Back in the day (late 70's...yikes) we built a home model RCA Cosmac Elf. You could actually get the schematics, etc. (I think in a Popular Electronics mag), without having to buy the system, so my buddy and I built our own version of this beast. Those were the days, 2 banks (8 and 8) of SPDT toggle switches arranged as BCH (binary coded hex), with up being 1 and down being 0, and a momentary push-button INPUT. 256 bytes of RAM. The feeling of joy when we wrote a machine code to make an LED blink at a specified rate was amazing. Also amaaaazing was how quickly you began to think in BCH when that was how you had to program! Then later came such beauties as the KIM 1, the SYM 1, Ohio Scientific, Altair, Imsai, and much later Coleco, Adam, Wizard. Then power of power came VIC 20, Atari, C64, C128, and the glorious Amigas, A1000, A500, A2000, A3000, and A4000. My present system (apart from the PIV 3.2GHz 2GB RAM laptops, PIII and PIV servers in my front room) that I love most is an A4000 with a 68060 accelerator, Newtek Toaster/Flyer, vectorscope, dual TBCs, that I use for NLE. Some fun!
Is it just me, or is it getting rather bizarre around here lately, with what passes for breaking news? Editors, please don't forget we are/. for cripes sake! We are the movers, we are the leading bleeding edgers, we know things. Please, please start editing again, and stop releasing crap!
I think many manufacturers miss the point that most people won't want full locomotion in a VR environment. Yes, many environments, such as rescue training, will require full locomotion, but most couch potatoes in a VR game or movie, won't want to exert the energy required to do full locomotion. I personally would enjoy the physical exertion of a VR bike ride across the planet Mars, for instance, as I already average 40 kM a day on a non-VR bike, but most of my friends would much prefer being taken along for a ride in a powered vehicle.
I find the idea of private tech schools to be abhorant and I find it equally abhorant that our federal (Canadian) government so willingly supports them. Federal job creation schemes will pay up to 2/3 of a $20,000.00 tuition plan for a student to attend a private school, because their programs are typically only nine months long. The bean counter feds see this as meaning the students will get into the job force quickly, but they fail to see that the student does NOT get a job. The same federal department will not pay one cent for a person to attend a 3 year program at an accredited institution (where the tuition is typically less than for a private school, for the full 3 year program!), where the student takes longer to get into the job force, but is pretty well guaranteed a job. This makes me want to scream.
I have a 3 year technology diploma, but a few years ago I was unemployed for several months, and entered a private school for some "upgrading". What a farce. Basically these schools guarantee that if you pay the tuition, and attend the correct number of classes, you WILL get a "technology" diploma. They DO NOT guarantee certification, etc. If you are smart enough, and can hold enough useless data in your brain for long enough, they can even forcefeed some students enough facts to pass those hilarious "certification" multiple choice "exams" private industry uses. Not meaning to belittle them, but I was in class with people who, just a few weeks ago, were hair dressers, taxi/truck drivers, waiters, secretarties, etc. These people were assured (and they beleived), that in just 9 short months they would magically become computer "specialists", and they could compete with me for jobs. That's pretty amazing, when you realize that I had a 3 year technology program, 2 years of university, and over 20 years of work experience under my belt. Because of these outright lies and misrepresentations, I for one am happy to see most of the private "technical" schools disappear.
The reason I'vd found for this is quite simply that a piece of software can't possibly report correctly on a hardware problem, especially an intermittant one ( a klingon!). It's self defeating to expect software to find a problem with hardware. That's NOT to say that software testers don't have their place; they are great for burn-ins and torture tests.
I will most often have found and fixed a problem long before a diagnostic is ready to report. And if it is an extremely hard or intermittant problem, the diagnostics are not going to help anyway! I've found even harware-based diagnostics (you know those units that plug in to an ISA/EISA/PCI/whatever slot), to be ineffective as well; they work great when the hardware is fine, but fall over without a useful result when it's not. Think about it. As some others have said here, nothing beats the old noggin' as the best diagnostic software available (I guess we'd have to call it "wetware" though!).
The article does not mention that the real reason impact printers are still used so much by banks and other businesses is to produce multi-copy forms. Yes, you can print several copies of a page on a laser or inkjet, but there is no way to get them to feed tractor multi-parts forms!
Anyone else notice that SCO's logo looks like a certain mouse looking at a globe. I mean the blue section looks like the back of the mouse's head, looking at a red globe. Is it just me, or does anyone else see this?
The age of the conquest of space will be an age of men
and machines probing far beyond our Earth. And just as some machines will
probe deeply into space, others will probe the men who will
travel in space. Yet, put to the ultimate test, no amount of machinery
will be ever able to determine the measure of a man's inner
strength.
I can't beleive that in this day and age, people are still using the
word men to mean humans. What about women in space?
The only way a computer can exist that a good hacker can't find is one that is turned off, unplugged, put back in it's box, and hidden under tha back stairs. Sure, it's obscure, and secure, but it doesn't do much!
This is something I've beleived for a long time. Security through obscurity (i.e. preventing reserach in areas that may be dangerous), just does not work.
OK. I'm sorry I bit you. I will doublr (er...double) check from now on before I hit the submit button. That little discussion about infinity was fun while it lasted!
Think these people ever heard of an outlet adapter? You know, the little thingy you screw in a light bulb socket that has two AC outlets, one on each side, and a light socket between. If they had used one of those, no "hacking" would be required!
You're bounding the sets again. An infinite universe has the set of infinite, which contains everything, including the monkeys banging out Shakespeare. Talking about infinity within a bounded set, is not the same as talking about infinity.
Remember it is exactly this concept of infinity that forced the early cosmologists to reject an infinite universe, because of the dark night sky paradox. (In a truly infinite universe with an infinite number of stars, that had existed for an infinite time, the night would be blazing with light because every direction you looked, would intersect a star).
"We're more interested in getting the stories out quickly than we are in making sure every post passes the white glove test."
direct quote from the FAQ
and I do know how to spell infinite, but replied without previewing...my face is red!
So is there really a bunch of you trolls whose only job is to jump on spelling errors. Reply again if you want to talk about the concept of infinity, otherwise, piss off!
Yes these are valid points, except that you are talking about a specific set (even number set), having an infinite number of items (the actual even numbers). But in a truly infinite universe, there is an infinite number of sets with infinite items in each, so therefor you can and will find anything you can think of! And an infinite number of monkeys will keep typing 's' forever, but an equal infinite number will produce the works of Shakespeare in correct chronilogical order, over and over again, forever. Weird!
An infinate number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time will produce the complete works of Shakespeare in the correct order! It is used to help people to gain some concept of infinity. In a universe that is infinite in space and time, anything can and will happen. An amazing concept when you think about it!
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if your project lead reads /. ?
Back in the day (late 70's...yikes) we built a home model RCA Cosmac Elf. You could actually get the schematics, etc. (I think in a Popular Electronics mag), without having to buy the system, so my buddy and I built our own version of this beast. Those were the days, 2 banks (8 and 8) of SPDT toggle switches arranged as BCH (binary coded hex), with up being 1 and down being 0, and a momentary push-button INPUT. 256 bytes of RAM. The feeling of joy when we wrote a machine code to make an LED blink at a specified rate was amazing. Also amaaaazing was how quickly you began to think in BCH when that was how you had to program! Then later came such beauties as the KIM 1, the SYM 1, Ohio Scientific, Altair, Imsai, and much later Coleco, Adam, Wizard. Then power of power came VIC 20, Atari, C64, C128, and the glorious Amigas, A1000, A500, A2000, A3000, and A4000. My present system (apart from the PIV 3.2GHz 2GB RAM laptops, PIII and PIV servers in my front room) that I love most is an A4000 with a 68060 accelerator, Newtek Toaster/Flyer, vectorscope, dual TBCs, that I use for NLE. Some fun!
Is it just me, or is it getting rather bizarre around here lately, with what passes for breaking news? Editors, please don't forget we are /. for cripes sake! We are the movers, we are the leading bleeding edgers, we know things. Please, please start editing again, and stop releasing crap!
Yeah the people that make the Swiss Army Knives, also make an amazing bag: http://www.ebags.com/victorinox/precision_gear_lap top_pak/product_detail/index.cfm?modelid=14780
I think many manufacturers miss the point that most people won't want full locomotion in a VR environment. Yes, many environments, such as rescue training, will require full locomotion, but most couch potatoes in a VR game or movie, won't want to exert the energy required to do full locomotion. I personally would enjoy the physical exertion of a VR bike ride across the planet Mars, for instance, as I already average 40 kM a day on a non-VR bike, but most of my friends would much prefer being taken along for a ride in a powered vehicle.
I find the idea of private tech schools to be abhorant and I find it equally abhorant that our federal (Canadian) government so willingly supports them. Federal job creation schemes will pay up to 2/3 of a $20,000.00 tuition plan for a student to attend a private school, because their programs are typically only nine months long. The bean counter feds see this as meaning the students will get into the job force quickly, but they fail to see that the student does NOT get a job. The same federal department will not pay one cent for a person to attend a 3 year program at an accredited institution (where the tuition is typically less than for a private school, for the full 3 year program!), where the student takes longer to get into the job force, but is pretty well guaranteed a job. This makes me want to scream.
I have a 3 year technology diploma, but a few years ago I was unemployed for several months, and entered a private school for some "upgrading". What a farce. Basically these schools guarantee that if you pay the tuition, and attend the correct number of classes, you WILL get a "technology" diploma. They DO NOT guarantee certification, etc. If you are smart enough, and can hold enough useless data in your brain for long enough, they can even forcefeed some students enough facts to pass those hilarious "certification" multiple choice "exams" private industry uses. Not meaning to belittle them, but I was in class with people who, just a few weeks ago, were hair dressers, taxi/truck drivers, waiters, secretarties, etc. These people were assured (and they beleived), that in just 9 short months they would magically become computer "specialists", and they could compete with me for jobs. That's pretty amazing, when you realize that I had a 3 year technology program, 2 years of university, and over 20 years of work experience under my belt. Because of these outright lies and misrepresentations, I for one am happy to see most of the private "technical" schools disappear.
The reason I'vd found for this is quite simply that a piece of software can't possibly report correctly on a hardware problem, especially an intermittant one ( a klingon!). It's self defeating to expect software to find a problem with hardware. That's NOT to say that software testers don't have their place; they are great for burn-ins and torture tests.
I will most often have found and fixed a problem long before a diagnostic is ready to report. And if it is an extremely hard or intermittant problem, the diagnostics are not going to help anyway! I've found even harware-based diagnostics (you know those units that plug in to an ISA/EISA/PCI/whatever slot), to be ineffective as well; they work great when the hardware is fine, but fall over without a useful result when it's not. Think about it. As some others have said here, nothing beats the old noggin' as the best diagnostic software available (I guess we'd have to call it "wetware" though!).
It's already in the works.k e2.asp
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0401/04012903canondv
And, if I'm not mistaken, was covered here a while ago!
The article does not mention that the real reason impact printers are still used so much by banks and other businesses is to produce multi-copy forms. Yes, you can print several copies of a page on a laser or inkjet, but there is no way to get them to feed tractor multi-parts forms!
Anyone else notice that SCO's logo looks like a certain mouse looking at a globe. I mean the blue section looks like the back of the mouse's head, looking at a red globe. Is it just me, or does anyone else see this?
I can't beleive that in this day and age, people are still using the word men to mean humans. What about women in space?
The only way a computer can exist that a good hacker can't find is one that is turned off, unplugged, put back in it's box, and hidden under tha back stairs. Sure, it's obscure, and secure, but it doesn't do much!
This is something I've beleived for a long time. Security through obscurity (i.e. preventing reserach in areas that may be dangerous), just does not work.
I already LOVE the Arrogant Worms!
Will now look for Moxy Fruvous and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie
I can see the headlines now:
"Slashdot sued for publishing copyrighted lyrics on its web site"
OK. I'm sorry I bit you. I will doublr (er...double) check from now on before I hit the submit button. That little discussion about infinity was fun while it lasted!
Think these people ever heard of an outlet adapter? You know, the little thingy you screw in a light bulb socket that has two AC outlets, one on each side, and a light socket between. If they had used one of those, no "hacking" would be required!
You're bounding the sets again. An infinite universe has the set of infinite, which contains everything, including the monkeys banging out Shakespeare. Talking about infinity within a bounded set, is not the same as talking about infinity. Remember it is exactly this concept of infinity that forced the early cosmologists to reject an infinite universe, because of the dark night sky paradox. (In a truly infinite universe with an infinite number of stars, that had existed for an infinite time, the night would be blazing with light because every direction you looked, would intersect a star).
"We're more interested in getting the stories out quickly than we are in making sure every post passes the white glove test." direct quote from the FAQ and I do know how to spell infinite, but replied without previewing...my face is red! So is there really a bunch of you trolls whose only job is to jump on spelling errors. Reply again if you want to talk about the concept of infinity, otherwise, piss off!
Yes these are valid points, except that you are talking about a specific set (even number set), having an infinite number of items (the actual even numbers). But in a truly infinite universe, there is an infinite number of sets with infinite items in each, so therefor you can and will find anything you can think of! And an infinite number of monkeys will keep typing 's' forever, but an equal infinite number will produce the works of Shakespeare in correct chronilogical order, over and over again, forever. Weird!
Actually if you have an infinate number of an infinate variety of things, then you will have everything. See how much fun infinity can be.
If I'm not mistaken the original idea was:
An infinate number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time will produce the complete works of Shakespeare in the correct order! It is used to help people to gain some concept of infinity. In a universe that is infinite in space and time, anything can and will happen. An amazing concept when you think about it!
...looking for a comet that does not seem to be there... uhhh...is it moving towrds us...or away????