open discussion is important, but a -2 to shit-bin stuff into neverneverland would be possibly useful. make it so not-logged-in users can't even see them. would make the site a bit more presentable, and possibly attract better commentards to join the fray.
Does this imply (I have not researched yet) that they could possibly sidestep this with something like a $250 non-biometric service fee? Technically available in non-biometric form, but locked behind a paywall that greatly increases the cost of the service?
Already posted my mandatory snark, or i'd +1. There is a great deal to fear from the widespread use/trust of biometrics, and this is only one part of the issue.
Now I can fly as anyone for whom I can spoof the biometrics. Seriously though, just like any other system, putting too much faith in the security afforded by biometrics is going to bite us in the ass... and hard.
Only printing defect is toner lines on the back of the page; I don't duplex anything, so I haven't bothered to look into the cause. They go away after 2-3 pages, but come back after being left off for a few days.
I guess also the gears that came with the feed roller rebuild kit, but they weren't worn enough to mandate replacement (did so anyways for good measure)
I just keep repairing my HP LaserJet 4 Plus from early 1994... One set of feed/pickup rollers, maxed out RAM (36MB), one belt, one fuser, and one burnt laser diode so far. Thing does 12 ppm on long batches of text/web content, though chugs a bit on full page raster stuff. Total investment minus toner is about $100. Page count around 25K. Draws under 40 watts in power save mode; while not impressive by today's standards, it's not going to turn your room into a sauna if you let it idle.
Perhaps an Analog Rights Management system in which the cartridge commits self-immolation to prevent reuse? Only being somewhat facetious; I'm sure they can come up with some way to cause installing it to permanently damage the cartridge components.
I recall reports of people having success extending the life of some types of ink cartridges by adding additional solvent (seems likely they were drying out somewhat, but i don't recall)... the solvent that was used in the story that's coming into my mind... Axe body spray. I'm having trouble finding it, so it may be a corrupt memory. Anyhow, up to a point, so long as the viscosity is reasonably low (and free of aggregating particles), it should work... provided your goal is just to get some sort of pigment onto the paper.
Glad to see that consumers rights trump corporations' rights in the eyes of the SCOTUS. My apologies to anyone that may have thought I might be going in a different direction there.
Should have qualified that 'additional insight', as it has been noted previously that it's a FORTRAN port, and some people are apparently allergic to GOTO.
Anyone have any insight on the use of GOTO in this code? To me, at least, it seems highly appropriate, in context. I bring it up because I was reading random '...considered harmful' stuff earlier, and have generally come to the conclusion that 'considered harmful' just means one should ponder a bit more if they're thinking about using it.
I made a snark on another post that folks should've voted 'Regressive', but I'm slowly realizing that we absolutely did just that. Sorry, I don't have an AI angle, but I've got some spare karma!
That notion was quite accurate up until about 5 years ago, when Intel decided to just sort of kick back and rake in the dough with their incremental CPU improvements. (I know, I'm being a bit harsh on them, as they're wandering into some very interesting territory with transistor gate sizing).
Unless you really want to be able to play current generation 3D games on the road, Sandy/Ivy Bridge laptops should still be fairly future-resistant. My latitude E5430 is in the same ballpark; if I hadn't gotten a great deal on it at the time of purchase, I'd likely have one of those listed today.
While the machine I will refer to wound up needing no repair, I discovered that a specific variety of laptop at my work requires near total disassembly to access two of the DIMM slots. Admittedly, a laptop with 4 DIMM slots is a pretty uncommon (the sucker, a Toshiba P875, supports 32GB RAM, and was made about 4 years ago!). Repairability isn't just a function of having many discrete parts, it's also about not having to jump through a million hoops to get it apart. Looking at you, Toshiba.
TLDR: companies should stop pumping unrepairable trash into the market; consumers should stop tolerating unrepairable trash. Also, don't assume that I'm calling the products in the story trash, but 'slim' has become a dirty word in my book, basically synonymous with the conditions of the previous statement.
Two of the best (IBM) ThinkPads I've ever owned are the 770 and 600 series; the 770 series was a bit on the chunky side, ever for its day, but the 600 (600X in my case) seemed to be a very optimal travel machine. They really don't make them like they used to... they were completely rebuildable; the internal circuitry comprised several discrete mezzanine boards, so if anything got crushed/burned out/wet, you could order a replacement (or in my case, cannibalize another from the scrap heap) and be back in action in fairly quickly. Combine that with a very rigid chassis, they felt as expensive as they were. Ultrabay was also a nice concept, a hot/warm swappable multifunction bay that could accept CD/DVD drives, hard drives, or a second battery; 770 actually accepted the same battery type in both bays, which was very nice (600 needed a special pack for the bay). Oh yes, and docking stations. I have two 600Xs that are fully functional today, albeit of limited utility due to their age, and lack or replacement batteries. These are obviously a bad comparison against mainstream laptops of any era, costing 2000+ USD in the late 90s, but it just makes me feel shame on behalf of my species for having accepted the onslaught non-repairable crap on the market today as reasonable.
There's no +1 Awesome mod, and my mod points expired, so I'll just leave this comment instead:D Hearing about stuff like this makes me feel as though I was born a couple decades too late to enjoy computing to its fullest, but reading other folks tales from the earlier days of computing brings me no shortage of enjoyment, so it'll have to do.
This happened almost a week ago, but this is Slashdot so, grudgingly, I'll accept our new usage of the word 'just' in this context. Arstechnica has a good article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
Slashdot Mirror
open discussion is important, but a -2 to shit-bin stuff into neverneverland would be possibly useful. make it so not-logged-in users can't even see them. would make the site a bit more presentable, and possibly attract better commentards to join the fray.
Does this imply (I have not researched yet) that they could possibly sidestep this with something like a $250 non-biometric service fee? Technically available in non-biometric form, but locked behind a paywall that greatly increases the cost of the service?
Already posted my mandatory snark, or i'd +1. There is a great deal to fear from the widespread use/trust of biometrics, and this is only one part of the issue.
Now I can fly as anyone for whom I can spoof the biometrics. Seriously though, just like any other system, putting too much faith in the security afforded by biometrics is going to bite us in the ass... and hard.
Only printing defect is toner lines on the back of the page; I don't duplex anything, so I haven't bothered to look into the cause. They go away after 2-3 pages, but come back after being left off for a few days.
I guess also the gears that came with the feed roller rebuild kit, but they weren't worn enough to mandate replacement (did so anyways for good measure)
I just keep repairing my HP LaserJet 4 Plus from early 1994... One set of feed/pickup rollers, maxed out RAM (36MB), one belt, one fuser, and one burnt laser diode so far. Thing does 12 ppm on long batches of text/web content, though chugs a bit on full page raster stuff. Total investment minus toner is about $100. Page count around 25K. Draws under 40 watts in power save mode; while not impressive by today's standards, it's not going to turn your room into a sauna if you let it idle.
Another terrifying future I can sort of foresee: ink with a sort of unique, DNA-like signature, to be detected by the machine.
Perhaps an Analog Rights Management system in which the cartridge commits self-immolation to prevent reuse? Only being somewhat facetious; I'm sure they can come up with some way to cause installing it to permanently damage the cartridge components.
I recall reports of people having success extending the life of some types of ink cartridges by adding additional solvent (seems likely they were drying out somewhat, but i don't recall)... the solvent that was used in the story that's coming into my mind... Axe body spray. I'm having trouble finding it, so it may be a corrupt memory. Anyhow, up to a point, so long as the viscosity is reasonably low (and free of aggregating particles), it should work... provided your goal is just to get some sort of pigment onto the paper.
Glad to see that consumers rights trump corporations' rights in the eyes of the SCOTUS. My apologies to anyone that may have thought I might be going in a different direction there.
In some ways, I wish I hadn't already posted on this thread (+1 Colossal!)... The depth of that article is appropriate to the nature of the cave.
Should have qualified that 'additional insight', as it has been noted previously that it's a FORTRAN port, and some people are apparently allergic to GOTO.
Anyone have any insight on the use of GOTO in this code? To me, at least, it seems highly appropriate, in context. I bring it up because I was reading random '...considered harmful' stuff earlier, and have generally come to the conclusion that 'considered harmful' just means one should ponder a bit more if they're thinking about using it.
I made a snark on another post that folks should've voted 'Regressive', but I'm slowly realizing that we absolutely did just that. Sorry, I don't have an AI angle, but I've got some spare karma!
Note that I am wandering around the subject of gaming laptops, as significant strides have been made in the GPU departement over the past 5 years.
That notion was quite accurate up until about 5 years ago, when Intel decided to just sort of kick back and rake in the dough with their incremental CPU improvements. (I know, I'm being a bit harsh on them, as they're wandering into some very interesting territory with transistor gate sizing).
Here I was, trying to give consumers the benefit of the (my) doubt... but I guess, unfortunately, you're very correct.
Unless you really want to be able to play current generation 3D games on the road, Sandy/Ivy Bridge laptops should still be fairly future-resistant. My latitude E5430 is in the same ballpark; if I hadn't gotten a great deal on it at the time of purchase, I'd likely have one of those listed today.
If I hadn't posted before I saw this, I'd mod up! Fully modular, portable computing devices are something in desperate need of a renaissance.
While the machine I will refer to wound up needing no repair, I discovered that a specific variety of laptop at my work requires near total disassembly to access two of the DIMM slots. Admittedly, a laptop with 4 DIMM slots is a pretty uncommon (the sucker, a Toshiba P875, supports 32GB RAM, and was made about 4 years ago!). Repairability isn't just a function of having many discrete parts, it's also about not having to jump through a million hoops to get it apart. Looking at you, Toshiba.
TLDR: companies should stop pumping unrepairable trash into the market; consumers should stop tolerating unrepairable trash. Also, don't assume that I'm calling the products in the story trash, but 'slim' has become a dirty word in my book, basically synonymous with the conditions of the previous statement.
Two of the best (IBM) ThinkPads I've ever owned are the 770 and 600 series; the 770 series was a bit on the chunky side, ever for its day, but the 600 (600X in my case) seemed to be a very optimal travel machine. They really don't make them like they used to... they were completely rebuildable; the internal circuitry comprised several discrete mezzanine boards, so if anything got crushed/burned out/wet, you could order a replacement (or in my case, cannibalize another from the scrap heap) and be back in action in fairly quickly. Combine that with a very rigid chassis, they felt as expensive as they were. Ultrabay was also a nice concept, a hot/warm swappable multifunction bay that could accept CD/DVD drives, hard drives, or a second battery; 770 actually accepted the same battery type in both bays, which was very nice (600 needed a special pack for the bay). Oh yes, and docking stations. I have two 600Xs that are fully functional today, albeit of limited utility due to their age, and lack or replacement batteries. These are obviously a bad comparison against mainstream laptops of any era, costing 2000+ USD in the late 90s, but it just makes me feel shame on behalf of my species for having accepted the onslaught non-repairable crap on the market today as reasonable.
There's no +1 Awesome mod, and my mod points expired, so I'll just leave this comment instead :D Hearing about stuff like this makes me feel as though I was born a couple decades too late to enjoy computing to its fullest, but reading other folks tales from the earlier days of computing brings me no shortage of enjoyment, so it'll have to do.
Perhaps he has undergone a barrectomy.
This happened almost a week ago, but this is Slashdot so, grudgingly, I'll accept our new usage of the word 'just' in this context. Arstechnica has a good article:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...