A. Yes there are things that PC can do that Devices cannot do as well. But a lot of people are willing to take that tradeoff for mobility
A lot of the current desire to stay in touch electronically was born with the PC, instant messaging and so on, but it has evolved. Who cares if a phone can do less, so long as the core functionality you need is there?
B. No the PC will be a Dying market but will take a Long time before it dies. Look at the Mainframe market it is a dying market but it never completely dies.
The PC is, I think, dying as an entertainment medium. No problem there, after all that wasn't why the PC came into existence, and there are other devices that are better at the most popular game types. OK the RTS is predominantly a PC thing, but that's just because the PC has better control mechanisms at present, the mouse and such. Those weren't invented for gaming though, who's to say there won't be better control systems evolving for consoles? I certainly hope so.
Personally I'd be happy to see the PC shrink in importance in the entertainment market. For one thing they'd start to get cheaper most like, and I for one need as many as I can get in order to run the experiments that make up my hobbies. (as an aside, it's a bizarre turnabout that I am seriously pondering clustered PS3s as an alternative, but I digress).
Besides, I am sick, really sick, of always having to upgrade some component or other to play the latest game. My main home pc has a seriously fast chip, but an old graphics card (old now that is, I didn't buy it that long ago, and it wasn't cheap), so I can't play some new games without spending the equivalent of the cost of a console. I don't want to replace the processor I have either, its perfect for my non gaming needs.
I bet you've been waiting ages to use the word tautology in a slashdot discussion. I try to avoid it meself, it reminds me of a bad moment in my undergrad logic exams.
Wel I supose if Poeple alL spent th tiem to undrstund thigs like a smurtipants leik yu dos do they wodn't be writng bad lotturs to congros in the fist plase wold tey!!!!
There is a theory that this is what happened. The Siberian Traps were already going, they were a long term thing, but they had an upsurge of activity that was seriously bad for the environment at around the time the Asteroid hit, or so I recall, it was a while ago I learned this. Wait a bit and I'm sure a slashdotr technorati will provide the ref:)
I think you'd have to go a long way down. I think Anywhere with ancient surface easily available would be OK. Mountains are more likely to be a good place, since deep ancient surfaces are uplifted.
It's not so easy to find good sites though, Time is money, and there isn't much of either available usually. Most places where you can find good rock are out of the way, and many have only a few months of the year you can be there.
I actually wrote (Not Vista, that's a sack of crap, no matter who wrote it), but I used the Not sign instead of the word, and for some reason it's gone from my post
I shouldn't take it personally. I got modded troll last week for not actually foaming at the mouth about microsoft in a post, I beleive it was about Office not being that bad, not sure, but the gist was that I don't actually mind some of their products I think. you can't win. You can take heart that he almost certainly wrote that post on a windows machine, I am.
I love the fact that so many people who rant about microsoft, or take umbrage at something microsofty are almost always committed windows users who wouldn't know their way round a Bash shell if their life depended on it.
Some of us grown up actually use more than one OS and not be juvenile about it, Currently I use three on a reguler basis. Life/work without my linux cluster would be hard, but so would life without a windows machine (Vista, that's a sack of crap, no matter who wrote it) in the house. God help me, I like windows.
I don't like all their technology takeover things, but I don't use a lot of it. Since I require cross platform functionality with everything I do I have avoided microsoft coding tools and languages, Their mindset as far as developers goes doesn't suit me. I also think Kdevelop sucks and don't use that either. It's not always the vendor I care about, its the product.
I wonder when this battle over formats is going to end so I can actually start buying HD movies. Seriously, it's very annoying. I certainly don't want to invest in a player until a winner emerges. I don't do TV, can't stand almost all of it, but I like my movies and SF shows (Mmmm, River Tam in HD..), I'd rather like to have more than three episodes per disc too, whole seasons even. For that I would happily re-buy much of my collection.
As for data storage? Well I'd love to get with that, but again, there's no way I'm getting a writer until two things happen
1: Someone wins this spat. 2: Whoever wins decides they've tapped out the 'adopt early and pay big coin' brigade, and prices for writers drop to something reasonable.
I meant Liet Keins, not Stilgar, and I corrected that in a reply above yours...
In fact a great deal of the Dune story takes place without mentioning spice at all. In later books it it little more then a luxury item, only used by the spacing guild for anything serious. It's only of primary importance in book one.
Sooner or later this kind of tech is going to result in a stilsuit. Hope so anyway, those things are just too cool not to be instantiated.
Seriously though, if we colonise mars, they will be more then interesting, they may well be essential.
Frank Herbert had way more right than people realise. Except for the spice thing, but if I have this right, in his original musings on the story, spice wasn't as important, and it was Stilgar, not Paul Atraides who was to be the major character.
a lot of those 100 in 1 sets were crap. I wouldn't buy one. I *would* buy one that had just a few things in, but was good.
The chemistry set thing has really brought out the freedom brigade today, not a bad thing I guess, but I would like to make one or two teensy points.
Wasn't it in the US that we had chemistry sets with actual radioactive materials in in the sixties? Doesn't sound that healthy to me. Plus, and I don't know how universal this is, but chemistry sets have, since then, been by and large really really boring, and too expensive for the cheap plastic beakers, pipets and chemicals chosen for their colour rather than any real interesting properties. The kids in my family have always done home chemistry. It's not hard to make home made litmus paper, or sugar crystals. We have a huge sugar crystal my son made years ago that's still on the shelf in the living room. And we've been making bicarb rockets for years too, messy yes, but the worst that can happen is we get wet or some flowers get knocked over.
I wonder if the terror thing was used as an excuse to kill off a product that tends either to crapness, or if brought in from abroad has too much risk of dodgy ingredients.
Those were for biting at the throat and severing veins only, if they hit bone they were very likely to break, and they weren't for tearing chunks out either, that might break them too. It was a choke or bleed to death thing, not a savage rip the throat out affair. Their strategy was apparently much the same as modern cats, with the requirement for sabre teeth being brought about because their prey was big, and thus had large necks to get through.
When I did an undergraduate course on ethics and law in computer science in 2002 at Reading university, the lecturer said in the very first session that if we were serious about understanding such things we should all read slashdot regulerly.
Before that day I didn't even know slashdot existed, and to start with I didn't get it. Now though its in my set of 'during morning coffee' bookmarks, and gets looked at a few times a day.
That is, I beleive, some of the basis behind the theory that Heisenberg, while very serious about the nuclear physics, had no intention of allowing th german government to get a working bomb. After all, he passed a speculative design he wrote for a nuclear power plant to the americans during the war.
This doesn't excuse everything he did, but it's better then nothing.
Ok, then it almost burned a hole in my carpet when it died, but apart from that it was good.
I also have a Dell OpenMosix cluster made up of by four pc's that are approximately five years old. Not one single problem has occurred with them, ever, I haven't had to reboot them for over a year, and that was just because we moved them to a new server room.
Eh, off the top of my head, orcas and wolves both stand out as apex predators that are fairly intelligent
I thought of the wolves thing myself, but actually their smart in their domain, but not able to think outside of, for want of a better term, the box. A lone wolf is usually not at all that efficient in the wild.
Orca's? Well those be whales, and whales have large brains, but not, I seem to recall, that large for their body size. I'm not yet convinced as to the intelligence of whales. Not that I therefore approve of killing them or anything, but I wonder how much is real of their purported intelligence. Elegant maybe, beautiful and mysterious certainly, but really smart? I has a doubt.
It would be nice for them to be around long enough for us to find out though...
Eh, Hollywood sucks, but who is to say that they WOULDN'T have been able to figure out how to open a door, given the right motivation?
If by motivation you mean claws you could fillet a buffalo with, then probably they could, at least with most of the doors I see.
Granted, the mammalian brain has tens of millions of years of evolution over the dinos,
The dinosaurs had no need for a large brain, they were the dominant species, most of them were big, there was food, water, it was warm, and they either ate each other or vegetation. Intelligence would not confer an evolutionary advantage.
Same's true for most mammals today. They don't need large brains because what they have gives them all the advantages they need. We only got them because we were being stomped on, chased, mauled and eaten by almost anything else alive. It was get smart or die out. Ok that's a simplification, but how many truly smart top predators are there?
In the sense that some companies, Microsoft included are *desperate* for them to be a launch pad into future profits. Cut out the middle man, go direct to the customer. Its a dream that is unlikely to succeed.
I've lost count of how many times I hear that IT workers or programmers will be obsolete because of new technology. It just aint so. Even if the average user can knock something together to do a job they want, they first have to want to do that. Same goes for network and system maintenance, many people could do the job themselves with a little training, but don't see why they should. After all, if your business is selling non computer related products, you don't want to be bothered spending time doing anything but that at work, or you lose money and customers. IT people/web designers and programmers get hired because people do not want to do those jobs themselves.
Hell I've been a programmer for 8 years, and I don't like fixing my own pc when it breaks, that's not something I want to bother with. I have people who are paid to do that for me. That might make me a bit odd, but to be honest I'm an algorithm designer, hardware, so long as its fast and working, really doesn't interest me.
Y'know, perhaps if they'd spent the last seven years concentrating on monetizing the net for media distribution instead of sinking millions into lawyers and DRM systems they might actually have beaten Apple to it.
The simple fact is Apple stepped into what was in effect an empty playing field while everyone else was still arguing over lockers in the changing room.
Slashdot Mirror
A. Yes there are things that PC can do that Devices cannot do as well. But a lot of people are willing to take that tradeoff for mobility
A lot of the current desire to stay in touch electronically was born with the PC, instant messaging and so on, but it has evolved. Who cares if a phone can do less, so long as the core functionality you need is there?
B. No the PC will be a Dying market but will take a Long time before it dies. Look at the Mainframe market it is a dying market but it never completely dies.
The PC is, I think, dying as an entertainment medium. No problem there, after all that wasn't why the PC came into existence, and there are other devices that are better at the most popular game types. OK the RTS is predominantly a PC thing, but that's just because the PC has better control mechanisms at present, the mouse and such. Those weren't invented for gaming though, who's to say there won't be better control systems evolving for consoles? I certainly hope so.
Personally I'd be happy to see the PC shrink in importance in the entertainment market. For one thing they'd start to get cheaper most like, and I for one need as many as I can get in order to run the experiments that make up my hobbies. (as an aside, it's a bizarre turnabout that I am seriously pondering clustered PS3s as an alternative, but I digress).
Besides, I am sick, really sick, of always having to upgrade some component or other to play the latest game. My main home pc has a seriously fast chip, but an old graphics card (old now that is, I didn't buy it that long ago, and it wasn't cheap), so I can't play some new games without spending the equivalent of the cost of a console. I don't want to replace the processor I have either, its perfect for my non gaming needs.
I bet you've been waiting ages to use the word tautology in a slashdot discussion. I try to avoid it meself, it reminds me of a bad moment in my undergrad logic exams.
Wel I supose if Poeple alL spent th tiem to undrstund thigs like a smurtipants leik yu dos do they wodn't be writng bad lotturs to congros in the fist plase wold tey!!!!
You condosconsing prock
Yrs
angery Slishdoter
There is a theory that this is what happened. The Siberian Traps were already going, they were a long term thing, but they had an upsurge of activity that was seriously bad for the environment at around the time the Asteroid hit, or so I recall, it was a while ago I learned this. Wait a bit and I'm sure a slashdotr technorati will provide the ref :)
Vegatarian Raptors? Heh. Is that really an exhibit? I'd go see it, but I'd probably wet myself from laughing.
What does a Raptor with six inch claws eat? Anything it wants.
I think you'd have to go a long way down. I think Anywhere with ancient surface easily available would be OK. Mountains are more likely to be a good place, since deep ancient surfaces are uplifted.
It's not so easy to find good sites though, Time is money, and there isn't much of either available usually. Most places where you can find good rock are out of the way, and many have only a few months of the year you can be there.
It shouldn't be that hard to work it out, after all, wasn't it only about ten thousand years ago it happened? /ducks :)
I actually wrote (Not Vista, that's a sack of crap, no matter who wrote it), but I used the Not sign instead of the word, and for some reason it's gone from my post
I shouldn't take it personally. I got modded troll last week for not actually foaming at the mouth about microsoft in a post, I beleive it was about Office not being that bad, not sure, but the gist was that I don't actually mind some of their products I think. you can't win. You can take heart that he almost certainly wrote that post on a windows machine, I am.
I love the fact that so many people who rant about microsoft, or take umbrage at something microsofty are almost always committed windows users who wouldn't know their way round a Bash shell if their life depended on it.
Some of us grown up actually use more than one OS and not be juvenile about it, Currently I use three on a reguler basis. Life/work without my linux cluster would be hard, but so would life without a windows machine (Vista, that's a sack of crap, no matter who wrote it) in the house. God help me, I like windows.
I don't like all their technology takeover things, but I don't use a lot of it. Since I require cross platform functionality with everything I do I have avoided microsoft coding tools and languages, Their mindset as far as developers goes doesn't suit me. I also think Kdevelop sucks and don't use that either. It's not always the vendor I care about, its the product.
I wonder when this battle over formats is going to end so I can actually start buying HD movies. Seriously, it's very annoying. I certainly don't want to invest in a player until a winner emerges. I don't do TV, can't stand almost all of it, but I like my movies and SF shows (Mmmm, River Tam in HD..), I'd rather like to have more than three episodes per disc too, whole seasons even. For that I would happily re-buy much of my collection.
As for data storage? Well I'd love to get with that, but again, there's no way I'm getting a writer until two things happen
1: Someone wins this spat.
2: Whoever wins decides they've tapped out the 'adopt early and pay big coin' brigade, and prices for writers drop to something reasonable.
I meant Liet Keins, not Stilgar, and I corrected that in a reply above yours...
In fact a great deal of the Dune story takes place without mentioning spice at all. In later books it it little more then a luxury item, only used by the spacing guild for anything serious. It's only of primary importance in book one.
I meant Liet Kiens, not Stilgar
Sooner or later this kind of tech is going to result in a stilsuit. Hope so anyway, those things are just too cool not to be instantiated.
Seriously though, if we colonise mars, they will be more then interesting, they may well be essential.
Frank Herbert had way more right than people realise. Except for the spice thing, but if I have this right, in his original musings on the story, spice wasn't as important, and it was Stilgar, not Paul Atraides who was to be the major character.
a lot of those 100 in 1 sets were crap. I wouldn't buy one. I *would* buy one that had just a few things in, but was good.
The chemistry set thing has really brought out the freedom brigade today, not a bad thing I guess, but I would like to make one or two teensy points.
Wasn't it in the US that we had chemistry sets with actual radioactive materials in in the sixties? Doesn't sound that healthy to me. Plus, and I don't know how universal this is, but chemistry sets have, since then, been by and large really really boring, and too expensive for the cheap plastic beakers, pipets and chemicals chosen for their colour rather than any real interesting properties. The kids in my family have always done home chemistry. It's not hard to make home made litmus paper, or sugar crystals. We have a huge sugar crystal my son made years ago that's still on the shelf in the living room. And we've been making bicarb rockets for years too, messy yes, but the worst that can happen is we get wet or some flowers get knocked over.
I wonder if the terror thing was used as an excuse to kill off a product that tends either to crapness, or if brought in from abroad has too much risk of dodgy ingredients.
Sabretoothed cats had their famous large canines
Those were for biting at the throat and severing veins only, if they hit bone they were very likely to break, and they weren't for tearing chunks out either, that might break them too. It was a choke or bleed to death thing, not a savage rip the throat out affair. Their strategy was apparently much the same as modern cats, with the requirement for sabre teeth being brought about because their prey was big, and thus had large necks to get through.
I don't know, I remain uncertain about Heisenberg priciples
For that pun you is banned from the normal internets for one month, report to 4chan for social readjustment...
When I did an undergraduate course on ethics and law in computer science in 2002 at Reading university, the lecturer said in the very first session that if we were serious about understanding such things we should all read slashdot regulerly.
Before that day I didn't even know slashdot existed, and to start with I didn't get it. Now though its in my set of 'during morning coffee' bookmarks, and gets looked at a few times a day.
That is, I beleive, some of the basis behind the theory that Heisenberg, while very serious about the nuclear physics, had no intention of allowing th german government to get a working bomb. After all, he passed a speculative design he wrote for a nuclear power plant to the americans during the war.
This doesn't excuse everything he did, but it's better then nothing.
The Aqueducts?
My dell laptop lasted for seven years....
Ok, then it almost burned a hole in my carpet when it died, but apart from that it was good.
I also have a Dell OpenMosix cluster made up of by four pc's that are approximately five years old. Not one single problem has occurred with them, ever, I haven't had to reboot them for over a year, and that was just because we moved them to a new server room.
Eh, off the top of my head, orcas and wolves both stand out as apex predators that are fairly intelligent
I thought of the wolves thing myself, but actually their smart in their domain, but not able to think outside of, for want of a better term, the box. A lone wolf is usually not at all that efficient in the wild.
Orca's? Well those be whales, and whales have large brains, but not, I seem to recall, that large for their body size. I'm not yet convinced as to the intelligence of whales. Not that I therefore approve of killing them or anything, but I wonder how much is real of their purported intelligence. Elegant maybe, beautiful and mysterious certainly, but really smart? I has a doubt.
It would be nice for them to be around long enough for us to find out though...
Eh, Hollywood sucks, but who is to say that they WOULDN'T have been able to figure out how to open a door, given the right motivation?
If by motivation you mean claws you could fillet a buffalo with, then probably they could, at least with most of the doors I see.
Granted, the mammalian brain has tens of millions of years of evolution over the dinos,
The dinosaurs had no need for a large brain, they were the dominant species, most of them were big, there was food, water, it was warm, and they either ate each other or vegetation. Intelligence would not confer an evolutionary advantage.
Same's true for most mammals today. They don't need large brains because what they have gives them all the advantages they need. We only got them because we were being stomped on, chased, mauled and eaten by almost anything else alive. It was get smart or die out. Ok that's a simplification, but how many truly smart top predators are there?
oh don't be silly.
Exactly how are "mashups" a technology?
In the sense that some companies, Microsoft included are *desperate* for them to be a launch pad into future profits. Cut out the middle man, go direct to the customer. Its a dream that is unlikely to succeed.
I've lost count of how many times I hear that IT workers or programmers will be obsolete because of new technology. It just aint so. Even if the average user can knock something together to do a job they want, they first have to want to do that.
Same goes for network and system maintenance, many people could do the job themselves with a little training, but don't see why they should. After all, if your business is selling non computer related products, you don't want to be bothered spending time doing anything but that at work, or you lose money and customers.
IT people/web designers and programmers get hired because people do not want to do those jobs themselves.
Hell I've been a programmer for 8 years, and I don't like fixing my own pc when it breaks, that's not something I want to bother with. I have people who are paid to do that for me. That might make me a bit odd, but to be honest I'm an algorithm designer, hardware, so long as its fast and working, really doesn't interest me.
Y'know, perhaps if they'd spent the last seven years concentrating on monetizing the net for media distribution instead of sinking millions into lawyers and DRM systems they might actually have beaten Apple to it.
The simple fact is Apple stepped into what was in effect an empty playing field while everyone else was still arguing over lockers in the changing room.