You don't think the Native Americans wouldn't have strapped on bomb vests if they had them available? Especially toward the final conflicts? Nobody likes being conquered. Now you just have more wonderful tools and free easy-to-get weapons knowledge to wage guerrilla warfare almost indefinitely. Just because your underfunded and running low on options doesn't mean you no longer have the right to resist.
You have a right not to be conquered and use any means at your disposal to repel an enemy or make his stay as unpleasant as possible. If it comes down to suicide bombing, well desperation is a bitch.
Though personally, If I were them I'd think it wiser keep my recruits alive. There's no such thing as being an "expert" suicide bomber. Generally people become more effective with greater productivity if they have more than one attempt at a task.
I quit buying new PC games period, specifically because of overzealous copy protection and DRM. Usually the DRM BS won't function under WINE and even causes issues under Windows. Hell a lot of games won't run without a net connection for authentication/DRM which doesn't work for me in rural SC. I even stopped buying new console games but I pick up the occasional used PS2 or Wii game. When I buy a copy of a game, my future grandkids should be able to play it too when I pull it out of a dusty box. I didn't rent the right to play it on one internet-connected computer that I never upgrade often.
The sad thing is I really liked the IL2 series but won't buy Cliffs of Dover or Wings of Prey because they are DRM-laden and/or tied to Steam. You can't even host your own net game server anymore last I checked. You have to use their servers which will likely be shut down 5 years down the road.
We are basically being forced into another dark ages to pad a few douchebags pockets. And it's backed by law. Personally, I'm done. Let Rome burn. If they don't want a couple hundred bucks a year from me because I exercise my rights, whatever, f**k'em. They need me more than I need them.
Unless you have SAMs with paintball warheads or a paintball flak gun, you're going to be hard pressed to hit the bastard. They fly quite high. Don't need low altitude with a nice optics package. Even with real guns, most rifle calibers can't reach 35,000 feet. You talking over 6.5 miles in the air. Much smaller target than a standard plane too.
Maybe if you caught it under the clouds on a really cloudy day when they REALLY wanted to see your backyard. But then you'd still probably miss and they would send a ground unit to kill/torture you for the attempt. Ya know, they gotta brush those rights aside to go after those sneaky, wily terrorists. They're too quick and effective for that archaic due process s**t.
Patents aren't a bad idea but they should be non-transferrable and any patent for which no product is sold should be null and void within a year or two. Using litigation as your sole business model should be outlawed as well. And patent examiners should be able to examine a working prototype in detail with an industry expert before granting the patent.
Software patents as a whole are evil and need to be abolished. Most of the world doesn't respect them anyway and there's too many of them covering very basic expected functionality in software applications. You shouldn't be able to patent numbers or a list of instructions. That's why we have copyright.
What you don't realize is this whole STATE is boondocks for the most part. Internet access should be available in every part of the US. Period. Modern computers and game consoles are useless without it as that is now the primary method of getting software and updates. Much software these days will even refuse to run without a net connection. Yes, if I have to subsidize your roads, pollution and crime issues, then you should get to subsidize my net access some. Especially since they already received tax dollars to run fiber to last-mile residences.
There's a big difference, folks in the country don't need cities. Cities DO need rural farmers. This area is not "unpopulated", it's just sparse. Just like we need phones, we need net access as the internet is rapidly replacing the traditional phone.
There's a lot more rural land in the US than you think and to say that only people in cramped apartment buildings and townhouses should have cheap internet is bullshit.
[quote] Hospitals are supposed to be private. You really think that having a bunch of slave doctors is good for your country? You think your government knows how many doctors are needed, or exactly what kind of training each one needs? You don't want to let the people decide that? You love long wait times and poor service? [/quote]
In the past we had "charity hospitals" and hospitals run by clergy.
Being a doctor does NOT mean you're entitled to a 6-figure salary. And most state employees I know get paid ok but they have a REALLY nice benefits package. The government is not going to take over day to day administration of the hospitals and doctors will still be calling the shots in a "socialized medicine" system. Most of the rest of the world has done it and even if wait times suck, you still get treated with little out of pocket cost.
Are you saying that people should f**k off and die to make your ER visit shorter?
We already have long wait times in poor service + the benefit of being treated like a second-class citizen if you can't afford insurance. They actively go out of their way to NOT look for real problems, send you home with a handful of percocet and send you a $1,500 bill. They also charge double to the uninsured patients and cut insurance companies a break. And if you're in the same spot as I am with a family of 4 and a 35k household income you are double screwed because you can't afford insurance OR qualify for medicaid.
Long wait times+poor service is a hell of a lot better than NO medical care with the ER being the only place you can be treated with no followup appointment or medication assistance.
So around here farmers, local computer technicians, and mechanics don't deserve net access or reliable cell coverage because they "chose" to live in the country? If it weren't for folks like my neighbors you wouldn't even eat pal. Why should we subsidize your f**king roads that aren't even in this state? ESPECIALLY since the state here will not even pave MY road. Why should I help subsidize the extra law enforcement required with such population density? Why should I help pay for your schooling? Why should I pay for the environmental cleanup required because your city is a cesspool. Why should I pay taxes, some of which go to supporting the telco that's willing to provide DSL to you and not me?
Apparently you're pretty young. Farmers are people too and a lot of them make good use of the net if available as a vast resource of agricultural information.
AND for your information, the running of fiber to "last mile" residences was SUBSIDIZED ALREADY. In the late 90's the telcos took a LOT of money from the government to roll all this out. They found a loophole and bought a satellite company so they can claim they provide broadband and pocketed the rest.
As far as wireless goes, 802.16 would be great out here but nobody is rolling it out, 802.11 wouldn't cut it with the distance between nodes without really pricy gear. Nobody is willing to fund such a thing in this area due to the rough shape of the economy and without financing from a bank (or a very wealthy friend) who believes in you, it's not going to happen. I want the net infrastructure that was paid for already because the second someone DOES roll out 802.16, suddenly DSL will be magically available cheaper.
You seem to not realize that the telcos take a LOT of tax dollars, including mine. I deserve reliable net access just as much as you do. I'm not willing to give up my family home and move my children to a more crowded dangerous environment just for net access that should have been run to my place a long time ago. Their claim now even after they installed the proper equipment a few miles down the street was "Oh, we can't run DSL down a dirt road." which I know to be false. With all computers and game consoles effectively REQUIRING internet access these days, not having unlimited broadband is not an option and without it it puts smaller rural businesses at a great disadvantage and means children will have even less access to educational materials.
Hell, my son's school sends home assignments that are internet-based. It's not a "luxury" or "convenience" anymore. It's required. Once state agencies and institutions MANDATE certain things to be done on the internet, then yes, you should help subsidize my internet access. Just like I subsidize unemployed bums and their shelters in your city.
It's what I started my programming history with and I still have fond memories of it. Easy enough language that got me interested in programming and provided me instant fun.
BASIC was a great first language and is still useful in teaching simple programming constructs. It was a better fit for early micros than today's machines however. You could get down and dirty with PEEK&POKE statements and talk to hardware directly. Not quite the same anymore.
There never really was any other such comprehensive language with quick-to-see results.
Ummm.... I have to call BS on that one. Both TCL and LISP come to mind.
Drawing on screen was easy, syntax was easy and reading from input was easy.
Depends which version of BASIC we're talking about. Different dialects had WIDELY varying levels of hardware support. Atari BASIC had easy to use graphics statements, BASIC on the C64 did not. QBASIC and QuickBASIC for DOS had lots of graphics commands and supported old-school line numbering as well as more modern labels.
Compatibility was another issue. A program written in Microsoft BASIC wouldn't run without modification on Atari BASIC for example.
Speed was another issue... different BASIC environments were faster than others. Atari BASIC was slow, TurboBASIC XL was 5 times faster on the same hardware and was compatible.
As far as helping me to understand how a computer really works, assembler was more useful. Not saying force assembler on a 10-year-old or expect to write a masterpiece 3D engine. Doing some simple math, throwing some text on the screen, allocating/writing to/reading from RAM, etc isn't so bad.
You got fun things done quickly. As much as some "I'm better than you" geeks like to take a stand about it, BASIC was important part of history.
BASIC just isn't a real good fit for modern environments IMHO. HyperCard w/ HyperTalk on the Mac was interesting and fun to play with but it would stick out like a sore thumb today as well.
A simple high-performance BASIC with an easy to use integrated 3D library that's as easy to use as sprites were might get people interested. The problem with getting kids interested is that most of them want to write games. Writing 3D games is tough.... creating 3D models and environments is tougher. There's no QUICK gratification like you had with simple low-rez sprites back in the day. When kids have dual-screen stereoscopic 3D handheld game systems, spending a week learning to move a sprite around seems dull and irrelevant.
I'm an atheist. Give me my year, a remote, a more comfy mattress, a metric f**kton of morphine and a list of braver doctors to call.
I don't care if all I can do is shit from my nostrils while drooling and giggling. I don't care if I'm paralyzed from the neck down. It beats not living. I'm comfortable with the fact I'm going to die at some point (hell, could be tomorrow) but dammit, the doc better try everything and I mean EVERYthing. They aren't going to get paid to give up.
I could have sworn I watched a similar test of an American anti-satellite system when I was a kid on TV..... and I was right.... back in the 80's we shot down a satellite or two. Launched from an F-15. Stop treating people like barbarians for developing the same tech we love and enjoy because we won't sell it to them. And if we did, it would have a remote kill switch. Not that I want to live in China... but just sayin... they have rights too and that includes developing tech that is equal to or better than ours to defend their homeland and their interests just like we do. I'm not a big fan of communism but apparently a lot of them are pretty ok with it and they can be governed however they wish. If we didn't like the current regime we could have helped the RoC out. We have no qualms interfering in other nations these days.... you know.... ones smaller than us....with no nukes....
Umm.... a long time ago they apparently had 23mm cannons on space stations..... tested them successfully as well. Would likely have been able to shred an Apollo capsule quite nicely. Or the later Space Shuttle.
Salyut 3 (OPS-2) (Russian: -3; English: Salute 3) was launched on June 25, 1974. It was another Almaz military space station, this one launched successfully. It tested a wide variety of reconnaissance sensors, returning a canister of film for analysis. On January 24, 1975, after the station had been ordered to deorbit, trials of the on-board 23 mm Nudelman aircraft cannon (other sources say it was a Nudelman NR-30 30 mm gun) were conducted with positive results at ranges from 3000 m to 500 m.[1] Cosmonauts have confirmed that a target satellite was destroyed in the test. The next day, the station was ordered to deorbit. Only one of the three intended crews successfully boarded and crewed the station, brought by Soyuz 14; Soyuz 15 attempted to bring a second crew but failed to dock. Nevertheless, it was an overall success. The station's orbit decayed, and it re-entered the atmosphere on January 24, 1975.
Kinda funny considering IBM received no major backlash in the US for selling computing/tabulating equipment to the Nazis while making M-1 Carbines for our boys going over there.
I guess in the US, large companies are exempt from having to have a sense of ethics and morality. Everything is OK as long as it increases shareholder value and a few bucks get put in the right hands. Even if it's treasonous. Glad Israel doesn't work the same way.
Your hard-earned "wealth" in your account is nothing more than a couple fields in an Oracle database. No printing even required. Just an UPDATE query. Your magic plastic suddenly has a positive value for a while.
I think the tin whiskers issues are a little overblown.... power supply issues and occasional dead caps can be a problem. Every antique piece of electronics I've resuscitated usually had power supply issues or blown caps near the power supply.... or unseated chips.
Some things surprise you though.... my old Atari 400 fires right up.
Opening up a CRT is only dangerous if you are careless. If you discharge the tube properly, the danger is minimal or non-existent. CRT repair used to be expected of techs. My money is on the DC power supply failing in your TV. Probably not worth repairing unless it was a really cool TV. I still repair CRT VGA monitors if they are really nice and the repair isn't very expensive. Solder and caps are cheap. I replaced a couple caps in my big Sony Wega HD CRT TV. Why? Because I can watch newer HD content AND my wife can play super mario brothers without it looking like badly upscaled garbage.
For a run-of-the-mill TV, I may not bother. If there was something special about it I might have a go at it. I actually find soldering and prodding at electronics relaxing. Especially old through-hole stuff.
We were lucky enough to be "grandfathered" in on a truly unlimited 3G plan with AT&T otherwise we'd still be using dialup. They tried to start capping us at 5GB/month until we threatened with lawyers. There's no WiMax, DSL, or cable available here. My options are a T-1 at great expense, overpriced bandwidth-capped satellite access with latency issues, dialup (can only connect at 19.2 do to crappy phone lines) or a cell modem.
What pisses me off is Verizon took tax payer funds to run fiber out to last-mile residences and instead of doing the work, they bought a struggling satellite provider for cheap and pocketed the rest claiming they provided broadband.
They don't even care that I have a business need for the access and refuse to run the cable the last 3/4 of a mile to my home. Trust me, I've thought of doing evil things to their equipment in the area. Been going round and round with them for 6 years now with no progress. At least they stopped with the empty promises and admitted they have no intention of providing the access recently.
You know 802.11 (what you call WiFi) is intended to be a substitute for ethernet for LOCAL networks right? You know it's used for more than internet access right? You know there's several business uses for it besides facebook too right?
Nobody ever said you'd get 300Mbps Internet access but I use the hell out of that 300Mbps moving large files around my home network between our server, the PC hooked to the TV, our desktops, our laptops, etc.
If you want wireless access straight to the net, why do you have 802.11 at all, what you want is 802.16 which is intended to provide wireless internet access. Buying an access point and monthly DSL just to use Facebook from your cheap Walmart laptop without plugging into the wall is kind of a waste of money. Get a WiMax card. This White-Space deal is to provide something like WiMax over unused old TV frequencies.
And if interference is that big of a deal, remember you looked at the box and saw it was 2.4GHz, your brain should have turned on and realized MOST cheap consumer gear including your microwave oven uses that spectrum. If you live in a super-crowded area with lots of idiots who don't know how to configure the shiny toy they bought, you're going to have problems. It's not the technologies fault most people can't read a pamphlet and you can't engineer around that.
If interference is really that big of a deal to you 802.11a has been around forever and uses the 5GHz spectrum. b, g and cheap n gear do NOT. And if you don't want to learn anything about wireless tech and find that confusing, maybe trying to play "IT guy" without the experience was a dumb move.
Governments no longer care about the will of the people. Hell, the Russians are bordering on rushing the Kremlin and their leader simply calls them lawless monkeys and likens their ribbons they wear in support to condoms.
Obama has made it a point to dismiss the OWS movement, the tea parties and every other threat of uprising as a non-threat from immature, rash savages that can't do anything about the situation anyway.
Nobody is taking thousands of people standing outside their windows with signs like "Next time we won't be waving signs" or "We're unarmed....this time" seriously at all. And anybody participating in these rallies is treated like they're a bunch of kids that need to go back to school/work instead of "holding everyone up and getting in the way". The general public is mad because while they're out "protesting which ain't gonna do a damn bit of good anyway" they have "responsibilities and bills to pay".
They don't realize the corporate elite and politicians have been outright screwing them CRIMINALLY and then legitimizing their abuses with legislation that only benefits them. It's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse.
And that's why this is probably useless for consumer grade electronics.
I mean really - how often do you break TRACES in a motherboard or PCB in any home consumer product? I haven't ever seen a failure like that get out of QC. The things that kill consumer electronics are corrosion, solder point failure (usually from overpressured heatsinks or heat based warping, see RROD), bad/exploding capacitors, and the occasional power surge or ESD damage.
MAYBE in aeronautics? Maybe maybe MAYBE in automobiles, if you have a PCB somewhere controlling a multifuel system. But for consumer grade home electronics? Not remotely necessary.
I don't know.....if they could find a way to apply this to BGA chips......
Seriously.... the modern BGA package was the stupidest cost cutting measure in history that has caused the average laptop to last maybe 20% as long as laptops made 10 years ago. I doubt Taiwanese 6-yr-olds in the sweatshop X-Ray every board and make sure the solder balls are perfectly uniform.
I want a REAL computer again instead of a disposable consumer entertainment devices. But since the consumer market is so large, pro users and hobbyists with a clue are not at all their target market anymore despite the fact that without the demanding, picky, quality-conscious geeks the home computer would have NEVER taken off. PERIOD.
Yeah, seriously. When you have a security flaw that allows root privilege escalation you don't just decide not to fix that because the homebrewer's were using it as a convenient way to get access to the machine. If this was on an (open) desktop platform, such a flaw wouldn't really be tolerated for long.
If this was a desktop platform, closed locked bootloaders that only boot one revision of Windows wouldn't be tolerated for long either. Bad argument.
Not every weekend but I DO change my own oil and have tried various brands. Found with the age of my engine, 20W40 actually works much better in this climate with less wear and a happier engine. Also have a higher mileage filter with some additives, etc.
So while YOU were trying to be funny.... let's see who's car is actually still running in 5 years. I have NEVER retired a car with less than 250,000 miles on it. And I don't spend more than $500/yr in parts/repairs since most minor-moderate things I take care of myself. Can you say the same?
Why we can't just leave the device details up to the manufacturers and pick our devices based on the features and benefits they offer is beyond me. Some people just love to drown in minutia, personally I would rather buy something that works, return it if it doesn't, and buy another/newer one if it makes me happy.
For you and all the other morons that want to just play Angry Birds and bitch that the Facebook app sucks, that's a fine philosophy. For us smartphone owners that use our devices for real work beyond e-mail, GPS, and facebook that's unacceptable.... an affordable available device which fills my needs or "makes me happy" as you say no longer exists because of morons like you. I am FORCED to flash a phone and find locking bootloaders to be an underhanded and sleazy tactic with "security" just being a lame justification for making sure you have to throw away your phone in a year or two.
you know... us folks who have had smartphones since before they were a buzzword and before Android even existed? Us folks who can't tolerate lockdown because it prevents us from doing our jobs as effectively. The folks who were actually HAPPIER with the pen-based interface instead of the lame fat-finger touch interfaces. The folks who actually use them as real computing devices rather than entertainment. The industry doesn't care about SERIOUS smartphone users anymore. They want the Angry Birds crowd.
Since when does a manufacturer have the right to dictate how I'm going to use something I own? I'm not renting the device, I'll do whatever the hell I want with it whenever the hell I want and if they don't like me removing their crapware/spyware infested, locked-down, useless default Android install they can f**kin kiss my ass. It's mine.
Yet the government is perfectly OK with a large portion of the population (including kids) being fed amphetamines for ADHD. Methamphetamine is just more efficiently absorbed. Same effects basically. They even have an extended-release variety.
The government doesn't want you to stray from their APPROVED tax-paying drug dealers and medical cartel.
It's gotten to the point where if it isn't alcohol or tobacco and it gives you a buzz, it's immediately demonized and banned often with one-sided fictional research that they themselves fund.
Both alcohol and tobacco have SEVERE side-effects with normal use and will usually eventually kill you, even when not "abused". The War on Drugs is stupid and always has been since its roots in the 20's.
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You don't think the Native Americans wouldn't have strapped on bomb vests if they had them available? Especially toward the final conflicts? Nobody likes being conquered. Now you just have more wonderful tools and free easy-to-get weapons knowledge to wage guerrilla warfare almost indefinitely. Just because your underfunded and running low on options doesn't mean you no longer have the right to resist.
You have a right not to be conquered and use any means at your disposal to repel an enemy or make his stay as unpleasant as possible. If it comes down to suicide bombing, well desperation is a bitch.
Though personally, If I were them I'd think it wiser keep my recruits alive. There's no such thing as being an "expert" suicide bomber. Generally people become more effective with greater productivity if they have more than one attempt at a task.
I quit buying new PC games period, specifically because of overzealous copy protection and DRM. Usually the DRM BS won't function under WINE and even causes issues under Windows. Hell a lot of games won't run without a net connection for authentication/DRM which doesn't work for me in rural SC. I even stopped buying new console games but I pick up the occasional used PS2 or Wii game. When I buy a copy of a game, my future grandkids should be able to play it too when I pull it out of a dusty box. I didn't rent the right to play it on one internet-connected computer that I never upgrade often.
The sad thing is I really liked the IL2 series but won't buy Cliffs of Dover or Wings of Prey because they are DRM-laden and/or tied to Steam. You can't even host your own net game server anymore last I checked. You have to use their servers which will likely be shut down 5 years down the road.
We are basically being forced into another dark ages to pad a few douchebags pockets. And it's backed by law. Personally, I'm done. Let Rome burn. If they don't want a couple hundred bucks a year from me because I exercise my rights, whatever, f**k'em. They need me more than I need them.
Unless you have SAMs with paintball warheads or a paintball flak gun, you're going to be hard pressed to hit the bastard. They fly quite high. Don't need low altitude with a nice optics package. Even with real guns, most rifle calibers can't reach 35,000 feet. You talking over 6.5 miles in the air. Much smaller target than a standard plane too.
Maybe if you caught it under the clouds on a really cloudy day when they REALLY wanted to see your backyard. But then you'd still probably miss and they would send a ground unit to kill/torture you for the attempt. Ya know, they gotta brush those rights aside to go after those sneaky, wily terrorists. They're too quick and effective for that archaic due process s**t.
Patents aren't a bad idea but they should be non-transferrable and any patent for which no product is sold should be null and void within a year or two. Using litigation as your sole business model should be outlawed as well. And patent examiners should be able to examine a working prototype in detail with an industry expert before granting the patent.
Software patents as a whole are evil and need to be abolished. Most of the world doesn't respect them anyway and there's too many of them covering very basic expected functionality in software applications. You shouldn't be able to patent numbers or a list of instructions. That's why we have copyright.
What you don't realize is this whole STATE is boondocks for the most part. Internet access should be available in every part of the US. Period. Modern computers and game consoles are useless without it as that is now the primary method of getting software and updates. Much software these days will even refuse to run without a net connection. Yes, if I have to subsidize your roads, pollution and crime issues, then you should get to subsidize my net access some. Especially since they already received tax dollars to run fiber to last-mile residences.
There's a big difference, folks in the country don't need cities. Cities DO need rural farmers. This area is not "unpopulated", it's just sparse. Just like we need phones, we need net access as the internet is rapidly replacing the traditional phone.
There's a lot more rural land in the US than you think and to say that only people in cramped apartment buildings and townhouses should have cheap internet is bullshit.
[quote]
Hospitals are supposed to be private. You really think that having a bunch of slave doctors is good for your country? You think your government knows how many doctors are needed, or exactly what kind of training each one needs? You don't want to let the people decide that? You love long wait times and poor service?
[/quote]
In the past we had "charity hospitals" and hospitals run by clergy.
Being a doctor does NOT mean you're entitled to a 6-figure salary. And most state employees I know get paid ok but they have a REALLY nice benefits package. The government is not going to take over day to day administration of the hospitals and doctors will still be calling the shots in a "socialized medicine" system. Most of the rest of the world has done it and even if wait times suck, you still get treated with little out of pocket cost.
Are you saying that people should f**k off and die to make your ER visit shorter?
We already have long wait times in poor service + the benefit of being treated like a second-class citizen if you can't afford insurance. They actively go out of their way to NOT look for real problems, send you home with a handful of percocet and send you a $1,500 bill. They also charge double to the uninsured patients and cut insurance companies a break. And if you're in the same spot as I am with a family of 4 and a 35k household income you are double screwed because you can't afford insurance OR qualify for medicaid.
Long wait times+poor service is a hell of a lot better than NO medical care with the ER being the only place you can be treated with no followup appointment or medication assistance.
So around here farmers, local computer technicians, and mechanics don't deserve net access or reliable cell coverage because they "chose" to live in the country? If it weren't for folks like my neighbors you wouldn't even eat pal. Why should we subsidize your f**king roads that aren't even in this state? ESPECIALLY since the state here will not even pave MY road. Why should I help subsidize the extra law enforcement required with such population density? Why should I help pay for your schooling? Why should I pay for the environmental cleanup required because your city is a cesspool. Why should I pay taxes, some of which go to supporting the telco that's willing to provide DSL to you and not me?
Apparently you're pretty young. Farmers are people too and a lot of them make good use of the net if available as a vast resource of agricultural information.
AND for your information, the running of fiber to "last mile" residences was SUBSIDIZED ALREADY. In the late 90's the telcos took a LOT of money from the government to roll all this out. They found a loophole and bought a satellite company so they can claim they provide broadband and pocketed the rest.
As far as wireless goes, 802.16 would be great out here but nobody is rolling it out, 802.11 wouldn't cut it with the distance between nodes without really pricy gear. Nobody is willing to fund such a thing in this area due to the rough shape of the economy and without financing from a bank (or a very wealthy friend) who believes in you, it's not going to happen. I want the net infrastructure that was paid for already because the second someone DOES roll out 802.16, suddenly DSL will be magically available cheaper.
You seem to not realize that the telcos take a LOT of tax dollars, including mine. I deserve reliable net access just as much as you do. I'm not willing to give up my family home and move my children to a more crowded dangerous environment just for net access that should have been run to my place a long time ago. Their claim now even after they installed the proper equipment a few miles down the street was "Oh, we can't run DSL down a dirt road." which I know to be false. With all computers and game consoles effectively REQUIRING internet access these days, not having unlimited broadband is not an option and without it it puts smaller rural businesses at a great disadvantage and means children will have even less access to educational materials.
Hell, my son's school sends home assignments that are internet-based. It's not a "luxury" or "convenience" anymore. It's required. Once state agencies and institutions MANDATE certain things to be done on the internet, then yes, you should help subsidize my internet access. Just like I subsidize unemployed bums and their shelters in your city.
It's what I started my programming history with and I still have fond memories of it. Easy enough language that got me interested in programming and provided me instant fun.
BASIC was a great first language and is still useful in teaching simple programming constructs. It was a better fit for early micros than today's machines however. You could get down and dirty with PEEK&POKE statements and talk to hardware directly. Not quite the same anymore.
There never really was any other such comprehensive language with quick-to-see results.
Ummm.... I have to call BS on that one. Both TCL and LISP come to mind.
Drawing on screen was easy, syntax was easy and reading from input was easy.
Depends which version of BASIC we're talking about. Different dialects had WIDELY varying levels of hardware support. Atari BASIC had easy to use graphics statements, BASIC on the C64 did not. QBASIC and QuickBASIC for DOS had lots of graphics commands and supported old-school line numbering as well as more modern labels.
Compatibility was another issue. A program written in Microsoft BASIC wouldn't run without modification on Atari BASIC for example.
Speed was another issue... different BASIC environments were faster than others. Atari BASIC was slow, TurboBASIC XL was 5 times faster on the same hardware and was compatible.
As far as helping me to understand how a computer really works, assembler was more useful. Not saying force assembler on a 10-year-old or expect to write a masterpiece 3D engine. Doing some simple math, throwing some text on the screen, allocating/writing to/reading from RAM, etc isn't so bad.
You got fun things done quickly. As much as some "I'm better than you" geeks like to take a stand about it, BASIC was important part of history.
BASIC just isn't a real good fit for modern environments IMHO. HyperCard w/ HyperTalk on the Mac was interesting and fun to play with but it would stick out like a sore thumb today as well.
A simple high-performance BASIC with an easy to use integrated 3D library that's as easy to use as sprites were might get people interested. The problem with getting kids interested is that most of them want to write games. Writing 3D games is tough.... creating 3D models and environments is tougher. There's no QUICK gratification like you had with simple low-rez sprites back in the day. When kids have dual-screen stereoscopic 3D handheld game systems, spending a week learning to move a sprite around seems dull and irrelevant.
I'm an atheist. Give me my year, a remote, a more comfy mattress, a metric f**kton of morphine and a list of braver doctors to call.
I don't care if all I can do is shit from my nostrils while drooling and giggling. I don't care if I'm paralyzed from the neck down. It beats not living. I'm comfortable with the fact I'm going to die at some point (hell, could be tomorrow) but dammit, the doc better try everything and I mean EVERYthing. They aren't going to get paid to give up.
I could have sworn I watched a similar test of an American anti-satellite system when I was a kid on TV..... and I was right.... back in the 80's we shot down a satellite or two. Launched from an F-15. Stop treating people like barbarians for developing the same tech we love and enjoy because we won't sell it to them. And if we did, it would have a remote kill switch. Not that I want to live in China... but just sayin... they have rights too and that includes developing tech that is equal to or better than ours to defend their homeland and their interests just like we do. I'm not a big fan of communism but apparently a lot of them are pretty ok with it and they can be governed however they wish. If we didn't like the current regime we could have helped the RoC out. We have no qualms interfering in other nations these days.... you know.... ones smaller than us....with no nukes....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#US_programs
Their space program is funded from the same pot as their defense. Big deal. The Air Force kept NASA at arms length as well, it was just less official.
Umm.... a long time ago they apparently had 23mm cannons on space stations..... tested them successfully as well. Would likely have been able to shred an Apollo capsule quite nicely. Or the later Space Shuttle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut#Salyut_3
Salyut 3
OPS-2 (Salyut 3)
Main article: Salyut 3
Salyut 3 (OPS-2) (Russian: -3; English: Salute 3) was launched on June 25, 1974. It was another Almaz military space station, this one launched successfully. It tested a wide variety of reconnaissance sensors, returning a canister of film for analysis. On January 24, 1975, after the station had been ordered to deorbit, trials of the on-board 23 mm Nudelman aircraft cannon (other sources say it was a Nudelman NR-30 30 mm gun) were conducted with positive results at ranges from 3000 m to 500 m.[1] Cosmonauts have confirmed that a target satellite was destroyed in the test. The next day, the station was ordered to deorbit. Only one of the three intended crews successfully boarded and crewed the station, brought by Soyuz 14; Soyuz 15 attempted to bring a second crew but failed to dock. Nevertheless, it was an overall success. The station's orbit decayed, and it re-entered the atmosphere on January 24, 1975.
I doubt it... piracy was still popular before mere mortals could afford internet access. There were plenty of thriving BBS's back in the day.
Kinda funny considering IBM received no major backlash in the US for selling computing/tabulating equipment to the Nazis while making M-1 Carbines for our boys going over there.
I guess in the US, large companies are exempt from having to have a sense of ethics and morality. Everything is OK as long as it increases shareholder value and a few bucks get put in the right hands. Even if it's treasonous. Glad Israel doesn't work the same way.
Your hard-earned "wealth" in your account is nothing more than a couple fields in an Oracle database. No printing even required. Just an UPDATE query. Your magic plastic suddenly has a positive value for a while.
I think the tin whiskers issues are a little overblown.... power supply issues and occasional dead caps can be a problem. Every antique piece of electronics I've resuscitated usually had power supply issues or blown caps near the power supply.... or unseated chips.
Some things surprise you though.... my old Atari 400 fires right up.
Opening up a CRT is only dangerous if you are careless. If you discharge the tube properly, the danger is minimal or non-existent. CRT repair used to be expected of techs. My money is on the DC power supply failing in your TV. Probably not worth repairing unless it was a really cool TV. I still repair CRT VGA monitors if they are really nice and the repair isn't very expensive. Solder and caps are cheap. I replaced a couple caps in my big Sony Wega HD CRT TV. Why? Because I can watch newer HD content AND my wife can play super mario brothers without it looking like badly upscaled garbage.
For a run-of-the-mill TV, I may not bother. If there was something special about it I might have a go at it. I actually find soldering and prodding at electronics relaxing. Especially old through-hole stuff.
We were lucky enough to be "grandfathered" in on a truly unlimited 3G plan with AT&T otherwise we'd still be using dialup. They tried to start capping us at 5GB/month until we threatened with lawyers. There's no WiMax, DSL, or cable available here. My options are a T-1 at great expense, overpriced bandwidth-capped satellite access with latency issues, dialup (can only connect at 19.2 do to crappy phone lines) or a cell modem.
What pisses me off is Verizon took tax payer funds to run fiber out to last-mile residences and instead of doing the work, they bought a struggling satellite provider for cheap and pocketed the rest claiming they provided broadband.
They don't even care that I have a business need for the access and refuse to run the cable the last 3/4 of a mile to my home. Trust me, I've thought of doing evil things to their equipment in the area. Been going round and round with them for 6 years now with no progress. At least they stopped with the empty promises and admitted they have no intention of providing the access recently.
You know 802.11 (what you call WiFi) is intended to be a substitute for ethernet for LOCAL networks right? You know it's used for more than internet access right? You know there's several business uses for it besides facebook too right?
Nobody ever said you'd get 300Mbps Internet access but I use the hell out of that 300Mbps moving large files around my home network between our server, the PC hooked to the TV, our desktops, our laptops, etc.
If you want wireless access straight to the net, why do you have 802.11 at all, what you want is 802.16 which is intended to provide wireless internet access. Buying an access point and monthly DSL just to use Facebook from your cheap Walmart laptop without plugging into the wall is kind of a waste of money. Get a WiMax card. This White-Space deal is to provide something like WiMax over unused old TV frequencies.
And if interference is that big of a deal, remember you looked at the box and saw it was 2.4GHz, your brain should have turned on and realized MOST cheap consumer gear including your microwave oven uses that spectrum. If you live in a super-crowded area with lots of idiots who don't know how to configure the shiny toy they bought, you're going to have problems. It's not the technologies fault most people can't read a pamphlet and you can't engineer around that.
If interference is really that big of a deal to you 802.11a has been around forever and uses the 5GHz spectrum. b, g and cheap n gear do NOT. And if you don't want to learn anything about wireless tech and find that confusing, maybe trying to play "IT guy" without the experience was a dumb move.
Governments no longer care about the will of the people. Hell, the Russians are bordering on rushing the Kremlin and their leader simply calls them lawless monkeys and likens their ribbons they wear in support to condoms.
Obama has made it a point to dismiss the OWS movement, the tea parties and every other threat of uprising as a non-threat from immature, rash savages that can't do anything about the situation anyway.
Nobody is taking thousands of people standing outside their windows with signs like "Next time we won't be waving signs" or "We're unarmed....this time" seriously at all. And anybody participating in these rallies is treated like they're a bunch of kids that need to go back to school/work instead of "holding everyone up and getting in the way". The general public is mad because while they're out "protesting which ain't gonna do a damn bit of good anyway" they have "responsibilities and bills to pay".
They don't realize the corporate elite and politicians have been outright screwing them CRIMINALLY and then legitimizing their abuses with legislation that only benefits them. It's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse.
Both materials however seem to be vulnerable to high velocity lead, stone, steel or gas expansion due to explosive force.
We've had this problem throughout history. Technology solved it a long time ago.
And that's why this is probably useless for consumer grade electronics.
I mean really - how often do you break TRACES in a motherboard or PCB in any home consumer product? I haven't ever seen a failure like that get out of QC. The things that kill consumer electronics are corrosion, solder point failure (usually from overpressured heatsinks or heat based warping, see RROD), bad/exploding capacitors, and the occasional power surge or ESD damage.
MAYBE in aeronautics? Maybe maybe MAYBE in automobiles, if you have a PCB somewhere controlling a multifuel system. But for consumer grade home electronics? Not remotely necessary.
I don't know.....if they could find a way to apply this to BGA chips......
Seriously.... the modern BGA package was the stupidest cost cutting measure in history that has caused the average laptop to last maybe 20% as long as laptops made 10 years ago. I doubt Taiwanese 6-yr-olds in the sweatshop X-Ray every board and make sure the solder balls are perfectly uniform.
I want a REAL computer again instead of a disposable consumer entertainment devices. But since the consumer market is so large, pro users and hobbyists with a clue are not at all their target market anymore despite the fact that without the demanding, picky, quality-conscious geeks the home computer would have NEVER taken off. PERIOD.
Yeah, seriously. When you have a security flaw that allows root privilege escalation you don't just decide not to fix that because the homebrewer's were using it as a convenient way to get access to the machine. If this was on an (open) desktop platform, such a flaw wouldn't really be tolerated for long.
If this was a desktop platform, closed locked bootloaders that only boot one revision of Windows wouldn't be tolerated for long either. Bad argument.
Not every weekend but I DO change my own oil and have tried various brands. Found with the age of my engine, 20W40 actually works much better in this climate with less wear and a happier engine. Also have a higher mileage filter with some additives, etc.
So while YOU were trying to be funny.... let's see who's car is actually still running in 5 years. I have NEVER retired a car with less than 250,000 miles on it. And I don't spend more than $500/yr in parts/repairs since most minor-moderate things I take care of myself. Can you say the same?
Why we can't just leave the device details up to the manufacturers and pick our devices based on the features and benefits they offer is beyond me. Some people just love to drown in minutia, personally I would rather buy something that works, return it if it doesn't, and buy another/newer one if it makes me happy.
For you and all the other morons that want to just play Angry Birds and bitch that the Facebook app sucks, that's a fine philosophy. For us smartphone owners that use our devices for real work beyond e-mail, GPS, and facebook that's unacceptable.... an affordable available device which fills my needs or "makes me happy" as you say no longer exists because of morons like you. I am FORCED to flash a phone and find locking bootloaders to be an underhanded and sleazy tactic with "security" just being a lame justification for making sure you have to throw away your phone in a year or two.
you know... us folks who have had smartphones since before they were a buzzword and before Android even existed? Us folks who can't tolerate lockdown because it prevents us from doing our jobs as effectively. The folks who were actually HAPPIER with the pen-based interface instead of the lame fat-finger touch interfaces. The folks who actually use them as real computing devices rather than entertainment. The industry doesn't care about SERIOUS smartphone users anymore. They want the Angry Birds crowd.
Since when does a manufacturer have the right to dictate how I'm going to use something I own? I'm not renting the device, I'll do whatever the hell I want with it whenever the hell I want and if they don't like me removing their crapware/spyware infested, locked-down, useless default Android install they can f**kin kiss my ass. It's mine.
Yet the government is perfectly OK with a large portion of the population (including kids) being fed amphetamines for ADHD. Methamphetamine is just more efficiently absorbed. Same effects basically. They even have an extended-release variety.
The government doesn't want you to stray from their APPROVED tax-paying drug dealers and medical cartel.
It's gotten to the point where if it isn't alcohol or tobacco and it gives you a buzz, it's immediately demonized and banned often with one-sided fictional research that they themselves fund.
Both alcohol and tobacco have SEVERE side-effects with normal use and will usually eventually kill you, even when not "abused". The War on Drugs is stupid and always has been since its roots in the 20's.