Yessir, those nasty aweful communist/drug dealers/terrorists/threat de jour are so bad we have to covertly suspend the US constitution once again to protect Freedom and Justice. My neighbor looks like one of those geeky hacker types - fetch me my alligator clips and Rat Shack amplifier...
So what's the point anymore? Once upon a time, when the elements were first arrange in the periodic table and some gaping holes lead to the discovery of new elements, it was a useful persuit of new materials that might have some utility. Why go after extremely hard to create, very unstable, high atomic # elements that only last a brief time other than the vainglory of having done it, and getting to name it?
Wouldn't it be funny if
on
Robot Wars
·
· Score: 1
Someone hacks in and scarfs a copy of the front end controller, thinks it's a really cool video game but s/he's actually piloting a squadron of those things over [insert funny accidental real world target here].
Sure, just like ice skaters are allowed to kick their competitors in the legs.
I'm sorry but 'capitalism' is private ownership of industry with consumer choice of competing products in a free marketplace, not a free for all, no rules, winner take all power grab. Say I'm running an ice cream stand and someone dares to open one up across the street with better goods and lower prices. Is going over there and knifing the lousy undercutting bastard 'capitalism'? Or, more subtly, hiring some thugs to cut the power to his freezer must surely count as an ingenious business plan in your version of 'capitalism'.
If you want to see how the wonderous Msft performs as a real capitalist bustiness look at the X-Box results which is a real consumer competition, not the usual monopoly tie in scam that has been cunningly forcing products on consumers against their will since the 1st IBM pc.
Funny yes, but true, great ideas come from the strangest places - it's called 'brainstorming', an unfettered festival of wacky idea generation, uninhibited overcaffeinated creative imagination that just might spit out something that will actually work (not to mention it's fun!). For example, the govt appointed scientist working on the 'problem of powered flight' (Langley) couldn't do it, but a couple of bike mechanics from Dayton with a passion for the subject did.
What happened to "75th anniversary of 7-11" ??
on
Digital Dark Ages?
·
· Score: 1
Was I still asleep and dreaming or was there an article here about that?
Sounds like a fit description of the Msft dominated computer industry alright.
Fact is, that's just what the comp industry WANTS - the old name is 'planned obsolence', nothing, very little anyway, is built to last. At best it's made to last 3 years then you thro it away and buy another. Gotta keep them customers spending $$$!
A co-worker was talking about archiving his ancient family photos with a scanner and CD writer - I told him if he's lucky within a generation a descendant or relative will take up the job of transfering them from CD to holographic crystals or whatever is the format du jour at the time. Just like the DNA code is recreated every generation.
I print out ALL online transactions involving $$$, just in case there's a dispute;)
I was surprised by the amount of work and testing that went into NT.
Doesn't matter, it's still a piece of crap trying to do what a mature system was already doing for 30 years anyway. It made Msft bundles but is no boon for humanity, just taking advantage of a mass market that doesn't know crap from shinola. Everyday I still chuckle at the NT4SP6a event viewer where 'previous' moves ahead in time and 'next' goes back. But we learn to live with those little illogical computer issues so the mgmt can project their sheen and feel of "New! Improved!! Up to Date!!! Digital!!!" keeping up with the multibillionair rip-offs. For an elegant, intellectually satisfying system I have to use something else.
to run my electric air conditioner to keep me cool from the global warming caused by all the fossle fuel emissions from conventional power plants because of the enviro idiots who won't permit more safe, clean nuclear power plants to be built. There's still way too much irrational fearmongering about nuclear materials, most of it second hand propaganda spread by entertainers w/o a clue looking for some 'cause celeb' to vent about and completely misleading the public. People who are steadfastly opposed to anything associated with nuclear to such a degree that they tremble with fear over getting a completely safe "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" scan really should do the intelligent world a favor and study the enemy and get over their misconceptions - get a damn geiger counter and/measure/ what the heck your afraid of, get some low level uranium glass or pitchblende samples and play with it, notice the everpresent background radiation that occurs in nature, measure how fast radiation falls off when you get just a few inches away. Read about the history of radioactivity, Mme Curie, prospecting, etc. Otherwise you're just a clueless puppet of an even more ignorant leadership that show your lack of knowledge with every empty-minded protest. Democracy only works with an educated public - that's why people who know what they're doing are so frustrated by an ill informed public who start wearing black skeleton suits and mushroom clouds at the mere movement of a railroad car.
Here you have over 40 thousand people perish in the US 'automobile holocaust' every friggin year and nobody ever protests that - but take an industry with an incredibly safe track record and the mere mention of some activity brings out the placard waving idiots in droves.
Which country will want to spend money creating applications, if the rest get them for free?
Because they're not in the software for profit business? Say I want to build a house a certain way, but there are no pre-existing blueprints for one just the way I want it. So I hire an architect and we work and work and make up exactly what I want and then built it. Does it really detract from my life just because someone else can use the same blueprints, obtained for the cost of duplication, if it just happens to work for them as well? If I have a software need, I can either 1) purchase a license for an existing product and since I'm only purchasing a license, not the rights to the software, am left dangling at their whims like a marionette (Msft: "We want you to upgrade now, be a good customer and buy our latest or greatest or we can make things difficult for you!") or 2) use existing freeware and live with the warts or 3) get into the open source game and a) use what exists and modify it to your needs or b) wait for someone else to make a version that fits your needs.
Now one can easily complain, "Hey, we spent X amount of France's taxpayer money developing this app and Belgium gets it for free!" but the country or company that hires developers to create and maintain software the way they want it gets exactly what they want, and the freeloaders have to life with that or hire their own developers. In a way it's like the software market anyway, you can only purchase off the shelf what the majority want or what Msft research decides you shall want.
What happened to the 'good ol' days' when they'd have a neat-o Martian rover for the US Independence day? That was exciting. Now it's just a bunch of space fotos from an orbiting 'scope.
That's what I was going to say - last time I upgraded a user to a 30Gb disk, mainly for a speedup, just made a shared hidden directory called 'backups' and now it stays busy all night spreading risk.
Yes, somewhere in Redmond this conversation is going on:
Bill: Hey Steve, this Gartner report says that over a billion PC's have been sold! Steve: Yeah, but we've only shipped 739,428,801 Windows licenses... Bill: Damn software pirates!!
That company should be a study in how NOT to run a business, 10 yrs growth to build a brand name up there with Coke, then 10 years steady decline to oblivion. Bushnell cashed out just a little too early, Warner couldn't manage it, then Jack Traimel made a valient attempt, and eventually got the Swordquest prize over his fireplace.
Anyway, I was happy to find a 1979 Sears 'wishbook' with the Atari 400 in it. Also, the way to run a classic Atari 800(XL) system today is use the APE (Atari Peripheral Emulator), run it to your PC serial port, then you can mount disks from a PC and have tons of Atari software (my entire collection fits on a CD) at your fingertips. It also daisy chains with a normal 850/1050 fdd if you need to get data on/off 5.25" floppies.
nothing will - this is obviously a booster piece for 'Fortune' hunters and other stakeholders who purchased Msft at > $75 + waiting to get their share of the pie back.
But does the mass market of preinstalled sw still trust this guy? Can the dream be re-illisioned after so many being largely burnt so far? I.e., is there still gold in them thar' hills?
like in the 2001 movie and countless SciFi stories, as rotating wheels which make their own artificial gravity? Jogging around the endless loop / track would be great exercise.
Yup, that's why I usually decline those "maintenance service contracts" they try to sell you when buying parts - odds are you won't need it, beyond the mfgrs warranty, and a failure won't wipe you out. However, with auto and health insurance, sure, it's a losing gamble but then you're gambling with your life or a crushing financial obligation for the rest of your existence, it can be devastating should you 'win' (i.e., end up collecting more than you pay had you had insurance), so we play along, they make money, we breath easy, all is well. Some of the first uses of computers was in the insurance / actuarial field.
Slashdot Mirror
New slogan for today's politico: "The Keyboard is mightier than the H-Bomb!"
Yessir, those nasty aweful communist/drug dealers/terrorists/threat de jour are so bad we have to covertly suspend the US constitution once again to protect Freedom and Justice. My neighbor looks like one of those geeky hacker types - fetch me my alligator clips and Rat Shack amplifier...
Hmm, the joke page is /.ed, so here's a couple others:
/ www.hannainst.com/products/stirrer/hi300_10 .htm
http://www.mbcoct.com/glascol/90354.htm
http:/
I needed those for my cold fusion project...
These elements are extremely short lived.
So what's the point anymore? Once upon a time, when the elements were first arrange in the periodic table and some gaping holes lead to the discovery of new elements, it was a useful persuit of new materials that might have some utility. Why go after extremely hard to create, very unstable, high atomic # elements that only last a brief time other than the vainglory of having done it, and getting to name it?
Someone hacks in and scarfs a copy of the front end controller, thinks it's a really cool video game but s/he's actually piloting a squadron of those things over [insert funny accidental real world target here].
Not only that, but your employer has to foot the bill (so to speak, uh, pay) for your reconstructive dental surgery.
Sure, just like ice skaters are allowed to kick their competitors in the legs.
I'm sorry but 'capitalism' is private ownership of industry with consumer choice of competing products in a free marketplace, not a free for all, no rules, winner take all power grab. Say I'm running an ice cream stand and someone dares to open one up across the street with better goods and lower prices. Is going over there and knifing the lousy undercutting bastard 'capitalism'? Or, more subtly, hiring some thugs to cut the power to his freezer must surely count as an ingenious business plan in your version of 'capitalism'.
If you want to see how the wonderous Msft performs as a real capitalist bustiness look at the X-Box results which is a real consumer competition, not the usual monopoly tie in scam that has been cunningly forcing products on consumers against their will since the 1st IBM pc.
Funny yes, but true, great ideas come from the strangest places - it's called 'brainstorming', an unfettered festival of wacky idea generation, uninhibited overcaffeinated creative imagination that just might spit out something that will actually work (not to mention it's fun!). For example, the govt appointed scientist working on the 'problem of powered flight' (Langley) couldn't do it, but a couple of bike mechanics from Dayton with a passion for the subject did.
Was I still asleep and dreaming or was there an article here about that?
ignorance, suppression, warfare, famine, strife
;)
Sounds like a fit description of the Msft dominated computer industry alright.
Fact is, that's just what the comp industry WANTS - the old name is 'planned obsolence', nothing, very little anyway, is built to last. At best it's made to last 3 years then you thro it away and buy another. Gotta keep them customers spending $$$!
A co-worker was talking about archiving his ancient family photos with a scanner and CD writer - I told him if he's lucky within a generation a descendant or relative will take up the job of transfering them from CD to holographic crystals or whatever is the format du jour at the time. Just like the DNA code is recreated every generation.
I print out ALL online transactions involving $$$, just in case there's a dispute
I was surprised by the amount of work and testing that went into NT.
Doesn't matter, it's still a piece of crap trying to do what a mature system was already doing for 30 years anyway. It made Msft bundles but is no boon for humanity, just taking advantage of a mass market that doesn't know crap from shinola. Everyday I still chuckle at the NT4SP6a event viewer where 'previous' moves ahead in time and 'next' goes back. But we learn to live with those little illogical computer issues so the mgmt can project their sheen and feel of "New! Improved!! Up to Date!!! Digital!!!" keeping up with the multibillionair rip-offs. For an elegant, intellectually satisfying system I have to use something else.
to run my electric air conditioner to keep me cool from the global warming caused by all the fossle fuel emissions from conventional power plants because of the enviro idiots who won't permit more safe, clean nuclear power plants to be built. There's still way too much irrational fearmongering about nuclear materials, most of it second hand propaganda spread by entertainers w/o a clue looking for some 'cause celeb' to vent about and completely misleading the public. People who are steadfastly opposed to anything associated with nuclear to such a degree that they tremble with fear over getting a completely safe "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" scan really should do the intelligent world a favor and study the enemy and get over their misconceptions - get a damn geiger counter and /measure/ what the heck your afraid of, get some low level uranium glass or pitchblende samples and play with it, notice the everpresent background radiation that occurs in nature, measure how fast radiation falls off when you get just a few inches away. Read about the history of radioactivity, Mme Curie, prospecting, etc. Otherwise you're just a clueless puppet of an even more ignorant leadership that show your lack of knowledge with every empty-minded protest. Democracy only works with an educated public - that's why people who know what they're doing are so frustrated by an ill informed public who start wearing black skeleton suits and mushroom clouds at the mere movement of a railroad car.
Here you have over 40 thousand people perish in the US 'automobile holocaust' every friggin year and nobody ever protests that - but take an industry with an incredibly safe track record and the mere mention of some activity brings out the placard waving idiots in droves.
(currently 'offtopic')
:)
moderators are obviously metaphor challenged
Grass? Sun? Wind? We're talking about Unisys making a profit here!
Which country will want to spend money creating applications, if the rest get them for free?
Because they're not in the software for profit business? Say I want to build a house a certain way, but there are no pre-existing blueprints for one just the way I want it. So I hire an architect and we work and work and make up exactly what I want and then built it. Does it really detract from my life just because someone else can use the same blueprints, obtained for the cost of duplication, if it just happens to work for them as well? If I have a software need, I can either 1) purchase a license for an existing product and since I'm only purchasing a license, not the rights to the software, am left dangling at their whims like a marionette (Msft: "We want you to upgrade now, be a good customer and buy our latest or greatest or we can make things difficult for you!") or 2) use existing freeware and live with the warts or 3) get into the open source game and a) use what exists and modify it to your needs or b) wait for someone else to make a version that fits your needs.
Now one can easily complain, "Hey, we spent X amount of France's taxpayer money developing this app and Belgium gets it for free!" but the country or company that hires developers to create and maintain software the way they want it gets exactly what they want, and the freeloaders have to life with that or hire their own developers. In a way it's like the software market anyway, you can only purchase off the shelf what the majority want or what Msft research decides you shall want.
One mentioned right here.
What happened to the 'good ol' days' when they'd have a neat-o Martian rover for the US Independence day? That was exciting. Now it's just a bunch of space fotos from an orbiting 'scope.
That's what I was going to say - last time I upgraded a user to a 30Gb disk, mainly for a speedup, just made a shared hidden directory called 'backups' and now it stays busy all night spreading risk.
Yes, somewhere in Redmond this conversation is going on:
Bill: Hey Steve, this Gartner report says that over a billion PC's have been sold!
Steve: Yeah, but we've only shipped 739,428,801 Windows licenses...
Bill: Damn software pirates!!
That company should be a study in how NOT to run a business, 10 yrs growth to build a brand name up there with Coke, then 10 years steady decline to oblivion. Bushnell cashed out just a little too early, Warner couldn't manage it, then Jack Traimel made a valient attempt, and eventually got the Swordquest prize over his fireplace.
Anyway, I was happy to find a 1979 Sears 'wishbook' with the Atari 400 in it. Also, the way to run a classic Atari 800(XL) system today is use the APE (Atari Peripheral Emulator), run it to your PC serial port, then you can mount disks from a PC and have tons of Atari software (my entire collection fits on a CD) at your fingertips. It also daisy chains with a normal 850/1050 fdd if you need to get data on/off 5.25" floppies.
Personal faves: Blue Max, Kennedy Approach, etc.
Hey, that is fun! (i.e, 3:57PM, 1 hour 3 minutes untill quitting time...) It's going up about 5 every time I hit refresh.
nothing will - this is obviously a booster piece for 'Fortune' hunters and other stakeholders who purchased Msft at > $75 + waiting to get their share of the pie back.
But does the mass market of preinstalled sw still trust this guy? Can the dream be re-illisioned after so many being largely burnt so far? I.e., is there still gold in them thar' hills?
at The Net
like in the 2001 movie and countless SciFi stories, as rotating wheels which make their own artificial gravity? Jogging around the endless loop / track would be great exercise.
a huge game of numbers and betting on the odds.
Yup, that's why I usually decline those "maintenance service contracts" they try to sell you when buying parts - odds are you won't need it, beyond the mfgrs warranty, and a failure won't wipe you out. However, with auto and health insurance, sure, it's a losing gamble but then you're gambling with your life or a crushing financial obligation for the rest of your existence, it can be devastating should you 'win' (i.e., end up collecting more than you pay had you had insurance), so we play along, they make money, we breath easy, all is well. Some of the first uses of computers was in the insurance / actuarial field.