Shit, I'm only 35 and I feel ancient after reading your post:)
When I was in high school, we had about 10 Apple IIs, maybe 14 DEC 8086 PCs, running DOS 3.3 booted from a floppy (there were no hard drives), and a fucking PDP-8!
I'm self taught as well. I got my first computer in 1983, an Atari 800XL. Seems like the barrier to entry is so much higher these days that most kids will never learn to program...
Something like the ClioNXT might interest you, as long as you can stomach Windows CE.NET 5.0. Well, that and the fact that it's been delayed for the better part of a year. At least the systems are finally entering beta testing.
It has the physical specifications to match your desired device: 10.4" screen, Wifi, SD and PC Card, QWERTY keyboard and swivel touch screen. Last I heard it was to cost between $799 and $999.
I hate the fact that since Lenovo took over the Thinkpad line they have modified the keyboard to include those infernal "Windows" keys. They reduce the size of Ctrl, Alt, and the Spacebar, and are worthless if you don't run Windows on it! I actually looked into the new design on the X60 to see if I could yank the keyboard out and replace it with one from my X24 or X30, but they changed the connector design!!!
No thanks, I'll just keep using my old Thinkpads...
Re:Data definitely is inescapable
on
Inescapable Data
·
· Score: 1
File sharing is probably the biggest reason why people leave their PCs on 24/7 these days. Of course you can cut electricity costs if you use a low end PC with no monitor for BitTorrent, Emule, etc.
Too bad nobody else had a good idea here. I was thinking of building my own too after seeing them in Smarthome for over $3,000. For the wiseguys out there- No, it's not so I can watch TV while on the shitter, I hoped to use it while shaving in the morning. My wife is sick of me walking out of the bathroom while shaving to catch a breaking news or weather report.
The neat part of the mirror is that when the TV is off, the entire surface is reflective. You probably need to get one of those semi-transparent 2 way mirrors, remove an LCD TV/Monitor from its housing, and place it directly against the back of the glass. Then get a backlight that goes to 11, and something to dissipate the heat in there. Maybe you could build this in a medicine cabinet type enclosure to make it easy to test, hang on the wall, and god forbid- swing the door open so you can see it better from the shitter.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the American culture that forces ratings to be skewed toward the upper extremes. In the US, students are given letter grades that correspond to percentages. If your average score is 90%, you get an A (or A-, depending on the scale). 80% is a B, 70% is a C (* some use 65%), and anything less than that is considered a failure.
Wow, it has become even easier to get a "C" than when I was in school (70's and 80's in USA). Back then A was 93-100%, B was 86-92%, C was 78 to 85%, D was 70-77%, and anything below 70% was an F... Not that this changes the rest of your argument for game rankings, but it used to be a lot more difficult to get an acceptable (not just "passing" grade)!
I hate to be a stickler for correctness, but Street Fighter II was the sequel to the game Fighting Street (which was available for the TurboGrafx-CD system).
Well, I like being a stickler for correctness:) and it turns out that Street Fighter I is AKA Fighting Street on the PC Engine/Turbografx 16. It was released in the arcades first in 1987 as Street Fighter, and originally had buttons that were sensitive to the amount of force a player put on them. Push harder for stronger punches and kicks! That system was not rugged enough for arcade use at the time, and was abandoned for the 6-button control scheme Street Fighter II used.
Re:"the snort rule will peg the CPU on your router
on
Trustworthy Computing
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The AC is correct, Internet Explorer will look at up to 256 bytes of each data stream returned (images, html, etc) and attempt to "guess" the MIME type.
An interesting fix for this problem-
Rather than having your hardware router/firewall sniff all the packets, you could write a pluggable MIME filter registered to ALL image types on your PC (Google it for more info- I've done a lot of research on MIME filters and Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols for IE, but I'm too lazy to dig it all up right now). If the MIME filter examines the returned image data stream and sees evidence of the WMF exploit, trash the stream and substitute your own image (maybe a jpeg of a skull and crossbones). If registered as a permanent MIME filter it would have the benefit of blocking the exploit in anything that uses IE as a rendering engine- which includes many e-mail applications (Outlook!), and some IM apps.
I looked at doing this myself, but dropped it assuming MS would have created a fix by now. Maybe I should start working on it again....
I have been there, done that on a much larger screen. There was a large arcade in Nashua, NH (the name escapes me right now) in the 1990s that had a neat driving game based on a Mazda Miata. You sat in the Miata and controlled Ridge Racer (with the gas, brake, and steering wheel) on a huge 10' screen in front of the car. I think it was one of only a few prototype systems in the world at that point. Not sure if it's still around, or been upgraded to a more modern game...
I would agree. I have a Toshiba M200, and it can read/search/convert all of my awful chicken-scratch handwriting. No training of the software or user required. It's amazing:)
While there may be a connection between John and Dan (the slimy feel of this review makes me think so), that web site proves nothing. The guy who wrote that page was Garrett French, not John Garrett...
If this guy is paying $0.10 per AdWord and is getting 15,000 click-throughs per day... correct me if I'm wrong, but he's paying $1,500 per day to Google for advertising? $500,000 per year?
What do you do if you get 15,000 click-throughs per day but only 15 sales because of it?
1) Price your item higher than $100
2) ????
3) Profit!
What about a built in display? Like the way you can use GBAs as controllers on the Cube (Final Fantasy, Crystal Chronicles?). That could be a really cool feature. It could even be a touch screen like the DS and maybe a sliding cover to hide it when not used.
Now, imagine combining that with another feature discussed here- Flash Memory. You could use the controller as a stand alone console! Battery powered, it has a "D" pad and a few buttons on it. Just flip up the built in screen and play NES/SNES games directly on it...
Getting further off-topic... Do you have a link to the press release or any data for that flash-based Toshiba laptop? I'd be interested in knowing more!
Your linked items are interesting but I think you may have misunderstood his request- he doesn't want to have multiple monitors/TVs synchronized and showing the same video. What he wants is to use one large screen - projection, HDTV and display 4, 9, or 16 individual video sources all on one image (like the black and white CCTV security video footage mentioned).
With that said, I'd suggest a high-end dual core desktop PC with 3 or 4 TV tuner cards installed. Connect this to your HDTV (1920x1080 preferred!) with a DVI cable and enjoy. Of course it may require writing custom software to display those all at once, or alternating Xvid/H.264 files for some of the squares. I'm actually working on a scaled down version of this for my next house. I want to watch TV/video and have other things overlay on top- Weather forecast at a button press, caller id when the phone rings, Video PiP of the front door when someone rings the bell, etc. You know, the typical home of the future junk. I really just want to try for the hell of it, I may never get it all working but I'll learn a lot along the way...
I have used nothing but a long stream of laptops since the mid 90's. Never owned a desktop until I bought one this fall. Originally I used Netscape for browsing and e-mail (v2.0 - v4), and later moved to Eudora (to avoid the perils of Outlook).
With every new laptop purchase I transfer my mailboxes and data from Eudora to the new one. No problem there. My problem comes when I want to check e-mail across these two machines- Eudora obviously supports it, but I do not have IMAP available for my e-mail server.
What to do then? I may take the laptop and be on the road for several weeks, but I want all incoming and outgoing mail synchronized between it and my new desktop. Ideas other than "find a new e-mail provider" are appreciated.:)
I agree. In fact I like the Thinkpad keyboard so much I bought an IBM keyboard with trackpoint stick built in for my desktop, and ditched the mouse. It gives me more desk space and I am much more productive with it...
I agree that Aurora ALX system is WAY overpriced, it was only an FX 55 CPU too. Your best bet with Alienware is to configure one yourself. I started with the Aurora 7500 and squeezed in an FX 57, 2GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, 2 x 7800GTX 512MB in SLI config, 2 DVD burners, keyboard and mouse for a hair over $4500 and a ship date of 11/28. That's $300 cheaper than the far inferior ALX system... Still expensive (those 7800GTX 512MB cards are $700 EACH!), but you get just about the best machine money can buy in this case. Also, still no monitor, but hey most of us/.ers have those already.
No, I don't work for Alienware. I have bought a system from them though (for significantly less than either pricetag above), and was very impressed with the machine's performance and their attention to detail.
I run a business in Industrial Automation, and have written some substantial data logging, plotting, and reporting systems for clients due to the fact that it's not easy to find products that do what they need (or can do it at an affordable price). Sound's like you're running into that same wall. Most of my programming is middleman code between PLCs and SQL Server or Oracle, with the occasional logging to Access or a Text file.
Unfortunately I can't share my projects due to NDAs. I don't have any open source projects of note to point you toward either, the Industrial world is closed to the extreme. It's a bitch sometimes just getting communications protocol info for a device. Anyway, like the old saying goes- "If you want something done right, do it yourself". I noticed the manufacturer of your device has an ActiveX control available to help you create your own software, so you're one step ahead already! You should download it and code away... It's not hard to find sample code on the web that shows how to write to a db/file format of your choice. The same goes for plotting data points.
Finally, if that XP Computer is not in an enclosure try to get it off the production floor. If you don't have Ethernet capability in your device, run a couple hundred meters of shielded twisted-pair wire and communicate over RS-485 from the saftety of an office. If you have a lot of these boxes floating around, try to create several runs of a few devices each back to a RS-485 multiport card/box to keep the 485 network snappy (try ConnectTech if you don't know where to start). I did a power monitoring system for a particle accelerator just like that in the late 90's and it is still in use today.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help:) If you have any more specific questions, ask away!
I've been using OSX-X86 on a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC for a few months now. The Wacom interface (in this and all tablet PCs) does not function with OSX because there are no drivers for it presently. You have to stick with the touchpad or an external mouse for now I'm afraid.
"Rescue on Fractalus" scared the hell out of me too the first time one of the survivors I was picking up turned out to be an alien... It was about 1AM, lights are out, the TV volume was up high so I could hear the little guy knock, and BAM! The alien jumps up, very LOUD spooky sound you describe. Knocked me right out of my seat, I had to shut it off immediately and turn on all the lights! Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night...
I'd love to see a remake of that game. If my workload ever drops off I'd create one myself!
I looked at these about a month ago. Do you have any source for your info stating they will be available next week? All I get when I try to buy one is a "Preorder" offer that tells me "Shipping date not available. We will notify you by email when this product has shipped."
Would love to get one, small lightweight laptops are the road warrior's best friend!
I do not dispute your position on faster than light travel being essentially time travel (backwards in time of course- if you want to go forward in time with no effect on your local clock then travel at exactly the speed of light until the rest of the universe reaches the point in time you're looking for!).
I differ on the possibility of Warp Drive. In theory, you do not have to exceed the speed of light. Actually you would not need to "move" at all in order to reach a destination. Read up on the theory of the Alcubierre Warp Drive. Obviously no way known to physics to do something like this (yet!), but it solves all the major issues with FTL travel- no time dialations, no crushing acceleration. I guess you can say it is and is not FTL- You can arrive at a destination before light could, but your ship is essentialy at rest (actual free-fall) the whole time in its own pocket of space.
Slashdot Mirror
Shit, I'm only 35 and I feel ancient after reading your post :)
When I was in high school, we had about 10 Apple IIs, maybe 14 DEC 8086 PCs, running DOS 3.3 booted from a floppy (there were no hard drives), and a fucking PDP-8!
I'm self taught as well. I got my first computer in 1983, an Atari 800XL. Seems like the barrier to entry is so much higher these days that most kids will never learn to program...
Something like the ClioNXT might interest you, as long as you can stomach Windows CE.NET 5.0. Well, that and the fact that it's been delayed for the better part of a year. At least the systems are finally entering beta testing.
It has the physical specifications to match your desired device: 10.4" screen, Wifi, SD and PC Card, QWERTY keyboard and swivel touch screen. Last I heard it was to cost between $799 and $999.
I hate the fact that since Lenovo took over the Thinkpad line they have modified the keyboard to include those infernal "Windows" keys. They reduce the size of Ctrl, Alt, and the Spacebar, and are worthless if you don't run Windows on it! I actually looked into the new design on the X60 to see if I could yank the keyboard out and replace it with one from my X24 or X30, but they changed the connector design!!!
No thanks, I'll just keep using my old Thinkpads...
She put up a good fight though :)
P2P - (Ok, 2 letters and a number...)
File sharing is probably the biggest reason why people leave their PCs on 24/7 these days. Of course you can cut electricity costs if you use a low end PC with no monitor for BitTorrent, Emule, etc.
Too bad nobody else had a good idea here. I was thinking of building my own too after seeing them in Smarthome for over $3,000. For the wiseguys out there- No, it's not so I can watch TV while on the shitter, I hoped to use it while shaving in the morning. My wife is sick of me walking out of the bathroom while shaving to catch a breaking news or weather report.
The neat part of the mirror is that when the TV is off, the entire surface is reflective. You probably need to get one of those semi-transparent 2 way mirrors, remove an LCD TV/Monitor from its housing, and place it directly against the back of the glass. Then get a backlight that goes to 11, and something to dissipate the heat in there. Maybe you could build this in a medicine cabinet type enclosure to make it easy to test, hang on the wall, and god forbid- swing the door open so you can see it better from the shitter.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the American culture that forces ratings to be skewed toward the upper extremes. In the US, students are given letter grades that correspond to percentages. If your average score is 90%, you get an A (or A-, depending on the scale). 80% is a B, 70% is a C (* some use 65%), and anything less than that is considered a failure.
Wow, it has become even easier to get a "C" than when I was in school (70's and 80's in USA). Back then A was 93-100%, B was 86-92%, C was 78 to 85%, D was 70-77%, and anything below 70% was an F... Not that this changes the rest of your argument for game rankings, but it used to be a lot more difficult to get an acceptable (not just "passing" grade)!
I hate to be a stickler for correctness, but Street Fighter II was the sequel to the game Fighting Street (which was available for the TurboGrafx-CD system).
:) and it turns out that Street Fighter I is AKA Fighting Street on the PC Engine/Turbografx 16. It was released in the arcades first in 1987 as Street Fighter, and originally had buttons that were sensitive to the amount of force a player put on them. Push harder for stronger punches and kicks! That system was not rugged enough for arcade use at the time, and was abandoned for the 6-button control scheme Street Fighter II used.
Well, I like being a stickler for correctness
The AC is correct, Internet Explorer will look at up to 256 bytes of each data stream returned (images, html, etc) and attempt to "guess" the MIME type.
An interesting fix for this problem- Rather than having your hardware router/firewall sniff all the packets, you could write a pluggable MIME filter registered to ALL image types on your PC (Google it for more info- I've done a lot of research on MIME filters and Asynchronous Pluggable Protocols for IE, but I'm too lazy to dig it all up right now). If the MIME filter examines the returned image data stream and sees evidence of the WMF exploit, trash the stream and substitute your own image (maybe a jpeg of a skull and crossbones). If registered as a permanent MIME filter it would have the benefit of blocking the exploit in anything that uses IE as a rendering engine- which includes many e-mail applications (Outlook!), and some IM apps.
I looked at doing this myself, but dropped it assuming MS would have created a fix by now. Maybe I should start working on it again....
Bring on Data!
How can I be of service?
I have been there, done that on a much larger screen. There was a large arcade in Nashua, NH (the name escapes me right now) in the 1990s that had a neat driving game based on a Mazda Miata. You sat in the Miata and controlled Ridge Racer (with the gas, brake, and steering wheel) on a huge 10' screen in front of the car. I think it was one of only a few prototype systems in the world at that point. Not sure if it's still around, or been upgraded to a more modern game...
I would agree. I have a Toshiba M200, and it can read/search/convert all of my awful chicken-scratch handwriting. No training of the software or user required. It's amazing :)
While there may be a connection between John and Dan (the slimy feel of this review makes me think so), that web site proves nothing. The guy who wrote that page was Garrett French, not John Garrett...
If this guy is paying $0.10 per AdWord and is getting 15,000 click-throughs per day ... correct me if I'm wrong, but he's paying $1,500 per day to Google for advertising? $500,000 per year?
1) Price your item higher than $100What do you do if you get 15,000 click-throughs per day but only 15 sales because of it?
2) ????
3) Profit!
What about a built in display? Like the way you can use GBAs as controllers on the Cube (Final Fantasy, Crystal Chronicles?). That could be a really cool feature. It could even be a touch screen like the DS and maybe a sliding cover to hide it when not used.
Now, imagine combining that with another feature discussed here- Flash Memory. You could use the controller as a stand alone console! Battery powered, it has a "D" pad and a few buttons on it. Just flip up the built in screen and play NES/SNES games directly on it...
Getting further off-topic... Do you have a link to the press release or any data for that flash-based Toshiba laptop? I'd be interested in knowing more!
Your linked items are interesting but I think you may have misunderstood his request- he doesn't want to have multiple monitors/TVs synchronized and showing the same video. What he wants is to use one large screen - projection, HDTV and display 4, 9, or 16 individual video sources all on one image (like the black and white CCTV security video footage mentioned).
With that said, I'd suggest a high-end dual core desktop PC with 3 or 4 TV tuner cards installed. Connect this to your HDTV (1920x1080 preferred!) with a DVI cable and enjoy. Of course it may require writing custom software to display those all at once, or alternating Xvid/H.264 files for some of the squares. I'm actually working on a scaled down version of this for my next house. I want to watch TV/video and have other things overlay on top- Weather forecast at a button press, caller id when the phone rings, Video PiP of the front door when someone rings the bell, etc. You know, the typical home of the future junk. I really just want to try for the hell of it, I may never get it all working but I'll learn a lot along the way...
I have used nothing but a long stream of laptops since the mid 90's. Never owned a desktop until I bought one this fall. Originally I used Netscape for browsing and e-mail (v2.0 - v4), and later moved to Eudora (to avoid the perils of Outlook).
:)
With every new laptop purchase I transfer my mailboxes and data from Eudora to the new one. No problem there. My problem comes when I want to check e-mail across these two machines- Eudora obviously supports it, but I do not have IMAP available for my e-mail server.
What to do then? I may take the laptop and be on the road for several weeks, but I want all incoming and outgoing mail synchronized between it and my new desktop. Ideas other than "find a new e-mail provider" are appreciated.
I agree. In fact I like the Thinkpad keyboard so much I bought an IBM keyboard with trackpoint stick built in for my desktop, and ditched the mouse. It gives me more desk space and I am much more productive with it...
I agree that Aurora ALX system is WAY overpriced, it was only an FX 55 CPU too. Your best bet with Alienware is to configure one yourself. I started with the Aurora 7500 and squeezed in an FX 57, 2GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, 2 x 7800GTX 512MB in SLI config, 2 DVD burners, keyboard and mouse for a hair over $4500 and a ship date of 11/28. That's $300 cheaper than the far inferior ALX system... Still expensive (those 7800GTX 512MB cards are $700 EACH!), but you get just about the best machine money can buy in this case. Also, still no monitor, but hey most of us /.ers have those already.
No, I don't work for Alienware. I have bought a system from them though (for significantly less than either pricetag above), and was very impressed with the machine's performance and their attention to detail.
I run a business in Industrial Automation, and have written some substantial data logging, plotting, and reporting systems for clients due to the fact that it's not easy to find products that do what they need (or can do it at an affordable price). Sound's like you're running into that same wall. Most of my programming is middleman code between PLCs and SQL Server or Oracle, with the occasional logging to Access or a Text file.
:) If you have any more specific questions, ask away!
Unfortunately I can't share my projects due to NDAs. I don't have any open source projects of note to point you toward either, the Industrial world is closed to the extreme. It's a bitch sometimes just getting communications protocol info for a device. Anyway, like the old saying goes- "If you want something done right, do it yourself". I noticed the manufacturer of your device has an ActiveX control available to help you create your own software, so you're one step ahead already! You should download it and code away... It's not hard to find sample code on the web that shows how to write to a db/file format of your choice. The same goes for plotting data points.
Finally, if that XP Computer is not in an enclosure try to get it off the production floor. If you don't have Ethernet capability in your device, run a couple hundred meters of shielded twisted-pair wire and communicate over RS-485 from the saftety of an office. If you have a lot of these boxes floating around, try to create several runs of a few devices each back to a RS-485 multiport card/box to keep the 485 network snappy (try ConnectTech if you don't know where to start). I did a power monitoring system for a particle accelerator just like that in the late 90's and it is still in use today.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help
I've been using OSX-X86 on a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC for a few months now. The Wacom interface (in this and all tablet PCs) does not function with OSX because there are no drivers for it presently. You have to stick with the touchpad or an external mouse for now I'm afraid.
"Rescue on Fractalus" scared the hell out of me too the first time one of the survivors I was picking up turned out to be an alien... It was about 1AM, lights are out, the TV volume was up high so I could hear the little guy knock, and BAM! The alien jumps up, very LOUD spooky sound you describe. Knocked me right out of my seat, I had to shut it off immediately and turn on all the lights! Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night...
I'd love to see a remake of that game. If my workload ever drops off I'd create one myself!
I looked at these about a month ago. Do you have any source for your info stating they will be available next week? All I get when I try to buy one is a "Preorder" offer that tells me "Shipping date not available. We will notify you by email when this product has shipped."
Would love to get one, small lightweight laptops are the road warrior's best friend!
I do not dispute your position on faster than light travel being essentially time travel (backwards in time of course- if you want to go forward in time with no effect on your local clock then travel at exactly the speed of light until the rest of the universe reaches the point in time you're looking for!).
I differ on the possibility of Warp Drive. In theory, you do not have to exceed the speed of light. Actually you would not need to "move" at all in order to reach a destination. Read up on the theory of the Alcubierre Warp Drive. Obviously no way known to physics to do something like this (yet!), but it solves all the major issues with FTL travel- no time dialations, no crushing acceleration. I guess you can say it is and is not FTL- You can arrive at a destination before light could, but your ship is essentialy at rest (actual free-fall) the whole time in its own pocket of space.