To extend this question, is there anything I can buy that will let me convert an ATX PC into a rack mounted unit?
Re:Sounds like typical NPR retoric
on
Blogspace vs. NPR
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· Score: 2
I agree completely. NPR attempts to paint itself as being different from large media companies. However, just last night they had a segment where for five minutes a reviewer raved about the glory of the DVD format without even mentioning the draconian measures taken by the RIAA against persons who try to exercise their legal rights for fair use with DVDs they have purchased.
People were actually sued because they wrote a computer program and posted it on the Internet. This deserves some mention in a discussion of how "great" DVD is.
Ever since palm sent unsolicited phone spam to my pay per minute mobile phone, thus costing me actual $ for having to listen to one of their ads, I will have nothing to do with the company. The fact that their hardware QA is substandard does not surprise me.
The part about them transmitting the signal back on a "megacycle" caught my attention. I took this to mean they sent the television picture back over the airwaves at a frequency of 1mHz (1 Hz = 1 cycle), or a wavelength of 300m. That's a pretty low end of the spectrum to send a complex signal like television, given that most television signals are now between 150 and 200mHz. You can send a signal at ~15mHz, albeit at a slow scan rate. Does anyone know what frequency they likely used for this transmission?
I could not agree with this more. As a recent entrant in the SW Engineering field, I would also say that one of the most important things the curriculum should stress is all of the parts PRIOR to actual coding
I know this horse has been beat to death, but so many courses do not even focus on requirements analysis. For a Software Engineer, this is the foundation of all work you will do. You want to be sure they give you hands on experience in breaking requirements down to the atomic level. Don't forget, these requirements are a contract between you and your employer, so make sure they are sane.
Next, you want them to teach current methods of design -- the part where you integrate your many, hopefully simple by now, requirements and turn them into a working concept.
Be sure you get experience in creating all types of design artifacts: sequence diagrams, detailed design documents, and requirements to design mapping. This is the stuff you will be expected to do in your career. It's best to know as much as possible about it before you enter the workplace.
The other phases (implementation, testing) are important too, but I've found that a little understanding in the early phases will count for a lot later on.
Use cell phones? This doesn't necessarily work. I got a message on my mobile phone's voice mail from palm.com. It lasted about a minute and used up one of my 300 monthly minutes.
I'm thinking about sending a bill to palm for the airtime, not to mention turning them in, since this is illegal. I will also never buy anything from them since they have effectively stolen from me.
I heard a story about someone who got one of those pictures of himself running a light in the mail. Instead of sending in payment, he mailed them a photograph of some money.
They responded by mailing him back a picture of some handcuffs.
Wow. I didn't know you could buy a PC from a major vendor without windows. This is perhaps more interesting than the article itself. Finally, a way for the average person to avoid the Microsoft Tax
The only way I can think of to compare two sound files is with md5sum. Your saved sound sample probably won't compare exactly with what your voice modem hears each time due to timing and line noise differences. If they are not exactly alike, you won't get a match.
There are utilities like mgetty-voice that you can use to control a voice modem. However, the hard part would be getting your modem to recognize the voicemail system's voice prompts, like, "Press 7 to hear the next message" and such. Computers can recognize dtmf tones, but I suspect they would have difficulty navigating most VM systems, which only provide voice cues.
Maybe there is another way to do this that I'm not thinking about. Perhaps you could have your voicemail system default to forwarding its message to a paging system with an internet gateway or something.
The secret appears to be the lack of a carrier wave, allowing use of wide swaths
of the spectrum for transmission
This is not really a secret, and is the reason why Morse Code (CW) and Single Sideband use narrower frequency ranges and make better use of available power. Using AM or FM modes, while offering greater fidelity, is a less efficient use of bandwidth.
even if after a year is spent trying to fix the commercial source, they abandon the crappy commercial code and start over from scratch? I love Mozilla, think it is a great browser (now), but I'm not sure if it should really be a poster child for OSS.
I think that Mozilla's desire to release software when it is actually ready is to be commended. So often corporate software is rushed out the door before it is even usable. Not to get preachy, but it's like Linus said about the 2.4 kernel, "It will be ready when it is ready" (or something similar). They could have stayed with the old code and produced something earlier, but would it have been as good?
As one who uses both VMS and NT on a daily basis, I can attest that the similarities between the two platforms are nonexistent as far as stability and robustness are concerned. VMS is one of the most stable OS's ever to gain widespread deployment. NT is somewhat lacking in this respect, to say the least.
As someone said in the OS/2 story, Microsoft gained its dominance through restrictive OEM licensing. Any penalty must forbid them from using this anticompetitive practice to be worthwhile.
I was reading one of the ham radio web sites the other day (I think it was qrz.com and they stated that the best way to ensure your package survives is to strap it to a 48x48 wooden palette.
This assures no human will try and lift (and possibly drop) it, and that they will have to handle it with a palette lifter.
Also, have the UPS associate inspect your packaging before you send it off, so they can't complain about improper packing. There should be 6" between your cargo and the container wall packed with shock absorbing material.
As for the claims, yes they can take months. It's much better to prevent damage entirely and dummy proof your package by attaching it to a large object like a palette.
I helped out at a high school programming contest once. The way we did it was to give out 9 or so problems and let the kids hack at them all day. Whoever got the most working at the end of the day won. We specified that they had to use either C++, Java, or Pascal, I think due to the fact that all our machines had these environments installed and none else.
If I'd done it, I would have allowed them to use any language/environment. I think the ones using Perl would have had an advantage on certain problems, but that's just because we gave them many limited scope problems. If you gave them a single large problem, the ones using a stricter language like Java or Ada would probably have the advantage.
Anyway, I think you need to avoid subjective judgments like elegance and concentrate on measuring things like correctness and speed of completion.
Check out my college's programming contest website for some ideas.
Is it possible to buy access to a virtual Linux server anywhere, e.g. on an IBM S/390?
It would seem like a good business idea for someone to sell 10,000 virtual Linux servers to amateur users for $10-$20/month.
That's not a bad idea for someone providing web hosting services to many clients. However, it may not work for the poster's needs since he is looking to run a game server. Lots of games and their servers are tied to the x86 architecture for one reason or another. Example: Quake III. Sure, it runs under Linux on x86 machines, but it will no more run on S/390 Linux than it will on Alpha Linux.
Not to proselytize free software, but if the poster is running an Open Source game server, it's possible he could modify the source to run on other architecture. This would probably be difficult, however.
Speaking of Alphas, does anyone know where to get some cheap? I'll bet they will flood the used market soon since Compaq killed Alpha in favor of Itanium.
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To extend this question, is there anything I can buy that will let me convert an ATX PC into a rack mounted unit?
I agree completely. NPR attempts to paint itself as being different from large media companies. However, just last night they had a segment where for five minutes a reviewer raved about the glory of the DVD format without even mentioning the draconian measures taken by the RIAA against persons who try to exercise their legal rights for fair use with DVDs they have purchased.
People were actually sued because they wrote a computer program and posted it on the Internet. This deserves some mention in a discussion of how "great" DVD is.
Ever since palm sent unsolicited phone spam to my pay per minute mobile phone, thus costing me actual $ for having to listen to one of their ads, I will have nothing to do with the company. The fact that their hardware QA is substandard does not surprise me.
The part about them transmitting the signal back on a "megacycle" caught my attention. I took this to mean they sent the television picture back over the airwaves at a frequency of 1mHz (1 Hz = 1 cycle), or a wavelength of 300m. That's a pretty low end of the spectrum to send a complex signal like television, given that most television signals are now between 150 and 200mHz. You can send a signal at ~15mHz, albeit at a slow scan rate. Does anyone know what frequency they likely used for this transmission?
I could not agree with this more. As a recent entrant in the SW Engineering field, I would also say that one of the most important things the curriculum should stress is all of the parts PRIOR to actual coding
I know this horse has been beat to death, but so many courses do not even focus on requirements analysis. For a Software Engineer, this is the foundation of all work you will do. You want to be sure they give you hands on experience in breaking requirements down to the atomic level. Don't forget, these requirements are a contract between you and your employer, so make sure they are sane.
Next, you want them to teach current methods of design -- the part where you integrate your many, hopefully simple by now, requirements and turn them into a working concept.
Be sure you get experience in creating all types of design artifacts: sequence diagrams, detailed design documents, and requirements to design mapping. This is the stuff you will be expected to do in your career. It's best to know as much as possible about it before you enter the workplace.
The other phases (implementation, testing) are important too, but I've found that a little understanding in the early phases will count for a lot later on.
Use cell phones? This doesn't necessarily work. I got a message on my mobile phone's voice mail from palm.com. It lasted about a minute and used up one of my 300 monthly minutes.
I'm thinking about sending a bill to palm for the airtime, not to mention turning them in, since this is illegal. I will also never buy anything from them since they have effectively stolen from me.
They responded by mailing him back a picture of some handcuffs.
Does this mean I can call them up and they will be able to tell me where my other sock is?
Wow. I didn't know you could buy a PC from a major vendor without windows. This is perhaps more interesting than the article itself. Finally, a way for the average person to avoid the Microsoft Tax
The only way I can think of to compare two sound files is with md5sum. Your saved sound sample probably won't compare exactly with what your voice modem hears each time due to timing and line noise differences. If they are not exactly alike, you won't get a match.
Didn't they become Lucent Technologies a long time ago?
There are utilities like mgetty-voice that you can use to control a voice modem. However, the hard part would be getting your modem to recognize the voicemail system's voice prompts, like, "Press 7 to hear the next message" and such. Computers can recognize dtmf tones, but I suspect they would have difficulty navigating most VM systems, which only provide voice cues.
Maybe there is another way to do this that I'm not thinking about. Perhaps you could have your voicemail system default to forwarding its message to a paging system with an internet gateway or something.
On an unrelated note, could someone please recommend which license is better, the GPL or BSD?
We were right about the CueCat, perhaps you should trust us this time.
Good point. If you don't like the practices of this industry, then don't support the other areas of their business.
Don't go to the movies or watch TV anymore. Cancel your cable subscription.
Trust me, your life will still be enjoyable and you'll have an extra $500/yr. to spend on beer.
As one who uses both VMS and NT on a daily basis, I can attest that the similarities between the two platforms are nonexistent as far as stability and robustness are concerned. VMS is one of the most stable OS's ever to gain widespread deployment. NT is somewhat lacking in this respect, to say the least.
As someone said in the OS/2 story, Microsoft gained its dominance through restrictive OEM licensing. Any penalty must forbid them from using this anticompetitive practice to be worthwhile.
I believe the correct spelling is "gyro".
This assures no human will try and lift (and possibly drop) it, and that they will have to handle it with a palette lifter.
Also, have the UPS associate inspect your packaging before you send it off, so they can't complain about improper packing. There should be 6" between your cargo and the container wall packed with shock absorbing material.
As for the claims, yes they can take months. It's much better to prevent damage entirely and dummy proof your package by attaching it to a large object like a palette.
If I'd done it, I would have allowed them to use any language/environment. I think the ones using Perl would have had an advantage on certain problems, but that's just because we gave them many limited scope problems. If you gave them a single large problem, the ones using a stricter language like Java or Ada would probably have the advantage.
Anyway, I think you need to avoid subjective judgments like elegance and concentrate on measuring things like correctness and speed of completion.
Check out my college's programming contest website for some ideas.
Good luck
Not to proselytize free software, but if the poster is running an Open Source game server, it's possible he could modify the source to run on other architecture. This would probably be difficult, however.
Speaking of Alphas, does anyone know where to get some cheap? I'll bet they will flood the used market soon since Compaq killed Alpha in favor of Itanium.
A comparison between Windows and Unix.
Now if someone could just recommend a good visual mode text editor.