I thought there was some kind of law that prevented a company or organization from making automated calls.
Isn't there also an unwanted soliciation law that if a person requests to be removed from the list and calls are still placed the company could face penalty charges for each call.
I also wonder if the ABC station where there testing this is up for renewal on their liscense, because I know I'd file a complaint!
Oh well, maybe they should just learn to put a better lineup over the air, don't change it around every two weeks, and give plenty of warning when new shows are added or dropped.
If they really wanted to punish ATI they would have went with a different card entirely, 3DFX and NVIDIA would have bent over backwards to score a deal like that.
It's more likely that ATI wasn't sure they could get the Radeon out before the release or the final design stages so instead offered technology that they know works.
If Apple did make a concious decision in the short amount of time, putting a lower performing video card into their new product would only make them look the fools.
Although when I did see that the Rage 128 pro card was going to be used I wondered why they didn't go with others. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to put something that might fail and make them look bad. Whatever their reason I bet they'll offer new systems with a Radeon, 3DFX or NVIDIA card installed within the next few months, definiatly before christmas.
I hope the feds do get the system working on earthlink. Then I'll sign up for an account and send e-mail back and forth to a hot mail account about drug deals, child porn or even plots to overthrow the goverment. Maybe if I e-mail some ufo conspiracy stuff I'll get to meet Scully and Mulder! It's more likely they'll spend huge amounts of time and money reading how little billy has finally learned to use the toilet. In my experience most e-mail people send is so boring you could use it to put the enemy to sleep. Yet another federal program created to waste any budget surplus!
Doesn't this hurt you as well, I mean there using part of you bandwidth to download from. Even if you have dsl or a cable modem their still using bandwidth you paid good money for. Kinda seems like a waste of my time and money.
BXXP (or BEEP) is a good start, but not quite what I want or need as a e-commerce developer.
Currently if I want to design a "fully" interactive site that behaves the same way an application would I'd have to write some kind of java gui, for portablility reasons, that communicates back and forth to some central server running a specialized program that listens on some unused port and processes my cryptic and hastily thrown together messages. However, this is a lot of work, and with my message structure changing every few days its extremely difficult to manage, since you have to change the server and client code.
What I'd like to see is a new protocol with its own server, an application server vs. the current web server. I envision something like an asynchronous connection where both ends pass standard messages back and forth in real time, something similar to the messages passed back and forth between an OS and an application. It would also have to have what everybody is screaming for, one persistant connection, encryption, user validation, and a whole slew of other things I can't think of now.
The main problem is agreeing on a standard messaging system that isn't OS specific, allows users to format data however they wish, and still provides a means for expansion without dozens of revisions before a stable and workable model is created.
Along with this there would need to be an update to web programming languages, yet another java package, or maybe even a whole new net language. This would turn the current web browser into an application browser, where one program could act as anything you wanted it to be. I suspect this is what MS is doing or intends to do, however I doubt they'll open the specifics to everyone, at least not without signing a disclosure agreement.
Well with all that out of the way all we need to do is come up with some acronym. I recomend nssmp (not so simple messaging protocol), or how about wrcwicp (who really cares what it's called protocol)?
Gee I'm impressed, NOT! If you've ever taken a design class it takes usually 2-3 risc instructions to do the same operation a intel instruction takes. Just comparing raw Mhz is like compairing farenheit to celsuis, there is a slight conversion that you need to perform first. Then there's the issue of cache, how many main registers it has, main memory access speed, drive access speed, and other factors that can throw a cpu into an idle state. When all is said and done I doubt the tests will show that the new 400Mhz marvle will be able to outperform a athlon or P3 chip. And as far as the hype about it being a supercomputer, show me a computer in the work place that doesn't run faster than some of the first supercomputers ever designed. So before you start spouting numbers make sure you know about hardware design and what those numbers mean.
Well back in the days when the earth was cooling off and dinasours were being domesticated for house hold pets there existed computers that had many terminals, a terminal being a monitor and keyboard with out a cpu of it's own. Since computers were soo expensive it was common for one computer, usually no faster than your common 286, to have a dozen or so terminal connections to one "true computer", one with a cpu. However the problem was how do your reset a terminal if it hangs, or how do you get the system to recognize your attempt to login? It would be wastefull for the "true computer" to keep a connection going to a terminal that no one was using. Well that's where the SysRq came in, think of it as a on/off switch.
As systems grew and computers became cheap, about this point dinasours died of lung cancer long story don't want to get into it at this time, the key was carried along since computers could be wired into such a system through a serial connection. I've even seen such a serial connection, the horror!
You might also be interested to know that the SysRq key requires you to press the right alt key as well, shift doesn't work. I don't remember what the scan code from the keyboard is but it's a unique scan code.
In reality all the keys on the keyboard do nothing but send back a number, ctl-alt-del is not some magical configuration that trips the reset switch. It's up to your software to recognize that combination and do what ever is appropriate. If your vagly interested the codes sent back start with 1 from your esc key and go from left to right across the keyboard starting with your 1 key above the q, with a few notable exceptions like pause which sends several codes, as well as num lock and the keypad.
As for not being able to detect several key presses, this is true to some degree. While you can't sent to codes at once, codes are sent as make/break codes, if the code is less than 128 it's a make code if it's more than 128 subtract 128 from it and it coresponds to it's break code, meaning it's been released. So a smart programmer would know how to keep track of what position all the keys are in. However there is a limit to how many keys the keyboard can detect as pressed, I think I've managed 12 simultanious keys. I think it's a problem with the number of circuit traces on the board and that some overlap to more than one key, but I'm just guessing that, you can open one up and take a look for yourself.
Now if this has been utterly fascinating to you, get out and date more before your fate is the same as the dinasours!
You might have a point, one connector! That would make my hardware problems just disapper. The floppy could be USB, the cd rom, the hard drive, DVD, memory, network card, video, sound, cpu, fans. My god, all you would need is a power supply with one USB connector! What have we been thinking this whole time. We could make a lego computer, everything connects to each other or even better small little cubes strung together by USB wires.
Now if you think this is a good idea have obviously never taken a course or two in computer design. There is a reason this doesn't happen, it's called too much bandwidth! Things also need priorty, it would suck if your hard drive couldn't be accessed because your mouse was using the line (oops, I didn't need that research paper I was working on anyway.) This isn't to say USB doesn't have it's place. It's a great way to plug in something without having to restart you computer (versus plugging in a sound card while the system is running, which is just a bad idea!)
The only person that pushes for a computer with only one connector (other than imac people) is my 85 year old great, great grandmother (who isn't allowed to drive so she thinks this applies to the information highway as well.) Even a novice can figure out where the keyboard goes, the printer is also pretty hard to mess up, and mice are so simple my you'd have to have a blood alchohol level of.8 not to figure out where this goes. If anything I think it's just way to simple, if my dad can figure out how to hook up his computer anybody can.
I did a few searches myself, here are the results.
wine: 2,066,590 beer: 1,916,500
legal: 8,928,337 illegal: 2,551,590
coke: 246,890 pepsi: 209,930
god: 6,980,580 jesus: 3,792,070 666: 399,310
nude: 21,656,226 clothed: 3,610
So what does all this prove? Well I think it just shows how bored I am. Although it was interesting to note that legal scored higher than illegal. One would think that the search on "illegal" would also include the sub-set "legal".
My real opinion, the internet is neither good nor evil, it is a tool. It is what we do with this tool that is good or evil. Cracking down on isp's that carry offensive material is useless, it's like putting out a fire gasoline, it usually angers the person into posting more offensive material.
While I'm on my ranting kick, I thought this was a free country where we could do and say what we wanted without persicution. If a child runs across an offensive site chances are they won't know what it means. If there activly seeking the material, the internet is only one place they can be exposed to it. You can't shield your children from life because it isn't what you want it to be. Let them makes mistakes, learn what the world is really about. It's neither good or bad, it just is!
If you had about 3,000 users, exchange would work. However, it's not very scalable (contrary to their propiganda). The staff here was forced by the college network to switch over to it so that we could read and use the documents students were sending to us. To it's credit it's pretty flexible, but when the time came to switch the students over to it Microsoft said that it couldn' t support 20,000+ users. Also from what I've seen of the budget it was a pretty hefty price, even with an educational discount!
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I thought there was some kind of law that prevented a company or organization from making automated calls.
Isn't there also an unwanted soliciation law that if a person requests to be removed from the list and calls are still placed the company could face penalty charges for each call.
I also wonder if the ABC station where there testing this is up for renewal on their liscense, because I know I'd file a complaint!
Oh well, maybe they should just learn to put a better lineup over the air, don't change it around every two weeks, and give plenty of warning when new shows are added or dropped.
If they really wanted to punish ATI they would have went with a different card entirely, 3DFX and NVIDIA would have bent over backwards to score a deal like that.
It's more likely that ATI wasn't sure they could get the Radeon out before the release or the final design stages so instead offered technology that they know works.
If Apple did make a concious decision in the short amount of time, putting a lower performing video card into their new product would only make them look the fools.
Although when I did see that the Rage 128 pro card was going to be used I wondered why they didn't go with others. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to put something that might fail and make them look bad. Whatever their reason I bet they'll offer new systems with a Radeon, 3DFX or NVIDIA card installed within the next few months, definiatly before christmas.
I hope the feds do get the system working on earthlink. Then I'll sign up for an account and send e-mail back and forth to a hot mail account about drug deals, child porn or even plots to overthrow the goverment. Maybe if I e-mail some ufo conspiracy stuff I'll get to meet Scully and Mulder!
It's more likely they'll spend huge amounts of time and money reading how little billy has finally learned to use the toilet. In my experience most e-mail people send is so boring you could use it to put the enemy to sleep.
Yet another federal program created to waste any budget surplus!
Doesn't this hurt you as well, I mean there using part of you bandwidth to download from. Even if you have dsl or a cable modem their still using bandwidth you paid good money for. Kinda seems like a waste of my time and money.
BXXP (or BEEP) is a good start, but not quite what I want or need as a e-commerce developer.
Currently if I want to design a "fully" interactive site that behaves the same way an application would I'd have to write some kind of java gui, for portablility reasons, that communicates back and forth to some central server running a specialized program that listens on some unused port and processes my cryptic and hastily thrown together messages. However, this is a lot of work, and with my message structure changing every few days its extremely difficult to manage, since you have to change the server and client code.
What I'd like to see is a new protocol with its own server, an application server vs. the current web server. I envision something like an asynchronous connection where both ends pass standard messages back and forth in real time, something similar to the messages passed back and forth between an OS and an application. It would also have to have what everybody is screaming for, one persistant connection, encryption, user validation, and a whole slew of other things I can't think of now.
The main problem is agreeing on a standard messaging system that isn't OS specific, allows users to format data however they wish, and still provides a means for expansion without dozens of revisions before a stable and workable model is created.
Along with this there would need to be an update to web programming languages, yet another java package, or maybe even a whole new net language. This would turn the current web browser into an application browser, where one program could act as anything you wanted it to be. I suspect this is what MS is doing or intends to do, however I doubt they'll open the specifics to everyone, at least not without signing a disclosure agreement.
Well with all that out of the way all we need to do is come up with some acronym. I recomend nssmp (not so simple messaging protocol), or how about wrcwicp (who really cares what it's called protocol)?
Sweeet, now all we need is a way to map users pictures to the processes they spawn. Take that vice president!
Although I think Duke 3D would have been a better 3d engine to use, but I'll take what I can get.
Gee I'm impressed, NOT! If you've ever taken a design class it takes usually 2-3 risc instructions to do the same operation a intel instruction takes.
Just comparing raw Mhz is like compairing farenheit to celsuis, there is a slight conversion that you need to perform first. Then there's the issue of cache, how many main registers it has, main memory access speed, drive access speed, and other factors that can throw a cpu into an idle state.
When all is said and done I doubt the tests will show that the new 400Mhz marvle will be able to outperform a athlon or P3 chip.
And as far as the hype about it being a supercomputer, show me a computer in the work place that doesn't run faster than some of the first supercomputers ever designed.
So before you start spouting numbers make sure you know about hardware design and what those numbers mean.
Well back in the days when the earth was cooling off and dinasours were being domesticated for house hold pets there existed computers that had many terminals, a terminal being a monitor and keyboard with out a cpu of it's own. Since computers were soo expensive it was common for one computer, usually no faster than your common 286, to have a dozen or so terminal connections to one "true computer", one with a cpu. However the problem was how do your reset a terminal if it hangs, or how do you get the system to recognize your attempt to login? It would be wastefull for the "true computer" to keep a connection going to a terminal that no one was using. Well that's where the SysRq came in, think of it as a on/off switch.
As systems grew and computers became cheap, about this point dinasours died of lung cancer long story don't want to get into it at this time, the key was carried along since computers could be wired into such a system through a serial connection. I've even seen such a serial connection, the horror!
You might also be interested to know that the SysRq key requires you to press the right alt key as well, shift doesn't work. I don't remember what the scan code from the keyboard is but it's a unique scan code.
In reality all the keys on the keyboard do nothing but send back a number, ctl-alt-del is not some magical configuration that trips the reset switch. It's up to your software to recognize that combination and do what ever is appropriate. If your vagly interested the codes sent back start with 1 from your esc key and go from left to right across the keyboard starting with your 1 key above the q, with a few notable exceptions like pause which sends several codes, as well as num lock and the keypad.
As for not being able to detect several key presses, this is true to some degree. While you can't sent to codes at once, codes are sent as make/break codes, if the code is less than 128 it's a make code if it's more than 128 subtract 128 from it and it coresponds to it's break code, meaning it's been released. So a smart programmer would know how to keep track of what position all the keys are in. However there is a limit to how many keys the keyboard can detect as pressed, I think I've managed 12 simultanious keys. I think it's a problem with the number of circuit traces on the board and that some overlap to more than one key, but I'm just guessing that, you can open one up and take a look for yourself.
Now if this has been utterly fascinating to you, get out and date more before your fate is the same as the dinasours!
You might have a point, one connector! That would make my hardware problems just disapper. The floppy could be USB, the cd rom, the hard drive, DVD, memory, network card, video, sound, cpu, fans.
.8 not to figure out where this goes. If anything I think it's just way to simple, if my dad can figure out how to hook up his computer anybody can.
My god, all you would need is a power supply with one USB connector! What have we been thinking this whole time. We could make a lego computer, everything connects to each other or even better small little cubes strung together by USB wires.
Now if you think this is a good idea have obviously never taken a course or two in computer design. There is a reason this doesn't happen, it's called too much bandwidth! Things also need priorty, it would suck if your hard drive couldn't be accessed because your mouse was using the line (oops, I didn't need that research paper I was working on anyway.)
This isn't to say USB doesn't have it's place. It's a great way to plug in something without having to restart you computer (versus plugging in a sound card while the system is running, which is just a bad idea!)
The only person that pushes for a computer with only one connector (other than imac people) is my 85 year old great, great grandmother (who isn't allowed to drive so she thinks this applies to the information highway as well.) Even a novice can figure out where the keyboard goes, the printer is also pretty hard to mess up, and mice are so simple my you'd have to have a blood alchohol level of
I did a few searches myself, here are the results.
wine: 2,066,590
beer: 1,916,500
legal: 8,928,337
illegal: 2,551,590
coke: 246,890
pepsi: 209,930
god: 6,980,580
jesus: 3,792,070
666: 399,310
nude: 21,656,226
clothed: 3,610
So what does all this prove? Well I think it just shows how bored I am. Although it was interesting to note that legal scored higher than illegal. One would think that the search on "illegal" would also include the sub-set "legal".
My real opinion, the internet is neither good nor evil, it is a tool. It is what we do with this tool that is good or evil. Cracking down on isp's that carry offensive material is useless, it's like putting out a fire gasoline, it usually angers the person into posting more offensive material.
While I'm on my ranting kick, I thought this was a free country where we could do and say what we wanted without persicution. If a child runs across an offensive site chances are they won't know what it means. If there activly seeking the material, the internet is only one place they can be exposed to it. You can't shield your children from life because it isn't what you want it to be. Let them makes mistakes, learn what the world is really about. It's neither good or bad, it just is!
If you had about 3,000 users, exchange would work. However, it's not very scalable (contrary to their propiganda). The staff here was forced by the college network to switch over to it so that we could read and use the documents students were sending to us. To it's credit it's pretty flexible, but when the time came to switch the students over to it Microsoft said that it couldn'
t support 20,000+ users. Also from what I've seen of the budget it was a pretty hefty price, even with an educational discount!