're going out of business, these things could easily be required by law)
DRM'd e-books can create a huge problem. What's to prevent a publisher from requiring you to enroll in an "update agreement", in which you agree to pay $X/year for any updates and new versions, or you lose the ability to access the book? Or what's to prevent publishers from removing or redacting sections just because some vocal minority claims it offends them? What if you buy the US version of a textbook and find you can't access it overseas? And how will you access your information ten years from now when your iPad dies and your book is in an iPad-only format?
Sorry, but a lot of my textbooks cover basic principles that don't really change that much (discrete math, data structures, etc) and I'd rather keep them handy than depend on some on-line resource that may or may not cover the subject with the level of detail I need.
I was thinking of HF, not a 2M. A good mobile transceiver (say a Yaesu 897D) and a screwdriver antenna could reach Europe or anywhere in the Middle East easily.
Or had a mobile transceiver. Lots of people mount 100W transceivers in their cars, and the antenna isn't terribly bulky. And it's not like you have to get a signal to orbit or anything, a few hundred miles is all, and people do that every day.
Why not leave the VM running on some proper hardware and just use the phone and/or TV as UI? I mean, if I'm in the middle of a firefight in Black Ops, the last thing I'll want to do is shift my game from my quad-core 3GHz TV and start running it on a dual-core 1GHz phone...
Heh. Just a couple weeks ago I ran across an old ZIP disk from 1994 that has the files I restored from an old VMSBACKUP tape from 1982. It wasn't too bad, I was able to read the tape on an HP-9000, and groveled over the file with a hex editor until I was able to grok enough of the format to extract the individual files. I hooked up my old ZIP drive (a clunky parallel-port model), loaded the driver for it (which fortunately I was smart enough to copy from the original floppy to a CD), and was able to peruse my old DCL command procedures, Pascal projects, MACRO-32 programs and DAL code. I'm tempted to get a VMS emulator up and running, but the only thing I'd really care to get running is the DAL stuff, and I don't think that software's available (in fact, I'm not sure it was ever released as an official product).
Won't somebody think of the pixels!?!?
Does the account holder know it's "borrowed"?
Oh, they eventually figure it out...
ISTR that PL/I had a 128-character limit, but if you exceeded that limit it named the identifier by concatenating the first and last 64 characters. I always use something similar if I'm designing a language, albeit with smaller limits (I think that after a point, identifiers get harder to read as they get longer).
Yeah, home computers were non-existant (I remember reading an article in Popular Mechanics about the cray 1 in 1976).
We got our first home computer (a TRS-80 model I) in 1978, and we were hardly the first. I was quite amused to read an article (one of Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls) some years later that showed that a TRS-80 could actually be faster than a Cray-1 (assuming the Cray-1 was using a sufficiently poor algorithm and the TRS-80 wasn't).
India is a large target for terrorist attacks
Seriously? Who did you guys manage to piss off? I mean, your main religions are pretty peaceful, you don't seem to participate much in "peacekeeping missions", you don't oppress your neighbors (except maybe Pakistan, but that's been going on since day 1, so no points there). What have you been doing that terrorists want to stop?
You are entitled to your opinion, but sometimes it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. In most cases a programmer does not have a choice on using spaces or tabs for indentation - their company coding style guidelines or FOSS project coding style guidelines completely determines that.
FFS, we had a Perl script that ran interference for us, transparently converting between personal and project indenting style on check-in and check-out. So you worked with code that looked the way you wanted, and code that got checked in followed the project standard.
This was fifteen years ago.