a "serial terminal" is not that hard to come by, you only need a null modem cable or USB-to-serial and some terminal software (came with Windows 3.1 and 95)
There are likely ways around that but before I elaborate on it, let's say I've had weird regressions with my nvidia card support recently. It's a geforce 7 woefully outdated but that I like to use still it's still as powerful as when I got it (it is the same tech as the Playstation 3 GPU, with half the computing units but same fillrate and bandwith, and a hard to beat 32 watt TDP)
With the "nouveau" driver you've had to boot with the "nomodeset" kernel option (or alternatively one that disables nouveau 3D acceleration), this has been a big enough issue that it has been on the short Linux Mint release notes every six monthes. 1+ year ago I could still run nouveau with 3D acceleration (was on Mint 16 past its due date) and now it's fucked. But you might able to run nouveau in such a "degraded" state - still fine for e.g. playing an unaccelerated 720p H264 video in full screen. From that state - or if you could not get there - try to run Xorg with the VESA driver (is it called vesa or vesafb) : every card can run in fucking VESA, or should be able to. Or find an old PCI card (ATI Rage Pro PCI works fine for instance, any shit PCI 1MB card can give you text mode or 800x600 16bit)
Fast forward to the state of the art Ubuntu 14.04 compatible : both 304 driver and nouveau driver sucked (304 driver lacks resolutions/refresh rates I would want to use), but it took a third option I've never thought of trying : the 173 driver (i.e. even more "legacy" that the 304 one). Had to run the older 3.13 kernel, then beat the PC into submission so it would boot the 3.13 kernel by default. Then a "sudo nvidia-xconfig" later, I'm set. But Steam refuses to run because it has a hard check for 304 or later driver, which I had long forgotten about. So I can't use it to run a 15 years old game (Counter Strike 1.6)
So, I ought to be modded down because I run the wrong hardware too! BTW nevermind the "superior" linux driver support : I'm sure the graphics card can work properly with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and 7.
In particular it is dumb that a linux DE mandates 3D acceleration, given how brittle and slow it can be and given that linux is often installed on random old computers. There may be some 2D fallback, but then it doesn't count as it isn't the same desktop. Or fast software opengl (llvmpipe) which again doesn't count because it uses up all CPU, for a result of still slow.
Well I've checked and it seems three z13 CPU share 480MB L4, and one CPU ("Storage Controller") can have 480MB to its own. Three full POWER8 would have 128MB L4 each, or 384MB if you add them up. You can add up cache figures like that but it seems suprisingly close.
Let's consider the dictator of Belarus. The US doesn't support the regime (e.g. with weapons, flow of money from Wall Street etc.) nor wants to kill or remove the dictator. That's because nobody gives a shit about that country and it has a neighbour a bit too big military and vocal, but there is no dichotomy.
(...) Before his next appearance on Fox, Kristol could do worse than peruse Professor Hamoud Salhi’s address, presented at the Center for Contemporary Conflict, of the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School in June 2004.(iii pdf) It is entitled: “Syria’s Threat to America’s National Interest.” It is arguably even more pertinent now – and another reminder of how long Syria has been in U.S. sights.
He opens: “Syria’s threat to America’s national interest in the Middle East can only be understood in the context of U.S. plans to reconfigure the Middle East. Knowing now that the motive for invading Iraq was strategic, taking over Syria would give the United States further strategic depth in the region tipping the balance of power (even more) in favour of the United States regional allies, Israel and Turkey.”
Salhi notes that “strategic pre-emption” is long central to American policy in the Middle East, citing Rapid Deployment Forces during the Carter Administration, Dual Containment under Clinton, Pre-emptive Doctrine under George W. Bush. Polices, he holds, which: “have been instrumental in maintaining hegemony in the region”, avoiding threats to U.S interests, or to those of Israel,Turkey and the Gulf States.
After the 1998 US-UK Christmas bombing of Baghdad drew world-wide criticism, Salhi points out that the often daily (illegal) bombing of Iraq by the two countries was stepped up, with often daily sorties, “using the latest technology” destroying what minimal economic infrastructure remained: “under the pretext that they represented future threats.” It was he contends, the “quiet war”, an ongoing tragedy little noticed by the world.
The ground was – literally – being prepared for invasion, the trigger finger ever itchier, any excuse sought. George W. Bush would later explain that invading Iraq was necessary: “ to advance freedom in the greater Middle East ” (Emphasis mine.)
11th September 2001 arguably gave the excuse to release the safety catches. On 20th September 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Bush: “ recommending the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even if no direct link to the 9/11 attack were found.” Time to redeem American: “supremacy in global politics (and for) regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
Michael Ledeen, foreign policy expert, another neo-con minded Fox News commentator, alleged to be a “strong admirer” of Niccolo Machiavelli, regarded 1991’s Desert Storm attack on Iraq as a woeful missed chance states Salhi. He notes Ledeen’s view that driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait was wholly inadequate. Strategy should have been: “regime change in Baghdad” (as) “one piece in an overall mission”, which should have been: “one battle against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.”
Addressing “The Syrian Threat”, Professor Salhi reminds of the U.S. Congress 2004 “Syria Accountability Act” which considerably financially weakened Syria’s fragile economy, with further aims clearly paving the way to regime change.
That achieved: “the United States will have completed its final stage of encircling Iran. This would further tip the region’s balance of power in favour of Israel and ultimately open new doors” for the U.S. “active involvement in toppling the Iranian regime.” (...)
Afghanistan is just a side gig, perhaps simply an opportunity to wage war even if it's strategically useless. The "revenge war against 911" narrative needs the US to go in Afghanistan : if you only attack Iraq, every one knows it's unjustified because there's no Al Qaeda or Bin
Alright. By proposing monochrome, sub-pixels are no more so there is only a third as many physical "pixels". But even then the screen's power use is the biggest factor, in this though experiment.
That not so much a trend as an habit some people might have. If you used your desktop PC 12 years ago to play music, you likely had all your digital music (say 20 to 40GB) in a folder on your PC, you thus had access to your entire collection every time (that you were at home and using the PC). A completely unremarkable PC was needed.
Storing an entire book is as trivial as storing a song, thus people used to storing 5000-10000 songs on a low end or outdated PC may expect to store all of their e-books on an e-book - whether you have 12, 100 or 2500 ones.
Thanks. That is described in TFA but god knows who reads it.
The frustration really is an annoyance because people will want to see it as a semi-dedicated device (small tablet that reads books) and for that they typically want to use the software that comes with it. Going online to install some software is some kind of a barrier. With smartphones most people use the default browser, the default music player, the default SMS software. If they install apps at all it's likely so as to actually do something else.
Remember the Game Boy? It did cost a bit more but it was cheap. Ebooks - the devices - are the closest things to the original Game Boy, i.e. black and white, made for prolonged offline use and a very long battery life for cheap. That's like an extension of 80s tech.
Turns out I don't really need or want a science-fiction device, which comes with the wrong sort of science-fiction too (Brave New World, panopticon dystopia etc.) I would want to see a modern "game boy" with D-pad and buttons on the bottom, high res monochrome LCD with touch (black on amber) or OLED, such as 800x1280 or 768x1024 - 1200x1600 or 1280x1280 etc. and lastly fuck networking, do only USB file transfers (or SD) and Bluetooth 4.x. Have a bluetooth USB module included in the box, because Bluetooth is rare enough on PC.
Less than $100, or less than $80 and give me a week battery life. A volume know instead of buttons because, let's have something different and nicer to use. The thing it is not is "app store" friendly. Why not sell software on carts (e.g. a non-action game collection, a map of a whole country or Europe, a scrabble game with multiple languages and dictionaries etc.)
A TV analogy : what, you expected to get a cheap TV and change channels? If you want to change channels, you should expect that you have to get a high end TV, not a barrel scrapping one.
Where that analogy fails : if there's a $200 Amazon tablet, you can bet the same software limitation is still in.
First tablet review I'm skimming through without even knowing what the size of the thing is. Only on the very bottom of the page you get a hint about the size, in "related articles" : it's a 6". Even following the link, it's a mystery as what's the display resolution.
Cloud cities on other planets might be possible, if enormously expensive. (Avoid Jupiter). We might see them after the US-Russia tunnel/bridge, the dam on the Mediterranean and the giant mirror of death space station that can cook people with reflected sunlight.
The poor need communication, weather reports and satellite TV too (ok satellite TV is full of crap lol but it's not like 3rd world rural poors have something else)
There was a man called Gadhafi that set up some panafrican fund that led up to the first African-operated satellite, which made satellite comms vastly cheaper. But a foreign policy independant of that of the United States isn't to be tolerated, so the US decided to fight a civil war with death from above at a time convenient to get away with it. I don't care if the US goes to Mars or not. There's overlap between space industry and the war machine (e.g. Boeing). Well, I guess if the US spends corporate welfare on space missions rather than a rain down of missiles on brown people so that they kill each other, that would be better.
Why build electricity infrastructure when we have oil lamps? Because electrical lighting will be cheaper and safer, and tons of money were wasted on candles and piping lighting gas across town. Or so that there will be less many theater fires.
Researching travel to Mars? You might have a few useful side results but what it will really enable is more travel to Mars. Things like better solar panels, fuel cells, materials etc. are already researched because they're useful on their own.
Never heard of McBaguette and McCamembert, although they universally server beer. It's mostly about Big Mac, cheeseburgers, the bacon burger, chicken nuggets, cardboard fries and so on.
One day we'll finally go back to Windows 3.1. It has both the structure found in menu and grid layout.
In my experience text is getting bigger, on websites or as an egregious example Firefox's setting page or "tab recovery" page. As I'm not buying new hardware every month like a mobile computer with a 1080p 13" display. Hurts my eyes and makes me scroll. I find it easier to read a web 1.0 page such as wikipedia than stuff like medium.com but with even bigger text if that wasn't enough.
Face it this is only to be considered if you have fiber at home, because that's where the latency is lowest. Or perhaps some cable deployments. You even have to consider monitor latency, and wired ethernet vs wifi. Consumer will use the laggy TV without turning off or tweaking processing, and will rarely run an ethernet cable from TV to router, unless they're within 20 cm from each other : that's one weakness of the plan.
Really if the conditions are met that seems a fine and neat system. It eliminates the need for an overpowered PC, and the need for Windows. Living in a country that is less crooked than the USA, fiber is deployed in new buildings or retrofitted big enough buildings (otherwise, you're fucked). Will take 10 to 20 years to get linked to fiber that's lies two meters from the building in the sewage system, but it does happen. You can game even if you don't have a PC and don't have a console : in very small apartments that's nifty.
The DRM does not strike me as particularly bad, because it is about the same deal as Steam or Google's app store or downloads on the latest consoles : everything you have is tied to an account and you're spied on. I hate that regardless if the game is local or not. The only real way out is to use an offline Windows PC (running either Windows 98, XP, Vista or 7) or older game consoles (with games that don't need to download patches for critical bug fixes)
I did or witnessed a signature transaction exactly once in my life, and that was for buying duty-free in the small moutain nation. The cashier didn't have a list of 50 million printed signatures to check against or something. It was funny and unexpected. Here in France you now have adults that only know chip and pin for a good reason : there was chip and pin before they were born.
In fact if you're writing a signature and relying on that, why not write a cheque. That used to be very common, requires a pen but does not require a modem and power.
Anyway 90% of the debate is "we're using to doing things that way" and of course the way I've been doing things is the better, and you're weird if you think differently.
Slashdot Mirror
a "serial terminal" is not that hard to come by, you only need a null modem cable or USB-to-serial and some terminal software (came with Windows 3.1 and 95)
There are likely ways around that but before I elaborate on it, let's say I've had weird regressions with my nvidia card support recently. It's a geforce 7 woefully outdated but that I like to use still it's still as powerful as when I got it (it is the same tech as the Playstation 3 GPU, with half the computing units but same fillrate and bandwith, and a hard to beat 32 watt TDP)
With the "nouveau" driver you've had to boot with the "nomodeset" kernel option (or alternatively one that disables nouveau 3D acceleration), this has been a big enough issue that it has been on the short Linux Mint release notes every six monthes.
1+ year ago I could still run nouveau with 3D acceleration (was on Mint 16 past its due date) and now it's fucked. But you might able to run nouveau in such a "degraded" state - still fine for e.g. playing an unaccelerated 720p H264 video in full screen. From that state - or if you could not get there - try to run Xorg with the VESA driver (is it called vesa or vesafb) : every card can run in fucking VESA, or should be able to.
Or find an old PCI card (ATI Rage Pro PCI works fine for instance, any shit PCI 1MB card can give you text mode or 800x600 16bit)
Fast forward to the state of the art Ubuntu 14.04 compatible : both 304 driver and nouveau driver sucked (304 driver lacks resolutions/refresh rates I would want to use), but it took a third option I've never thought of trying : the 173 driver (i.e. even more "legacy" that the 304 one). Had to run the older 3.13 kernel, then beat the PC into submission so it would boot the 3.13 kernel by default. Then a "sudo nvidia-xconfig" later, I'm set. But Steam refuses to run because it has a hard check for 304 or later driver, which I had long forgotten about. So I can't use it to run a 15 years old game (Counter Strike 1.6)
So, I ought to be modded down because I run the wrong hardware too! BTW nevermind the "superior" linux driver support : I'm sure the graphics card can work properly with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista and 7.
In particular it is dumb that a linux DE mandates 3D acceleration, given how brittle and slow it can be and given that linux is often installed on random old computers.
There may be some 2D fallback, but then it doesn't count as it isn't the same desktop. Or fast software opengl (llvmpipe) which again doesn't count because it uses up all CPU, for a result of still slow.
can't
Well I've checked and it seems three z13 CPU share 480MB L4, and one CPU ("Storage Controller") can have 480MB to its own.
Three full POWER8 would have 128MB L4 each, or 384MB if you add them up.
You can add up cache figures like that but it seems suprisingly close.
Let's consider the dictator of Belarus. The US doesn't support the regime (e.g. with weapons, flow of money from Wall Street etc.) nor wants to kill or remove the dictator. That's because nobody gives a shit about that country and it has a neighbour a bit too big military and vocal, but there is no dichotomy.
I like this one
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...
(...)
Before his next appearance on Fox, Kristol could do worse than peruse Professor Hamoud Salhi’s address, presented at the Center for Contemporary Conflict, of the (U.S.) Naval Postgraduate School in June 2004.(iii pdf) It is entitled: “Syria’s Threat to America’s National Interest.” It is arguably even more pertinent now – and another reminder of how long Syria has been in U.S. sights.
He opens: “Syria’s threat to America’s national interest in the Middle East can only be understood in the context of U.S. plans to reconfigure the Middle East. Knowing now that the motive for invading Iraq was strategic, taking over Syria would give the United States further strategic depth in the region tipping the balance of power (even more) in favour of the United States regional allies, Israel and Turkey.”
Salhi notes that “strategic pre-emption” is long central to American policy in the Middle East, citing Rapid Deployment Forces during the Carter Administration, Dual Containment under Clinton, Pre-emptive Doctrine under George W. Bush. Polices, he holds, which: “have been instrumental in maintaining hegemony in the region”, avoiding threats to U.S interests, or to those of Israel,Turkey and the Gulf States.
After the 1998 US-UK Christmas bombing of Baghdad drew world-wide criticism, Salhi points out that the often daily (illegal) bombing of Iraq by the two countries was stepped up, with often daily sorties, “using the latest technology” destroying what minimal economic infrastructure remained: “under the pretext that they represented future threats.” It was he contends, the “quiet war”, an ongoing tragedy little noticed by the world.
The ground was – literally – being prepared for invasion, the trigger finger ever itchier, any excuse sought. George W. Bush would later explain that invading Iraq was necessary: “ to advance freedom in the greater Middle East ” (Emphasis mine.)
11th September 2001 arguably gave the excuse to release the safety catches. On 20th September 2001 PNAC sent a letter to Bush: “ recommending the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even if no direct link to the 9/11 attack were found.” Time to redeem American: “supremacy in global politics (and for) regime changes in Iraq, Iran and Syria.”
Michael Ledeen, foreign policy expert, another neo-con minded Fox News commentator, alleged to be a “strong admirer” of Niccolo Machiavelli, regarded 1991’s Desert Storm attack on Iraq as a woeful missed chance states Salhi. He notes Ledeen’s view that driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait was wholly inadequate. Strategy should have been: “regime change in Baghdad” (as) “one piece in an overall mission”, which should have been: “one battle against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.”
Addressing “The Syrian Threat”, Professor Salhi reminds of the U.S. Congress 2004 “Syria Accountability Act” which considerably financially weakened Syria’s fragile economy, with further aims clearly paving the way to regime change.
That achieved: “the United States will have completed its final stage of encircling Iran. This would further tip the region’s balance of power in favour of Israel and ultimately open new doors” for the U.S. “active involvement in toppling the Iranian regime.”
(...)
Afghanistan is just a side gig, perhaps simply an opportunity to wage war even if it's strategically useless. The "revenge war against 911" narrative needs the US to go in Afghanistan : if you only attack Iraq, every one knows it's unjustified because there's no Al Qaeda or Bin
Alright.
By proposing monochrome, sub-pixels are no more so there is only a third as many physical "pixels".
But even then the screen's power use is the biggest factor, in this though experiment.
Well the "correct" course of action was to stay on Windows 98SE, wait for XP SP1. If you didn't mind being on Win 9x.
The equivalent would be stay on XP, wait for 7 SP1 (Vista SP2 an option too) ; stay on Windows 7, wait for Windows "10.1" (or Windows 8.1.1)
And IBM has made external memory controllers with 16MB L4 cache in each of them, called "Centaur".
That not so much a trend as an habit some people might have.
If you used your desktop PC 12 years ago to play music, you likely had all your digital music (say 20 to 40GB) in a folder on your PC, you thus had access to your entire collection every time (that you were at home and using the PC).
A completely unremarkable PC was needed.
Storing an entire book is as trivial as storing a song, thus people used to storing 5000-10000 songs on a low end or outdated PC may expect to store all of their e-books on an e-book - whether you have 12, 100 or 2500 ones.
Thanks. That is described in TFA but god knows who reads it.
The frustration really is an annoyance because people will want to see it as a semi-dedicated device (small tablet that reads books) and for that they typically want to use the software that comes with it. Going online to install some software is some kind of a barrier.
With smartphones most people use the default browser, the default music player, the default SMS software. If they install apps at all it's likely so as to actually do something else.
Remember the Game Boy? It did cost a bit more but it was cheap.
Ebooks - the devices - are the closest things to the original Game Boy, i.e. black and white, made for prolonged offline use and a very long battery life for cheap. That's like an extension of 80s tech.
Turns out I don't really need or want a science-fiction device, which comes with the wrong sort of science-fiction too (Brave New World, panopticon dystopia etc.)
I would want to see a modern "game boy" with D-pad and buttons on the bottom, high res monochrome LCD with touch (black on amber) or OLED, such as 800x1280 or 768x1024 - 1200x1600 or 1280x1280 etc. and lastly fuck networking, do only USB file transfers (or SD) and Bluetooth 4.x. Have a bluetooth USB module included in the box, because Bluetooth is rare enough on PC.
Less than $100, or less than $80 and give me a week battery life. A volume know instead of buttons because, let's have something different and nicer to use. The thing it is not is "app store" friendly. Why not sell software on carts (e.g. a non-action game collection, a map of a whole country or Europe, a scrabble game with multiple languages and dictionaries etc.)
A TV analogy : what, you expected to get a cheap TV and change channels? If you want to change channels, you should expect that you have to get a high end TV, not a barrel scrapping one.
Where that analogy fails : if there's a $200 Amazon tablet, you can bet the same software limitation is still in.
First tablet review I'm skimming through without even knowing what the size of the thing is.
Only on the very bottom of the page you get a hint about the size, in "related articles" : it's a 6". Even following the link, it's a mystery as what's the display resolution.
Is it like begging in the streets? which musicians still do.
Cloud cities on other planets might be possible, if enormously expensive. (Avoid Jupiter). We might see them after the US-Russia tunnel/bridge, the dam on the Mediterranean and the giant mirror of death space station that can cook people with reflected sunlight.
You can land there, but bring with you a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a chainsaw etc. and thousand of ammo crates and medical supplies just to be sure.
The poor need communication, weather reports and satellite TV too (ok satellite TV is full of crap lol but it's not like 3rd world rural poors have something else)
There was a man called Gadhafi that set up some panafrican fund that led up to the first African-operated satellite, which made satellite comms vastly cheaper. But a foreign policy independant of that of the United States isn't to be tolerated, so the US decided to fight a civil war with death from above at a time convenient to get away with it.
I don't care if the US goes to Mars or not.
There's overlap between space industry and the war machine (e.g. Boeing). Well, I guess if the US spends corporate welfare on space missions rather than a rain down of missiles on brown people so that they kill each other, that would be better.
Why build electricity infrastructure when we have oil lamps? Because electrical lighting will be cheaper and safer, and tons of money were wasted on candles and piping lighting gas across town. Or so that there will be less many theater fires.
Researching travel to Mars?
You might have a few useful side results but what it will really enable is more travel to Mars.
Things like better solar panels, fuel cells, materials etc. are already researched because they're useful on their own.
Really weird, it should have been obvious that "entrée" is the same word as "entry".
Never heard of McBaguette and McCamembert, although they universally server beer. It's mostly about Big Mac, cheeseburgers, the bacon burger, chicken nuggets, cardboard fries and so on.
One day we'll finally go back to Windows 3.1. It has both the structure found in menu and grid layout.
In my experience text is getting bigger, on websites or as an egregious example Firefox's setting page or "tab recovery" page. As I'm not buying new hardware every month like a mobile computer with a 1080p 13" display.
Hurts my eyes and makes me scroll. I find it easier to read a web 1.0 page such as wikipedia than stuff like medium.com but with even bigger text if that wasn't enough.
Face it this is only to be considered if you have fiber at home, because that's where the latency is lowest. Or perhaps some cable deployments.
You even have to consider monitor latency, and wired ethernet vs wifi. Consumer will use the laggy TV without turning off or tweaking processing, and will rarely run an ethernet cable from TV to router, unless they're within 20 cm from each other : that's one weakness of the plan.
Really if the conditions are met that seems a fine and neat system. It eliminates the need for an overpowered PC, and the need for Windows.
Living in a country that is less crooked than the USA, fiber is deployed in new buildings or retrofitted big enough buildings (otherwise, you're fucked). Will take 10 to 20 years to get linked to fiber that's lies two meters from the building in the sewage system, but it does happen.
You can game even if you don't have a PC and don't have a console : in very small apartments that's nifty.
The DRM does not strike me as particularly bad, because it is about the same deal as Steam or Google's app store or downloads on the latest consoles : everything you have is tied to an account and you're spied on. I hate that regardless if the game is local or not.
The only real way out is to use an offline Windows PC (running either Windows 98, XP, Vista or 7) or older game consoles (with games that don't need to download patches for critical bug fixes)
I did or witnessed a signature transaction exactly once in my life, and that was for buying duty-free in the small moutain nation. The cashier didn't have a list of 50 million printed signatures to check against or something. It was funny and unexpected.
Here in France you now have adults that only know chip and pin for a good reason : there was chip and pin before they were born.
In fact if you're writing a signature and relying on that, why not write a cheque. That used to be very common, requires a pen but does not require a modem and power.
Anyway 90% of the debate is "we're using to doing things that way" and of course the way I've been doing things is the better, and you're weird if you think differently.