I'm actually quite satisfied with the way linux handles devices and their drivers right now (this is stuff for nerds after all).
But I always wonder why there isn't a huge effort to build an abstract abstraction layer... it could look like this:
Every piece of hardware is equipped with a standardized storage chip, which contains detailed information about the purpose of the device and instructions on how to "talk" to it. Basically I'm looking for a way to enable any OS to figure out a driver on its own.
I know that many vendors (like nvidia) would never support such an idea, since they prefer to keep the source of their drivers secret. And I also doubt that it would be easy to write something like this for modern video cards. But something like this would be great for input devices or nics.
I'm quite sure that internet access is the main reason we still have so many home phones after all.
Cable isn't that widespread in Europe, satelite links are quite expensive and they require a telephone line for upload. Access via power lines never really took off. There is nothing which beats 2 copper wires running to your house in terms of speed, reliability and price.
Wireless LANs bringing internet access to entire blocks reduces the amount of home phones, since only one POTS is needed to get it online, but (at least over here) we won't see telcos going down the drain before ISPs are offering (cheaper than telco) area-wide wireless access for their services.
I don't need a home phone at all, but my favorite monopolistic telco offers me DSL for a reasonable price. They also charge me for a mandatory phone connection using the same line, but it's still much cheaper than their closest competitor.
a service provider in Germany has been doing something like this for years. If you subscribe to their service you basically get a username and pass which you can use to access a map on their website displaying your phone's current position. So if your friends know the pass they are able to spot you. IIRC they rely on 3 cells in your phone's range (cell-id I guess) to locate you, so the results can be quite inaccurate.
However it never became popular for obvious reasons. I guess nobody likes to reveal his/her whereabouts 24/7.
Sure they don't like Nazi stuff, etc, but please, can you really ban that sort of material without banning countless other things?
Over here (Germany) nazi Stuff is banned if it's not related to research on history. It's also possible to use nazi flags when you make a movie playing at that time. There are other situations which are alright. But if you start selling fylfot t-shirts or "Mein Kampf" you are going to get into trouble (historical versions of Mein Kampf are alright btw, but when Amazon (.com) started to ship them to.de it was stoped right away). I'm quite glad about this law, because it prevents a minority from making us look like we are still in a holocaust mindset. But to get back on topic: I've never seen any case of anti-hate laws which prevented anybody from expressing "countless other things".
Yahoo intends to defend its First Amendment rights should a French court try to enforce French anti-hate laws
Yahoo certainly has first ammendment rights in the USA, but France isn't part of the US. How are they going to defend a law or right, which isn't part of the french legal system? That's like using the Basic Constitutional Law (aka constitution) of Germany in Vanuatu.
Just take a look at the Foreign Claims Act in the US if you want to know how local law can have much influence on global acting companies.
I don't really know why you would be offended by an insensitive clod like me, if you are comfortable with the current state of enlightenment.
I still think it's great, but I doubt that they are going to release 0.17 this year and I also doubt that they'll (at the current rate of development) be any better than some newer WMs/minDesktops in regards to innovation, features and usability. I found something which works better for me but I never would criticize someone who is loyal to E.
fouls are almost as annoying as dives and I would appreciate it if certain measures were taken to reduce them. Some soccer players develop enormous stagecraft qualities when an oponent could have touched them.
But it's also a good example for the limitations of electronics in this area. How many pressure sensors are necessary in order to make sure that a person has been hit by another? I guess it's somewhere between 50 and 200. Could make a match more complicated (they aren't weightless after all). Apart from the weight/uncomfortability/time (how long does it take to put this on every single player?) issue sensors wouldn't really prove anything, because you don't know who actually hit whom. So you need lots of cameras, too.
You would need both if you want be sure. If you only use cameras you won't be able to determine whether someone just had contact or if he kicked the other guys ass like he was mad.
I just fear that we'll end up with giant real time x-ray tomographs build around every major stadium.
it's funny to read this now - I just visited enlightenment.org some hours ago to check if they got any closer to 0.17 stable since the last time I checked (~6 month ago). Now / tells me that they finally made it to 16.7.1. I guess I'll have to lower my expectations.
Don't get me wrong - I really like Enlightenment. I used it for several months before I finally switched to XFCE. 0.16 showed me the potential this project has, but it lacks some features which I really want to use. I started searching for alternatives when I realized that E wouldn't go anywhere for a long time.
By the way: What was the most obvious April Fools story this year? I'd vote for 'Enlightenment 1.0 is out'.
but I consider wrong decisions to be part of the game.
They developed something like this for soccer matches some years ago (all links I can think of lead to German sites - rather boring for the majority ). However, there have been some controversial decisions in this sport (like England vs. Germany 1966), which people are still discussing nowadays. I believe that sensors would make sport more boring in the long run.
Language in this case has certainly limited their ability to express concepts.
Maybe their concept (of not dealing with specific numbers higher than 2) has limited their language? I think it's possible to flip this argument like a coin without getting anywhere.
How often are companies like Gartner - which really are into IT research and analysis - being held liable for their publications?
Google did this "just for fun". They never said it really represented market share. They didn't link to it directly. And they didn't take money for it.
I know that we are talking about the US legal system here, but I still can't figure out a way someone could honestly use those numbers to sue them.
My guess is that they recieved so much feedback and inquiries by the media about this aspect of zeitgeist that it became incommodious for them.
(1). What will happen when the lake water will be warmed up? Ok,it will perhaps take a long time,but...
Unfortunately they don't cover this issue in tfa, but since they use it for regular watter supply afterwards I would guess that the effects are minimal. After all they would have taken the water anyways (but maybe from a shallower and warmer site?).
And since NTSC (never the same colour) is notorious for not being able to display yellow or other "hot" colours, some improvements would be nice.
AFAIK NTSC used to have this rep, but a long time ago the standard was "improved". It might still lack the ability to display certain shades of yellow or other hot colours, but since every decade seems to feature its own preferred color set I advise everyone to calm down...
(just compare Mash (mostly 70's) to "The Bold and the Beautiful" (mostly 80's) and you'll see that colors have nothing in common with reality really)
yes, I know that it would cost more and we would still have moving parts. It's also slower. But just imagine a room with ~21300 FDD (30 gigs) stacked to the ceiling blinking and spinning like mad.
so what should be used instead of a 95% waste?
on
Spectrum as Property
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· Score: 2, Insightful
yes, it might be a good way to make money after all, but those using the frequencies as a consumer will pay for it one way or the other.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that he'll benefit from more efficient bandwith usage on a personal level? It would be great if the 2.4 GHz spectrum would be licensed - I'm looking forward to pay fees for any WLAN NIC I buy.
95% of the spectrum are not meant to be for profit, but it's not like 95% of it are being wasted/unused.
i wonder why they went with the recombent position rather than a upright postion. i would imagine you get a little extra power upright. you're not worried about airdynamics when hovering also.
comparing normal bicycles with those which require you to take a recumbent position it's quite obvious (you're much faster if you use the latter).
it will indeed spin around like mad if the little rotor existant.
I already stated that I'm not into helicopters, but isn't it quite obvious that a helicopter can't fly if most of the energy is used for spinning the cockpit? Even if it would work it would be quite unlikely that the pilot could take it.
However, some of us aren't still stuck with 14.4 modems, so feel free to use less compression next time you make a site.
some of us still use 14.4's. Apart from that I prefer whacky logos when it comes to slashdotted sites.
They apparently care more about helicopters than a fancy presentation. I don't know what's wrong about that.
afaik it's quite hard to build a human powered plane (yes, someone made it from France to England many years ago). A helicopter is much trickier, because the pilot must run two rotors at the same time. It's not easy to transfer human energy to two places without adding much weight.
I'm not an expert in helicopters, but it's kinda obvious to me that the pilot would have to use extraordinary effort to stay above the ground for 3 minutes.
I don't want to rant, but I always wondered about the current situation of car development. The car industry innovates better and bigger engines, which use less fuel all the time. But whenever they have something new they integrate it into a heavier vehicle. In the end we'll have engines which are close to running without fuel, but the vehicles they power will weight 5 tons (that's exactly 10000 lbs). I guess that we waste the same ammounts of fuel we wasted 20 years ago. What's the point about that? We gain efficiency which is lost because cars are getting more comfortable all the time (at least that's how the car manufacturers justify the weight gain). I would switch from a SUV to a normal car if I was interested in reducing pollution - not the other way around.
Btw: At least the Mercedes M xxx is primarily used for shopping over here. Everybody knows that SUV's are normally used on-road, but a SUV, which has parking sensors for the purpose of sending signals if you are getting too close to another car really prooves that they are just a waste of fuel after all. Those cars haven't seen anything apart from roads and parking lots.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm actually quite satisfied with the way linux handles devices and their drivers right now (this is stuff for nerds after all).
But I always wonder why there isn't a huge effort to build an abstract abstraction layer... it could look like this:
Every piece of hardware is equipped with a standardized storage chip, which contains detailed information about the purpose of the device and instructions on how to "talk" to it. Basically I'm looking for a way to enable any OS to figure out a driver on its own.
I know that many vendors (like nvidia) would never support such an idea, since they prefer to keep the source of their drivers secret. And I also doubt that it would be easy to write something like this for modern video cards. But something like this would be great for input devices or nics.
extemely insightful - I used to have doubts about the mod system, but you just proved (to me) that it perfectly makes sense after all.
all we need know is a bunch of hamsters in wheels keeping this thingie going and we are all set.
Since we're talking about ASCI - does anybody know where I can find this aalib demo just about anybody is talking about?
This makes me wonder how much a human would produce in a big wheel or several humans in a long wheel.
Don't blame me if you just think about hordes of illegal immigrants powering Las Vegas - wasn't my intention to imply anything...
I'm quite sure that internet access is the main reason we still have so many home phones after all.
Cable isn't that widespread in Europe, satelite links are quite expensive and they require a telephone line for upload. Access via power lines never really took off. There is nothing which beats 2 copper wires running to your house in terms of speed, reliability and price.
Wireless LANs bringing internet access to entire blocks reduces the amount of home phones, since only one POTS is needed to get it online, but (at least over here) we won't see telcos going down the drain before ISPs are offering (cheaper than telco) area-wide wireless access for their services.
I don't need a home phone at all, but my favorite monopolistic telco offers me DSL for a reasonable price. They also charge me for a mandatory phone connection using the same line, but it's still much cheaper than their closest competitor.a service provider in Germany has been doing something like this for years. If you subscribe to their service you basically get a username and pass which you can use to access a map on their website displaying your phone's current position. So if your friends know the pass they are able to spot you. IIRC they rely on 3 cells in your phone's range (cell-id I guess) to locate you, so the results can be quite inaccurate.
However it never became popular for obvious reasons. I guess nobody likes to reveal his/her whereabouts 24/7.
Yahoo certainly has first ammendment rights in the USA, but France isn't part of the US. How are they going to defend a law or right, which isn't part of the french legal system? That's like using the Basic Constitutional Law (aka constitution) of Germany in Vanuatu.
Just take a look at the Foreign Claims Act in the US if you want to know how local law can have much influence on global acting companies.
I don't really know why you would be offended by an insensitive clod like me, if you are comfortable with the current state of enlightenment.
I still think it's great, but I doubt that they are going to release 0.17 this year and I also doubt that they'll (at the current rate of development) be any better than some newer WMs/minDesktops in regards to innovation, features and usability. I found something which works better for me but I never would criticize someone who is loyal to E.
fouls are almost as annoying as dives and I would appreciate it if certain measures were taken to reduce them. Some soccer players develop enormous stagecraft qualities when an oponent could have touched them. But it's also a good example for the limitations of electronics in this area. How many pressure sensors are necessary in order to make sure that a person has been hit by another? I guess it's somewhere between 50 and 200. Could make a match more complicated (they aren't weightless after all). Apart from the weight/uncomfortability/time (how long does it take to put this on every single player?) issue sensors wouldn't really prove anything, because you don't know who actually hit whom. So you need lots of cameras, too. You would need both if you want be sure. If you only use cameras you won't be able to determine whether someone just had contact or if he kicked the other guys ass like he was mad. I just fear that we'll end up with giant real time x-ray tomographs build around every major stadium.
it's funny to read this now - I just visited enlightenment.org some hours ago to check if they got any closer to 0.17 stable since the last time I checked (~6 month ago). Now / tells me that they finally made it to 16.7.1. I guess I'll have to lower my expectations. Don't get me wrong - I really like Enlightenment. I used it for several months before I finally switched to XFCE. 0.16 showed me the potential this project has, but it lacks some features which I really want to use. I started searching for alternatives when I realized that E wouldn't go anywhere for a long time. By the way: What was the most obvious April Fools story this year? I'd vote for 'Enlightenment 1.0 is out'.
Is Ellen Feiss in it?
AFAIK Slashdot never publicized official zeitgeist like stats
but I consider wrong decisions to be part of the game.
They developed something like this for soccer matches some years ago (all links I can think of lead to German sites - rather boring for the majority ). However, there have been some controversial decisions in this sport (like England vs. Germany 1966), which people are still discussing nowadays. I believe that sensors would make sport more boring in the long run.
Maybe their concept (of not dealing with specific numbers higher than 2) has limited their language?
I think it's possible to flip this argument like a coin without getting anywhere.
I don't really see it.
How often are companies like Gartner - which really are into IT research and analysis - being held liable for their publications?Google did this "just for fun". They never said it really represented market share. They didn't link to it directly. And they didn't take money for it. I know that we are talking about the US legal system here, but I still can't figure out a way someone could honestly use those numbers to sue them.
My guess is that they recieved so much feedback and inquiries by the media about this aspect of zeitgeist that it became incommodious for them.
Unfortunately they don't cover this issue in tfa, but since they use it for regular watter supply afterwards I would guess that the effects are minimal. After all they would have taken the water anyways (but maybe from a shallower and warmer site?).
take a look at this raid 0 floppy setup: http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm
yes, I know that it would cost more and we would still have moving parts. It's also slower.
But just imagine a room with ~21300 FDD (30 gigs) stacked to the ceiling blinking and spinning like mad.
yes, it might be a good way to make money after all, but those using the frequencies as a consumer will pay for it one way or the other.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that he'll benefit from more efficient bandwith usage on a personal level?
It would be great if the 2.4 GHz spectrum would be licensed - I'm looking forward to pay fees for any WLAN NIC I buy.
95% of the spectrum are not meant to be for profit, but it's not like 95% of it are being wasted/unused.
it will indeed spin around like mad if the little rotor existant. I already stated that I'm not into helicopters, but isn't it quite obvious that a helicopter can't fly if most of the energy is used for spinning the cockpit? Even if it would work it would be quite unlikely that the pilot could take it.
afaik it's quite hard to build a human powered plane (yes, someone made it from France to England many years ago). A helicopter is much trickier, because the pilot must run two rotors at the same time. It's not easy to transfer human energy to two places without adding much weight. I'm not an expert in helicopters, but it's kinda obvious to me that the pilot would have to use extraordinary effort to stay above the ground for 3 minutes.
I don't want to rant, but I always wondered about the current situation of car development. The car industry innovates better and bigger engines, which use less fuel all the time. But whenever they have something new they integrate it into a heavier vehicle. In the end we'll have engines which are close to running without fuel, but the vehicles they power will weight 5 tons (that's exactly 10000 lbs). I guess that we waste the same ammounts of fuel we wasted 20 years ago. What's the point about that? We gain efficiency which is lost because cars are getting more comfortable all the time (at least that's how the car manufacturers justify the weight gain).
I would switch from a SUV to a normal car if I was interested in reducing pollution - not the other way around.
Btw: At least the Mercedes M xxx is primarily used for shopping over here. Everybody knows that SUV's are normally used on-road, but a SUV, which has parking sensors for the purpose of sending signals if you are getting too close to another car really prooves that they are just a waste of fuel after all. Those cars haven't seen anything apart from roads and parking lots.