The concept of huge mechanical computers fulfilling any purpose that seems hard for us to comprehend today.
Yet huge mechanical computers for specialized use were in actual deployment in several industries, not the least of which were "fire control computers" on US and British Battle Ships and Heavy Cruisers in the pre WWII era. These were initially fairly huge mechanical beasts that were originally developed around the time of the first World War, and which were initially totally mechanical in nature. By the Second World War they were electro-mechanical (solenoids and relays and stepper motors), and were enclosed in battle hardened enclosures.
Still 1920-to-1945 is hardly 1833, and the size and complexity of such devices taxed the manufacturing capabilities of the day, and the size and complexity of the problems they could solve was probably more easily worked out on paper than set (programmed) onto the machine.
Having worked out the concepts, one wonders how far Babbage could have progressed with a large budget and a larger machine shop to build his engines. There were precious few problems to which you could apply this technology in that day. But its a chicken and egg problem. Its hard to know what computations would have been attempted had such equipment been available. The calculation problems any society tackles tend to be near the limits of the computing capabilities available to the task.
Actually this happens more than you might think. Anyone who spends a LOT of time on specific games can achieve a skill level that looks like cheating to the newbie player.
The solution to that problem is easy. Go find a better group of opponents instead of beating up on newbies.
Really good players don't enjoy waxing a newbie 100 to 0 time after time. It takes a pretty juvenile mentality to do that, and playing against the bots ends up being more fun. Many really good players will start offering tips to newbies to help build their skills. It makes game play more fun for all.
Just asking, "wow cool, how do you do that move" on the chat will get you a lesson from an honest GOOD player and a taunt or "just practice" from the cheater.
But all too often good players will spot actual cheating, and hacked clients which evade server detection, etc. The better you are at any given game the more likely you will see things which you know to be impossible. Recording movies of this (if you have the computer horsepower) will actually allow you to replay something enough times to see rockets coming out of a guys ass and going thru walls etc.
And cheaters often come in pairs. Lurk long and quiet like you are away from the machine and you will often catch them chatting about the cheat.
Want to use our device? Good, here it is all set up.
That works as long as everybody with a legitimate need can get a device (paid for by the company). In fact, I much prefer it this way, as I can simply leave that device turned off when not required to be on-duty. I don't have to hand out my personal phone number for company business. I don't have to compromise MY device by letting some pimply faced kid from IT get his mitts on it.
Down side: If the company gives you a phone they expect you to answer it 24/7.
The problem comes in with small companies who simply don't have it in their budget to get a phone or a tablet for each user, yet insist that those users monitor company mail and answer business calls. That pretty much forces the user to surrender their own device to company policy. With 47 applicants standing in line down in HR to fill your job, it gets hard so say NO.
Notice the huge over representation of Photographers in the list.
I doubt these companies have much of a market cap or are even publicly traded. It seems like some trade association got a ton of them to sign a petition without even considering the impact. They are probably simply Mom and Pop shops that every town has.
It is NOT public in incognito at the link posted in the story. Nor in Firefox Private Browsing.
If it seems so for you, its because you've some how destroyed your incognito window anonymity by logging in somewhere along the line, either in the past, or in the current session.
You can then tightly control the gateway to that subnet, manage protocols at the router, and only allow company issued devices on the secure wifi. That way the company bears the cost of the devices, and therefore gets to make all the rules and need entertain no arguments.
Most users don't need access to anything on the company servers other than email anyway, and you can route that access thru your public facing gateways, so it would be tightly controlled.
Its still not going to prevent company documents walking away. There are too many ways that can happen, bluetooth, thumb drives, microSD drives, and the rogue Dropbox, Spider Oak, Box accounts.
But it will eliminate the casual, careless, or accidental breaches, lost device worries. Then any remaining breaches fall into the categories of Intentional, Malicious, Criminal or at the very least, cause for Termination.
I'm not sure how practical it would be to take the next step and simply don't allow wifi on company network period. But I do know that this is the approach taken in some high security environments, and many government agencies. I suspect this would see a lot of push-back from workers and management at your typical business.
"On of" makes no sense, which is why it sounds wrong : because it is wrong.
"On to" (or onto) sounds fine. Because it is perfectly correct.
Your confusion is caused by your assumption that the same preposition structure would be used in dissimilar situations.
I have no clue what the technical name is for the OF following OFF. But what ever it is, it must match. Omitting it seems fine in either case, but if used it must be correct.
Unfortunately, no other provider in the area (Twin Cities) offers static IPs and permission to run servers.
I'm pretty sure Comcast serves the Twin Cities (at least some portions) and they offer static IPs and you can run servers. You need their business package, a few bucks more perhaps. I use this (not in Minnesota), and find it very stable and consistent, and they never give me any crap about what ports I open.
Not that anyone else does this, but one of the first changes I make in my browser settings is deactivating automatic spell checking. Call it a holdover from the days where leaving it on meant the top rate of entering text would be about one or two characters per second.
The performance difference is non-zero.
Well, true, it is non-zero, but nobody else runs an 8088 processor anymore either.
If this still bothers you, remember that there will be great deals in the After Christmas sales from most computer vendors. You might be able to step up to a 486 or something.
Every web browser as auto spell-check capabilities these days. Most of them correct as you type. So why should there be any misspellings on something that is managed strictly from a web interface?
Is it part of the arrogance of those electing themselves to write and editing articles on wiki that they refuse to use a spell checker, or is it that the words are simply unknown to the normal spell-check dictionaries?
I find occasional misspellings in mainstream news articles as well (and I am by no means a natural born speller).
But most maddening to me is the "they're their there" errors, and similar wrong word usage. Spell checkers offer little help in catching these, but a 6th grade education usually suffices.
Maybe the same people who wont waist there time checking they're spelling also cant be bothered to use the write word.;-)
Not to be pedantic...but labs don't run operating systems, computers do.
That's true, and pedantry is welcome. This is slashdot after all.
I knew things were off to a rocky start when the story started with this quote:
"I am a high school computer teacher and I've been put in the unique situation of designing my ideal computer lab
To be perfectly pedantic: "computer teachers" probably don't need a lab at all. Just an ssh connection to each computer, and you can program (teach) the computers what ever you want.
Why build a lab, that invariably attracts students, who always mess things up. Get a Gorilla rack and put it in the basement somewhere, but what ever you do, keep those pesky kids away.
Some have it as the first choice, but not all are so single minded as to not offer a choice like Ubuntu.
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop and log in to KDE.
Reading comprehension 101:
Offering a choice means being given a selection of desktops to to install when you are installing. Suse does it. Slackware does it. Fedora does it.
Ubuntu can't be bothered.
I find it condescending how you suggest offering "no choice" at install time is somehow protecting the new user. The new user may be years away from doing an apt-get. But they can pick from a list, because they have all been to a Restaurant in the past.
OpenSuse, Kubuntu, and several others not cloned off of Ubuntu come with KDE. Some have it as the first choice, but not all are so single minded as to not offer a choice like Ubuntu.
You don't have to go out of your way, you just have to expand your horizon beyond your little Ubuntu world.
You are correct. With the Regal's dismal city mileage, (18), driving 15000 miles per year the 5 year fuel saving would be closer to $13,500, so the recovery of his postulated $10k would come more quickly.
Of course the Regal is not a $35,000 dollar car, so the comparison would be more apt with an Acura or something approaching $35k.
And of course our gas prices today are rather low. If they go back up to $4, you recover your $10k in three years.
So I still think the lowest price model is right on the cusp of being reasonable for the average commuter who has about a 30 to 60 mile round trip commute in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
The concept of huge mechanical computers fulfilling any purpose that seems hard for us to comprehend today.
Yet huge mechanical computers for specialized use were in actual deployment in several industries, not the least of which were "fire control computers" on US and British Battle Ships and Heavy Cruisers in the pre WWII era. These were initially fairly huge mechanical beasts that were originally developed around the time of the first World War, and which were initially totally mechanical in nature. By the Second World War they were electro-mechanical (solenoids and relays and stepper motors), and were enclosed in battle hardened enclosures.
Still 1920-to-1945 is hardly 1833, and the size and complexity of such devices taxed the manufacturing capabilities of the day, and the size and complexity of the problems they could solve was probably more easily worked out on paper than set (programmed) onto the machine.
Having worked out the concepts, one wonders how far Babbage could have progressed with a large budget and a larger machine shop to build his engines. There were precious few problems to which you could apply this technology in that day. But its a chicken and egg problem. Its hard to know what computations would have been attempted had such equipment been available. The calculation problems any society tackles tend to be near the limits of the computing capabilities available to the task.
A man before his time.
Very little confidential information goes home on a carpenter's drill bit.
Wasn't misspelled idiot.
Actually this happens more than you might think. Anyone who spends a LOT of time on specific games
can achieve a skill level that looks like cheating to the newbie player.
The solution to that problem is easy. Go find a better group of opponents instead of beating up on newbies.
Really good players don't enjoy waxing a newbie 100 to 0 time after time. It takes a pretty juvenile mentality to do that,
and playing against the bots ends up being more fun. Many really good players will start offering
tips to newbies to help build their skills. It makes game play more fun for all.
Just asking, "wow cool, how do you do that move" on the chat will get you a lesson from an honest GOOD player
and a taunt or "just practice" from the cheater.
But all too often good players will spot actual cheating, and hacked clients which evade server detection, etc.
The better you are at any given game the more likely you will see things which you know to be impossible.
Recording movies of this (if you have the computer horsepower) will actually allow you to replay
something enough times to see rockets coming out of a guys ass and going thru walls etc.
And cheaters often come in pairs. Lurk long and quiet like you are away from the machine and you will
often catch them chatting about the cheat.
simply pushing the politics of Rupert Murdoch. Nor do I hate successful people.
Priceless.
Back to back, and he still didn't even see it as he wrote it.
One company I've worked with does it this way:
Want to use our device? Good, here it is all set up.
That works as long as everybody with a legitimate need can get a device (paid for by the company). In fact, I much prefer it this way, as I can simply leave that device turned off when not required to be on-duty. I don't have to hand out my personal phone number for company business.
I don't have to compromise MY device by letting some pimply faced kid from IT get his mitts on it.
Down side: If the company gives you a phone they expect you to answer it 24/7.
The problem comes in with small companies who simply don't have it in their budget to get a phone or a tablet for each user, yet insist that those users monitor company mail and answer business calls. That pretty much forces the user to surrender their own device to company policy. With 47 applicants standing in line down in HR to fill your job, it gets hard so say NO.
Americans do not "control" soft dictionaries. Tin foil much?
Set your country code and browser language appropriately and you are good to go.
google (tm) "harley davidson t-shirts" and see after the first few pages its all rip-offs.
Wow. Bike sales must be tanking if their tee-shirt spin off makes them willing to throw the internet under the bus just for a tee shirt royalty.
Do these people not understand that free advertising is worth WAY more than they earn from tee shirt sales?
Notice the huge over representation of Photographers in the list.
I doubt these companies have much of a market cap or are even publicly traded. It seems like some trade association got a ton of them to sign a petition without even considering the impact. They are probably simply Mom and Pop shops that every town has.
It is NOT public in incognito at the link posted in the story. Nor in Firefox Private Browsing.
If it seems so for you, its because you've some how destroyed your incognito window anonymity by logging in somewhere along the line, either in the past, or in the current session.
This link works in Incognito https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmGJz_37ojoqdFZhYlBhN2hQOGRoN2R0ZGh3VDZlblE&output=html
but the story link does not.
I was about to suggest the same thing.
You can then tightly control the gateway to that subnet, manage protocols at the router, and only allow company issued devices on the secure wifi. That way the company bears the cost of the devices, and therefore gets to make all the rules and need entertain no arguments.
Most users don't need access to anything on the company servers other than email anyway, and you can route that access thru your public facing gateways, so it would be tightly controlled.
Its still not going to prevent company documents walking away. There are too many ways that can happen, bluetooth, thumb drives, microSD drives, and the rogue Dropbox, Spider Oak, Box accounts.
But it will eliminate the casual, careless, or accidental breaches, lost device worries. Then any remaining breaches fall into the categories of Intentional, Malicious, Criminal or at the very least, cause for Termination.
I'm not sure how practical it would be to take the next step and simply don't allow wifi on company network period. But I do know that this is the approach taken in some high security environments, and many government agencies. I suspect this would see a lot of push-back from workers and management at your typical business.
Off of
On to
"On of" makes no sense, which is why it sounds wrong : because it is wrong.
"On to" (or onto) sounds fine. Because it is perfectly correct.
Your confusion is caused by your assumption that the same preposition structure would be used in dissimilar situations.
I have no clue what the technical name is for the OF following OFF. But what ever it is, it must match. Omitting it seems fine in either case, but if used it must be correct.
Unfortunately, no other provider in the area (Twin Cities) offers static IPs and permission to run servers.
I'm pretty sure Comcast serves the Twin Cities (at least some portions) and they offer static IPs and you can run servers. You need their business package, a few bucks more perhaps. I use this (not in Minnesota), and find it very stable and consistent, and they never give me any crap about what ports I open.
Not that anyone else does this, but one of the
first changes I make in my browser settings is deactivating automatic spell checking. Call it a holdover from the days where leaving it on meant the top rate of entering text would be about one or two characters per second.
The performance difference is non-zero.
Well, true, it is non-zero, but nobody else runs an 8088 processor anymore either.
If this still bothers you, remember that there will be great deals in the After Christmas sales from most computer vendors.
You might be able to step up to a 486 or something.
Typo and tense change were unintentional. I'll cop to the Muphry's Law violation. It bites me all the time. But hey, this is Slashdot.
The last sentence, on the other hand, totally intentional, and watching all the whoosh posts has been fun.
Whoosh, I mean.
Whoosh!
smilie = kidding.
Whoosh = you.
But written Australian English is different from North American English.
In N.A. things are similar TO each other or they are different FROM each other.
We would no more say Different TO than we would say Similar FROM. Just seems wrong to our ears.
Every web browser as auto spell-check capabilities these days. Most of them correct as you type.
So why should there be any misspellings on something that is managed strictly from a web interface?
Is it part of the arrogance of those electing themselves to write and editing articles on wiki that they refuse to use a spell checker, or
is it that the words are simply unknown to the normal spell-check dictionaries?
I find occasional misspellings in mainstream news articles as well (and I am by no means a natural born speller).
But most maddening to me is the "they're their there" errors, and similar wrong word usage.
Spell checkers offer little help in catching these, but a 6th grade education usually suffices.
Maybe the same people who wont waist there time checking they're spelling also cant be bothered to use the write word. ;-)
Not to be pedantic...but labs don't run operating systems, computers do.
That's true, and pedantry is welcome. This is slashdot after all.
I knew things were off to a rocky start when the story started with this quote:
"I am a high school computer teacher and I've been put in the unique situation of designing my ideal computer lab
To be perfectly pedantic: "computer teachers" probably don't need a lab at all.
Just an ssh connection to each computer, and you can program (teach) the computers what ever you want.
Why build a lab, that invariably attracts students, who always mess things up.
Get a Gorilla rack and put it in the basement somewhere, but what ever you do, keep those pesky kids away.
Some have it as the first choice, but not all are so single minded as to not offer a choice like Ubuntu.
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop and log in to KDE.
Reading comprehension 101:
Offering a choice means being given a selection of desktops to to install when you are installing.
Suse does it.
Slackware does it.
Fedora does it.
Ubuntu can't be bothered.
I find it condescending how you suggest offering "no choice" at install time is somehow protecting the new user.
The new user may be years away from doing an apt-get. But they can pick from a list, because they have all been to a Restaurant in the past.
Ok, what is this?
They just barely got Kwallet working and now something totally new?
OpenSuse, Kubuntu, and several others not cloned off of Ubuntu come with KDE. Some have it as the first choice, but not all are so single minded as to not offer a choice like Ubuntu.
You don't have to go out of your way, you just have to expand your horizon beyond your little Ubuntu world.
You are correct. With the Regal's dismal city mileage, (18), driving 15000 miles per year the 5 year fuel saving would be closer to $13,500, so the recovery of his postulated $10k would come more quickly.
Of course the Regal is not a $35,000 dollar car, so the comparison would be more apt with an Acura or something approaching $35k.
And of course our gas prices today are rather low. If they go back up to $4, you recover your $10k in three years.
So I still think the lowest price model is right on the cusp of being reasonable for the average commuter who has about a 30 to 60 mile round trip commute in the US.