The funny thing is that someone's uber-secure password might be hashed right onto a dictionary word if the coder is a clown. Imagine finding out your password of "7,g/1jI-1?m" got hacked because it hashed onto "password".
Providing free wireless isn't going to suddenly make the normal ISPs go into bankruptcy. A free wireless network would be nice if you have a laptop in a park or something, but it isn't going to cut it for home use.
First of all, the security is terrible on wireless networks. I would not allow anyone in my house to connect their PC to a wireless city-wide network. You would have to lock down the PC to the point where it was barely usable anyway.
Secondly, you would still want a home network in most cases. Unless you set up a PC to act as your wireless access point, and made it into a hardcore firewall/router you wouldn't have the kind of security or network design you wanted. It wouldn't be very convenient to have all of your devices floating around in a public access WAN.
Last but not least is speed. I don't think I'll be getting the 1M download rate I currently enjoy with cable on a municiple wireless connection.
If the city is sellign this as a way for the average user to have an internet connection they are sadly mistaken. They might say it is as easy as connecting, which it is. The people that would want the simplicty of connection are the same ones that don't have a clue how to secure themselves, therefore they would be worse off in the end.
From the sounds of things, Google learns with a neural network. It has the ability to learn new mappings based on pattern matching. Babblefish sounds like a distinct mapping of phrases that have been hand coded.
Theoretically, Google can get better at translating over time, as it's neural network learns better connections. It might even get better than a human translator if it goes long enough. There will always be small discrepancies, but if the bulk of the text is correctly translated, that would be good enough.
That would work, but it completely defeats the purpose of the small unit. What's the difference between a small tower and 3 external devices stacked on top of a mini-pc?
I guess it would allow you to grab the smaller unit for easier transport if you wanted to leave the data drives behind.
I don't see the big rush for these Mini-machines. They are clearly aimed at a market where people want a very simple solution. The people that want email, internet access, and maybe Office.
I think Intel is better off with the normal PC market. For the same price you can get way more out of a normal PC. Apple might make a little money off the Mini mostly because the Mini looks trendy and that drives a lot of Mac sales.
The Mini design might start looking good for a media PC that would sit on top of a TV, but until there is a way to add way more storage for DVR and storing DivX, they won't cut it. Also, I am guessing the GPU in it won't play HD quality very well.
Intel might be a little better off enlarging the size, but adding more power to it. Call it the "Almost-mini" and sell it as a faster solution.
For $20k, you're not exactly getting Stephen Hawking to teach your physics class. You might be more accurate to say it would be 3 teachers. Also, a total cost of $20k per teacher would mean that the teachers actual pay would be more like $15k/year once you factor in pension and benefits.
Also, take into account that the $100,000 is a one time upgrade cost, and the teachers are a yearly cost.
Your point was taken, but there isn't any kind of comparison. It is best to say that the money can be put to better use now that they switched.
It is as secure as you make it. I could easily say Java is not secure. Hand over an unconfigured Linux box to someone and see how secure their application ends up. If someone knows what they are doing, any application can be secure.
.Not free
The Framework is free. The development environment is not. There are a lot of environments that cost money in other areas as well. You can program with Notepad if you are hardcore. If you want ultra-hardcore, download VI for Windows.
.Not stable.
Tell that to the many applications I have been running that have never crashed..NET is surprisingly stable. Just because Win 98 used to crash a lot, doesn't mean a.NET application on Windows 2003 Server does.
I think my definition of average college kid by default excludes anyone that reads/. I was thinking more of the business majors that spend most of their time doing keg stands.;)
Somehow I didn't have an extra card anymore. I think I've finally ditched my last one. Between giving old PCs away to friends and stuff, I have finally gotten rid of most of my pre-pentium era hardware.:)
I didn't have to get such a high end card, but I figured there was an off chance I might want to 2-box a game at some point, and made it match the lowest specs for most games.
It would seem that the it would make more sense at first to design a desktop that is 100% linux compatible. The vast majority of Linux machines are acting as servers of some sort or are being used by us geeks that are locked in a basement with no windows anyway, and have no reason to be portable. I don't see the average college kid running out to buy a linux machine for school, nor do I see executives deciding to buy linux machines for their traveling businessmen.
You can also get more horsepower for cheaper. I'm sure that are plenty of people that want a Linux laptop, but if I was going to specifically design hardware for linux, I would start with a desktop. I would probably also include the US, but that's another story.
In my first post I had a typo. Where I said "...the motherboard I wanted didn't have AGP" I meant IGP.
That was the point of my post actually. It is great to get an IGP mobo for most people. You can always upgrade later, but in the case of my server it would have been more than enough. Like you mentioned, it barely costs anything extra, so you might as well get it.
Imagine that - two integrated video chips running side-by-side with enough power to run the best of games.... would be nice, if possible.
I don't think it could ever get to that point, but it would be nice. The IGPs usually don't have the horsepower because they don't take in extra power and they don't have their own cooling. Running two of these on the mobo in SLI mode, with them being good enough to handle something like Doom 3 at the highest settings isn't likely. I doubt they could fit that onto the ATX pattern, or provide any way to cool or power such a beast.
It would be nice if you could somehow use the IGP chip in addition to your normal AGP video card. Imagine if it could do some backgroup processing to speed up your primary card? Even if it was just to cache textures or something.
IGPs are nice when you throw together a server or for the average home user that checks their email or browses the web. I just put together an AMD machine and had to drop $50 to get a GEForce card because the motherboard I wanted didn't have AGP.
The main problem with IGP for me, is that motherboard technology doesn't expand nearly as fast as graphics card technology. For any kind of gamer, they will have their motherboard way longer than any video card. I usually replace my PC around every 2-3 years. In video card years, like is like 10 decades. I probably replace the video card once or twice in that time, depending on the new games coming out. WoW and Doom 3 forced me into my last video card purchase. Mostly because I don't ever buy the bleeding edge one, so I am already a year behind while I wait for the price to fall a little.
IGP get nVidia into the lucrative market of OEM machines though. If they strike a deal to toss that chip on Dell motherboards, they can sit back and watch the money pour in. Or if they can make a contract with ASUS or something. Then they don't even have to worry about marketing and sales. The other products sell themselves, and they just get a piece of the pie.
Forgot to add that Neocron was a good attempt at a Shadowrun like MMORPG, but missed the mark in some key areas. The actual game mechanics weren't great, and there were a lot of bugs. The lack of players made it less fun also.
Neocron kept me occupied for a couple of weeks, but if they took it to the next level in the form of Shadowrun, I would wet my pants with excitement.
A shadowrun MMORPG would be so sweet. Shadowrun had some of the best concepts around, and was probably my favorite PNP game. I loved that you had the cyber stuff, implants, vampires, orcs, and vehicles decked out with missile launchers.
Another one I daydream about is a Transformers MMORPG. That one is a little trickier though. Since there is a predefined set of characters, I am not sure if you can really do it well. I am not sure it would be as fun to just be a random robot. I would want the chance to be one of the actual old-school Transformers. I probably wouldn't even care which one, except that it wouldn't really be that exciting to be Soundwave. He's awesome, but turning into a cassette player isn't exactly fantastic.
Google just string replaces any occurances of "www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/" with "google.com/adsense" in the future. No need to rewrite the algorithm.
For that matter, if I were writing a search site, I would probably code it so my site came up first on every query. Even when it wasn't relevant. For example, a query on "Spicy taco recipes" would still lead to #1 being Nytewynd's page (404: no tacos found)
The prohibition period in the US continues to this day. Marijuana, LSD, opiates, and a host of other substances less harmful than alcohol remain prohibited. It's just that the propaganda is better this time around.
I've seen the commercials. If I smoke pot, I'll become a baby sitter and burn down the house with the baby inside. There is also a good chance I'll play with the gun on my dad's desk, and blow away my friend. Finally, I would obviously run over a little girl on a bike when pulling out of a drive-thru.
That's why pot is prohibited. Those commercials point out the dangers accurately.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but you could have plugged your modem directly into your laptop. No other computers would have worked, but you would have had internet connectivity.
If you had any servers running, though... well... time to get a UPS.:-)
That is obviously an option, but that laptop is set up only with wireless and I really didn't care enough to configure the landline and assign IPs.
My server has gone down because of the power twice in the past 2 days. I would consider UPS if it mattered. Last night even UPS wouldn't have saved me. Power was out for 3-4 hours. For the trivial web pages and teamspeak server it runs, I'm fine with it being offline.
They already make decent money for a relatively small amount of work. They are paid to be droids and wookies in video games. How hard is it to scream out "Attack!" 3 different ways into the microphone. It's probably jealousy because they are too ugly to get real acting parts, and need computerized muscle-man and strippers to represent them. If anything, they should pay the developers for making them sexy.
In all seroiusness they do good work, but they should hardly be paid a large part of the money gained from video games. The majority of sales go to offset programming and marketing. There isn't exactly a huge pool of money left over to give out to everyone that made noise for the game.
Last night I lost power for about 3 hours. My laptop worked. My cable modem stayed connected on battery backup. My router is plugged in and died.
Russia's connections at least made a couple of hops before dying. Mine died on 1 hop. It did illustrate the uselessness of a battery-backed up modem on my network, however.
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The funny thing is that someone's uber-secure password might be hashed right onto a dictionary word if the coder is a clown. Imagine finding out your password of "7,g/1jI-1?m" got hacked because it hashed onto "password".
I store all of my data in WMA files. That way I can listen to my databases on my iPod. Northwind Traders has some phat beats.
Providing free wireless isn't going to suddenly make the normal ISPs go into bankruptcy. A free wireless network would be nice if you have a laptop in a park or something, but it isn't going to cut it for home use.
First of all, the security is terrible on wireless networks. I would not allow anyone in my house to connect their PC to a wireless city-wide network. You would have to lock down the PC to the point where it was barely usable anyway.
Secondly, you would still want a home network in most cases. Unless you set up a PC to act as your wireless access point, and made it into a hardcore firewall/router you wouldn't have the kind of security or network design you wanted. It wouldn't be very convenient to have all of your devices floating around in a public access WAN.
Last but not least is speed. I don't think I'll be getting the 1M download rate I currently enjoy with cable on a municiple wireless connection.
If the city is sellign this as a way for the average user to have an internet connection they are sadly mistaken. They might say it is as easy as connecting, which it is. The people that would want the simplicty of connection are the same ones that don't have a clue how to secure themselves, therefore they would be worse off in the end.
From the sounds of things, Google learns with a neural network. It has the ability to learn new mappings based on pattern matching. Babblefish sounds like a distinct mapping of phrases that have been hand coded.
Theoretically, Google can get better at translating over time, as it's neural network learns better connections. It might even get better than a human translator if it goes long enough. There will always be small discrepancies, but if the bulk of the text is correctly translated, that would be good enough.
There is - it's called USB and Firewire.
That would work, but it completely defeats the purpose of the small unit. What's the difference between a small tower and 3 external devices stacked on top of a mini-pc?
I guess it would allow you to grab the smaller unit for easier transport if you wanted to leave the data drives behind.
I don't see the big rush for these Mini-machines. They are clearly aimed at a market where people want a very simple solution. The people that want email, internet access, and maybe Office.
I think Intel is better off with the normal PC market. For the same price you can get way more out of a normal PC. Apple might make a little money off the Mini mostly because the Mini looks trendy and that drives a lot of Mac sales.
The Mini design might start looking good for a media PC that would sit on top of a TV, but until there is a way to add way more storage for DVR and storing DivX, they won't cut it. Also, I am guessing the GPU in it won't play HD quality very well.
Intel might be a little better off enlarging the size, but adding more power to it. Call it the "Almost-mini" and sell it as a faster solution.
$100,000/5 = $20,000 per teacher.
For $20k, you're not exactly getting Stephen Hawking to teach your physics class. You might be more accurate to say it would be 3 teachers. Also, a total cost of $20k per teacher would mean that the teachers actual pay would be more like $15k/year once you factor in pension and benefits.
Also, take into account that the $100,000 is a one time upgrade cost, and the teachers are a yearly cost.
Your point was taken, but there isn't any kind of comparison. It is best to say that the money can be put to better use now that they switched.
Great. You just filled in the missing piece for the terrorists.
*Gets in bomb shelter*
.Not secure
.Not free
.Not stable.
.NET is surprisingly stable. Just because Win 98 used to crash a lot, doesn't mean a .NET application on Windows 2003 Server does.
It is as secure as you make it. I could easily say Java is not secure. Hand over an unconfigured Linux box to someone and see how secure their application ends up. If someone knows what they are doing, any application can be secure.
The Framework is free. The development environment is not. There are a lot of environments that cost money in other areas as well. You can program with Notepad if you are hardcore. If you want ultra-hardcore, download VI for Windows.
Tell that to the many applications I have been running that have never crashed.
I think my definition of average college kid by default excludes anyone that reads /. I was thinking more of the business majors that spend most of their time doing keg stands. ;)
Somehow I didn't have an extra card anymore. I think I've finally ditched my last one. Between giving old PCs away to friends and stuff, I have finally gotten rid of most of my pre-pentium era hardware. :)
I didn't have to get such a high end card, but I figured there was an off chance I might want to 2-box a game at some point, and made it match the lowest specs for most games.
It would seem that the it would make more sense at first to design a desktop that is 100% linux compatible. The vast majority of Linux machines are acting as servers of some sort or are being used by us geeks that are locked in a basement with no windows anyway, and have no reason to be portable. I don't see the average college kid running out to buy a linux machine for school, nor do I see executives deciding to buy linux machines for their traveling businessmen.
You can also get more horsepower for cheaper. I'm sure that are plenty of people that want a Linux laptop, but if I was going to specifically design hardware for linux, I would start with a desktop. I would probably also include the US, but that's another story.
In my first post I had a typo. Where I said "...the motherboard I wanted didn't have AGP" I meant IGP.
That was the point of my post actually. It is great to get an IGP mobo for most people. You can always upgrade later, but in the case of my server it would have been more than enough. Like you mentioned, it barely costs anything extra, so you might as well get it.
Imagine that - two integrated video chips running side-by-side with enough power to run the best of games.... would be nice, if possible.
I don't think it could ever get to that point, but it would be nice. The IGPs usually don't have the horsepower because they don't take in extra power and they don't have their own cooling. Running two of these on the mobo in SLI mode, with them being good enough to handle something like Doom 3 at the highest settings isn't likely. I doubt they could fit that onto the ATX pattern, or provide any way to cool or power such a beast.
It would be nice if you could somehow use the IGP chip in addition to your normal AGP video card. Imagine if it could do some backgroup processing to speed up your primary card? Even if it was just to cache textures or something.
IGPs are nice when you throw together a server or for the average home user that checks their email or browses the web. I just put together an AMD machine and had to drop $50 to get a GEForce card because the motherboard I wanted didn't have AGP.
The main problem with IGP for me, is that motherboard technology doesn't expand nearly as fast as graphics card technology. For any kind of gamer, they will have their motherboard way longer than any video card. I usually replace my PC around every 2-3 years. In video card years, like is like 10 decades. I probably replace the video card once or twice in that time, depending on the new games coming out. WoW and Doom 3 forced me into my last video card purchase. Mostly because I don't ever buy the bleeding edge one, so I am already a year behind while I wait for the price to fall a little.
IGP get nVidia into the lucrative market of OEM machines though. If they strike a deal to toss that chip on Dell motherboards, they can sit back and watch the money pour in. Or if they can make a contract with ASUS or something. Then they don't even have to worry about marketing and sales. The other products sell themselves, and they just get a piece of the pie.
Forgot to add that Neocron was a good attempt at a Shadowrun like MMORPG, but missed the mark in some key areas. The actual game mechanics weren't great, and there were a lot of bugs. The lack of players made it less fun also.
Neocron kept me occupied for a couple of weeks, but if they took it to the next level in the form of Shadowrun, I would wet my pants with excitement.
A shadowrun MMORPG would be so sweet. Shadowrun had some of the best concepts around, and was probably my favorite PNP game. I loved that you had the cyber stuff, implants, vampires, orcs, and vehicles decked out with missile launchers.
Another one I daydream about is a Transformers MMORPG. That one is a little trickier though. Since there is a predefined set of characters, I am not sure if you can really do it well. I am not sure it would be as fun to just be a random robot. I would want the chance to be one of the actual old-school Transformers. I probably wouldn't even care which one, except that it wouldn't really be that exciting to be Soundwave. He's awesome, but turning into a cassette player isn't exactly fantastic.
Google just string replaces any occurances of "www.all-in-one-business.com/adsense/" with "google.com/adsense" in the future. No need to rewrite the algorithm.
For that matter, if I were writing a search site, I would probably code it so my site came up first on every query. Even when it wasn't relevant. For example, a query on "Spicy taco recipes" would still lead to #1 being Nytewynd's page (404: no tacos found)
The prohibition period in the US continues to this day. Marijuana, LSD, opiates, and a host of other substances less harmful than alcohol remain prohibited. It's just that the propaganda is better this time around.
I've seen the commercials. If I smoke pot, I'll become a baby sitter and burn down the house with the baby inside. There is also a good chance I'll play with the gun on my dad's desk, and blow away my friend. Finally, I would obviously run over a little girl on a bike when pulling out of a drive-thru.
That's why pot is prohibited. Those commercials point out the dangers accurately.
Clearly, French judges want the ability to download the latest Eminem Album. And probably a copy of Return of the Sith to go with it.
Look her up online. After you see her, if you still think she's a porn star, more power to you!
I have Wilwheaton.net in my browser history and cached on my drive. Never has their been a better reason to rub magnets on my hard drive than now.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying, but you could have plugged your modem directly into your laptop. No other computers would have worked, but you would have had internet connectivity.
:-)
If you had any servers running, though... well... time to get a UPS.
That is obviously an option, but that laptop is set up only with wireless and I really didn't care enough to configure the landline and assign IPs.
My server has gone down because of the power twice in the past 2 days. I would consider UPS if it mattered. Last night even UPS wouldn't have saved me. Power was out for 3-4 hours. For the trivial web pages and teamspeak server it runs, I'm fine with it being offline.
They already make decent money for a relatively small amount of work. They are paid to be droids and wookies in video games. How hard is it to scream out "Attack!" 3 different ways into the microphone. It's probably jealousy because they are too ugly to get real acting parts, and need computerized muscle-man and strippers to represent them. If anything, they should pay the developers for making them sexy.
In all seroiusness they do good work, but they should hardly be paid a large part of the money gained from video games. The majority of sales go to offset programming and marketing. There isn't exactly a huge pool of money left over to give out to everyone that made noise for the game.
Last night I lost power for about 3 hours. My laptop worked. My cable modem stayed connected on battery backup. My router is plugged in and died.
Russia's connections at least made a couple of hops before dying. Mine died on 1 hop. It did illustrate the uselessness of a battery-backed up modem on my network, however.