I used to work at a place that had a nice cd and dvd refinisher. It used about 5 different abrassive discs, each finer than the other, to refinish and polish the disc. It worked very well, much better than those crappy DVD Doctors people see in stores. You could even polish a disc up to ten times I believe until you hit the metal.
As long as the data layer is protected, optical media will last a while. Problems that most people face are cheap CD-Rs that have no protective coating on the data layer and they scratch it and lose their data.
Most people are lazy. If you've been a teacher for a decade and you have tenure, what insentive is there to work harder? You can still be lazy and as long as you don't mess up you'll still get your yearly raises. I think the problems people have with teachers' unions is that they don't encourage people to work harder. I don't think teacher's should be a commodity who are fired at will because the principal doesn't like them. However, since it's the future of this country at stake, teachers who are utterly useless should have to work harder or lose their jobs.
All I seem to hear is that paying teachers more money will repair the educational system in america. I think efforts would be spent better ensuring teachers are doing their best to teach and can't rely on unions to keep them secure in their jobs.
I designed a robot from scratch, although an off the shelf AVR microcontroller board was used. I agree with you that it would be great for hobbyists to plug in parts and just write some code to get them working, but that adds cost and waste. However, I2C is a great interface that makes adding components easy and lots of components support it. And what is so bad about mechanical and electrical issues? It's fun to learn this stuff if you're a geek. As for an open source robot, there are so many resources on the internet that someone can learn everything they need to know about spinning motors and reading distance measuring sensors. Boe-bots are good for people starting out, but I think it's important for people to go through the entire open ended process of building a robot from scratch. I think they will have a greater sense of accomplishment and enjoy it more.
I honestly agree. I found it pretty cool when I learned all a computer can really do is perform some simple arithmatic and logical operations on numbers and make conditional branches. Everything else is hardware abstraction or insanely complex software systems when compared to these simple operations.
The whole computer literacy is really about understanding how to interact with what someone else designed. Even programming takes this course when you use text editors, libraries, and compilers. So computer literacy can be as simple as using windows and word. It can expand almost infinitely into designing operating systems and hardware. The only thing that I hate is when people get the idea that's it's somehow magic or not based on logic.
I saw it on Fox News today and something I noticed should dampen the missile theorists. The low framerate prevented the smoking gun shot of an airplane everyone was hoping to see, however the explosion is key. There was a big red fireball with thick black smoke when it hit the building. This is evident of a fuel explosion, not a missile explosion. Dispite how movies portray ordinances exploding in big puffy fireballs, they're actually like big "bangs". They don't create much smoke, instead just blow dust and material everywhere.
Look at the tapes of the plane hitting the second WTC tower and see how similar the explosions are. Just because there is no hole where the engines should be does not mean a plane didn't hit the building. The building is like a fortrace and could withstand most of the impact of the aluminum plane. This explosion looks like a large amount of fuel exploded, not a missile or bomb.
..but if anyone's interested in what I do on my linux running laptop, I'll explain it. I use KDE which comes with JuK and I put on Kid3. I keep the folders organized by genre then artist then album. Kid3 keeps all the tags neat and clean. I then pull all the folders in JuK and it's great. Simple and fast searching. I find amaroK to be too much and I prefer the interface of JuK. Of course, the key is keeping the tags straight with Kid3.
After reading everyone else making the argument that acronyms are bad and "blu" sounds cool, I think you hit the nail on the head. Most people shop based on price. This is probably because they don't know the difference and they feel the cheaper one is cheating them less. What will probably happen is one will start off more expensive than current DVDs but less than the competetor. They'll convince people that the price difference between the DVDs will quickly shrink because new technologies cost lots of money. I believe these same companies did this with the transition from VHS to DVD. Anyway, people will initially go for the cheapest solution (player + media) and that one will win. Based on Sony's previous history of providing the more expensive alternative, I think Blu-Ray discs will initially and continue to be more expensive. Average Joe, as well as geeks on slashdot, are gonna go for the cheaper one because that's how most people make their decisions at places like Best Buy no matter how much they know about the differences in the products.
Those are being developed. iRobot PackBot, Foster Miller Talon, Remotec Mini Andros. They are controlled by human operators, have a coulple cameras and are being testing with explosive detection devices. The robots I mentioned are more or less designed to disable the IED after they are found, but companies are making add-ons that aid in detecting IEDs in the field.
It feels like the whole point of real player was just a big con. The endless popups, the shitty performance, the need to integrate it with web pages. Real player was first cool in the mid 90s where streaming audio seemed like a new thing. A few years later, it lost it's cool factor and they tried to keep it alive by tieing it with anything under the sun.
I figure they weighed the effects of anti-gay people and pro-gay people protesting and realized that if they didn't sell it, it would create more trouble than not. Plus this way they get to make money. Walmart isn't stupid, they do what they do very well...sell crap to people who want a bargain. I vote with my dollar and avoid them like the plaugue, but I'm only one person.
Depends on what you're interested. The only applications I'd rather use over open source counterparts are part of the Microsoft Office 2003 and Photoshop CS. I use windows and linux and those are the only applications I prefer using the windows counterparts. Of course, nobody really uses office unless they have specific work to do, but photoshop is fun and useful.
I doubt it. If you look at a typical utility bill you're talking pennies a kilowatt hour. And small systems don't scale as well as larger systems that can deliver power to an entire city. The only inefficiency is how the power plants burn coal to heat the boilers.
They probably changed to IDE because it saved money and to USB because USB2.0 and FireWire speeds are nearly the same. But all these comments implying switching to windows is insane. OSX is what truely separates their entire product line. People use Apple PCs and Laptops because of OSX. Their hardware looks prettier, but it's all about how everything seemlessly integrates because they only have a few things to worry about. Microsoft is trying to convince people that Windows can do the same with all the thousands of little devices that say they run on windows, but iPods and iTunes work better and are easier to use than those PlaysForSure devices and especially the ones that don't even guarantee that.
Aside from the "Job's will NEVER do it" attitude, it would be bad business because they'd just be another windows dealing OEM and their margins on the hardware would dry up overnight.
Both components are just executing very simple instructions. A GPU may just execute certain instructions, like floating point calculations, faster than most common CPUs.
I think your statement that all linux servers are better than windows servers is way to general for any rational person to believe.
Second, do you really think management came to this decision because they noticed the green start button on their screen? They did this over money. Microsoft probably wanted their business enough to charge them next to nothing and offer better support than Linux forums can offer. If they can take that savings and pass it along to their stockholders or customers then good for them. In the end, it might be costing Microsoft some money for the PR.
But to say Linux servers are always better and to think they did this on a whim is incredibly myopic.
A lawyer once explained this concept to me why post-dated checks aren't worth anything. A check is a promisory note saying "on this date I promise to pay you X dollars". Therefore, a post-dated check is interpretted as "I promise to promise to pay you on this future date to pay you X dollars". So since it's a double promise it doesn't hold up in court I guess. I may have butchered the explaination, but you get the point. I'm sure what happened is someone at one point in time tried to get out of the obligation of a post dated check and so the judge interpretted it this way.
Using it on Linux. None of the extensions were compatible, that's okay for now. The only improvement I noticed was that sound in flash actually works now. It's nice to visit youtube.com and actually hear audio.
Other than that, similar interface but the tabs organize themselves now. Also, the ACID2 test doesn't render properly.
I wonder if there are some licenses or acceptions that would allow a company to donate old windows licenses. They could get a decent tax write-off and do some nice PR. If this works, they probably have old office licenses too.
I'm all for teaching people linux, but it sounds to me like these people need "job skills". Teaching them how to write a letter and a spreadsheet would be beneficial to them. If some are interested and want to go further, look into putting linux on a few machines. You could teach a little programming too which for a kid might open some doors. But for the older people, I'm more concerned that they know enough to get an entry level data entry position. Doesn't sound glamorous, but neither is flipping hamburgers.
And on a side note, I think what this guy is doing is very admirable. Lots of people, probably myself included, love to jump on slashdot and show other geeks how geekier they are, but this truly helps people.
Slashdot Mirror
I am one of those people who uses Gmail as a backup betting it's more reliable than my hard drive.
I used to work at a place that had a nice cd and dvd refinisher. It used about 5 different abrassive discs, each finer than the other, to refinish and polish the disc. It worked very well, much better than those crappy DVD Doctors people see in stores. You could even polish a disc up to ten times I believe until you hit the metal.
As long as the data layer is protected, optical media will last a while. Problems that most people face are cheap CD-Rs that have no protective coating on the data layer and they scratch it and lose their data.
Most people are lazy. If you've been a teacher for a decade and you have tenure, what insentive is there to work harder? You can still be lazy and as long as you don't mess up you'll still get your yearly raises. I think the problems people have with teachers' unions is that they don't encourage people to work harder. I don't think teacher's should be a commodity who are fired at will because the principal doesn't like them. However, since it's the future of this country at stake, teachers who are utterly useless should have to work harder or lose their jobs.
All I seem to hear is that paying teachers more money will repair the educational system in america. I think efforts would be spent better ensuring teachers are doing their best to teach and can't rely on unions to keep them secure in their jobs.
I designed a robot from scratch, although an off the shelf AVR microcontroller board was used. I agree with you that it would be great for hobbyists to plug in parts and just write some code to get them working, but that adds cost and waste. However, I2C is a great interface that makes adding components easy and lots of components support it. And what is so bad about mechanical and electrical issues? It's fun to learn this stuff if you're a geek. As for an open source robot, there are so many resources on the internet that someone can learn everything they need to know about spinning motors and reading distance measuring sensors. Boe-bots are good for people starting out, but I think it's important for people to go through the entire open ended process of building a robot from scratch. I think they will have a greater sense of accomplishment and enjoy it more.
I GNOw what you mean
Exactly. I run linux and play my movies over ethernet on a modded xbox using xbox media center. No where in that chain will the DRM checks play fair.
my engineering classes are all guys, and my sociology electives are all girls. go figure...
I honestly agree. I found it pretty cool when I learned all a computer can really do is perform some simple arithmatic and logical operations on numbers and make conditional branches. Everything else is hardware abstraction or insanely complex software systems when compared to these simple operations.
The whole computer literacy is really about understanding how to interact with what someone else designed. Even programming takes this course when you use text editors, libraries, and compilers. So computer literacy can be as simple as using windows and word. It can expand almost infinitely into designing operating systems and hardware. The only thing that I hate is when people get the idea that's it's somehow magic or not based on logic.
I saw it on Fox News today and something I noticed should dampen the missile theorists. The low framerate prevented the smoking gun shot of an airplane everyone was hoping to see, however the explosion is key. There was a big red fireball with thick black smoke when it hit the building. This is evident of a fuel explosion, not a missile explosion. Dispite how movies portray ordinances exploding in big puffy fireballs, they're actually like big "bangs". They don't create much smoke, instead just blow dust and material everywhere.
Look at the tapes of the plane hitting the second WTC tower and see how similar the explosions are. Just because there is no hole where the engines should be does not mean a plane didn't hit the building. The building is like a fortrace and could withstand most of the impact of the aluminum plane. This explosion looks like a large amount of fuel exploded, not a missile or bomb.
..but if anyone's interested in what I do on my linux running laptop, I'll explain it. I use KDE which comes with JuK and I put on Kid3. I keep the folders organized by genre then artist then album. Kid3 keeps all the tags neat and clean. I then pull all the folders in JuK and it's great. Simple and fast searching. I find amaroK to be too much and I prefer the interface of JuK. Of course, the key is keeping the tags straight with Kid3.
Off topic, but I read her novel "Slander" and it was pretty good. She made some good points.
"Even though you are using an unlicensed copy, you're still helping up maintain marketshare. Thank you."
After reading everyone else making the argument that acronyms are bad and "blu" sounds cool, I think you hit the nail on the head. Most people shop based on price. This is probably because they don't know the difference and they feel the cheaper one is cheating them less. What will probably happen is one will start off more expensive than current DVDs but less than the competetor. They'll convince people that the price difference between the DVDs will quickly shrink because new technologies cost lots of money. I believe these same companies did this with the transition from VHS to DVD. Anyway, people will initially go for the cheapest solution (player + media) and that one will win. Based on Sony's previous history of providing the more expensive alternative, I think Blu-Ray discs will initially and continue to be more expensive. Average Joe, as well as geeks on slashdot, are gonna go for the cheaper one because that's how most people make their decisions at places like Best Buy no matter how much they know about the differences in the products.
Those are being developed. iRobot PackBot, Foster Miller Talon, Remotec Mini Andros. They are controlled by human operators, have a coulple cameras and are being testing with explosive detection devices. The robots I mentioned are more or less designed to disable the IED after they are found, but companies are making add-ons that aid in detecting IEDs in the field.
It feels like the whole point of real player was just a big con. The endless popups, the shitty performance, the need to integrate it with web pages. Real player was first cool in the mid 90s where streaming audio seemed like a new thing. A few years later, it lost it's cool factor and they tried to keep it alive by tieing it with anything under the sun.
I figure they weighed the effects of anti-gay people and pro-gay people protesting and realized that if they didn't sell it, it would create more trouble than not. Plus this way they get to make money. Walmart isn't stupid, they do what they do very well...sell crap to people who want a bargain. I vote with my dollar and avoid them like the plaugue, but I'm only one person.
Good point. However, does office for the mac include visio? that's pretty much the best part of office 2003 for windows.
Depends on what you're interested. The only applications I'd rather use over open source counterparts are part of the Microsoft Office 2003 and Photoshop CS. I use windows and linux and those are the only applications I prefer using the windows counterparts. Of course, nobody really uses office unless they have specific work to do, but photoshop is fun and useful.
I doubt it. If you look at a typical utility bill you're talking pennies a kilowatt hour. And small systems don't scale as well as larger systems that can deliver power to an entire city. The only inefficiency is how the power plants burn coal to heat the boilers.
They probably changed to IDE because it saved money and to USB because USB2.0 and FireWire speeds are nearly the same. But all these comments implying switching to windows is insane. OSX is what truely separates their entire product line. People use Apple PCs and Laptops because of OSX. Their hardware looks prettier, but it's all about how everything seemlessly integrates because they only have a few things to worry about. Microsoft is trying to convince people that Windows can do the same with all the thousands of little devices that say they run on windows, but iPods and iTunes work better and are easier to use than those PlaysForSure devices and especially the ones that don't even guarantee that.
Aside from the "Job's will NEVER do it" attitude, it would be bad business because they'd just be another windows dealing OEM and their margins on the hardware would dry up overnight.
Both components are just executing very simple instructions. A GPU may just execute certain instructions, like floating point calculations, faster than most common CPUs.
I think your statement that all linux servers are better than windows servers is way to general for any rational person to believe.
Second, do you really think management came to this decision because they noticed the green start button on their screen? They did this over money. Microsoft probably wanted their business enough to charge them next to nothing and offer better support than Linux forums can offer. If they can take that savings and pass it along to their stockholders or customers then good for them. In the end, it might be costing Microsoft some money for the PR.
But to say Linux servers are always better and to think they did this on a whim is incredibly myopic.
A lawyer once explained this concept to me why post-dated checks aren't worth anything. A check is a promisory note saying "on this date I promise to pay you X dollars". Therefore, a post-dated check is interpretted as "I promise to promise to pay you on this future date to pay you X dollars". So since it's a double promise it doesn't hold up in court I guess. I may have butchered the explaination, but you get the point. I'm sure what happened is someone at one point in time tried to get out of the obligation of a post dated check and so the judge interpretted it this way.
Using it on Linux. None of the extensions were compatible, that's okay for now. The only improvement I noticed was that sound in flash actually works now. It's nice to visit youtube.com and actually hear audio.
Other than that, similar interface but the tabs organize themselves now. Also, the ACID2 test doesn't render properly.
I wonder if there are some licenses or acceptions that would allow a company to donate old windows licenses. They could get a decent tax write-off and do some nice PR. If this works, they probably have old office licenses too.
I'm all for teaching people linux, but it sounds to me like these people need "job skills". Teaching them how to write a letter and a spreadsheet would be beneficial to them. If some are interested and want to go further, look into putting linux on a few machines. You could teach a little programming too which for a kid might open some doors. But for the older people, I'm more concerned that they know enough to get an entry level data entry position. Doesn't sound glamorous, but neither is flipping hamburgers.
And on a side note, I think what this guy is doing is very admirable. Lots of people, probably myself included, love to jump on slashdot and show other geeks how geekier they are, but this truly helps people.