So? I've been to both Dakotas, and most fields do not have irrigation despite getting half the rainfall. Not sure what that does to yields though. We get a lot or rain in Minnesota, but I see a lot of irrigation anyway, few farmers irrigate corn fields. Corn may need a lot of water, but it not so much that farmers need to irrigate.
Since drink is not a concern we can assume that 20% alcohol will be produced, not 8%.
The mash will still have leftovers that need to be accounted for. It can be sun dried, and then burned for some of the energy needed to do your distillation. Or the mash can be fed to cows/pigs, and since most corn is animal feed already you can assume the energy in growing and harvesting would be lost anyway. Corn oil can also be made someplace in this process and turned into bio-diesel. You need to account for more variables that in the real world would be accounted for.
Have you looked at how much work those tractors do though? I'd put my money on a big tractors working on 10 rows of corn being more efficant than a tiny one working one row. (Of course that tiny tractor is likely from the 1950s, and the 10 row one less than 5 years old so I have a technological advantage on my side as well) Do not overlook scale.
I'm sure that tractors use more energy than raising food by hand labor. I'm not willing to go to the days when 90+% of the population had to do farm labor to get enough food and clothing. (clothing was generally made from either plants, or animals) Modern farmers know that a properly run 10 acre farm generates about twice the profit per acre as a 3000 acre farm. They also know that the 10 acre farm will use just as much human labor as the 3000 acre farm.
True, but leaves automaticly place themselves at the correct angle to the sun, and repair weather damage without extra labor. Sorta a goggle approach to he problem of maintnance, once a year plant something, and a year latter take it all up. Currently a lot less labor is involved in planing an acre of corn than an acre of solar cells.
Less environmental damage too, though this is hard to compare. Just remember that sustainable farming exists, and all farmers practice some form of it. (they were forced to change after the dust bowl of the 1930s)
Every iron I've ever seen has a thermostat of some sort, so you can leave it on without it getting too hot. My mom sews, and often leaves her iron on for 6 hours at a time (she is using it often in that time), and you can hear the clicks as the heater turns off and on.
I multitask. That means that I have more than just my web browser open on my screen at this time, and some of those windows have something in them that I'm looking at.
A web page should not assume that I'm running full screen, or even at 800x600, because neither is true. I like my Konqueror window open tall and skinny, which is great for me, unless someone forces a bigger size.
I'm not so sure that gold would replace copper wiring. Copper is a much better conductor. Alumium used to be used for house wiring, but many fired have been blamed on it. Most of those fires were blamed on Al being soft, but then Au is soft as well, so I'm not sure how it would fit.
Hackers can be engineers
on
Hack Your Car
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· Score: 1
I have to disagree. Sure some, perhaps most, hackers are not engineers. However to make a blanket statement like that is incorrect. I took many engineering classes on my way to a CS degree. I regret not finishing the statics-thermo sequence that mechanical engineers have to take. (Couldn't take that many classes and get good grades so I dropped it) I could have done so though, and I can still go back and do it.
Most engineers learn programing, some become good enough to program. Sort of like every engineer learns their native language, and takes classes in school on it. I'll never speak or write as good as someone who majored in English but I still do both.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
Or you can accelerate so damn fast the issue does not arise. No, no matter how fast you can accelerate you should always be going as fast as safe on the on-ramp until you reach the speed of traffic. Sure you can put on a burst of acceleration at the end, but I'm right behind in my 49hp GEO that can't. You need to accelerate for the benifit of drivers behind you who can't.
Acceleration is not the answer to any driving problems. It might seem like it, but there are enough truckers with 3 million accident free miles out there despite not having the ability to accelerate that you can be sure quick acceleration is not a necessary for good driving.
Try a little politeness, if enough people in Massachusetts did you wouldn't have the problem. You need to start with yourself. Constantly be polite no matter how the others treat you. Take a defensive driving course sometime too, and then do what they teach you, it really works.
I need to go as fast as I can get my car on the on-ramp, and idiots in high power cars are dangerious. My car gets 49hp. I need to floor it at the start of the on ramp, to reach freeway speeds by the end. Maybe your car can do 30-70 in the 40 feet left of the ramp, but I'll be lucky to get 5mph in that distance.
Learn to drive, you should be going as fast as your car can safely go at all points of the on-ramp until you at the speed of traffic. Note the safely part, even with my little car I often have to let up a little to safely take the corner, but they give me space to get up to speed anyway.
That second tank would be nitrous oxide, similar to nitrogen, but not the same. A very common mod for people at the track who think they can get away with it. Inject the "nitro" and you get a lot more power. Run out of nitro and you can fill the tank with compressed air, and have a poor mans turbo with only a small number of boosts. Either way you select when you want the extra power.
You could also put water in your second tank, which when injected into a warm engine does provide more power. Not very common to do this though. (water freezes in some areas, and getting the right volume is hard)
I don't want to copy Microsoft's code. I want to document how those undocumented functions work that office uses, and then let wine hackers implement them.
I agree that I cannot legally get a hold of this code though. (It is copyrighted by them, and they haven't given me permission.)
You being setup. Find out by whom and what their goals are.
First of all, can you turn this team around? It doesn't matter what anyone's goals are if you can bring the team around. In fact nothing will look better than to have low guys publicly thanking you for turning the team around. (Depending on your orginization... at one job the GUI team was turned around and everyone on the project thanked the new manager for getting them to join the team)
If you are not sure you can turn it around, now you have to reseach. (Odds are you can't be 100% sure) Make sure your research is public, if they don't see you thinking hard about this they will conclude you don't care. (You might or might not get another chance)
I'd start with the guy 4 above you, the one who you wanted to be your boss when you applied for the roll 3 above you, and see what he knows. Get 1/2 and hour with him, and chat about it. If he set you up hoping you can turn this around, then you must take it, this is a test of your abilites, failure might be expected, and he wants to see how you handle it, and how close to success you get anyway. If he knows nothing about this, at least he knows that someone is setting you up, and knows what you look like, and might even look for you.
Next talk to your potential new boss about the team. Tell him your concerns, and see if he agrees, and what he wants from you. See if he wants you to do well or not.
Find out who wants you to fail. People might or might not know about your application to the higher position, but if they know some will see you as compitition to destroy. If you are any good someone will hate you no matter what you do. You have to deal with them, part of the job, so make sure you do. Don't let politics at your level affect those below you. Don't ignore politics though, that is dangerious.
What is your family situation? If you are heavily in debt you might be better off taking easy positions that will not move you up, but at least you won't have live on unemployment when/if they cut the failing project. If your spouse is power hungry and you want to keep him/her you might be forced to jump at this opportunity.
Don't be afraid to take this position just for experience knowing you will fail. You will have the position on your resume, which might be what it takes to get the next job elsewhere.
Make your decision. Don't ignore the advice of others, but you have to decide for yourself.
I still miss the laptop I had 3 years ago, but had to give that up when I left...
A good travel case is essential. There are many designs, find one that is right for you. Some people use the backpack because it is easy to carry, others the traditional "briefcase", and others have a wheeled contraption. Make sure the laptop, and the accesories you get fit. This is first for a reason: downsize everything else if you must to get a good travel case.
Get a laptop where the CD/floppy can be replaced by a second battery. I almost never had the CD drive installed, instead I had the second battery. I sometimes did use the ability to go 9 hours without mains. Not just in flight, but also some classrooms didn't have power.
Wireless is critical. I would put a AP in the house and the office (likely you already have it), it is very nice to not have to worry about cables. This is useful enough that I'd want it built into the laptop if there is a choice. (But make sure there is linux support) My wireless connection was "only 1 megabit", but it worked at the office just fine. I'd get something faster today just because you can, but if you already have something that works I didn't see a need for more speed. (but then I didn't use it for anything high bandwidth either. YMMV)
You still need ethernet and modems, make sure they work with linux. External is fine, just toss is in a pocket of your travel case and forget about it until you need it. You need long cables. Hotels phone jacks tend to be a bad places. Ethernet is often better placed, but don't count on that. If there is room get both a long and a short cable so you don't have to roll the long one up all the time.
You might consider a mouse, keyboard, monitor, power supply, etc to leave at work or home, depending on how often you use the machine in those places and what annoys you about the settup. I never wanted one, but I could see the use.
Putting a mouse or USB hub in your travel case sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure if you would use it. I'd start without (if you are using your tax refund money is limited I'm guessing) and buy what you decide you really want. Most towns have a store where you can buy these things, so get them when you need them.
Other things that I've seen people get:
A portable projector. Obviously this means you would give presentations often. Still it is something to consider if you have the money. When you want to watch the video of your nephew's choir you might like to project it on the wall so everyone can see.
Screwdrivers. A travel toolkit could come in handy. I know that I used mine several times on the road.
If it is a work laptop (for others reading this) get the manuals for all the products you will be dealing with. Preferably on the harddrive, with hardcopies of the equipment you will need to reference most often. Also CDs with the latest software. Make sure that you check what copyright law allows you to do though.
Game pads, headphones, video games, e-books, music, and so on. If you have a goal in mind for the laptop you might forget about these until you want them. Eventially you will have half an hour or an entire flight to kill, make sure you have something to do.
Remember, everyone is different, and your needs are different. Decide what fits you and get that. Don't forget that a lot of things can be bought anytime. Computer stores are everywhere (including Walmart), while some charge too much you can get the accessories you need in pretty much any town.
I'm trying to decide if this is good or not. On the one hand, any burgler who sees what I have will start replacing all the junk I have with something that works. On the other hand I'd loose bragging rights when I no longer have a 386 as a critical machine on my network. Not to mention the loss of laughs when someone sits on a chair wrong, or....
uber-dorks We generally consider that a compliment considering the type of person who makes the comment.
tiny room Well for 30 people it is a little small but it wasn't uncomfortable. There are a bigger room too, but it didn't have a net connection so you didn't see as many pictures of it. Compared to a typical room in a house, it is large. I've been in office buildings that didn't have a meeting room that large. (though the cafeteria substituted for a meeting room when they needed it)
hunched over their laptops Most of those with a laptop sat at the table, where there was no need to hunch. For that matter few people were using their laptop in the meeting, as it is hard to work and listen to technical conversation at the same time.
building a product that what few people actually do use, use for free Codeweavers and Transgaming both claim to be making money. Not getting rich, but making money. That seems like a pretty good indication that not everyone is using it for free. Maybe most people use it for free, but we are still talking several million $ per year just to pay all the people who get paid to work on wine. Few compared to MsWindows perhaps, but I know plenty of projects the thrive on much smaller customer bases.
Please don't confuse wine with WineX. They are almost the same, but not quite. WineHq.com has little to do with WineX. Some code is passed back and forth, but not all.
There are 3 versions of wine: wine, WineX, and Crossover. WineX was Wine plus some things that cannot legally be made open source several years ago, but they have branched. Crossover is Wine, but they pick a point where it is stable, fix a few bugs, and sell support for that. Wine is the Open Source project that sometimes releases developmental versions, but there are always bugs in it, which are fixed in a different version with different bugs.
Re:Did the attendees make it back home too?
on
WineConf 2004 Wrapup
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· Score: 1
Not at the meeting, but getting around outside of the meeting. Friday before the high temperature was -15F (~-23C), pretty much everyone consideres that cold, though some have seen colder. Saturday and Sunday were warmer, but it snowed, meaning getting around was dangerous.
Not everyone had a car, and you can't get around in Minneapolis without a car. So some of the attendees were also attendants for those who didn't get a car.
Wine hackers are cheap. Nobody went for the expensive hotels. Some managed to spend nothing the entire weekend. (by sleeping on someone's floor and eating the host's food, hitching rides with someone) The only expense was transportation to Minneapolis. Of course all this cheapness means there was attendants to provide. Someone had a car, someone provied the floor, and food/beer (or wine, but mostly beer) in the fridge.
All this combined to mean that most people needed help. But then I don't know anyone who can live without getting help.
Codeweavers was joking that the next version of crossover would come in two version, standard for $70, and everything but Clippy for $100. Of course this assumes they manage to get all the code that Clippy uses working.
When the PS2 hit for ~$200, a DVD player was at least $100 more expensive. Most of the early buyers wanted a PS2, but not enough to replace the PS1 that was still working fine. They wanted a DVD player, but couldn't justify $300 or more for one. When the PS2 could play both DVDs and games (including all their PS1 games) for less than a DVD player, it was a no brainer to get it.
DVD ability drove the PS2. the Xbox came just enough latter that DVD players where cheap (and "everyone" had one) so DVD ability didn't drive sales. Time to market drove sales.
Your tri band cell phone covers only small parts of the US, but it covers the parts you want to visit. Seriously, the US is a big place, but odds are you are not going far from the big cities and freeways, and those areas have good GSM coverage.
And you can buy pay as you go service in the US, with not need for a 6 month contract. However billing in general is different in the US, so they don't make sense for most residents.
I live in the US, and my cell phone is a tri-band GSM phone. I nearly always have service, and the places I don't, nobody else has service either.
The only exceptions to the above is if you visit a national park. Most of them have no cell service, shut your phone off in those places and enjoy nature. (I reccomend that if you come to the US, you make it a point to visit our national parks, they are beautiful)
I haven't either, but from those I've talked to who have, apparently women are not adults in Japanese culture. Not kids, but not really adults either, at least not by western standards.
Oh, please, what difference does it make what protocol is used? Once you have the silicon designed it is just a "library" you plug into. Sure if you are a small cell phone designer you might not bother to create silicon for some of the other US standards, but that is no excuse for not at least designing a US GSM version. (Not when you already have 900Mhz (or was it 800?)and 1800Mhz phone to design.
Or haven't hardware engineers learned the value of well designed interfaces like us software people have. GSM will not be the only standard for long, 3g systems are coming out, and they are closer to the US systems than GSM. Nobody in their right mind knowing that would design a cell phone that they couldn't move to a different protocol.
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So? I've been to both Dakotas, and most fields do not have irrigation despite getting half the rainfall. Not sure what that does to yields though. We get a lot or rain in Minnesota, but I see a lot of irrigation anyway, few farmers irrigate corn fields. Corn may need a lot of water, but it not so much that farmers need to irrigate.
Since drink is not a concern we can assume that 20% alcohol will be produced, not 8%.
The mash will still have leftovers that need to be accounted for. It can be sun dried, and then burned for some of the energy needed to do your distillation. Or the mash can be fed to cows/pigs, and since most corn is animal feed already you can assume the energy in growing and harvesting would be lost anyway. Corn oil can also be made someplace in this process and turned into bio-diesel. You need to account for more variables that in the real world would be accounted for.
Have you looked at how much work those tractors do though? I'd put my money on a big tractors working on 10 rows of corn being more efficant than a tiny one working one row. (Of course that tiny tractor is likely from the 1950s, and the 10 row one less than 5 years old so I have a technological advantage on my side as well) Do not overlook scale.
I'm sure that tractors use more energy than raising food by hand labor. I'm not willing to go to the days when 90+% of the population had to do farm labor to get enough food and clothing. (clothing was generally made from either plants, or animals) Modern farmers know that a properly run 10 acre farm generates about twice the profit per acre as a 3000 acre farm. They also know that the 10 acre farm will use just as much human labor as the 3000 acre farm.
True, but leaves automaticly place themselves at the correct angle to the sun, and repair weather damage without extra labor. Sorta a goggle approach to he problem of maintnance, once a year plant something, and a year latter take it all up. Currently a lot less labor is involved in planing an acre of corn than an acre of solar cells.
Less environmental damage too, though this is hard to compare. Just remember that sustainable farming exists, and all farmers practice some form of it. (they were forced to change after the dust bowl of the 1930s)
Every iron I've ever seen has a thermostat of some sort, so you can leave it on without it getting too hot. My mom sews, and often leaves her iron on for 6 hours at a time (she is using it often in that time), and you can hear the clicks as the heater turns off and on.
I multitask. That means that I have more than just my web browser open on my screen at this time, and some of those windows have something in them that I'm looking at.
A web page should not assume that I'm running full screen, or even at 800x600, because neither is true. I like my Konqueror window open tall and skinny, which is great for me, unless someone forces a bigger size.
I'm not so sure that gold would replace copper wiring. Copper is a much better conductor. Alumium used to be used for house wiring, but many fired have been blamed on it. Most of those fires were blamed on Al being soft, but then Au is soft as well, so I'm not sure how it would fit.
I have to disagree. Sure some, perhaps most, hackers are not engineers. However to make a blanket statement like that is incorrect. I took many engineering classes on my way to a CS degree. I regret not finishing the statics-thermo sequence that mechanical engineers have to take. (Couldn't take that many classes and get good grades so I dropped it) I could have done so though, and I can still go back and do it.
Most engineers learn programing, some become good enough to program. Sort of like every engineer learns their native language, and takes classes in school on it. I'll never speak or write as good as someone who majored in English but I still do both.
Or you can accelerate so damn fast the issue does not arise.
No, no matter how fast you can accelerate you should always be going as fast as safe on the on-ramp until you reach the speed of traffic. Sure you can put on a burst of acceleration at the end, but I'm right behind in my 49hp GEO that can't. You need to accelerate for the benifit of drivers behind you who can't.
Acceleration is not the answer to any driving problems. It might seem like it, but there are enough truckers with 3 million accident free miles out there despite not having the ability to accelerate that you can be sure quick acceleration is not a necessary for good driving.
Try a little politeness, if enough people in Massachusetts did you wouldn't have the problem. You need to start with yourself. Constantly be polite no matter how the others treat you. Take a defensive driving course sometime too, and then do what they teach you, it really works.
I need to go as fast as I can get my car on the on-ramp, and idiots in high power cars are dangerious. My car gets 49hp. I need to floor it at the start of the on ramp, to reach freeway speeds by the end. Maybe your car can do 30-70 in the 40 feet left of the ramp, but I'll be lucky to get 5mph in that distance.
Learn to drive, you should be going as fast as your car can safely go at all points of the on-ramp until you at the speed of traffic. Note the safely part, even with my little car I often have to let up a little to safely take the corner, but they give me space to get up to speed anyway.
That second tank would be nitrous oxide, similar to nitrogen, but not the same. A very common mod for people at the track who think they can get away with it. Inject the "nitro" and you get a lot more power. Run out of nitro and you can fill the tank with compressed air, and have a poor mans turbo with only a small number of boosts. Either way you select when you want the extra power.
You could also put water in your second tank, which when injected into a warm engine does provide more power. Not very common to do this though. (water freezes in some areas, and getting the right volume is hard)
I don't want to copy Microsoft's code. I want to document how those undocumented functions work that office uses, and then let wine hackers implement them.
I agree that I cannot legally get a hold of this code though. (It is copyrighted by them, and they haven't given me permission.)
You being setup. Find out by whom and what their goals are.
First of all, can you turn this team around? It doesn't matter what anyone's goals are if you can bring the team around. In fact nothing will look better than to have low guys publicly thanking you for turning the team around. (Depending on your orginization... at one job the GUI team was turned around and everyone on the project thanked the new manager for getting them to join the team)
If you are not sure you can turn it around, now you have to reseach. (Odds are you can't be 100% sure) Make sure your research is public, if they don't see you thinking hard about this they will conclude you don't care. (You might or might not get another chance)
I'd start with the guy 4 above you, the one who you wanted to be your boss when you applied for the roll 3 above you, and see what he knows. Get 1/2 and hour with him, and chat about it. If he set you up hoping you can turn this around, then you must take it, this is a test of your abilites, failure might be expected, and he wants to see how you handle it, and how close to success you get anyway. If he knows nothing about this, at least he knows that someone is setting you up, and knows what you look like, and might even look for you.
Next talk to your potential new boss about the team. Tell him your concerns, and see if he agrees, and what he wants from you. See if he wants you to do well or not.
Find out who wants you to fail. People might or might not know about your application to the higher position, but if they know some will see you as compitition to destroy. If you are any good someone will hate you no matter what you do. You have to deal with them, part of the job, so make sure you do. Don't let politics at your level affect those below you. Don't ignore politics though, that is dangerious.
What is your family situation? If you are heavily in debt you might be better off taking easy positions that will not move you up, but at least you won't have live on unemployment when/if they cut the failing project. If your spouse is power hungry and you want to keep him/her you might be forced to jump at this opportunity.
Don't be afraid to take this position just for experience knowing you will fail. You will have the position on your resume, which might be what it takes to get the next job elsewhere.
Make your decision. Don't ignore the advice of others, but you have to decide for yourself.
I still miss the laptop I had 3 years ago, but had to give that up when I left...
A good travel case is essential. There are many designs, find one that is right for you. Some people use the backpack because it is easy to carry, others the traditional "briefcase", and others have a wheeled contraption. Make sure the laptop, and the accesories you get fit. This is first for a reason: downsize everything else if you must to get a good travel case.
Get a laptop where the CD/floppy can be replaced by a second battery. I almost never had the CD drive installed, instead I had the second battery. I sometimes did use the ability to go 9 hours without mains. Not just in flight, but also some classrooms didn't have power.
Wireless is critical. I would put a AP in the house and the office (likely you already have it), it is very nice to not have to worry about cables. This is useful enough that I'd want it built into the laptop if there is a choice. (But make sure there is linux support) My wireless connection was "only 1 megabit", but it worked at the office just fine. I'd get something faster today just because you can, but if you already have something that works I didn't see a need for more speed. (but then I didn't use it for anything high bandwidth either. YMMV)
You still need ethernet and modems, make sure they work with linux. External is fine, just toss is in a pocket of your travel case and forget about it until you need it. You need long cables. Hotels phone jacks tend to be a bad places. Ethernet is often better placed, but don't count on that. If there is room get both a long and a short cable so you don't have to roll the long one up all the time.
You might consider a mouse, keyboard, monitor, power supply, etc to leave at work or home, depending on how often you use the machine in those places and what annoys you about the settup. I never wanted one, but I could see the use.
Putting a mouse or USB hub in your travel case sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure if you would use it. I'd start without (if you are using your tax refund money is limited I'm guessing) and buy what you decide you really want. Most towns have a store where you can buy these things, so get them when you need them.
Other things that I've seen people get:
A portable projector. Obviously this means you would give presentations often. Still it is something to consider if you have the money. When you want to watch the video of your nephew's choir you might like to project it on the wall so everyone can see.
Screwdrivers. A travel toolkit could come in handy. I know that I used mine several times on the road.
If it is a work laptop (for others reading this) get the manuals for all the products you will be dealing with. Preferably on the harddrive, with hardcopies of the equipment you will need to reference most often. Also CDs with the latest software. Make sure that you check what copyright law allows you to do though.
Game pads, headphones, video games, e-books, music, and so on. If you have a goal in mind for the laptop you might forget about these until you want them. Eventially you will have half an hour or an entire flight to kill, make sure you have something to do.
Remember, everyone is different, and your needs are different. Decide what fits you and get that. Don't forget that a lot of things can be bought anytime. Computer stores are everywhere (including Walmart), while some charge too much you can get the accessories you need in pretty much any town.
I'm trying to decide if this is good or not. On the one hand, any burgler who sees what I have will start replacing all the junk I have with something that works. On the other hand I'd loose bragging rights when I no longer have a 386 as a critical machine on my network. Not to mention the loss of laughs when someone sits on a chair wrong, or ....
A dozen
If you consider 30+ a dozen I guess
uber-dorks
We generally consider that a compliment considering the type of person who makes the comment.
tiny room
Well for 30 people it is a little small but it wasn't uncomfortable. There are a bigger room too, but it didn't have a net connection so you didn't see as many pictures of it. Compared to a typical room in a house, it is large. I've been in office buildings that didn't have a meeting room that large. (though the cafeteria substituted for a meeting room when they needed it)
hunched over their laptops
Most of those with a laptop sat at the table, where there was no need to hunch. For that matter few people were using their laptop in the meeting, as it is hard to work and listen to technical conversation at the same time.
building a product that what few people actually do use, use for free
Codeweavers and Transgaming both claim to be making money. Not getting rich, but making money. That seems like a pretty good indication that not everyone is using it for free. Maybe most people use it for free, but we are still talking several million $ per year just to pay all the people who get paid to work on wine. Few compared to MsWindows perhaps, but I know plenty of projects the thrive on much smaller customer bases.
I just love it
I love it too.
Please don't confuse wine with WineX. They are almost the same, but not quite. WineHq.com has little to do with WineX. Some code is passed back and forth, but not all.
There are 3 versions of wine: wine, WineX, and Crossover. WineX was Wine plus some things that cannot legally be made open source several years ago, but they have branched. Crossover is Wine, but they pick a point where it is stable, fix a few bugs, and sell support for that. Wine is the Open Source project that sometimes releases developmental versions, but there are always bugs in it, which are fixed in a different version with different bugs.
Not at the meeting, but getting around outside of the meeting. Friday before the high temperature was -15F (~-23C), pretty much everyone consideres that cold, though some have seen colder. Saturday and Sunday were warmer, but it snowed, meaning getting around was dangerous.
Not everyone had a car, and you can't get around in Minneapolis without a car. So some of the attendees were also attendants for those who didn't get a car.
Wine hackers are cheap. Nobody went for the expensive hotels. Some managed to spend nothing the entire weekend. (by sleeping on someone's floor and eating the host's food, hitching rides with someone) The only expense was transportation to Minneapolis. Of course all this cheapness means there was attendants to provide. Someone had a car, someone provied the floor, and food/beer (or wine, but mostly beer) in the fridge.
All this combined to mean that most people needed help. But then I don't know anyone who can live without getting help.
There are several signs of win32 ports.
Some people are replacing Windows DLLs with Wine DLLs. (mostly for testing).
Some people are trying to get Wine running under Windows.
the ReactOS people are doing really cool things trying to make a windows clone that uses Wine.
Depending on your definition of running, all or some of the above might be of interest to you.
Codeweavers was joking that the next version of crossover would come in two version, standard for $70, and everything but Clippy for $100. Of course this assumes they manage to get all the code that Clippy uses working.
I was at the WineConf2004, very interesting.
When the PS2 hit for ~$200, a DVD player was at least $100 more expensive. Most of the early buyers wanted a PS2, but not enough to replace the PS1 that was still working fine. They wanted a DVD player, but couldn't justify $300 or more for one. When the PS2 could play both DVDs and games (including all their PS1 games) for less than a DVD player, it was a no brainer to get it.
DVD ability drove the PS2. the Xbox came just enough latter that DVD players where cheap (and "everyone" had one) so DVD ability didn't drive sales. Time to market drove sales.
My "no-it=all friends" have been to Japan though.
Your tri band cell phone covers only small parts of the US, but it covers the parts you want to visit. Seriously, the US is a big place, but odds are you are not going far from the big cities and freeways, and those areas have good GSM coverage.
And you can buy pay as you go service in the US, with not need for a 6 month contract. However billing in general is different in the US, so they don't make sense for most residents.
I live in the US, and my cell phone is a tri-band GSM phone. I nearly always have service, and the places I don't, nobody else has service either.
The only exceptions to the above is if you visit a national park. Most of them have no cell service, shut your phone off in those places and enjoy nature. (I reccomend that if you come to the US, you make it a point to visit our national parks, they are beautiful)
Never been to Japan, have you?
I haven't either, but from those I've talked to who have, apparently women are not adults in Japanese culture. Not kids, but not really adults either, at least not by western standards.
Oh, please, what difference does it make what protocol is used? Once you have the silicon designed it is just a "library" you plug into. Sure if you are a small cell phone designer you might not bother to create silicon for some of the other US standards, but that is no excuse for not at least designing a US GSM version. (Not when you already have 900Mhz (or was it 800?)and 1800Mhz phone to design.
Or haven't hardware engineers learned the value of well designed interfaces like us software people have. GSM will not be the only standard for long, 3g systems are coming out, and they are closer to the US systems than GSM. Nobody in their right mind knowing that would design a cell phone that they couldn't move to a different protocol.