Daniel Boone said: "If you can hear the sound of your neighbor's axe, it is time to move to the next valley". Robert A Heinlein once said: "If the local government starts requiring identification cards it is time to move off planet" Different ways of saying the same thing: Individualism does not live well in the land of the pencil pusher, home of the file in triplicate...
I currently have some 8 or so email addresses. One of these is Hotmail. One is Yahoo, I also use Eudora, Outlook, and Macintosh Mail. Oh, and Pine and elm on two systems. To me interface is just eye candy. I DON'T CARE what Hollyweird scandal, or flashing ad for a airline ticket/ car/ toothpaste/, is displayed next to some email that is an advert for Nigerian investments (that is as valid as the ads/articles) -which is what 90% of my Hotmail contains.. I also do not try to juggle my life via some online calendar that can crash/die and leave me all a twitter where I am suposed to be at 10:00.
Mail is mail. you toss the junk mail, you read the interesting stuff, grimace at the bills, and rememeber you need to send that birthday card to Mom. Online is no different then the paper kind. Hotmail's change of interface is like when the Electric company changed to smaller envelopes (and didn't bother to adjust their sorting machines). Better eye candy means more annoyance, Big Deal, Somehow, in spite of it, I supose I can still delete the spam. Thanks Microsoft for all the improvements.
Funny...but...Back in the early days of computing, the Soviets were experimenting with a "tri-state" computer. IIRC it used zero and 2 different voltage settings on the "flip flop" circuit. I am talking REAL early days here. The tale was that the Russians stole an entire OS/360 model 30 mainframe from a Berlin bank and based their later computer systems on that tech dropping the earlier work.
"...and cut the bureaucracy." Sorry, that will NEVER happen. There is an old old joke of a fellow walking the hall at the BIA, seeing a case worker in his office weeping at his desk. He asks: "What is the problem?" the case worker replies: "My Indian Died!".
Bureaucracy needs no reason, needs no purpose other then to grow and gain fiefdom. Adding a new level will in NO WAY reduce the old level.
There is nothing new here. The year was 1976. There was no megabit download, heck 300 baud was fast then. File Sharing consisted of floppy copy parties. and one of the hobby developers complained of the sharing and how it hurt hsi business model. He sent a open letter to the clubs sayign "Don't Copy!!" here is that letter:
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS By William Henry Gates III February 3, 1976 An Open Letter to Hobbyists To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
In most cases, if you read the briefs, the lawyers are clueless about the evidence presented, in almost ANY field, not just in tech. The verbage indicates ignorance in many many areas. In most cases though, the lawyer is more up to speed then is the judge. Think that one through and you will understand the ture pickle we are in...
well actually... I first sent emails via a timeshare called RAX that ran on a OS/360 under MFT/HASP but I also used PROFS on VM and other such. But back then "email" was more a geek toy then communication. I will admit that "DMR1,'HEY HOW ABOUT LUNCH?',LOG-N,CON=Y did get me a date once. AND it was typed in on a 1052. The recipient was at a RJE line and had to type her answer on a punch card to send it back..
Kids indeed, he said as he chucks a vacuum tube in the general direction:)
as a poster on the site pointed out:... why the "stave angel" should be using the treble clef, since 15th century music was usually written with C clefs. sort of like reading about email in the 1960s...
good point. so...get a Macbook, pull the drive, slap in the card, load OS X then load either Parallels or use Bootcamp and install XP (or something more vistarded). done.
A 32gb flash HD is a GREAT idea. Seems to me, one could make a laptop with a REALY small form factor and spend time protecting other things (Screen, keyboard) then worries about drive saftey. 32gb is plenty for the opsys and a few files. As to other stuff (movies, music); get a external 2.5 enclosure preferably with a firewire port. Firewire needs no external power support on a 2.5 enclosure and, you can get up to a good 100gb using regular tech. Most times you don't need the external anyway so why lug it around; stash the class notes on the flash and head towards the dorm to finish the paper and store permanant on the normal drive. best of both worlds...
These class designators remind me of Starbucks coffee; Why can't they just call it a medium? Or the sizing on condoms; there is no "small". -What ever happend to "Bone Head English"?
"...not having buttons, which would make it difficult to dial while driving" I am sure that like the last fellow texting in traffic in front of me, you will be just as capable of endangering life and limb. You should be paying attentiont o the 2 tons of metal you are piloting. seriously. SHUT UP AND DRIVE!
If you are worried about Google having your private information, be sure to place it somewhere safe and secure say...with your federal government. I am sure they will afford it all the care and consideration you as a citizen deserve..
You are probably quite right. and the moding of my post...proves my point; Russia's media's treatment of Putin depends to a degree on pressure from above; managment mood, and partially on how well that media has already influenced the minds of those they "serve" . See Marshal McCulin and George Orwell for details.
If I were a newsie doing a topical piece on Sufist traditions, and the colorful history of Iran, being favorable to the rich and varied aspects of that culture... how well would it be received by the NY Times?
I once worked as a mechanic; I 1st noticed that certain rubbers get tacky in gasoline back then. I thought I would try it on a spare roller from a HP 4si It works. So, I used it on the Laserwriter II rollers. the HP II and the Apple laserwriter II series (the G the SC and others) are bascially all the same Canon printer under the hood, sort of like taking a door off of a Audi and putting it on a VW Dasher; I know, I did that one once too;) Each is in a custom plastic box with the client company's own logic on board. I was using the Apple "G" board because you can store a mess of fonts in a connected SCSI drive and, it has native ethernet, Appletalk not TCP, but ethernet. As to rubbing alcohol as a solvent; I have used it for years on many electronic parts. It takes all sorts of crud out of machines. get a resealable plastic tub then go buy a bunch of bottles of rubbing alcohol at the local grocery or drug store. Vodka works too if you want:) toss in the board, laptop, printer part etc, seal the lid, swirl and set down. walk back in every so often and swirl. After a "While" decant and dry. Using gas and alcohol (btw, alcohol will wash off the gas) as solvents is one way. there are other chemicals that work far better but they are in he "Don't try this at home kids!" department. I am not aware of a web site that talks of this but, I am sure, given the nature of geeks...there probably is one;)
I purchased 3 dead printers at a Goodwill outlet store: a HP laser II and 2 Apple Laserwriters. Take the logic board from one laserwriter, the frame and fuser from the other, take off ALL the rollers and soak them a while in rubbing alcohol then use just a swab of gasoline from the lawn mower to soften the hard rubber, then back in the alcohol bath. then dry for a couple of days. take the better of the 3 toner carts, and all the best parts and assemble 1 printer. Cost: 15 bucks...output: quite good. It has lasted 4 years now.... so much for feel-good recycle. I RECYCLE:)
AK vs M16 is an excellent comparison. Talk to any Nam grunt who saw the elephant. They tended to grab a discarded AK and make use of it when possible. The M16 would BREAK IN HALF if you did anything but shoot gently.... and no comic book would save it... last I checked, little guys in pajamas with AKs seemd to end up as winners in that one...
Slashdot Mirror
Park?
maybe if he just fed the bubbles down that Internet Pipe.......
Daniel Boone said: "If you can hear the sound of your neighbor's axe, it is time to move to the next valley".
Robert A Heinlein once said: "If the local government starts requiring identification cards it is time to move off planet"
Different ways of saying the same thing: Individualism does not live well in the land of the pencil pusher, home of the file in triplicate...
I currently have some 8 or so email addresses. One of these is Hotmail. One is Yahoo, I also use Eudora, Outlook, and Macintosh Mail. Oh, and Pine and elm on two systems. To me interface is just eye candy. I DON'T CARE what Hollyweird scandal, or flashing ad for a airline ticket/ car/ toothpaste/, is displayed next to some email that is an advert for Nigerian investments (that is as valid as the ads/articles) -which is what 90% of my Hotmail contains..
I also do not try to juggle my life via some online calendar that can crash/die and leave me all a twitter where I am suposed to be at 10:00.
Mail is mail. you toss the junk mail, you read the interesting stuff, grimace at the bills, and rememeber you need to send that birthday card to Mom.
Online is no different then the paper kind. Hotmail's change of interface is like when the Electric company changed to smaller envelopes (and didn't bother to adjust their sorting machines). Better eye candy means more annoyance, Big Deal, Somehow, in spite of it, I supose I can still delete the spam. Thanks Microsoft for all the improvements.
Funny...but...Back in the early days of computing, the Soviets were experimenting with a "tri-state" computer. IIRC it used zero and 2 different voltage settings on the "flip flop" circuit. I am talking REAL early days here. The tale was that the Russians stole an entire OS/360 model 30 mainframe from a Berlin bank and based their later computer systems on that tech dropping the earlier work.
"...and cut the bureaucracy." Sorry, that will NEVER happen. There is an old old joke of a fellow walking the hall at the BIA, seeing a case worker in his office weeping at his desk. He asks: "What is the problem?" the case worker replies: "My Indian Died!".
Bureaucracy needs no reason, needs no purpose other then to grow and gain fiefdom. Adding a new level will in NO WAY reduce the old level.
There is nothing new here. The year was 1976. There was no megabit download, heck 300 baud was fast then. File Sharing consisted of floppy copy parties. and one of the hobby developers complained of the sharing and how it hurt hsi business model. He sent a open letter to the clubs sayign "Don't Copy!!" here is that letter:
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC. The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these "users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108. Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
Bill Gates
General Partner, Micro-Soft
and so it goes......
In most cases, if you read the briefs, the lawyers are clueless about the evidence presented, in almost ANY field, not just in tech. The verbage indicates ignorance in many many areas. In most cases though, the lawyer is more up to speed then is the judge. Think that one through and you will understand the ture pickle we are in...
well actually... I first sent emails via a timeshare called RAX that ran on a OS/360 under MFT/HASP but I also used PROFS on VM and other such. But back then "email" was more a geek toy then communication. I will admit that "DMR1,'HEY HOW ABOUT LUNCH?',LOG-N,CON=Y did get me a date once. AND it was typed in on a 1052. The recipient was at a RJE line and had to type her answer on a punch card to send it back..
:)
Kids indeed, he said as he chucks a vacuum tube in the general direction
as a poster on the site pointed out:... why the "stave angel" should be using the treble clef, since 15th century music was usually written with C clefs.
sort of like reading about email in the 1960s...
When EVER someone tells me it is good for me or does good. I reach for my wallet. and usually find his hand already in my pocket...
Declare it to be a way to help Global Warming. You will get funding, PR and a million drones to push it through...
The issue here is not technology..it is MARKETING!
good point. so...get a Macbook, pull the drive, slap in the card, load OS X then load either Parallels or use Bootcamp and install XP (or something more vistarded). done.
Jack never saw a paradigm that he couldn't miss, or at least mis- understand...
...Bright Blessings ;)
oh and
A 32gb flash HD is a GREAT idea. Seems to me, one could make a laptop with a REALY small form factor and spend time protecting other things (Screen, keyboard) then worries about drive saftey. 32gb is plenty for the opsys and a few files. As to other stuff (movies, music); get a external 2.5 enclosure preferably with a firewire port. Firewire needs no external power support on a 2.5 enclosure and, you can get up to a good 100gb using regular tech. Most times you don't need the external anyway so why lug it around; stash the class notes on the flash and head towards the dorm to finish the paper and store permanant on the normal drive. best of both worlds...
These class designators remind me of Starbucks coffee; Why can't they just call it a medium? Or the sizing on condoms; there is no "small". -What ever happend to "Bone Head English"?
"...not having buttons, which would make it difficult to dial while driving" I am sure that like the last fellow texting in traffic in front of me, you will be just as capable of endangering life and limb. You should be paying attentiont o the 2 tons of metal you are piloting. seriously. SHUT UP AND DRIVE!
One day while walking up the stair ...and he finally left...
I saw a man who wasn't there
he wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away
If you are worried about Google having your private information, be sure to place it somewhere safe and secure say...with your federal government. I am sure they will afford it all the care and consideration you as a citizen deserve..
You are probably quite right. and the moding of my post...proves my point; Russia's media's treatment of Putin depends to a degree on pressure from above; managment mood, and partially on how well that media has already influenced the minds of those they "serve" . See Marshal McCulin and George Orwell for details.
If I were a newsie doing a topical piece on Sufist traditions, and the colorful history of Iran, being favorable to the rich and varied aspects of that culture... how well would it be received by the NY Times?
I once worked as a mechanic; I 1st noticed that certain rubbers get tacky in gasoline back then. I thought I would try it on a spare roller from a HP 4si It works. So, I used it on the Laserwriter II rollers. the HP II and the Apple laserwriter II series (the G the SC and others) are bascially all the same Canon printer under the hood, sort of like taking a door off of a Audi and putting it on a VW Dasher; I know, I did that one once too ;) Each is in a custom plastic box with the client company's own logic on board. I was using the Apple "G" board because you can store a mess of fonts in a connected SCSI drive and, it has native ethernet, Appletalk not TCP, but ethernet. :) toss in the board, laptop, printer part etc, seal the lid, swirl and set down. walk back in every so often and swirl. After a "While" decant and dry. ;)
As to rubbing alcohol as a solvent; I have used it for years on many electronic parts. It takes all sorts of crud out of machines. get a resealable plastic tub then go buy a bunch of bottles of rubbing alcohol at the local grocery or drug store. Vodka works too if you want
Using gas and alcohol (btw, alcohol will wash off the gas) as solvents is one way. there are other chemicals that work far better but they are in he "Don't try this at home kids!" department. I am not aware of a web site that talks of this but, I am sure, given the nature of geeks...there probably is one
I purchased 3 dead printers at a Goodwill outlet store: a HP laser II and 2 Apple Laserwriters. Take the logic board from one laserwriter, the frame and fuser from the other, take off ALL the rollers and soak them a while in rubbing alcohol then use just a swab of gasoline from the lawn mower to soften the hard rubber, then back in the alcohol bath. then dry for a couple of days. take the better of the 3 toner carts, and all the best parts and assemble 1 printer. Cost: 15 bucks...output: quite good. It has lasted 4 years now.... so much for feel-good recycle. I RECYCLE :)
AK vs M16 is an excellent comparison. Talk to any Nam grunt who saw the elephant. They tended to grab a discarded AK and make use of it when possible. The M16 would BREAK IN HALF if you did anything but shoot gently. ... and no comic book would save it...
last I checked, little guys in pajamas with AKs seemd to end up as winners in that one...
TRIVIAL? have you TRIED Solitare under Vista? Something MUST be done!