You probably have fewer obstacles in a yard, and they probably move less frequently (trees and such rarely walk around). Just focusing on what path it would take (not propulsion or cutting or anything) you could set RF or whatever beacons around the perimeter of your lawn. Put the robot down at one corner, and have it programmed to stop when there's a barrier ahead of it, move it's body length to the side and procede in reverse.
Imagining a tree in the middle of your yard where you'd put a perimeter around, it would end up missing part of your lawn, but nothing huge, and it wouldn't constantly go over the same section of lawn.
This campaign is so beyond reality it makes reasonable people who don't know a lot about technology question all claims being made by Microsoft, and listen that much more to alternatives.
For instance, the one print ad I keep seeing making it seem like Linux needs to run on a mainframe. Oh boy... Of course the truth is for most business use 4 year old hardware runs just fine with Linux and other FOSS OSes.
Also, the idea that finding people who can admin FOSS is super expensive just isn't true on a per person basis, and FOSS systems can be locked down and remotely admin'ed pretty easily.
Which will only work if the "enemy" is well defined and plays by the rules. As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use.
According to the PDF, "...a Mach 7 railgun could deliver a lethal payload 100 nautical miles in about two minutes."
As we've already read, it can reach about 250 miles. So if the NSA manages to identify someone's voice over a satellite phone, and if there was a ship within range, and they were within 100 natuical miles, we could deliver a projectile of pretty tremendous destructive power in 2 minutes.
That sure seems precise and rapid enough to be useful for individual targets.
The sales people also tend to be loud and incapable of holding the receiver to their head, thus requiring all of the 20,000 daily phone calls to be done on speaker.
Also, I've had sales people sell stuff we didn't make, which we then had to make. Guess it's that do whatever you have to do to get the sale. Anyway, if Chip from sales is too close to the people who have to make what he came up with and sold, those grumbling, now overworked programmers may reach over and strangle Chip.
I did a network install on an old laptop, and once it got going, it was fine. However, the first time I tried to install it froze in downloading some packages, and there doesn't appear to be any way to cancel out of that, or anything to detect that there's a problem and back out. Not a huge deal - I just started over.
I have a funny suspicion the "code monkeys" are not necessarily the ones to blame. Given clear specs and sufficient time I bet they'd love to make good software. Being led by marketing people who are more concerned with features to advertise, and don't have the overall architecture in mind is likely the problem.
What's the significance of the first black guy in space? African-American doesn't mean black. You can be African and not black, you can be black and American and not African-American.
I'm sure there's a great word for this to add to my vocabulary, but....
People mishear something:
should have --> should've --> should of
I don't think they're intentionally changing words, they're repeating what they think they heard and passing that along.
And the people who get annoyed at word definitions changing over time are the same people that complain about Arnold Swartzeneggar saying fantastic to mean great - uh.... that's what it means now! It doesn't mean unbelievable anymore in most situations. Also the same people who hypenate email ("e-mail"), and most likely know no language other than english.
I run a free/paid email service - vfemail.net. You're welcome to monitor the main page and watch the number of free subscribers vs paid subscribers, but the paid users are pretty steady at 28 - while the number of free signups has just crossed the 10,000 mark:/.
People are cheap. If it wasn't for Google ads, I'd be dead in the water.
Great business lesson here - don't expect people to pay:
Unless they have to
There are no other options
And make your money off of their greed - sell ads. Their laziness - sell extra space or options like backups, saving sent messages, etc.
So are secure tunnels looked upon with suspicion, or are there 'legitimate' reasons to have one? ie ecommerce, security, etc.?
Is there some sort of dynamic steganography that could serve a site to look one way unless you have the appropriate software and key on the other side?
My understanding was the Internet was fault tolerant b/c even if points along it were destroyed, the network would still survive. Not the contents on those destroyed machines.
And I thought Akamai accelerated delivery of content and relieved the stress on servers. I can see how problems with Akamai would really mess things up.
Blame for problems and accord for achievement will be made in inverse proportion to how close to the front or backend of a technology project you fall, with designers typically being heralded and programmers scorned.
Eyecandy slowing things down? Programmers fault.
Recent story on Apple's new computers and how well designed the inside of the box is? Designers credit.
A 10 year old computer is probably best paired with 10 year old software.
A lot of current software is sloppy and gratuitous with memory usage - lots of eye candy, redundancy accross applications, etc.
While it may not be for everyone, it's possible to do quite a bit (programming, email, writing, etc) on the command line with programs that work quite happily there - VIM, gcc, bash, mutt, pine, etc.
And if you stick to the command line, or an xterm window in a srtipped down environment, you can do quite a bit on old hardware.
I think distros feel some pressure to have DVDs full of software and offer to install, at the outset, everything it can grab. Perhaps it's the fault of reviewers who focus excessively on the install process and the programs that come along with a distro, and partially on the installers that offer to install software when you're installing the base operating system - and some users feel compelled to install everything they may ever need at this point.
Many ISPs one of your accounts is the catchall, unless you specifically set one up. So to avoid having the massive bulk of spam hit you you can just set up the catchall.
so it would need another hole - air flow going through a dehumidifier. Air filter would be nice, too, to cut down on dust and junk that most boards attract like crazy. Just making a shopping list...
How about housing a computer in an old chest freezer? Make a hole for all the wires, connect to it by 802.11, use a terminal on a fanless, no moving parts computer for silent running. Or just use a laptop. Freezer would keep it quiet, too. And a chest freezer is pretty nondescript - a big box, really. You could stick it in a basement, if you have one, but even out in the open with woodpaneling or a tapestry over it it wouldn't be ugly.
What's next?
Cast Iron Laptops? "Weighing in at just 37lbs!" Plastic pots? "Heating above 140F may cause pot to melt" Or how about a bag you fill with soup that you put between your lap and your laptop to put that heat to good use? "I am my own crockpot!"
Have a catchall account that picks up all the email not handled by other accounts. Make sure to make forwarding addresses for mispellings of other email addresses, or weird variations. Then tell your filter to block everything else that comes in. Either have it do this automatically, or when you get the mail, highligh it all and mark it as junk/spam.
Here's where you can find info on thttpd running CGIs.
It appears, from their benchmarks, that performance running test C CGI's is very good for thttpd.
Seems like it might be best for simpler scripts, tough, as it appears that CGI execution is serialized, so "...one long running script will block all other requests." Here's another explanation.
I'm not sure what's worse - the people who never, ever want to change something (other than when stuff works - why change it then?), or the people who want to change everything without really thinking it over.
There's a new library near my home town that some residents call the Taj Mahal. It's really fancy looking, and evidently was so expensive they can't afford to buy any books to put in it. Oh boy...
That's great that you helped out like that, and really, really sad about the administrations attitude. Who do you they think uses the computers? Maybe kids who are doing papers or something... I don't know.
A computer is increasingly a requirement if you want to find a job or communicate at a professional level. And in a lot of ways, libraries are community centers - you can often take free classes, get tax advice, there are entertaining things for kids, etc.
Running a resource hungry MS operating system just so people can use a browser is a horrible waste of money. Just from the hardware perspective, it's way too expensive. Taking the software into account it gets really crazy.
People like 'things that work' and are disintered in disclaimers, security, back-ups and other 'technical stuff.' So as long as things are pretty and seem to do what people want, they're happy. If something happens that people are warned about, they are angry and incredulous. Such is life in technology. If you ever want to hide sensitive information but widely desciminate it, print it in a manual or a disclaimer.
If only everyone was willing to admit that not everything assumed scientifically true, particulary by non-scientists, is absolutely, certainly true, there would be a lot more investigation and a lot less supression of people's right to dissent.
Slashdot Mirror
You probably have fewer obstacles in a yard, and they probably move less frequently (trees and such rarely walk around). Just focusing on what path it would take (not propulsion or cutting or anything) you could set RF or whatever beacons around the perimeter of your lawn. Put the robot down at one corner, and have it programmed to stop when there's a barrier ahead of it, move it's body length to the side and procede in reverse.
Imagining a tree in the middle of your yard where you'd put a perimeter around, it would end up missing part of your lawn, but nothing huge, and it wouldn't constantly go over the same section of lawn.
...and sheep taste better than robots. hmmmm... robots
This campaign is so beyond reality it makes reasonable people who don't know a lot about technology question all claims being made by Microsoft, and listen that much more to alternatives.
For instance, the one print ad I keep seeing making it seem like Linux needs to run on a mainframe. Oh boy... Of course the truth is for most business use 4 year old hardware runs just fine with Linux and other FOSS OSes.
Also, the idea that finding people who can admin FOSS is super expensive just isn't true on a per person basis, and FOSS systems can be locked down and remotely admin'ed pretty easily.
Which will only work if the "enemy" is well defined and plays by the rules. As soon as it becomes a guerilla war you can have as many nukes, chemical weapons, rail guns or smart bombs as you want and it won't be much use.
According to the PDF, "...a Mach 7 railgun could deliver a lethal payload 100 nautical miles in about two minutes."
As we've already read, it can reach about 250 miles. So if the NSA manages to identify someone's voice over a satellite phone, and if there was a ship within range, and they were within 100 natuical miles, we could deliver a projectile of pretty tremendous destructive power in 2 minutes.
That sure seems precise and rapid enough to be useful for individual targets.
The sales people also tend to be loud and incapable of holding the receiver to their head, thus requiring all of the 20,000 daily phone calls to be done on speaker.
Also, I've had sales people sell stuff we didn't make, which we then had to make. Guess it's that do whatever you have to do to get the sale. Anyway, if Chip from sales is too close to the people who have to make what he came up with and sold, those grumbling, now overworked programmers may reach over and strangle Chip.
I did a network install on an old laptop, and once it got going, it was fine. However, the first time I tried to install it froze in downloading some packages, and there doesn't appear to be any way to cancel out of that, or anything to detect that there's a problem and back out. Not a huge deal - I just started over.
I have a funny suspicion the "code monkeys" are not necessarily the ones to blame. Given clear specs and sufficient time I bet they'd love to make good software. Being led by marketing people who are more concerned with features to advertise, and don't have the overall architecture in mind is likely the problem.
What's the significance of the first black guy in space?
African-American doesn't mean black. You can be African and not black, you can be black and American and not African-American.
I'm sure there's a great word for this to add to my vocabulary, but....
People mishear something:
should have --> should've --> should of
I don't think they're intentionally changing words, they're repeating what they think they heard and passing that along.
And the people who get annoyed at word definitions changing over time are the same people that complain about Arnold Swartzeneggar saying fantastic to mean great - uh.... that's what it means now! It doesn't mean unbelievable anymore in most situations. Also the same people who hypenate email ("e-mail"), and most likely know no language other than english.
People are cheap. If it wasn't for Google ads, I'd be dead in the water.
Great business lesson here - don't expect people to pay:
And make your money off of their greed - sell ads. Their laziness - sell extra space or options like backups, saving sent messages, etc.
So are secure tunnels looked upon with suspicion, or are there 'legitimate' reasons to have one? ie ecommerce, security, etc.?
Is there some sort of dynamic steganography that could serve a site to look one way unless you have the appropriate software and key on the other side?
My understanding was the Internet was fault tolerant b/c even if points along it were destroyed, the network would still survive. Not the contents on those destroyed machines.
And I thought Akamai accelerated delivery of content and relieved the stress on servers. I can see how problems with Akamai would really mess things up.
Blame for problems and accord for achievement will be made in inverse proportion to how close to the front or backend of a technology project you fall, with designers typically being heralded and programmers scorned.
Eyecandy slowing things down? Programmers fault.
Recent story on Apple's new computers and how well designed the inside of the box is? Designers credit.
A 10 year old computer is probably best paired with 10 year old software.
A lot of current software is sloppy and gratuitous with memory usage - lots of eye candy, redundancy accross applications, etc.
While it may not be for everyone, it's possible to do quite a bit (programming, email, writing, etc) on the command line with programs that work quite happily there - VIM, gcc, bash, mutt, pine, etc.
And if you stick to the command line, or an xterm window in a srtipped down environment, you can do quite a bit on old hardware.
I think distros feel some pressure to have DVDs full of software and offer to install, at the outset, everything it can grab. Perhaps it's the fault of reviewers who focus excessively on the install process and the programs that come along with a distro, and partially on the installers that offer to install software when you're installing the base operating system - and some users feel compelled to install everything they may ever need at this point.
Many ISPs one of your accounts is the catchall, unless you specifically set one up. So to avoid having the massive bulk of spam hit you you can just set up the catchall.
so it would need another hole - air flow going through a dehumidifier. Air filter would be nice, too, to cut down on dust and junk that most boards attract like crazy. Just making a shopping list...
How about housing a computer in an old chest freezer? Make a hole for all the wires, connect to it by 802.11, use a terminal on a fanless, no moving parts computer for silent running. Or just use a laptop. Freezer would keep it quiet, too. And a chest freezer is pretty nondescript - a big box, really. You could stick it in a basement, if you have one, but even out in the open with woodpaneling or a tapestry over it it wouldn't be ugly.
Would humidity be an issue?
What's next?
Cast Iron Laptops? "Weighing in at just 37lbs!"
Plastic pots? "Heating above 140F may cause pot to melt"
Or how about a bag you fill with soup that you put between your lap and your laptop to put that heat to good use? "I am my own crockpot!"
Have a catchall account that picks up all the email not handled by other accounts. Make sure to make forwarding addresses for mispellings of other email addresses, or weird variations. Then tell your filter to block everything else that comes in. Either have it do this automatically, or when you get the mail, highligh it all and mark it as junk/spam.
Here's where you can find info on thttpd running CGIs.
It appears, from their benchmarks, that performance running test C CGI's is very good for thttpd.
Seems like it might be best for simpler scripts, tough, as it appears that CGI execution is serialized, so "...one long running
script will block all other requests." Here's another explanation.
I'm not sure what's worse - the people who never, ever want to change something (other than when stuff works - why change it then?), or the people who want to change everything without really thinking it over.
There's a new library near my home town that some residents call the Taj Mahal. It's really fancy looking, and evidently was so expensive they can't afford to buy any books to put in it. Oh boy...
That's great that you helped out like that, and really, really sad about the administrations attitude. Who do you they think uses the computers? Maybe kids who are doing papers or something... I don't know.
A computer is increasingly a requirement if you want to find a job or communicate at a professional level. And in a lot of ways, libraries are community centers - you can often take free classes, get tax advice, there are entertaining things for kids, etc.
Running a resource hungry MS operating system just so people can use a browser is a horrible waste of money. Just from the hardware perspective, it's way too expensive. Taking the software into account it gets really crazy.
People like 'things that work' and are disintered in disclaimers, security, back-ups and other 'technical stuff.' So as long as things are pretty and seem to do what people want, they're happy. If something happens that people are warned about, they are angry and incredulous. Such is life in technology. If you ever want to hide sensitive information but widely desciminate it, print it in a manual or a disclaimer.
If only everyone was willing to admit that not everything assumed scientifically true, particulary by non-scientists, is absolutely, certainly true, there would be a lot more investigation and a lot less supression of people's right to dissent.