the article might have been interesting if the author wasn't pounding a drum and actually did an apples to apples comparison, i.e. prius to corolla or camry hybrid to camry regular...
My buddy is a mechE (thermal guy) working there on very esoteric thermal problems (he got hired for his work in micro-bubble cooling as an undergrad and masters student, one of only 4 guys in his 50 person group without a PhD...)
his job description is "invent stuff, don't worry about practical applications, we have whole buildings full of engineers who take your work and find uses for it"
a much more interesting statistic would be..
on
Apache down, IIS up
·
· Score: 1
a much more interesting statistic would be the percent of actual web traffic served by server type and average traffic by server type _not_ including "parked" domains.
"total websites hosted" is meaningless, as I could set up a hosting/registrar company, park ten bazillion domains and offer to sell my domain parking service to the highest bidding server vendor (or just pick my favorite (KHTTPD? matchbox-PIC-server?????) to screw the other guys.
the study is very misleading, implying that aluminum-foil hats (which everyone knows are useless) are equivalent to tin-foil hats.
you see? it's TIN-foil hats that protect you from the government's spy rays and the RFID chip they planted in your skull when they kidnapped your pregnant mom.
one of the main problems for getting device manufacturers to support linux is the fact that they either have to release a new version of their driver every time the linux kernel changes some esoteric internal API, or be badmouthed for not having good linux support.
would it really hurt so much to guarantee a stable DKI? doesn't have to freeze the whole kernel, just a subset of functions that will be guaranteed to work as they do now in perpetuity.
backwards compatibility is just as important to driver writers as it is to app writers.
doesn't even have to be binary backwards compatible, source level would be sufficient for most.
unfortunately, they broke rule number one: dont compromise the phone form factor for a big PDA screen. holding this phone to the side of your head is like holding a brick to the side of your head.
and they are GSM, which sucks in the states. verizon is the only company with good signal if you are more than 2 miles from the interstate.
hell, I even get 5 bars at my father-in-law's house in the middle of bum-fsck nowhere north dakota.
I don't want to haul around a phone, MP3 player, camera, PDA, notebook etc.
what I want is one device, the size of my cell phone that combines all the features of these devices.
what I want in this device: size of my current cellphone (Audiovox cdm-9900) cell phone features at least as good as current + mp3 ringtones 2MP 3x optical zoom camera w/ VGA/30fps movie mode industry standard flash memory card/data in industry standard storage format read and write files on flash card using standard tools in windows, linux and macos play MP3 and mpeg/mp4/divx (at VGA/30fps when driving remote display) (limitation to proprietary formats unacceptable, but support for proprietary formats in addition to standard formats desirable) PDA capabilities equal to palm pilot/zaurus/WINCE (assume primary data input by keyboard in desktop mode) wireless keyboard/mouse/display/headphone/microphone/networ king support
minimum 48 hours standby battery life/4 hours active use time (remote desktop/mobile mode)
USB master/slave capability using standard cables
I want to be able to access _all_ data on this device from a usb/wireless connected system as if I were looking at a hard drive/network drive
beyond solitaire/free cell/tetris/minesweeper level gaming, I dont care about gaming performance.
graphics performance equivalent to first gen radeon is sufficient.
I expect that there are 3 primary usage modes: mobile, remote and primary desktop
mobile usage model:
in this mode, this should operate like a cell phone, MP3 player or camera like a full function single purpose device for each of these uses. As a PDA it would primarily be used for data retrieval as opposed to input, for anything beyond trivial data input (on the level of what you would input into a cell phone) it is ok to assume a wireless or USB keyboard will be used (i.e. handwriting recognition not required/useful) the form factor of the divice should not be comprimized in the false belief that a big display is needed. the display on my cdm-9900 is more than sufficient.
with a secondary battery pack and set of display glasses, it should be possible to watch two complete feature length VGA/30fps movies in this mode (think flying Boston to LA)
remote desktop usage model:
in this mode, the user is primarily expecting functionality equivalent to a high end PDA/ultra portable laptop. the keyboard would probably be a wireless thumbboard or a rollup usb keyboard, the display would preferrably be a wireless head mounted display (HUD-glasses). external networking capabilities might be non-existant, or limited to analog cell phone bandwidth, so internal processing capabilities must be able to fulfill the minimums for this kind of use.
primary desktop usage model:
I want to just carry the device in my pocket, when I get to work, drop it on my desk, have it recognize my keyboard, display and mouse and start driving them. I want to be able to do everything I do on my desktop computer in this mode. I expect that this will require remote processing to provide the CPU horsepower necessary, but the UI will be displayed and driven here (X11 terminal style, but once I've done initial setup, I don't want to have to think about it. this should work from the other side of the world).
I expect it needs to be on the charger for best performance in this mode
what's missing to accomplish this:
the biggest piece of missing technology for this application is wireless capable monitors and really useable display glasses. by useable, I mean glasses that work like the glasses I wear today, but also can be used as a computer display. other than the weight issue and some manufacturing issues, the tech is here today with an LCD film overlay laminated onto the glasses lens or a projector/refractor model.
is there something I'm doing wrong? no maps come up for me, just a blenk beige space. when I click on one of the waypoint links, I get an empty square with the "broken" icon overlayed on the map.
burt rutan is the ss1 guy, and the voyager guy _and_ the guy building the Global Flyer. at the time of the voyager flight, the original concept was for a jet, or at least a turboprop, but at the time, those engine choices would not provide the kind of fuel economy necessary.
dick rutan and jeanna yeager flew the voyager.
the global flyer is being paid for by the Virgin CEO Richard Branson.
just another example of the egregious effect of the concept of "corporate personhood"
i.e. a corporation has all the same rights to free political speech (read as "give money to politicians") as real people, but with the substantial advantage of not having a dollar limit on their contributions(unlike real people, who are limited to $1000/candidate), and very deep pockets.
the only fix for this particular form of corruption is to eliminate the concept of "corporate personhood"
did it ever enter their tiny little heads that the reason that their wunder-patent didn't sell as well as their very carefully crafted market research said it should have, might just have something to do with the fact that the CONSUMER (not the producer, they just pass the cost on) didn't want to pay their licence fee (100% price markup) for a product which provided minimal benefit in certain limited cases and a large handicap in a great many (more commonly encountered) cases?
stupid corporation, hopefully they and all the other "IP" companies will go the way of the tyrannosaurus rex (i.e. screaming in agony as a giant fireball from space lands on their heads)
no, it would be 1/10th of a pint or a litttle less than an ounce. yes, that's 1 shot of everclear and you're legally drunk (or damn close to it).
the reason they say "two drinks an hour" is that most drinks have 1 shot of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor in them (a 6 oz glass of wine (@~10%) or a 12 oz beer is roughly equivalent).
assuming your liver can process alcohol at that rate (a wildly variable rule of thumb) then you can drink 2 drinks an hour till the cows come home and remain just below the legal limit.
I really want to be excited about this, I _really_ do. but I have no faith that this is anything other than election year politics to be abandoned or marginalized as soon as the election is over regardless of who wins.
be that as it may, we need to do this. we need a moon base first if only as a technology proving ground that is easy and quick to get to (compared to mars). we should have started this 30 years ago as a follow up to apollo, but instead we spent 30 years building the space shuttle and one third of the ISS. we are no further ahead now than we were in the 70's with skylab.
rather than doing this the conventional government way, where we send billions to lockheed on the basis of a rediculous underbid that everyone knows is BS and then sending them more and more when they have cost overrun after cost overrun compounded by weight issues, how about you take a lesson from the X-Prize, they have more than 20 teams competing and spending their own money on the chance of a $10 million prize (which won't cover their costs) and the prestige of being the winner. the side benefit is that they develop new technology which they may be able to sell later.
so here's the big idea:
offer a $1Billion (or $500 Million) prize to the first private company to land a crew of 4 on the moon, live there a week while performing a designated scientific task requiring EVA or perhaps building the first module of a permanent station and return safely to earth.
offer no government assistance other than access to all of NASA's technical info, access to the parts bin so they can use what's best of existing tech, and a basic technical viability review, then get out of their way and watch it happen.
if you read page 33 (section 2.4) and later of the POSIX 1996 standard, all those comment strings are direct quotes from the description in the standard.
examples: (p33): [E2BIG] Arg list too long
The sum of the number of bytes used by.... (p36): [EPERM] Operation not permitted
An attempt was made to...
actually, the contest in which the G11 failed had a standard of 50% improvement in combat effectiveness over the M-16. it was up against an m-16 derivative that fired flechettes and another m-16 like rifle also firing flechettes.
while all the weapons were significantly better than the m-16 in all but very long range situations, where the m-16's larger, heavier single bullet had better impact accuracy and energy, none of them achieved a 50% improvement in overall combat effectiveness.
why such a high standard you ask? $600-1000 per rifle * 4 million rifles + replace every bit fo rifle ammo, change to nato standard, yadda yadda yadda. Big freaking bucks.
however, they also found that just equipping stock m-16s with the flechette ammo got about 90% of the improvement tht was seen in the test weapons. there are though some geneva convention questions regarding flechettes...
anyway, long story short, the G11 was a better rifle than the m-16, just not better enough to justify the cost.
when I pay my buck, I don't mind DRM (as long as up front I know it's there) but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.
what I want is for my $.99 is:
a: 1 (drm restricted) full CD quality track (that I can write to CD a limited number of times using their tool)
b: 1 high bit-rate drm restricted mp3/ogg/wma equivalent for i-pod type devices
c: 1 128bps (drm or no drm) mp3 equivalent for flash based mp3 players.
that way they can be happy about controlling my access and I can still get decent quality sound..
according to NSI: scosucks.org is available. scosucks.biz is available. scosucks.info is available. scosucks.us is available. scosucks.cc is available. scosucks.bz is available. scosux.com is available. scosux.net is available. scosux.org is available. scosux.biz is available. scosux.info is available. scosux.us is available. scosux.cc is available. scosux.bz is available.
I know, I'm a chump for ever having owned one, but I had a 386sx/16 box from packard bell bought in 1990. it had a riser card in it.
before that, I worked with Zeniths that had essentially the same thing, except the "mobo" was vertical and the "riser" was horizontal (unless you turned the box on it's side (oldschool tower))
(I was overseas at the time and Gateway, then still a company worth buying from, didn't ship to APO addresses)
this, by 1 year, predates the earliest referenced patent in the claims section of this stupid patent.
Slashdot Mirror
or any general motors product for that matter.
the article might have been interesting if the author wasn't pounding a drum and actually did an apples to apples comparison, i.e. prius to corolla or camry hybrid to camry regular...
My buddy is a mechE (thermal guy) working there on very esoteric thermal problems (he got hired for his work in micro-bubble cooling as an undergrad and masters student, one of only 4 guys in his 50 person group without a PhD...)
his job description is "invent stuff, don't worry about practical applications, we have whole buildings full of engineers who take your work and find uses for it"
a much more interesting statistic would be the percent of actual web traffic served by server type and average traffic by server type _not_ including "parked" domains.
"total websites hosted" is meaningless, as I could set up a hosting/registrar company, park ten bazillion domains and offer to sell my domain parking service to the highest bidding server vendor (or just pick my favorite (KHTTPD? matchbox-PIC-server?????) to screw the other guys.
and it has always sUxx0rd. incomplete, poorly implemented, not really POSIX.
are they saying that they are doing it right now, or just pretending what is old is new?
I had the pimpinest RS Pocket computer back in the day, complete with thermal printer, expanded memory and all the accessories.
it was TEH BOMB!! I could play one line text games on it! I could add, subtract, multiply AND DEVIDE!!
man I miss that pos..
it's the ALUMINUM ones that don't work!
the study is very misleading, implying that aluminum-foil hats (which everyone knows are useless) are equivalent to tin-foil hats.
you see? it's TIN-foil hats that protect you from the government's spy rays and the RFID chip they planted in your skull when they kidnapped your pregnant mom.
one of the main problems for getting device manufacturers to support linux is the fact that they either have to release a new version of their driver every time the linux kernel changes some esoteric internal API, or be badmouthed for not having good linux support.
would it really hurt so much to guarantee a stable DKI? doesn't have to freeze the whole kernel, just a subset of functions that will be guaranteed to work as they do now in perpetuity.
backwards compatibility is just as important to driver writers as it is to app writers.
doesn't even have to be binary backwards compatible, source level would be sufficient for most.
unfortunately, they broke rule number one: dont compromise the phone form factor for a big PDA screen. holding this phone to the side of your head is like holding a brick to the side of your head.
and they are GSM, which sucks in the states. verizon is the only company with good signal if you are more than 2 miles from the interstate.
hell, I even get 5 bars at my father-in-law's house in the middle of bum-fsck nowhere north dakota.
I don't want to haul around a phone, MP3 player, camera, PDA, notebook etc.
r king support
what I want is one device, the size of my cell phone that combines all the
features of these devices.
what I want in this device:
size of my current cellphone (Audiovox cdm-9900)
cell phone features at least as good as current + mp3 ringtones
2MP 3x optical zoom camera w/ VGA/30fps movie mode
industry standard flash memory card/data in industry standard storage format
read and write files on flash card using standard tools in windows,
linux and macos
play MP3 and mpeg/mp4/divx (at VGA/30fps when driving remote display)
(limitation to proprietary formats unacceptable, but support for proprietary
formats in addition to standard formats desirable)
PDA capabilities equal to palm pilot/zaurus/WINCE (assume primary data
input by keyboard in desktop mode)
wireless keyboard/mouse/display/headphone/microphone/netwo
minimum 48 hours standby battery life/4 hours active use time (remote
desktop/mobile mode)
USB master/slave capability using standard cables
I want to be able to access _all_ data on this device from a usb/wireless
connected system as if I were looking at a hard drive/network drive
beyond solitaire/free cell/tetris/minesweeper level gaming, I dont care
about gaming performance.
graphics performance equivalent to first gen radeon is sufficient.
I expect that there are 3 primary usage modes: mobile, remote and primary
desktop
mobile usage model:
in this mode, this should operate like a cell phone, MP3 player or camera
like a full function single purpose device for each of these uses. As a PDA
it would primarily be used for data retrieval as opposed to input, for anything
beyond trivial data input (on the level of what you would input into a cell
phone) it is ok to assume a wireless or USB keyboard will be used (i.e.
handwriting recognition not required/useful) the form factor of the divice
should not be comprimized in the false belief that a big display is needed.
the display on my cdm-9900 is more than sufficient.
with a secondary battery pack and set of display glasses, it should be possible
to watch two complete feature length VGA/30fps movies in this mode (think
flying Boston to LA)
remote desktop usage model:
in this mode, the user is primarily expecting functionality equivalent to
a high end PDA/ultra portable laptop. the keyboard would probably be a
wireless thumbboard or a rollup usb keyboard, the display would preferrably be
a wireless head mounted display (HUD-glasses). external networking
capabilities might be non-existant, or limited to analog cell phone bandwidth,
so internal processing capabilities must be able to fulfill the minimums for
this kind of use.
primary desktop usage model:
I want to just carry the device in my pocket, when I get to work, drop it
on my desk, have it recognize my keyboard, display and mouse and start driving
them. I want to be able to do everything I do on my desktop computer in this
mode. I expect that this will require remote processing to provide the
CPU horsepower necessary, but the UI will be displayed and driven here
(X11 terminal style, but once I've done initial setup, I don't want to have to
think about it. this should work from the other side of the world).
I expect it needs to be on the charger for best performance in this
mode
what's missing to accomplish this:
the biggest piece of missing technology for this application is wireless
capable monitors and really useable display glasses. by useable, I mean glasses
that work like the glasses I wear today, but also can be used as a computer
display. other than the weight issue and some manufacturing issues, the tech
is here today with an LCD film overlay laminated onto the glasses lens or a
projector/refractor model.
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.
-From the Notebook of Lazarus Long
then you'd be EVERY engineer's worst nightmare, a marketroid with an engineering degree but no engineering experience!
seriously. work in the industry for 5 years, then go back to school, experience is more valuable than any piece of paper.
that is, the root of all evil left over after organized religion has taken it's majority share.
is there something I'm doing wrong? no maps come up for me, just a blenk beige space. when I click on one of the waypoint links, I get an empty square with the "broken" icon overlayed on the map.
firefox 1.0 xp
steve fossett is the round the world balloon guy.
burt rutan is the ss1 guy, and the voyager guy _and_ the guy building the Global Flyer. at the time of the voyager flight, the original concept was for a jet, or at least a turboprop, but at the time, those engine choices would not provide the kind of fuel economy necessary.
dick rutan and jeanna yeager flew the voyager.
the global flyer is being paid for by the Virgin CEO Richard Branson.
for the corporation.
just another example of the egregious effect of the concept of "corporate personhood"
i.e. a corporation has all the same rights to free political speech (read as "give money to politicians") as real people, but with the substantial advantage of not having a dollar limit on their contributions(unlike real people, who are limited to $1000/candidate), and very deep pockets.
the only fix for this particular form of corruption is to eliminate the concept of "corporate personhood"
did it ever enter their tiny little heads that the reason that their wunder-patent didn't sell as well as their very carefully crafted market research said it should have, might just have something to do with the fact that the CONSUMER (not the producer, they just pass the cost on) didn't want to pay their licence fee (100% price markup) for a product which provided minimal benefit in certain limited cases and a large handicap in a great many (more commonly encountered) cases?
stupid corporation, hopefully they and all the other "IP" companies will go the way of the tyrannosaurus rex (i.e. screaming in agony as a giant fireball from space lands on their heads)
no, it would be 1/10th of a pint or a litttle less than an ounce.
yes, that's 1 shot of everclear and you're legally drunk (or damn close to it).
the reason they say "two drinks an hour" is that most drinks have 1 shot of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor in them (a 6 oz glass of wine (@~10%) or a 12 oz beer is roughly equivalent).
assuming your liver can process alcohol at that rate (a wildly variable rule of thumb) then you can drink 2 drinks an hour till the cows come home and remain just below the legal limit.
I really want to be excited about this, I _really_ do. but I have no faith that this is anything other than election year politics to be abandoned or marginalized as soon as the election is over regardless of who wins.
be that as it may, we need to do this. we need a moon base first if only as a technology proving ground that is easy and quick to get to (compared to mars). we should have started this 30 years ago as a follow up to apollo, but instead we spent 30 years building the space shuttle and one third of the ISS. we are no further ahead now than we were in the 70's with skylab.
rather than doing this the conventional government way, where we send billions to lockheed on the basis of a rediculous underbid that everyone knows is BS and then sending them more and more when they have cost overrun after cost overrun compounded by weight issues, how about you take a lesson from the X-Prize, they have more than 20 teams competing and spending their own money on the chance of a $10 million prize (which won't cover their costs) and the prestige of being the winner. the side benefit is that they develop new technology which they may be able to sell later.
so here's the big idea:
offer a $1Billion (or $500 Million) prize to the first private company to land a crew of 4 on the moon, live there a week while performing a designated scientific task requiring EVA or perhaps building the first module of a permanent station and return safely to earth.
offer no government assistance other than access to all of NASA's technical info, access to the parts bin so they can use what's best of existing tech, and a basic technical viability review, then get out of their way and watch it happen.
my money's on Burt Rutan.
if you read page 33 (section 2.4) and later of the POSIX 1996 standard, all those comment strings are direct quotes from the description in the standard.
examples:
(p33):
[E2BIG] Arg list too long
The sum of the number of bytes used by....
(p36):
[EPERM] Operation not permitted
An attempt was made to...
actually, the contest in which the G11 failed had a standard of 50% improvement in combat effectiveness over the M-16. it was up against an m-16 derivative that fired flechettes and another m-16 like rifle also firing flechettes.
while all the weapons were significantly better than the m-16 in all but very long range situations, where the m-16's larger, heavier single bullet had better impact accuracy and energy, none of them achieved a 50% improvement in overall combat effectiveness.
why such a high standard you ask? $600-1000 per rifle * 4 million rifles + replace every bit fo rifle ammo, change to nato standard, yadda yadda yadda. Big freaking bucks.
however, they also found that just equipping stock m-16s with the flechette ammo got about 90% of the improvement tht was seen in the test weapons. there are though some geneva convention questions regarding flechettes...
anyway, long story short, the G11 was a better rifle than the m-16, just not better enough to justify the cost.
tall people suck. but besides that, let's get to the really important question:
"management hair" vs. bald?
ponytails vs. crewcuts?
comb-over bald vs. accept-it-and-move-on bald?
hairclub for men vs. hair-plugs?
luxurious flowing locks vs. brillo-pad-perm?
gerry(sp?) curl vs. 'fro?
blond vs. brunette vs. firebush (oops I mean redhead...)
farrah vs. Jacklyn?
when I pay my buck, I don't mind DRM (as long as up front I know it's there) but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.
what I want is for my $.99 is:
a: 1 (drm restricted) full CD quality track (that I can write to CD a limited number of times using their tool)
b: 1 high bit-rate drm restricted mp3/ogg/wma equivalent for i-pod type devices
c: 1 128bps (drm or no drm) mp3 equivalent for flash based mp3 players.
that way they can be happy about controlling my access and I can still get decent quality sound..
why the hell go to all the trouble to make this small and not go all the way to SATA only, or at least laptop formfactor IDE?
the 10 cm^2 wasted on IDE connectors could be cut to 2 w/SATA or 6 w/ laptopIDE
after all, wouldn't you want to put this in a box w/a laprop HD and slimline CD to create a box the size of a stack of 4 jewelcases?
btw, where's the power in? I couldn't spot any power supply connectors...
according to NSI:
scosucks.org is available.
scosucks.biz is available.
scosucks.info is available.
scosucks.us is available.
scosucks.cc is available.
scosucks.bz is available.
scosux.com is available.
scosux.net is available.
scosux.org is available.
scosux.biz is available.
scosux.info is available.
scosux.us is available.
scosux.cc is available.
scosux.bz is available.
I know, I'm a chump for ever having owned one, but I had a 386sx/16 box from packard bell bought in 1990. it had a riser card in it.
before that, I worked with Zeniths that had essentially the same thing, except the "mobo" was vertical and the "riser" was horizontal (unless you turned the box on it's side (oldschool tower))
(I was overseas at the time and Gateway, then still a company worth buying from, didn't ship to APO addresses)
this, by 1 year, predates the earliest referenced patent in the claims section of this stupid patent.