True, most episodes of Star Trek (and a lot of other space sci-fi shows that involve alien races) have a universal translator, and those translators not only transform the words, but also the mouths speaking them, into perfect gramatically correct English.
Since this IS Slashdot, I'd be remiss in reminding you of the one episode of one Star Trek show that actually showed how the universal translator works on a brand new language: DS9 S2 E10, Sanctuary. This actually showed the universal translator needing a significant sample from the other race before it stated translating bits and pieces, like common words.
The other episode about learning languages, TNG S5 E02, Darmok, shows a big weakness of the universal translator... that of a race that doesn't follow similar grammar rules to existing Earth languages, but speaks in a totally different fashion (in this case, concepts and events relevant to that races own history.) Of course, this is a HORRIBLE example, as how does this race communicate their own history to their young? Or even start to talk! But it does show the good point that not all languages follow the same grammar rules as we on Earth have standardized on.
Also useful to cut down on the weight of k-12 backpacks and bookbags. For the time being, we can't get rid of the paper and pencil/pen for homework assignments, but we could try to cut back from 5-6 5-pound books at a time down to a 1-pound portable device.
There are school districts out there that made policies for mandatory laptops, so there is precedent for being able to assign one of these to each student AND to keep spares available in case of breakage.
Can you point me to the nearest shop that sells a 15-mile keyboard, video, and mouse cable, that will stretch all the way across town... and by the way, also one that won't run through people's backyards?...Thought not.
And if one layer of tape don't work... use two. or three. The thicker, the better.
Personally at home, I have an AC in my room with a freakin bright green LED displaying the temperature and functional mode, and also a rechargable mouse with a bright green battery.
I have a sock hanging over the AC, and an old Best Buy Receipt folded in half, then half again over the mouse (happens to be the receipt for the mouse...)
Those work wonders. Really. Now the noise of the AC could use some work, but I don't have a white noise generator, or a sound nullifier (or, for those who would get the reference, a cone of silence.)
...if only they had more than one screen onscreen at the same time, but limited to 4 screens at most. Yes, that would be confusing, but it adds to the watcher's experience to yell "Watch out behind you!" when you KNOW its not going to be any good.
Of course, sound would become bad... really bad. So, 1 screen it is... but whose? The winners, or one of the losers?
Now, if I remember proiperly, USB 2.0 has a speed near 400 Mbps. This thing has a max network speed of 100 Mbps.
Sigh... If only they had included a 1Gbps port on this thing, I'd get somewhere near the speed I want. And yes, I do have a Gigabit network running at home, and only a few laptops aren't equipped with Gig cards. And yes, it does make a speed difference.
Why did they make this a hardware switch? Don't people learn through product testing that the more movable parts the consumer has access to, the chances of any movable part being broken from being moved back and forth rises exponentially?
Shoulda been a software selection on an internal webpage, or maybe (heaven forbid, as this is another point of failure), a membrane pushbutton.
Marathon countdown: T-minus just under a year
on
Star Wars on DVD
·
· Score: 1
OK, so who's having a marathon party in just over a year, prior to the release of ROTS?
Of course, to really have the marathon party in entirety so far, you'd need ROTS to be released, in special version with restored scenes and all. Then you can watch it all, in order, with the restored scenes...
Now if only Lucas would let out a special version of the DVD's that had the original footage. I know this was done with videotapes...
The Euro currency is already officially in use in 12 countries and over the next few years more countries in Europe will adopt it as their official currency. It is also used unofficially in several other countries.
So, when are we going to start seeing countries outside of Europe using the Euro? I'd like to hear that the Euro is the default form of currency in the US, or maybe in Brazil...
The interesting thing is that Orrin Hatch loves dealing with copyright restriction bills as they refer to technology and the Internet. Just scroll down to the bottom of Slashdot's page, and just search for "hatch", and you'll see a ton of them.
I believe he voted for the Sonny Bono copyright act, which extended copyrights (especially Disney's copyright on Michael Moose) to life of author + 70 years (law argument: the cartoon character in question was made while in employ of a company. The company doesn't die. When is "life" determined?) We don't know Hatch's yea or Nea on this one, because it was a voice vote in both chambers of Senate (see Wikipedia, Sonny Bono Copyright Act).
I almost want to say use something like Netlimiter (netlimiter.com) to use for your bandwidth limiter on each computer. Have them each set a limit on the Global download/upload speeds, and that'll take care of all sorts of traffic (including BitTorrent, Kazaa, Web, and any other application running locally on your computer.)
It's only for Windows, though... and not usable as a bandwidth shaper for a single computer sharing the connection out (I know, I've tried).
As to dish pointing: Got a compass? I've only pointed a normal TV dish (both Dish Network and DirecTV), which required signals from 2 sats simultaneous.
Usually what I needed then was to get the compass for the azimuth, and get in the general area of the signal (within about 5-10 degrees.) The altitude (height of the sat in the sky): Well, the DirecTV dish had altitude markings on it, the Dish one didn't.
So, it was pretty much move slowly up and down, wiggle back and forth, wait five seconds between each adjustment, until you could find the signal. Once you were on the fringe of the signal, then you start narrowing down onto it (my first time was using the Dish Network one, and it took a good 45 minutes to close in on the signal.)
Then, with the dish that required tuning in 2 birds, you don't deal with just left-right and up-down, but you also deal with rotating the dish (so the dish is pointing up at an angle) to tune in the second bird while keeping the first bird in sight. Sometimes a real pain in the neck, because you'll lose the first signal and have to reacquire it before you can go on. Again, the dish bracket may have markings, may not.
From what I've heard about providers like DirecWay, and usually goes for any sattelite Internet provider... you have to be pointed at a single sattelite, but have to be straight on the signal, not just at a fringe.
A bit of advice, but take this with some very large grains of salt: ask a contractor if someone could let you/show you point a normal TV dish for practice someday after hours, first a normal one sattelite one, then a two sattelite one... or maybe see if there is a very friendly local who uses sattelite, and will let you on the roof to see the settings of their dish (and maybe play around adjusting it to learn how it affects the signal.)
Watch out for the one with the local, as you might get someone mad at you if you screw up and can't get it pointed right again.
I don't know how well it would work, but maybe trying Citrix Metaframe XP, or maybe having a port of a Windows Remote Desktop/Windows Terminal Services client, and having the whole Peoplesoft application published on the MetaFrame or Terminal Server.
Of course, that's assuming there is a client port for either of those for your OS. It would make it so you could reinstall/replace the client machine, and not have to install/configure Peoplesoft.
So, what do you say to 28 Days (Sandra Bullock going through Alcoholic/Drug rehab for a month) and 28 Days Later (non-Sandra Bullock pseudo-zombie movie)?
When you push something in space it doesn't stop moving unless it runs into something or you expend energy to stop it.
Actually, it does slow down (hitting interstellar gas and matter, dealing with various gravity wells with effect on it), just very very minute speed decreases. For most intents and purposes, it doesn't seem to slow significantly (it's like saying a car traveling at 60 miles an hour is slowing down at an inch an hour... doesn't seem like much, but over time...).
College campus with approx 14 buildings, spread out over a distance from each other. All buildings are home run back to a central building which serves as the fiber aggregate.
Lightning struck a tree, approx 30 feet from one building, approx 100 feet from another. The bolt spiraled down (nice bark pattern from where the bark got blown off, and the bark was smooth enough some of us used it wet as skates), dug into ground, and scattered all directions. The building 100 feet away got the most damage: The lightning went through the stone foundation, found the bundles of Cat5 that were run from offices back to that building's closet that were right near the foundation wall, and proceded to follow to both ends of that bundle, to destroy 14 network cards, 6 printer JetDirect 610N cards (not those cheasy JD boxes, I mean the actual cards HP LJ4000's have.)
It also followed the Cat5 bundles the other direction, and destroyed ports on the switch that the copper was plugged into (2 switches were there. 1 died pretty soon after, the other started glitching up after about 2 weeks on a more frequent basis.) Oddly, phone was also running along those bundles, and none of those got whacked.
Oh, and it made a nice Gauss effect on all the CRTs around, so you could see which direction the EMP burst had come from. We had fun just degaussing hose monitors (a normal degauss worked... some in closer proximity needed it a few times to clear the purple arc entirely.)
Surprisingly, the building 30 feet away had only 2 network cards die... and more surprising, the only obvous affect to all affected machines is that the network card just stopped relaying signal back to the motherboard... was still detectable, just stopped processing signal. 2 years later, those same machines still seemed to work fine, with new network cards. Everything electric in the building survived just fine, and I don't think its due to the surge protectors on most computers (I don't care, a Surge protector can only handle a small spike of power.)
How would you have handled that better? Encased the Cat5 run bundles in a metal grounded pipe instead of the PVC they were in? We had the fiber between buildings, so the "grounded" lightning didn't blow more than things it could directly reach via the ground.
This was a freak hit where it was (usually happens in the heavily wooded area half a mile away, which is another story...
We were always waiting for an "OOPS" to happen across the river at Pfizer, Electric Boat (where half the country's subs are created, in CT), or slightly downriver at Subase NLON, and get a nice gauss effect on all screens campus wide. Of course, by then with the incident that caused it, that would be one of the least of our problems.
Reason why (and I can tell you this, having just fought tooth and nail with my boss, who was buying about 75 new computers for a mid-size K12 district):
People (the layperson) associate DVD with video. When they hear they have a DVD drive in their computer, they instantly think "Oh, I watch Blockbuster movies on my computer at work? Can't have my subordinates, or the students, doing that, there's lost productivity." Instead, they go buy the (less money required, so it's cheaper) 52x CD.
They also look at numbers. "Hey, look, a 12x DVD is slower than a 52x CD-ROM, right?" No, two totally different speed scales.
And finally, they look at the amount of current usage of non-video programs on DVD in the market. Since they see none now, they don't need one, right? Only thing they don't realize is that they're keeping the same computer for the next 7 years , with no upgrading of internal components (they may think at the time of purchase that they can upgrade internals later on... but when it comes time for us to suggest it, they always refuse to budge, saying the current POS works well enough (until 2 years after it really doesn't, which is too late to perform miracles.)
And yes, K12 education is that bad... I just got hired in about 6 months ago, and they're replacing a whole bunch of Pentium 75-133's, and Powermac 5200/75's. They think anything newer (166's,/120's) are good enough to last "a couple more years." Ow.
Slashdot Mirror
Power over fiber? Hmmmmm
The book it happened in was Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
True, most episodes of Star Trek (and a lot of other space sci-fi shows that involve alien races) have a universal translator, and those translators not only transform the words, but also the mouths speaking them, into perfect gramatically correct English.
Since this IS Slashdot, I'd be remiss in reminding you of the one episode of one Star Trek show that actually showed how the universal translator works on a brand new language: DS9 S2 E10, Sanctuary. This actually showed the universal translator needing a significant sample from the other race before it stated translating bits and pieces, like common words.
The other episode about learning languages, TNG S5 E02, Darmok, shows a big weakness of the universal translator... that of a race that doesn't follow similar grammar rules to existing Earth languages, but speaks in a totally different fashion (in this case, concepts and events relevant to that races own history.) Of course, this is a HORRIBLE example, as how does this race communicate their own history to their young? Or even start to talk! But it does show the good point that not all languages follow the same grammar rules as we on Earth have standardized on.
ERP
Also useful to cut down on the weight of k-12 backpacks and bookbags. For the time being, we can't get rid of the paper and pencil/pen for homework assignments, but we could try to cut back from 5-6 5-pound books at a time down to a 1-pound portable device.
There are school districts out there that made policies for mandatory laptops, so there is precedent for being able to assign one of these to each student AND to keep spares available in case of breakage.
Or were they European? ...the real question, what is the airspeed...
BZZZ!
Ow!
OK, OK, Sor-Ree!
Mod parent up...Methinks the original poster doesn't understand what a NIC card is.
What about "hand write" don't you get...
my question: Ball point or gel pens?
Excuse me sir...
...Thought not.
Can you point me to the nearest shop that sells a 15-mile keyboard, video, and mouse cable, that will stretch all the way across town... and by the way, also one that won't run through people's backyards?
Ummm... That one was either Air Force or Department of Homeworld Security (I hate that name).
And if one layer of tape don't work...
use two. or three. The thicker, the better.
Personally at home, I have an AC in my room with a freakin bright green LED displaying the temperature and functional mode, and also a rechargable mouse with a bright green battery.
I have a sock hanging over the AC, and an old Best Buy Receipt folded in half, then half again over the mouse (happens to be the receipt for the mouse...)
Those work wonders. Really. Now the noise of the AC could use some work, but I don't have a white noise generator, or a sound nullifier (or, for those who would get the reference, a cone of silence.)
... but do you have a cellphone that works with any telco's subscribers, and has Gaim installed?
...if only they had more than one screen onscreen at the same time, but limited to 4 screens at most. Yes, that would be confusing, but it adds to the watcher's experience to yell "Watch out behind you!" when you KNOW its not going to be any good.
Of course, sound would become bad... really bad. So, 1 screen it is... but whose? The winners, or one of the losers?
Now, if I remember proiperly, USB 2.0 has a speed near 400 Mbps. This thing has a max network speed of 100 Mbps.
Sigh... If only they had included a 1Gbps port on this thing, I'd get somewhere near the speed I want. And yes, I do have a Gigabit network running at home, and only a few laptops aren't equipped with Gig cards. And yes, it does make a speed difference.
Why did they make this a hardware switch? Don't people learn through product testing that the more movable parts the consumer has access to, the chances of any movable part being broken from being moved back and forth rises exponentially?
Shoulda been a software selection on an internal webpage, or maybe (heaven forbid, as this is another point of failure), a membrane pushbutton.
OK, so who's having a marathon party in just over a year, prior to the release of ROTS?
Of course, to really have the marathon party in entirety so far, you'd need ROTS to be released, in special version with restored scenes and all. Then you can watch it all, in order, with the restored scenes...
Now if only Lucas would let out a special version of the DVD's that had the original footage. I know this was done with videotapes...
So, when are we going to start seeing countries outside of Europe using the Euro? I'd like to hear that the Euro is the default form of currency in the US, or maybe in Brazil...
The interesting thing is that Orrin Hatch loves dealing with copyright restriction bills as they refer to technology and the Internet. Just scroll down to the bottom of Slashdot's page, and just search for "hatch", and you'll see a ton of them.
I believe he voted for the Sonny Bono copyright act, which extended copyrights (especially Disney's copyright on Michael Moose) to life of author + 70 years (law argument: the cartoon character in question was made while in employ of a company. The company doesn't die. When is "life" determined?) We don't know Hatch's yea or Nea on this one, because it was a voice vote in both chambers of Senate (see Wikipedia, Sonny Bono Copyright Act).
Of course, Hatch also was interested in the Remotely destroy filetraders PC's technology. Gotta love this guy.
Anyone know if Fritz Hollings (Disney Senator) is still in Senate? He's another copyright law junkie along the same lines.
4: Throttling:
I almost want to say use something like Netlimiter (netlimiter.com) to use for your bandwidth limiter on each computer. Have them each set a limit on the Global download/upload speeds, and that'll take care of all sorts of traffic (including BitTorrent, Kazaa, Web, and any other application running locally on your computer.)
It's only for Windows, though... and not usable as a bandwidth shaper for a single computer sharing the connection out (I know, I've tried).
As to dish pointing:
Got a compass? I've only pointed a normal TV dish (both Dish Network and DirecTV), which required signals from 2 sats simultaneous.
Usually what I needed then was to get the compass for the azimuth, and get in the general area of the signal (within about 5-10 degrees.) The altitude (height of the sat in the sky): Well, the DirecTV dish had altitude markings on it, the Dish one didn't.
So, it was pretty much move slowly up and down, wiggle back and forth, wait five seconds between each adjustment, until you could find the signal. Once you were on the fringe of the signal, then you start narrowing down onto it (my first time was using the Dish Network one, and it took a good 45 minutes to close in on the signal.)
Then, with the dish that required tuning in 2 birds, you don't deal with just left-right and up-down, but you also deal with rotating the dish (so the dish is pointing up at an angle) to tune in the second bird while keeping the first bird in sight. Sometimes a real pain in the neck, because you'll lose the first signal and have to reacquire it before you can go on. Again, the dish bracket may have markings, may not.
From what I've heard about providers like DirecWay, and usually goes for any sattelite Internet provider... you have to be pointed at a single sattelite, but have to be straight on the signal, not just at a fringe.
A bit of advice, but take this with some very large grains of salt: ask a contractor if someone could let you/show you point a normal TV dish for practice someday after hours, first a normal one sattelite one, then a two sattelite one... or maybe see if there is a very friendly local who uses sattelite, and will let you on the roof to see the settings of their dish (and maybe play around adjusting it to learn how it affects the signal.)
Watch out for the one with the local, as you might get someone mad at you if you screw up and can't get it pointed right again.
I don't know how well it would work, but maybe trying Citrix Metaframe XP, or maybe having a port of a Windows Remote Desktop/Windows Terminal Services client, and having the whole Peoplesoft application published on the MetaFrame or Terminal Server.
Of course, that's assuming there is a client port for either of those for your OS. It would make it so you could reinstall/replace the client machine, and not have to install/configure Peoplesoft.
So, what do you say to 28 Days (Sandra Bullock going through Alcoholic/Drug rehab for a month) and 28 Days Later (non-Sandra Bullock pseudo-zombie movie)?
Obvious play there?
Shoulda answered that with "WHO are they going to do?"
New area for the porn industry. Anyone done experiments on how well the condom regulation can be withheld in space?
Actually, it does slow down (hitting interstellar gas and matter, dealing with various gravity wells with effect on it), just very very minute speed decreases. For most intents and purposes, it doesn't seem to slow significantly (it's like saying a car traveling at 60 miles an hour is slowing down at an inch an hour... doesn't seem like much, but over time...).
Marco?
Marco?
Marco... Marco?
Marco!
Here's one, tell me how you would fix that:
College campus with approx 14 buildings, spread out over a distance from each other. All buildings are home run back to a central building which serves as the fiber aggregate.
Lightning struck a tree, approx 30 feet from one building, approx 100 feet from another. The bolt spiraled down (nice bark pattern from where the bark got blown off, and the bark was smooth enough some of us used it wet as skates), dug into ground, and scattered all directions. The building 100 feet away got the most damage: The lightning went through the stone foundation, found the bundles of Cat5 that were run from offices back to that building's closet that were right near the foundation wall, and proceded to follow to both ends of that bundle, to destroy 14 network cards, 6 printer JetDirect 610N cards (not those cheasy JD boxes, I mean the actual cards HP LJ4000's have.)
It also followed the Cat5 bundles the other direction, and destroyed ports on the switch that the copper was plugged into (2 switches were there. 1 died pretty soon after, the other started glitching up after about 2 weeks on a more frequent basis.) Oddly, phone was also running along those bundles, and none of those got whacked.
Oh, and it made a nice Gauss effect on all the CRTs around, so you could see which direction the EMP burst had come from. We had fun just degaussing hose monitors (a normal degauss worked... some in closer proximity needed it a few times to clear the purple arc entirely.)
Surprisingly, the building 30 feet away had only 2 network cards die... and more surprising, the only obvous affect to all affected machines is that the network card just stopped relaying signal back to the motherboard... was still detectable, just stopped processing signal. 2 years later, those same machines still seemed to work fine, with new network cards. Everything electric in the building survived just fine, and I don't think its due to the surge protectors on most computers (I don't care, a Surge protector can only handle a small spike of power.)
How would you have handled that better? Encased the Cat5 run bundles in a metal grounded pipe instead of the PVC they were in? We had the fiber between buildings, so the "grounded" lightning didn't blow more than things it could directly reach via the ground.
This was a freak hit where it was (usually happens in the heavily wooded area half a mile away, which is another story...
We were always waiting for an "OOPS" to happen across the river at Pfizer, Electric Boat (where half the country's subs are created, in CT), or slightly downriver at Subase NLON, and get a nice gauss effect on all screens campus wide. Of course, by then with the incident that caused it, that would be one of the least of our problems.
Reason why (and I can tell you this, having just fought tooth and nail with my boss, who was buying about 75 new computers for a mid-size K12 district):
/120's) are good enough to last "a couple more years." Ow.
People (the layperson) associate DVD with video. When they hear they have a DVD drive in their computer, they instantly think "Oh, I watch Blockbuster movies on my computer at work? Can't have my subordinates, or the students, doing that, there's lost productivity." Instead, they go buy the (less money required, so it's cheaper) 52x CD.
They also look at numbers. "Hey, look, a 12x DVD is slower than a 52x CD-ROM, right?" No, two totally different speed scales.
And finally, they look at the amount of current usage of non-video programs on DVD in the market. Since they see none now, they don't need one, right? Only thing they don't realize is that they're keeping the same computer for the next 7 years , with no upgrading of internal components (they may think at the time of purchase that they can upgrade internals later on... but when it comes time for us to suggest it, they always refuse to budge, saying the current POS works well enough (until 2 years after it really doesn't, which is too late to perform miracles.)
And yes, K12 education is that bad... I just got hired in about 6 months ago, and they're replacing a whole bunch of Pentium 75-133's, and Powermac 5200/75's. They think anything newer (166's,