I read the article and what a big piece of fluffy advertising for all things Microsoft. Now you too can see all the things the worlds richest man uses to keep his day organized.
Nice how he spends so much time on SharePoint, oh and gets a plug in for his TabletPC.
I am no anti-microsoftie, but this was just a very well placed ad. Even so I learned three things from this article: 1. Even Bill Gates has to wait to purchase some technology (Whiteboard) 2. 3 monitors does sound really cool, and I wonder if I can use it on my laptop 3. Sharepoint has some features that we are not currently using that I should research (discussion board being just one)
I learned about the free CDs about 5 weeks ago. Not having had a Linux install for a few years I went onto their shipit website and ordered a set.
Three weeks later they arrive and I tried the live CD. No joy - it turns out my nVidia onboard graphics are not supported. DAmn.
So I tried to load the no graphics server on my old dual 400 mhz computer that used to run SuSE 6.4. No joy there either - somehow the install mucked up my MBR and now I get nothing to install on that computer except Windows 95!
Until I can figure out either the MBR issue or the nVidia graphics issue there will be no ubuntu for me. I wish I was a happy user.
But you *are* being sexist by characterizing "sally" (assumes female) as the data operator and "joey" (assumes male) as the middle management.
I am presuming your comment about the secretaries is also that the secretaries were female, though as I was once "Administrative Assistant" and am (and have always been) male, I can tell you that is a pretty good presumption since there were so few of us XYs around.
I don't know about your company/IT department, but there is a heck of a lot more to worry about from internal security breaches than external cracking. So in your recommended example, I would be much more worried about Joe Pissed Off Employee going over to a random computer with the post - it note on it, deleting some critical data, then handing in his two week notice. As long as he used the posted login data, and you do not have security cameras set up on each floor, he gets away with it scot free.
Replace my example with any other internal security breaches you can think of, and you will understand why easy password protection is not a good idea for internal protection of company resources.
It is HIPAA. I write/edit medical proposals for a living and if I see HIPPA one more time I am going to jump off a cliff. Even google gets it and suggests the correct alternative: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=HIPPA
It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Honestly, how long can we really go before becoming seriously focused on minimizing the impact of our energy consumption? This seismic shift is coming soon. Some day, a -responsible- US president will not only give lip service, but will actually sets us on the path of an 'Apollo project' in the environmento/energy sector.
What do you think a president does? Right, he pays lip service to stuff and gets other folks to do it for him. It is your votes in Congress that get the funding and the US government moving in the right direction.
But while we are at it, what about the rest of the world? All I hear is carping from everyone about how we need to do this and that, and how wrong this country is. What I never hear is how England, France or Germany are making these huge technical leaps to help the US reduce its dependence on oil. Help us out, o smart ones over the pond!
First computer used: Atari 800 playing Space Raiders during the 1st shuttle liftoff.
First computer owned: Atari 1200xl in 1983 or so, bought and paid for with my own paper route money saved up over several years. Initially I had no backup, so I hand typed just about every BASIC program in, played it for a while, only to be deleted when I turned the machine off. I can remember spending hours and hours creating adventure/dungeons and dragons games by typing in lots of If...then statements. Even my Mom was impressed when I typed in a program from a magazine that produced a picture of a turkey. My best friend at the time had even had the honor of being published! Oh, how jealous I was that he had an Apple II with a cassette tape recorder that his parents had bought him, and it allowed him to create these programs and actually save them.
To think that I just bought a $450 eMachines that is so capable... but there is no programming language unless I install Linux or purchase software. BASIC was so simple, so fun... so much joy at typing '10 print "Lalalalalal" 20 goto 10 run'.
Well, a few years ago my whole company went around to every desktop and replaced all the grey power cords with black ones. (or vice versa) I guess the faulty grey power cords sold for years with electronic equipment were not up to snuff.
So I guess there *is* a difference in power cords also!:)
Memorization. You get a certain amount of time to memorize the cube before beginning. Then you orient the cube with the centers in the direction you prefer, then you put the blindfold on and begin. You know when you are done when you have done all the moves you planned in your head. If you have done it correctly the cube is solved once you put it down. If not, well then it isn't really 100% blindfolded then is it?
http://www.speedcubing.com/ has a pretty decent FAQ as well as good links to other more robust blindfold or regular speedcubing tutorial sites.
While 1985 seems ages ago to most, I remember asking for one of these for a graduation gift from high school. I didn't get it then, but about 18 months after as a 1986 Christmas present. I still have that Denon disc player which has been in use every single day since.
My father's 1985 Sony died a few years ago and I took it apart to scavenge the brushless CD motor for a model airplane (unsuccessful). The electronics inside were not large. The big difference I can recall is that the laser required a certain amount of height and this pushed the tray height either very high or very low, depending on how the laser and case were designed. The transport tray was correspondingly large with sizeable gears not optimized like current players for smaller size. The rest of the player electronics were supported on standoffs from the case -- they were not particularly large. Cooling the thing was relatively unnecessary, in fact there were no air vents on the top, sides or back (possibly the bottom).
It seems radio control planes might be affected by BPL as well. There aren't a lot of folks like me flying radio control airplanes compared to the "masses" of people that will benefit from BPL. It is going to be awful the first time someone loses a handbuilt airplane to interference with transmissions over power lines. As it is open space to fly these planes is increasingly at a premium and in many cases land under or near power lines is often the only place available/cheap enough to fly them!
You lucky, lucky bastards! Proper little comp. sci professionals eh? You must have slipped 'em a few dollars eh?... Oh, what I wouldn't give to be able to install an IM client. Sometimes I lay awake a night dreaming of being able to install an IM client!
Must be nice. We are so locked down here that there is no way they are going to let anything except NetMeeting (which has a horrid interface, no addressing etc.) be on the network.
Check up yet another long time poster where Slashdot is now becoming a place to read the comments rather than anything new and informative. Thanks to another thread that suggested digg.com was faster at breaking the news, and not a whole lot less accurate either.
During lunch time yesterday I was reading the posted blog and all the comments left after someone posted the story on digg.com. I gotta say that 80% of Slashdot articles are "scooped" on digg first, as I have set up both Slashdot and Digg as RSS feeds into my google.com/ig page.
I am not sure what the big deal is. I have an older copy of SuSE 7.1 that runs really well on my PII-400mhz with 128mb ram. This is my *only* computer at the moment. This same machine runs Win98 perfectly well and plays most of the games I have purchased without hiccup (most recent, though, is Diablo II Expansion).
You do not need a fast computer to run Linux. Just get an old distro and turn off the networking services. Many older machines had hardware that was reasonably well supported. You do not need WinXP or LInux 24.4.4 to have a pretty decent computing experience, though I suppose if you are a developer it is pretty useless to develop in an old version of GCC.
Yes, but all of these products have revenue streams that make up for the initial loss in revenue. In the case of the phones the revenue stream in guaranteed, else the consumer pays a big penalty (which makes up for the money loss on the phone). None of the companies that manufacture products you mention are in the business of giving money away, as it seems Microsoft is willing to do.
In the case of Xbox or Xbox 360 you are not locking in anyone into any future purchases. Sure games mean more money for Microsoft, but many people will buy an initial stock and then wait for the games to go on sale months or years later.
The term for all the above is "loss leader" something many of us learn in marketing class using the example of milk. Supermarkets and convenience stores have known forever (or at least since advertising in print became popular) that putting milk or any essentials on sale generates foot traffic. That foot traffic is more than likely to generate secondary sales. A person goes in to buy the milk on sale, but then buys cookies that have a net profit of 25%.
It is unfortunate. I am still running Windows 98 here and would love to try it.
Oh, you probably meant when will it run non-MS software. D'oh!
Comparison with TV works, but not in their example
on
Reining in Google
·
· Score: 1
Quote: "It isn't up to the broadcaster to track down someone profiting from their work, why should it be up to publishers and authors to do so?"
Um, wrong. It may be the broadcaster doesn't do it but the legions of attorneys they employ do! Otherwise you would be seeing all kinds of rebroadcasts of TV shows.
This is a very weak argument on both sides, both comparing re-use of TV shows as "fair use" by Google and by the authors here in attempting to refute Google's example.
I don't own an Xbox but I am super pleased that they are coming out with the new version because it then means that the regular Xbox games and console will be coming way down in price. That means I'll be able to finally afford a console that plays games pretty darn well... probably under the current $150 going price for a new unit, and games will be relatively cheap either new or used.
Of course, I have missed out on a couple of years of playing the console but it'll still be fun for me. After all, Halo is brand new to me and I'll get the same enjoyment and playability out of it that you all did a while back.
p.s. I am the guy that buys all the games in the $5 and $10 bin, including the triple packs you can sometimes buy at Marshalls and TJMaxx.:-)
Gotta agree with this point. And hand/computer drawn animation cartoons have not all sucked from Disney since Pixar either. My favorite animated movie of all time is Mulan (1998)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762/
Yet another voice to add to the chorus. You will need a teacher. But hold on before putting me to the bottom of the pile. You do not need to find someone who gets paid - any friend will do just fine.
I think elsewhere in the thread someone posted that getting a friend to help is a good idea. I started at age 20 in college (I am now 37) when my roommate showed my a few chords. He gave me a guitar book that I have since found at a few libraries and I used that plus his occasional advice to progress to the beginner stage.
Once you have a G, C, D, E, A and possibly F open chords you can play a whole lot of songs and that will do you for a while, possibly a few years. If you like metal, punk, alternative or just any kind of fast playing you will want to also learn Barre chords early on. This allows you to play the Major and Minor chords all the way up the guitar neck without changing the shape of your fingers - they just slide up the next. I did and could have been in a band within about 3 months of picking up the instrument. All the British punk bands used barre chords, mostly a E, D, A pounded out really fast.
So that will get you started. But then, like me, you will eventually get bored with that. Music theory will then become necessary to progress to any kind of "next" level. And if you are like most people, music theory just isn't palatable from behind a computer screen. Major and Minor chords are great, but adding the diminished, sevenths, 9ths etc. adds a totally new dimension to your playing. I would be a much better player if I could have afforded a teacher from the beginning but since I could not the road I took has been very rewarding.
Slashdot Mirror
Not near any town of note? Hmmm, Boston and Cambridge not notable enough?
I read the article and what a big piece of fluffy advertising for all things Microsoft. Now you too can see all the things the worlds richest man uses to keep his day organized.
Nice how he spends so much time on SharePoint, oh and gets a plug in for his TabletPC.
I am no anti-microsoftie, but this was just a very well placed ad. Even so I learned three things from this article:
1. Even Bill Gates has to wait to purchase some technology (Whiteboard)
2. 3 monitors does sound really cool, and I wonder if I can use it on my laptop
3. Sharepoint has some features that we are not currently using that I should research (discussion board being just one)
I learned about the free CDs about 5 weeks ago. Not having had a Linux install for a few years I went onto their shipit website and ordered a set.
Three weeks later they arrive and I tried the live CD. No joy - it turns out my nVidia onboard graphics are not supported. DAmn.
So I tried to load the no graphics server on my old dual 400 mhz computer that used to run SuSE 6.4. No joy there either - somehow the install mucked up my MBR and now I get nothing to install on that computer except Windows 95!
Until I can figure out either the MBR issue or the nVidia graphics issue there will be no ubuntu for me. I wish I was a happy user.
Rotate the seats around at the point the deceleration begins. Then your body presses into the seat back and not into the seatbelt.
Either that, or require everyone to put on 5 point harnesses!
But you *are* being sexist by characterizing "sally" (assumes female) as the data operator and "joey" (assumes male) as the middle management.
I am presuming your comment about the secretaries is also that the secretaries were female, though as I was once "Administrative Assistant" and am (and have always been) male, I can tell you that is a pretty good presumption since there were so few of us XYs around.
Awesome recommendation! I am definitely going to try this next time my pword expires.
I don't know about your company/IT department, but there is a heck of a lot more to worry about from internal security breaches than external cracking. So in your recommended example, I would be much more worried about Joe Pissed Off Employee going over to a random computer with the post - it note on it, deleting some critical data, then handing in his two week notice. As long as he used the posted login data, and you do not have security cameras set up on each floor, he gets away with it scot free.
Replace my example with any other internal security breaches you can think of, and you will understand why easy password protection is not a good idea for internal protection of company resources.
Off topic rant:
Argh! It is not HIPPA!
It is HIPAA. I write/edit medical proposals for a living and if I see HIPPA one more time I am going to jump off a cliff. Even google gets it and suggests the correct alternative: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=HIPPA
It stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Back to the usual programming.
What do you think a president does? Right, he pays lip service to stuff and gets other folks to do it for him. It is your votes in Congress that get the funding and the US government moving in the right direction.
But while we are at it, what about the rest of the world? All I hear is carping from everyone about how we need to do this and that, and how wrong this country is. What I never hear is how England, France or Germany are making these huge technical leaps to help the US reduce its dependence on oil. Help us out, o smart ones over the pond!
Great aerial photography forum on the 'net at http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f= 128. I bet they have just about all the hacks required to get cheap digital cameras to work on model airplanes.
First computer used: Atari 800 playing Space Raiders during the 1st shuttle liftoff.
First computer owned: Atari 1200xl in 1983 or so, bought and paid for with my own paper route money saved up over several years. Initially I had no backup, so I hand typed just about every BASIC program in, played it for a while, only to be deleted when I turned the machine off. I can remember spending hours and hours creating adventure/dungeons and dragons games by typing in lots of If...then statements. Even my Mom was impressed when I typed in a program from a magazine that produced a picture of a turkey. My best friend at the time had even had the honor of being published! Oh, how jealous I was that he had an Apple II with a cassette tape recorder that his parents had bought him, and it allowed him to create these programs and actually save them.
To think that I just bought a $450 eMachines that is so capable... but there is no programming language unless I install Linux or purchase software. BASIC was so simple, so fun... so much joy at typing '10 print "Lalalalalal" 20 goto 10 run'.
Well, a few years ago my whole company went around to every desktop and replaced all the grey power cords with black ones. (or vice versa) I guess the faulty grey power cords sold for years with electronic equipment were not up to snuff.
:)
So I guess there *is* a difference in power cords also!
Memorization. You get a certain amount of time to memorize the cube before beginning. Then you orient the cube with the centers in the direction you prefer, then you put the blindfold on and begin. You know when you are done when you have done all the moves you planned in your head. If you have done it correctly the cube is solved once you put it down. If not, well then it isn't really 100% blindfolded then is it?
http://www.speedcubing.com/ has a pretty decent FAQ as well as good links to other more robust blindfold or regular speedcubing tutorial sites.
While 1985 seems ages ago to most, I remember asking for one of these for a graduation gift from high school. I didn't get it then, but about 18 months after as a 1986 Christmas present. I still have that Denon disc player which has been in use every single day since.
My father's 1985 Sony died a few years ago and I took it apart to scavenge the brushless CD motor for a model airplane (unsuccessful). The electronics inside were not large. The big difference I can recall is that the laser required a certain amount of height and this pushed the tray height either very high or very low, depending on how the laser and case were designed. The transport tray was correspondingly large with sizeable gears not optimized like current players for smaller size. The rest of the player electronics were supported on standoffs from the case -- they were not particularly large. Cooling the thing was relatively unnecessary, in fact there were no air vents on the top, sides or back (possibly the bottom).
It seems radio control planes might be affected by BPL as well. There aren't a lot of folks like me flying radio control airplanes compared to the "masses" of people that will benefit from BPL. It is going to be awful the first time someone loses a handbuilt airplane to interference with transmissions over power lines. As it is open space to fly these planes is increasingly at a premium and in many cases land under or near power lines is often the only place available/cheap enough to fly them!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz splat!
You lucky, lucky bastards! Proper little comp. sci professionals eh? You must have slipped 'em a few dollars eh? ... Oh, what I wouldn't give to be able to install an IM client. Sometimes I lay awake a night dreaming of being able to install an IM client!
Must be nice. We are so locked down here that there is no way they are going to let anything except NetMeeting (which has a horrid interface, no addressing etc.) be on the network.
Check up yet another long time poster where Slashdot is now becoming a place to read the comments rather than anything new and informative. Thanks to another thread that suggested digg.com was faster at breaking the news, and not a whole lot less accurate either.
During lunch time yesterday I was reading the posted blog and all the comments left after someone posted the story on digg.com. I gotta say that 80% of Slashdot articles are "scooped" on digg first, as I have set up both Slashdot and Digg as RSS feeds into my google.com/ig page.
I am not sure what the big deal is. I have an older copy of SuSE 7.1 that runs really well on my PII-400mhz with 128mb ram. This is my *only* computer at the moment. This same machine runs Win98 perfectly well and plays most of the games I have purchased without hiccup (most recent, though, is Diablo II Expansion).
You do not need a fast computer to run Linux. Just get an old distro and turn off the networking services. Many older machines had hardware that was reasonably well supported. You do not need WinXP or LInux 24.4.4 to have a pretty decent computing experience, though I suppose if you are a developer it is pretty useless to develop in an old version of GCC.
Yes, but all of these products have revenue streams that make up for the initial loss in revenue. In the case of the phones the revenue stream in guaranteed, else the consumer pays a big penalty (which makes up for the money loss on the phone). None of the companies that manufacture products you mention are in the business of giving money away, as it seems Microsoft is willing to do.
In the case of Xbox or Xbox 360 you are not locking in anyone into any future purchases. Sure games mean more money for Microsoft, but many people will buy an initial stock and then wait for the games to go on sale months or years later.
The term for all the above is "loss leader" something many of us learn in marketing class using the example of milk. Supermarkets and convenience stores have known forever (or at least since advertising in print became popular) that putting milk or any essentials on sale generates foot traffic. That foot traffic is more than likely to generate secondary sales. A person goes in to buy the milk on sale, but then buys cookies that have a net profit of 25%.
It is unfortunate. I am still running Windows 98 here and would love to try it.
Oh, you probably meant when will it run non-MS software. D'oh!
Quote: "It isn't up to the broadcaster to track down someone profiting from their work, why should it be up to publishers and authors to do so?"
Um, wrong. It may be the broadcaster doesn't do it but the legions of attorneys they employ do! Otherwise you would be seeing all kinds of rebroadcasts of TV shows.
This is a very weak argument on both sides, both comparing re-use of TV shows as "fair use" by Google and by the authors here in attempting to refute Google's example.
I don't own an Xbox but I am super pleased that they are coming out with the new version because it then means that the regular Xbox games and console will be coming way down in price. That means I'll be able to finally afford a console that plays games pretty darn well... probably under the current $150 going price for a new unit, and games will be relatively cheap either new or used.
:-)
Of course, I have missed out on a couple of years of playing the console but it'll still be fun for me. After all, Halo is brand new to me and I'll get the same enjoyment and playability out of it that you all did a while back.
p.s. I am the guy that buys all the games in the $5 and $10 bin, including the triple packs you can sometimes buy at Marshalls and TJMaxx.
Gotta agree with this point. And hand/computer drawn animation cartoons have not all sucked from Disney since Pixar either. My favorite animated movie of all time is Mulan (1998)http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120762/
Yet another voice to add to the chorus. You will need a teacher. But hold on before putting me to the bottom of the pile. You do not need to find someone who gets paid - any friend will do just fine.
I think elsewhere in the thread someone posted that getting a friend to help is a good idea. I started at age 20 in college (I am now 37) when my roommate showed my a few chords. He gave me a guitar book that I have since found at a few libraries and I used that plus his occasional advice to progress to the beginner stage.
Once you have a G, C, D, E, A and possibly F open chords you can play a whole lot of songs and that will do you for a while, possibly a few years. If you like metal, punk, alternative or just any kind of fast playing you will want to also learn Barre chords early on. This allows you to play the Major and Minor chords all the way up the guitar neck without changing the shape of your fingers - they just slide up the next. I did and could have been in a band within about 3 months of picking up the instrument. All the British punk bands used barre chords, mostly a E, D, A pounded out really fast.
So that will get you started. But then, like me, you will eventually get bored with that. Music theory will then become necessary to progress to any kind of "next" level. And if you are like most people, music theory just isn't palatable from behind a computer screen. Major and Minor chords are great, but adding the diminished, sevenths, 9ths etc. adds a totally new dimension to your playing. I would be a much better player if I could have afforded a teacher from the beginning but since I could not the road I took has been very rewarding.
Find a friend who can teach you the basics.
Nissan had a two seater hatchback that could be converted into a station wagon.
Of course, we also have the Pontiaz Asstek that converts from a minivan into a camper, and looks uglier all the time.