My local vendor is like that as well, service much better than say Dell who doesn't do next business day support in my state as is the case with all the other name brand vendors so I win right off the bat. Not only that but he and his wife are more than willing to build to my custom designs which consistently out perform the name brands.
Actually I think they have the order of correlation reversed. Those who multi-task well do well at video games (and other games for that matter) which is why they play a lot of video games. Everyone else gets frustrated and quits playing video games:-). Since they multi-task well, then they do equally as well multi-tasking while driving. This is a normal mistake by many people in the scientific fields, mistaking correlation for causation when there is an underlying variable.
Actually they do have WiFi so that the children can share a network (mesh) connection for distance learning. Apparently it didn't add that much to the price which doesn't surprise me given the single chip solutions I'm seeing now in the electronic engineering trade pubs.
Excuse me? I've lost count of the number of NDA's I've signed over the years but one thing that I do know is that violations of the law are not subject to NDA and revealing such information to the authorities is covered by the whistleblower statutes. The public good has nothing to do with your comment. Your duties under the law do.
One of the more interesting developments in the Third World is that one woman (it always seems to be a woman) will obtain a cell phone via a microloan (Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, via other agencies elsewhere) and sell time on their cellular phone to others in their village at a small markup. It's a booming business and doesn't require any additional infrastructure investment by the countries involved beyond the cell towers which they already were installing all over the place for their own governmental officials and their military.
You never know how technology is going to be applied by sufficiently motivated individuals let alone all the various directions they will take to get there. That's what makes the intersection of high tech and economics especially in terms of international development so much fun.
So, expect to be surprised what happens with these laptops when they get into the hands of not only school children but their parents as well. It will happen.
these are not to be sold at CompUSA or even walmart.....
Which is sad. I know a lot of people to whom I've described this machine, all of whom are living on very limited disability incomes, that would love to be able to buy one from anyone, even if it's through a government program. I can easily think of numerous areas of this country where it would be to our (the US's) advantage to distribute these machines as well. Heck, I would love one as well even if it is just for reading e-books and tapping the wireless at the university/college libraries when I'm doing research. Paying a lot of money for a laptop seems silly for that kind of limited use.
The Defense Department already has a command perfectly tailored to sponsor cyberwarfare. The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which draws from all branches of the services and already has close ties with all the intelligence services. Furthermore, service rivalries are checked at the door in JSOC. What is sad is that if you are in JSOC, you can kiss your chances of promotion pretty much goodbye.
Actually the SEALs have been involved in cyberwarfare for quite a while. What is publicly known is that they have been tapping undersea telecommunications cables since the height of the Cold War, for instance, and they are usually on the ground first in every modern war we've fought months before the rest of our forces arrive. I don't believe, having worked with them before, that they are just sitting around in their spiderholes doing a whole lot of nothing. Actually, if they hadn't put me out to pasture on disability, my next duty station would almost certainly been as part of their technical support team. I'll give you one guess what I would have been involved in:-).
Yes, this topic comes up frequently among those of us that work in the fields of info-sec, network security, and physical security (I consult on all three). Yes, physical security as site details seem to be a frequent penetration target. One country I did not see mentioned in that article is North Korea. There has been discussion in the past that North Korea is developing a cyber-warfare capability with Chinese sponsorship and resources. Given the close connections between the two I wouldn't be surprised but I don't have the intell connections I had while in the service to know the "facts" behind that conjecture. Still, it would be a logical next step for the NKPA since both our economy and military-industrial complex as well as that of the South Koreans are based on information technology. Just think. How the heck would you call up your reserves if your whole communications system were wiped out. And that's just for starters.
What I do know is that if they try to target me, aside from the usual probes that I see hundreds to thousands of times per day, they may get a rude shock {evil grin}.
Actually if you examine the historical records for the medieval period and beyond you find out that every so-called religious based war had an economic basis. I made the medieval and renassaince period history and economics a specialty at the university and beyond as I've found it fascinating, especially as we are discovering more and more new material and just plain incorrect previously known "facts."
The Crusades are a prime example for the period. With the exception of the ill-fated Children's Crusade, the first three were driven by an excess of landless noble sons and that the Moslems were sitting on the trade routes to India and China. The Fourth Crusade, that resulted in the sack of Byzantium in 1204, was driven by the Venetians who were determined to eliminate a competitor in the eastern Mediterranean trade and worked like a charm. It gave the Venetians a monopoly on that trade for centuries.
Religion makes a fine justification for war but when you look at the historical patterns, the truth is that it is a late comer to causality.
I wouldn't bother to print it out if I went that way. I do download the free books from Baen books all the time and read them on the screen although I do, if I like the book, buy the paper-based version as well to read away from my keyboard. Anything else isn't economic as I can't get prices anything close to what the publishers get for ink or paper.
My basic point was that anyone can get most any book for download from UseNet so why the hu-hu about what Google is doing? Frankly I'd love it if someone did the same with music, i.e. allow searches with sample tracks and links to buy the music from a download site or order the (overpriced) CD.
The basic problem with the media industry today is that they haven't come to terms with the plain fact that all media today is now at the same paradigm shift as occured when Gutenburg fired up that printing press and put a lot of scribes out of business except for those that wanted a hand scribed book. Some day the media industry may figure it out but it will take a while. Unfortunately, all those scribes went to work for officialdom of that time which was the beginning of the reestablishment of bureaucracy which had faded out for a while after the fall of Byzantine Rome.
Baen books has always made a lot of money off of me and this feature is simply one more reason why they will continue to make money from my limited (disability) income. That's aside from the fact, as was cited in one of their end-page advertisements, that "Baen Books simply taste good." And neither I nor the author of that quote were talking about them as food!
It isn't unusual for me to have an electronic copy and the hard/paperback copy here and that's almost always the case. It's damned convenient to have the electronic copy while I'm working on the computer and I can pop off a chapter or three while something is happening just as it's damned inconvenient to try to figure out a way to carry my whole computer system and use it on the bus:-). Each medium has its uses.
You nailed it on the head about the first hit is always free. I dare anyone that is a serious history or science fiction buff to read the first of the Belisarius series ("Into the Heart of Darkness" - David Drake, Eric Flint) and not get the rest of the series! Yum! I've already almost killed (destroyed) my second set of these novels and about to buy a third.
If you want the entire text of something you don't need to hit Google and do a cut and paste job piecemeal. Simply sign up with a service that has the right newsgroups and then hit those newsgroups that trade books that have been scanned and collect away. Apparently they even have their own editors to correct the scans from what I can see. I don't do that myself (download from those groups) but I've checked out the various groups and they have pretty much anything you could ask for and a lot of people do ask away. I've seen the latest Harry Potter hit within a few days after release.
However, this is not what Google is doing and unless you can figure out a way to search for the entire text piece by piece and reassemble it in the proper order, you aren't going to get the complete text. I can think of some algorithmic techniques that might work but it would be very hit and miss even with the best techniques I can think of and I'm damned good in the non-linear search department.
In my case, stimming consists of listening to the radio and television (with occasional glances as needed) while reading one or more texts/screens at a time while I thinking about various things. All at the same time. My brain seems to be multi-track as has been demonstrated in numerous tests that they gave me as a teen. 16-18 from their tests, depending on what form the stimulants were. I rather like it although I do stress out when I do not have multiple inputs and I know for a fact that this behavior drives those around me more than a little nuts.
Another behavior that bothers those around me is my compulsive classification behavior. While this is great for an economist or musicologist (I have a degree in one and could easily operate as the other), people don't like it when you announce, for instance, the composer, title, and group/orchestra/singer for every piece of music that comes along or flaws in quotations, sources, or statistics complete with citations:-).
I also have to rewind things here when dealing with spoken words. Give me the written word any day of the week. For some reason, speech is more ambiguous and I have to rewind it, analyze what was said and then determine what actions are required. Every task requires thinking through the actual steps as well as all possible consequences. Fortunately I think very, very fast so most people never notice.
Last point is that I served in the US Navy for over thirteen years. They knew what they were getting when I joined. During that period I had fantastic (4.0) evaluations save in one area. Military behavior. Gee I wonder why? Still, they didn't want to let me go; that decision was made at the Pentagon by people without a clue.
Fortunately, my diagnosis was made long before this craze of self-diagnosis or over-diagnosis so I know its real and yes, I do need a lot of support. Still, I rather like what I am as I posted above. It certainly keeps me entertained and there is a place for someone that can connect information in multiple fields especially in these days of the 'net.
I don't know about dooming me to working as a McDonald's manager, but I wouldn't want to take the risk. I'm quite happy with my life as a HFA and wouldn't trade it for the world.
I guess there is only so much money to go around in the economy, if Google is making a huge profit, someone else is getting less.
Total BS. Only the economically uneducated would think that. While the actual number of dollars at any point in time may be fixed at some amount, which isn't strictly true if you understand how our banking system really works, money has a velocity. Velocity is the number of times that money changes hands during a given period of time. It is not fixed. If anything, the velocity of money increases as our technology improves; it can change hands at a more rapid pace. When Google, or anyone else, makes a profit, that profit is not stuck under a matress. It is distributed to shareholders, invested in the form of new capital (either physical, financial, or human in the form of training or new hires), or given to the government. The economy can grow as a result. The economy, despite assertions from those without a clue, is not a zero sum game.
It is not surprising that the French are the ones most interested in taking down Google, and the 'net for that matter. Aside from being stuck in the mercatilist model of the 1700's, they have a demonstrated pattern of cultural superiority/xenophobia. And if that comment (fact actually) offends the French, tough.
Yep, I (mis)remember that. Even afterward, Hotmail was still IE only for quite a while... paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
That makes two of us!
Well, if you don't have access to a professional level tool like Visual Studio or Macromedia's Dreamweaver, you could always use the freebie Microsoft ASP.NET WebMatrix. It's a sweet, little (1.3 MB), no-frills tool although you won't move the world with it. It can even do database driven pages from Access (blech!) or SQL Server. Other databases are possible although you'd have to hand tweak the code and forget the visual designer.
Really? I'm surprised as I've been giving the HP ML110 G3, with the Pentium D, a hard look here and the OS is an optional item on the order here in the US. I'm fairly impressed on the cost/benefits of this unit as I can't even come close to building one for the same cash. A pity about the limited number of drive bays though. The SATA has six ports but only two drive bays, three if you convert one of the "media bays" with a 3 1/2" conversion kit. Still, for what I want to do, serious virtual machine work, it may work nicely.
You wouldn't be the first to have made that same (correct) conclusion. However, one problem here with comparing FF to MSIE is that what is listed in the process list as Internet Explorer is only a wrapper to the actual process doing the heavy lifting so you aren't seeing the whole memory footprint for IE. I made that same mistake when I first met FF back in the 0.5 beta and did a bit of research in my MSDN's to figure out what was up. Secondly, it also helps that MSIE is Windows specific/optimized which is another problem for FF. This is not to say that FF can't do better (see the FF pixmap topic from yesterday). I still stand by my post though. FF is more than willing to gracefully relinquish memory in low memory situations. I've seen it.
BTW, coolness has nothing to do with my use of Win Server 2003. Stability does, just as when I used to use 2KAS for the same reason. You couldn't get me near XP except during testing and I only use it in a virtual machine even then. Blech! Reminds me of Win'Me.
Why? Since you are making that complaint you must be using Windows as I am while I am typing this (Windows Server 2003 Enterprise here). These are NOT the days of DOS where you have to have free memory before a program can load. Depending on buffering requirements, any program can request more memory than it may need at any moment and if another program should come along requiring memory, the operating system (we really have modern OS's now with the NT series, sort of) will tell all programs to free up whatever unused memory blocks they have laying around. BTW, even the OS itself carves out a huge chunk of RAM to act as a system buffer. Frequently around half (although you can hack this in the registry) and this is even true in the various flavors of *nix which will use almost all free pages for system buffers. Hell, in *nix you should see 90% or so of RAM allocated ALL the time.
Sorry, but you don't seem to understand how a modern operating system works let alone a modern application within that context. I suggest starting with Tannenbaum's excellent "Modern Operating System Design"; a very nice introduction to the subject.
FWIW, my system is wired up like a pinball machine and I normally run with six tabs open ranging up to a maximum of about twenty. Peak usage is about what you experience, 100 MB, and Firefox will relinquish all but about 20 MB when I fire up multiple virtual machines here. So, the memory management does work. I've seen it in action, repeatedly.
Actually this review is useless for comparing dual-core CPU machines. The fundamental methodology is flawed as Sandra is unable to test that feature since the tests themselves are single threaded as SiSoft is more than willing to acknowledge. I still expect the dual-core AMD CPU's to clean up on any benchmarks that are multi-threaded but still you can't base your decision off of these charts.
I make extensive use of virtual machines here using either Virtual Server or VMWare Workstation and can peg my P4's right to the wall when testing applications or one of my simulated network (security) configurations. Give me some benchmarks I can use, not this crap.
Actually you aren't the only one. I have a 5x86 here running WFW 3.11 sitting next to a PII running straight DOS 6.22;-). I still encounter these machines in the field so I keep them around for reference and to refresh my skills. I'm probably one of the few that still can cut 5 1/4" disks for people or convert them to 3 1/2. It's rarely called for but it does happen.
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My local vendor is like that as well, service much better than say Dell who doesn't do next business day support in my state as is the case with all the other name brand vendors so I win right off the bat. Not only that but he and his wife are more than willing to build to my custom designs which consistently out perform the name brands.
Actually I think they have the order of correlation reversed. Those who multi-task well do well at video games (and other games for that matter) which is why they play a lot of video games. Everyone else gets frustrated and quits playing video games :-). Since they multi-task well, then they do equally as well multi-tasking while driving. This is a normal mistake by many people in the scientific fields, mistaking correlation for causation when there is an underlying variable.
Actually they do have WiFi so that the children can share a network (mesh) connection for distance learning. Apparently it didn't add that much to the price which doesn't surprise me given the single chip solutions I'm seeing now in the electronic engineering trade pubs.
Excuse me? I've lost count of the number of NDA's I've signed over the years but one thing that I do know is that violations of the law are not subject to NDA and revealing such information to the authorities is covered by the whistleblower statutes. The public good has nothing to do with your comment. Your duties under the law do.
You never know how technology is going to be applied by sufficiently motivated individuals let alone all the various directions they will take to get there. That's what makes the intersection of high tech and economics especially in terms of international development so much fun.
So, expect to be surprised what happens with these laptops when they get into the hands of not only school children but their parents as well. It will happen.
Which is sad. I know a lot of people to whom I've described this machine, all of whom are living on very limited disability incomes, that would love to be able to buy one from anyone, even if it's through a government program. I can easily think of numerous areas of this country where it would be to our (the US's) advantage to distribute these machines as well. Heck, I would love one as well even if it is just for reading e-books and tapping the wireless at the university/college libraries when I'm doing research. Paying a lot of money for a laptop seems silly for that kind of limited use.
The Defense Department already has a command perfectly tailored to sponsor cyberwarfare. The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which draws from all branches of the services and already has close ties with all the intelligence services. Furthermore, service rivalries are checked at the door in JSOC. What is sad is that if you are in JSOC, you can kiss your chances of promotion pretty much goodbye.
Actually the SEALs have been involved in cyberwarfare for quite a while. What is publicly known is that they have been tapping undersea telecommunications cables since the height of the Cold War, for instance, and they are usually on the ground first in every modern war we've fought months before the rest of our forces arrive. I don't believe, having worked with them before, that they are just sitting around in their spiderholes doing a whole lot of nothing. Actually, if they hadn't put me out to pasture on disability, my next duty station would almost certainly been as part of their technical support team. I'll give you one guess what I would have been involved in :-).
What I do know is that if they try to target me, aside from the usual probes that I see hundreds to thousands of times per day, they may get a rude shock {evil grin}.
The Crusades are a prime example for the period. With the exception of the ill-fated Children's Crusade, the first three were driven by an excess of landless noble sons and that the Moslems were sitting on the trade routes to India and China. The Fourth Crusade, that resulted in the sack of Byzantium in 1204, was driven by the Venetians who were determined to eliminate a competitor in the eastern Mediterranean trade and worked like a charm. It gave the Venetians a monopoly on that trade for centuries.
Religion makes a fine justification for war but when you look at the historical patterns, the truth is that it is a late comer to causality.
My basic point was that anyone can get most any book for download from UseNet so why the hu-hu about what Google is doing? Frankly I'd love it if someone did the same with music, i.e. allow searches with sample tracks and links to buy the music from a download site or order the (overpriced) CD.
The basic problem with the media industry today is that they haven't come to terms with the plain fact that all media today is now at the same paradigm shift as occured when Gutenburg fired up that printing press and put a lot of scribes out of business except for those that wanted a hand scribed book. Some day the media industry may figure it out but it will take a while. Unfortunately, all those scribes went to work for officialdom of that time which was the beginning of the reestablishment of bureaucracy which had faded out for a while after the fall of Byzantine Rome.
Yeah, right {dripping sarcasm}.
It isn't unusual for me to have an electronic copy and the hard/paperback copy here and that's almost always the case. It's damned convenient to have the electronic copy while I'm working on the computer and I can pop off a chapter or three while something is happening just as it's damned inconvenient to try to figure out a way to carry my whole computer system and use it on the bus :-). Each medium has its uses.
You nailed it on the head about the first hit is always free. I dare anyone that is a serious history or science fiction buff to read the first of the Belisarius series ("Into the Heart of Darkness" - David Drake, Eric Flint) and not get the rest of the series! Yum! I've already almost killed (destroyed) my second set of these novels and about to buy a third.
However, this is not what Google is doing and unless you can figure out a way to search for the entire text piece by piece and reassemble it in the proper order, you aren't going to get the complete text. I can think of some algorithmic techniques that might work but it would be very hit and miss even with the best techniques I can think of and I'm damned good in the non-linear search department.
Another behavior that bothers those around me is my compulsive classification behavior. While this is great for an economist or musicologist (I have a degree in one and could easily operate as the other), people don't like it when you announce, for instance, the composer, title, and group/orchestra/singer for every piece of music that comes along or flaws in quotations, sources, or statistics complete with citations :-).
I also have to rewind things here when dealing with spoken words. Give me the written word any day of the week. For some reason, speech is more ambiguous and I have to rewind it, analyze what was said and then determine what actions are required. Every task requires thinking through the actual steps as well as all possible consequences. Fortunately I think very, very fast so most people never notice.
Last point is that I served in the US Navy for over thirteen years. They knew what they were getting when I joined. During that period I had fantastic (4.0) evaluations save in one area. Military behavior. Gee I wonder why? Still, they didn't want to let me go; that decision was made at the Pentagon by people without a clue.
Fortunately, my diagnosis was made long before this craze of self-diagnosis or over-diagnosis so I know its real and yes, I do need a lot of support. Still, I rather like what I am as I posted above. It certainly keeps me entertained and there is a place for someone that can connect information in multiple fields especially in these days of the 'net.
I don't know about dooming me to working as a McDonald's manager, but I wouldn't want to take the risk. I'm quite happy with my life as a HFA and wouldn't trade it for the world.
It is not surprising that the French are the ones most interested in taking down Google, and the 'net for that matter. Aside from being stuck in the mercatilist model of the 1700's, they have a demonstrated pattern of cultural superiority/xenophobia. And if that comment (fact actually) offends the French, tough.
Yep, I (mis)remember that. Even afterward, Hotmail was still IE only for quite a while. .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
That makes two of us!
I can live with that. Actually that would be a positive way to go here. Thanks for the tip. Now to save those pennies.
Well, if you don't have access to a professional level tool like Visual Studio or Macromedia's Dreamweaver, you could always use the freebie Microsoft ASP.NET WebMatrix. It's a sweet, little (1.3 MB), no-frills tool although you won't move the world with it. It can even do database driven pages from Access (blech!) or SQL Server. Other databases are possible although you'd have to hand tweak the code and forget the visual designer.
(Yes, I know, off-topic)
BTW, coolness has nothing to do with my use of Win Server 2003. Stability does, just as when I used to use 2KAS for the same reason. You couldn't get me near XP except during testing and I only use it in a virtual machine even then. Blech! Reminds me of Win'Me.
Sorry, but you don't seem to understand how a modern operating system works let alone a modern application within that context. I suggest starting with Tannenbaum's excellent "Modern Operating System Design"; a very nice introduction to the subject.
FWIW, my system is wired up like a pinball machine and I normally run with six tabs open ranging up to a maximum of about twenty. Peak usage is about what you experience, 100 MB, and Firefox will relinquish all but about 20 MB when I fire up multiple virtual machines here. So, the memory management does work. I've seen it in action, repeatedly.
Free memory? Bah! A waste.
I make extensive use of virtual machines here using either Virtual Server or VMWare Workstation and can peg my P4's right to the wall when testing applications or one of my simulated network (security) configurations. Give me some benchmarks I can use, not this crap.
Actually you aren't the only one. I have a 5x86 here running WFW 3.11 sitting next to a PII running straight DOS 6.22 ;-). I still encounter these machines in the field so I keep them around for reference and to refresh my skills. I'm probably one of the few that still can cut 5 1/4" disks for people or convert them to 3 1/2. It's rarely called for but it does happen.