On the question of COMBO drives and floppies, here is a combo drive that reads 3.5 inch floppies, and just about every memory stick type ever conceived.
Why the deliberately obtuse antagonistic belligerent reply?
I won't say that you didn't really know what the hell you were talking about, or that you just jumped at the opportunity to be an ignorant blathering fanboy.
Regardless of who wins the majority of the popular vote, having the opposing candidate nominated anyway may be the end of the Hunt Commission's and Geraldine Ferraro's 80's style "Super Delegate" role.
How many of the Democratic Party membership will stand for just the appearance of the party going back to the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms, where a few party heavyweights would decide who the nominee would be?
If Obama wins the popular vote and the Super Delegates force the nomination to go to Clinton anyway (and if the Democratic rank-and-file are indeed upset), watch for those few "party heavyweight" Super Delegates try to convince the credentials and rules committees to reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegates.
It would be really interesting if the super delegates do continue to support Clinton despite the popular vote.
If Hillary Clinton were to win the nomination by only the super delegates vote, and have lost the popular Democratic vote, would it be fair then for the opposition (Democratic as well as Republican) to label her the "Selected" rather than "Elected" Nominee?
Will Democratic Party leaders think that the risk of ignoring the popular vote is worth the possible reward of nominating someone who the party leaders think may be the more "electable" candidate in the general election?
Regardless of the above, it looks to be an interesting Democratic Convention coming up.
To me Optimal media is not optical, but magnetic! (I keed I keed). I didn't mean to make a blanket statement, just a broad generalization with obvious exceptions.
I was trying to make the point that the baby-boom generation will continue to purchase familiar formats more out of habit than practicality.
In regards to Video Games, I generally copy the media to hard disk and store the original media in a safe place, (or simply download it to begin with if available). Sometimes I need a "No CD" crack, but that is less and less often.
We watch less television now than when (as a kid) we had only five channels. Up until recently the TV was all but abandoned in my house too.
At least this was the case until I got a High Definition LCD TV, and connected my gaming computer to it. Now I find that although we watch almost zero television "programming" on it, the device itself gets much more usage than the tube TV it replaced.
Once you attach a computer to your big screen LCD and watch a movie or play a game, why would you bother to watch any "programming" at all, let alone programming with commercial interruptions?
Movies on demand? Simple! Click a link on TPB or NNTP or even GooTube and watch a movie almost instantly, or download it in about an hour (maybe several hrs for 1080p content). Music? Same thing. Games? Same thing. News? Better! I can check the weather, read headlines, watch news clips, and best of all I can even comment on it or rank it!
Is Optical media dead? Not as long as the baby-boom generation keeps buying "wax" disks. Optical media is as good as dead for many of us post-boomers, the younger the crowd the less likely they have any practical use for it either. Heck, I don't even own a standalone CD or DVD player! I Rip and store media on disk, and consume it when it's convenient for me.
IMHO disk based media already too obsolete to use, (as designed - in disk players) even if the content providers were to give it away. I never buy optical media unless it's the only way I can obtain it. Once obtained, the content is transferred to Hard-disk where it can be of some use.
The funny thing is that I'm more than willing to pay for all of my media. Just on my terms, because I'm the one with the money! I already pay for all of my games. Why? Because I can download them, and the publisher will generally add value like game servers, ranking and records, updates, and free stuff like wallpaper and screensavers.
I want to buy music, I want to buy video content... but there is no added value for me if I pay, and currently I actually lose value by paying because the only time I am restricted in my usage is when I hit a DRM wall.
No one seems to want my money badly enough to actually work for it.
Might I suggest that people use something completely crazy, like public transportation?
While I too would like to see improvement in the streets and roads infrastructure, the problem here is NOT with the infrastructure, it societal and anthropomorphic. The issue is not overall capacity; most roads are nearly deserted during certain parts of every day.
Society requires that the populace generally start and finish work at roughly the same times daily. Human nature and our anthropomorphic instinctive reactions while traveling as it turns out, is primarily responsible for traffic jams.
Increasing taxes while providing no alternative means of transportation is not really an answer, it's just an excuse for another governmental cash grab. The transportation problems and requisite solutions are quite a bit more complex than that.
"Charge a toll" is simplistic at best, penalizes the productive for their productivity, and is simply counterintuitive to what you say you would be trying to achieve. To say that a toll would "save them hours of valuable [commuting] time every day" might not necessarily be the net result, because those same workers would have to spend work hours to pay for the tolls, while at the end of the day they may still find themselves sitting in the same traffic.
I'll say the same thing to Mac fans like you that I say to Windows Fans (like you), when it comes to crying and gnashing of teeth that your mega corporation of choice is not extracting enough money from the computing populace.
Pay for the MAC OS when MAC OS Final is released, till then it's just the latest beta software. Pay for the Windows OS when Windows OS Final is released, till then it's just the latest beta software.
If it makes you feel any better, most users don't pay for any of version of Linux either. But oddly enough there seems to be plenty of continued development despite the lack of exorbitant licensing fees.
OS-Fairy indeed...
Next up, UK requires that automobile manufactures equip all autos with a buggy whip in their boot, in case the auto runs out of petrol and might then be pulled by horse.
Judge 1: The way in which the Board . . . presented Bilski to us was with this prayer for guidance. . . . Our examiners need guidance, we need to know how to deal with this situation . . . . Let me ask you this question, Is the opinion in In Re Comiskey enough? Can your examiners now move forward? Are you satisfied in dealing with business-method patents?
Solicitor: Not quite your honor. I say not quite because what I can foresee [are] future disputes and also potentially years of litigation over trying to find the dividing line between what would be a so-called patent-eligible business method versus a so-called patent-ineligible mental process. It just is going to create litigation issue that we dont think needs to be there.
Judge 2: So to cut to the chase, how would you [the Office] have reformulated the test . . . for purposes of explaining both Comiskey and then extrapolating to this case?
Solicitor: I think what was just discussed here page 17 [of Comiskey slip opinion, see http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/06-1286.pdf ] is a very fair recitation of what the law is where it says. . . . the Supreme Court has held that a claim reciting an algorithm or abstract idea can state statutory subject matter only if, as employed in the process, it is embodied in, operates on, transforms, or otherwise involves another class of statutory subject matter, i.e., a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.
What about the Gender challenged? I don't mind my date showing up larger than advertised, but when SHE turns out to be a HE... well that's where I draw the line!/Unless he/she is really fine looking, then a little petting before the breakup may be in order.
How would one do a background check on an avatar? Or will Avatars simply now be discriminated against, and prohibited from joining social sites altogether?
"they seriously are not that much tougher then a laptop hd."
I would like to see a citation for that claim. From my team's research, SSDs are much much tougher than any spindle HD. But toughness may not be a factor for you when evaluating SSDs, (it wasn't for us).
Our test SSD laptops have also demonstrated much improved battery life. On a D630 we are seeing four and a half hour battery life with standard stock batteries. That's a two hour increase. Use larger cell count batteries and battery life will just get better. A laptop equiped with an eight cell battery and a secondary battery licated in the Optical drive bay, we have experienced eight hour-plus battery life.
Our boot times are also improved with SSD. Since we also encrypt, (and if anyone has used encryption on a Windows domain then they have likely experienced a hit with login times) we were most impressed with the performance improvement of encrypted SSD, when compared to a traditional HD on the same equipment. Write times are not as much improved, but there is no negative impact either.
Our experiences have been good enough that we are planning to order SSD on all new laptops for next year. The improvement in Battery life alone is worth the price of admission. Toughness, and increased write speed are icing on the cake.
Downloading an mp3 is sometimes not legal. Driving over the speed limit is not legal, (not even one mile or kilometer over). Going to a rated "R" movie without an adult when under 17 is not legal. Smoking outside within fifteen feet of any doorway is not legal in many big cities.
Being the source of a low power jamming signal that should only last ten seconds at the most? Yep you are correct, not legal.
Given that, the idea behind the a portable device is that only cell signals should be affected, and you only have enough battery power to jam long enough to cause a disconnect. My guess would be that an many things (such as an arc welder) put out much more Radio Frequency Interference than any portable jammer, thus making your jamming pretty difficult for the FCC to detect.
If one happens to be any good with a soldering iron, a person may build their own short range RF jamming device.
This website details the design and construction of the "Wave Bubble": a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camouflaging: it is the size of a pack of cigarettes.
But he wasn't talking about "real" money. He was describing interdepartmental charges (i.e. corporate "funny money"). Those charges must, by their very nature, include all of the incremented departmental operating costs and overhead, backup, DR, as well as the actual hardware costs. IT departments are seldom "Profit Centers" and so must justify their budget by including all of their costs.
I reiterate: high-speed disks, redundant RAID array (SAN attached), UPSs, the ongoing costs of regular backups and Disaster Recovery, Electricity, Server Room AC, ect. Additionally there is an ongoing "Cost per year" for storage that has to be taken into account, like support contracts, licensing, and warranty costs. And I didn't even mention the cost of staffing.
So yes the ultimate cost to a company for high speed redundant storage that includes DR can indeed approach $3000.00 per gig.
Mightn't the 3K price for storage include the high-speed disks, redundant RAID array (SAN perhaps?), UPSs, the ongoing costs of regular backups and maybe even Disaster Recovery?
Points to ponder;
You are storing company data on a USB fob? A complete data loss (among other things) is just waiting to happen. Are you encrypting the fobs at least? If you lose the unencrypted fob, and the data is compromised, is that ok with your director?
Forwarding Company email to an internet email account provider? Not a good idea.
Blaming IT for a vendors software limitations? Microsoft writes exchange, not your IT staff. It's highly doubtful that your IT staff is arbitrarily making busy-work for themselves.
Insuring the security and integrity of company data is likely the source of what you perceive as "hegemony ", and is what most IT departments do every day. It sounds like you may be actively working to compromise your company's data, if you are indeed doing the things that you describe above.
"I love French wine, like I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère!
You see, it's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it."
I agree with your risk assessment Chris, however the Swiss do not and have shut the plant down entirely.
Although still in it's infancy as a technology, the benefits of geothermal power generation are likely worth the risk. Obviously there is a bit more work to be done with the technology.
I also think the same holds true for a mature technology like nuclear power. By utilizing fast breeder reactor technology, mankind can realize the benefits of clean efficient nuclear power with reasonable/manageable/trivial risk.
Obviously we need to stop burning oil for energy, if for no other reason, when we run out we lose the raw material required to manufacture plastic.
Even environmentally friendly alternative technologies can have negative impacts which are difficult to predict. The citizens of Basel (Switzerland) learned this first-hand as they were shaken by an earthquake of magnitude 3.4 on the Richter scale, followed by 60 lesser aftershocks, including a quake of magnitude 2.5 a week after the initial quake, and another tremor of 3.1 as recently as 6 January, attributed to changes as underground pressures at the now discontinued project site return to normal. The engineers and officials of Geopower did inform the authorities and the public that the proposed Deep Heat Mining project posed a risk of triggering small tremors. Quakes of the magnitude actually experienced, however, were not anticipated.
No energy source comes without some risk. My vote is for liquid-metal fast breeder reactors and fuel recycling. Rounded out with Renewable bio-fuel, wind, and solar.
Slashdot Mirror
I can buy an HD-DVD BluRay combo drive today.
Why the deliberately obtuse antagonistic belligerent reply? I won't say that you didn't really know what the hell you were talking about, or that you just jumped at the opportunity to be an ignorant blathering fanboy.
I'm too nice for that.
How many of the Democratic Party membership will stand for just the appearance of the party going back to the bad old days of smoke-filled rooms, where a few party heavyweights would decide who the nominee would be?
If Obama wins the popular vote and the Super Delegates force the nomination to go to Clinton anyway (and if the Democratic rank-and-file are indeed upset), watch for those few "party heavyweight" Super Delegates try to convince the credentials and rules committees to reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegates.
If Hillary Clinton were to win the nomination by only the super delegates vote, and have lost the popular Democratic vote, would it be fair then for the opposition (Democratic as well as Republican) to label her the "Selected" rather than "Elected" Nominee?
Will Democratic Party leaders think that the risk of ignoring the popular vote is worth the possible reward of nominating someone who the party leaders think may be the more "electable" candidate in the general election?
Regardless of the above, it looks to be an interesting Democratic Convention coming up.
To me Optimal media is not optical, but magnetic! (I keed I keed). I didn't mean to make a blanket statement, just a broad generalization with obvious exceptions.
I was trying to make the point that the baby-boom generation will continue to purchase familiar formats more out of habit than practicality.
In regards to Video Games, I generally copy the media to hard disk and store the original media in a safe place, (or simply download it to begin with if available). Sometimes I need a "No CD" crack, but that is less and less often.
At least this was the case until I got a High Definition LCD TV, and connected my gaming computer to it. Now I find that although we watch almost zero television "programming" on it, the device itself gets much more usage than the tube TV it replaced.
Once you attach a computer to your big screen LCD and watch a movie or play a game, why would you bother to watch any "programming" at all, let alone programming with commercial interruptions?
Movies on demand? Simple! Click a link on TPB or NNTP or even GooTube and watch a movie almost instantly, or download it in about an hour (maybe several hrs for 1080p content). Music? Same thing. Games? Same thing. News? Better! I can check the weather, read headlines, watch news clips, and best of all I can even comment on it or rank it!
Is Optical media dead? Not as long as the baby-boom generation keeps buying "wax" disks. Optical media is as good as dead for many of us post-boomers, the younger the crowd the less likely they have any practical use for it either. Heck, I don't even own a standalone CD or DVD player! I Rip and store media on disk, and consume it when it's convenient for me .
IMHO disk based media already too obsolete to use, (as designed - in disk players) even if the content providers were to give it away. I never buy optical media unless it's the only way I can obtain it. Once obtained, the content is transferred to Hard-disk where it can be of some use.
The funny thing is that I'm more than willing to pay for all of my media. Just on my terms, because I'm the one with the money! I already pay for all of my games. Why? Because I can download them, and the publisher will generally add value like game servers, ranking and records, updates, and free stuff like wallpaper and screensavers.
I want to buy music, I want to buy video content ... but there is no added value for me if I pay, and currently I actually lose value by paying because the only time I am restricted in my usage is when I hit a DRM wall.
No one seems to want my money badly enough to actually work for it.
While I too would like to see improvement in the streets and roads infrastructure, the problem here is NOT with the infrastructure, it societal and anthropomorphic. The issue is not overall capacity; most roads are nearly deserted during certain parts of every day.
Society requires that the populace generally start and finish work at roughly the same times daily. Human nature and our anthropomorphic instinctive reactions while traveling as it turns out, is primarily responsible for traffic jams.
Increasing taxes while providing no alternative means of transportation is not really an answer, it's just an excuse for another governmental cash grab. The transportation problems and requisite solutions are quite a bit more complex than that.
"Charge a toll" is simplistic at best, penalizes the productive for their productivity, and is simply counterintuitive to what you say you would be trying to achieve. To say that a toll would "save them hours of valuable [commuting] time every day" might not necessarily be the net result, because those same workers would have to spend work hours to pay for the tolls, while at the end of the day they may still find themselves sitting in the same traffic.
I'll say the same thing to Mac fans like you that I say to Windows Fans (like you), when it comes to crying and gnashing of teeth that your mega corporation of choice is not extracting enough money from the computing populace. Pay for the MAC OS when MAC OS Final is released, till then it's just the latest beta software. Pay for the Windows OS when Windows OS Final is released, till then it's just the latest beta software. If it makes you feel any better, most users don't pay for any of version of Linux either. But oddly enough there seems to be plenty of continued development despite the lack of exorbitant licensing fees. OS-Fairy indeed...
Next up, UK requires that automobile manufactures equip all autos with a buggy whip in their boot, in case the auto runs out of petrol and might then be pulled by horse.
Interesting stuff.
What about SCO?
XBox 360 does indeed playback DivX. For over a month now. Good quality, and passable ease of use.
What about the Gender challenged? I don't mind my date showing up larger than advertised, but when SHE turns out to be a HE ... well that's where I draw the line! /Unless he/she is really fine looking, then a little petting before the breakup may be in order.
How would one do a background check on an avatar? Or will Avatars simply now be discriminated against, and prohibited from joining social sites altogether?
I would like to see a citation for that claim. From my team's research, SSDs are much much tougher than any spindle HD. But toughness may not be a factor for you when evaluating SSDs, (it wasn't for us).
Our test SSD laptops have also demonstrated much improved battery life. On a D630 we are seeing four and a half hour battery life with standard stock batteries. That's a two hour increase. Use larger cell count batteries and battery life will just get better. A laptop equiped with an eight cell battery and a secondary battery licated in the Optical drive bay, we have experienced eight hour-plus battery life.
Our boot times are also improved with SSD. Since we also encrypt, (and if anyone has used encryption on a Windows domain then they have likely experienced a hit with login times) we were most impressed with the performance improvement of encrypted SSD, when compared to a traditional HD on the same equipment. Write times are not as much improved, but there is no negative impact either.
Our experiences have been good enough that we are planning to order SSD on all new laptops for next year. The improvement in Battery life alone is worth the price of admission. Toughness, and increased write speed are icing on the cake.
Your point about Porn is an Excellent example, and much better than the "R" rating. I wish I would have thought of it when I posted.
Being the source of a low power jamming signal that should only last ten seconds at the most? Yep you are correct, not legal.
Given that, the idea behind the a portable device is that only cell signals should be affected, and you only have enough battery power to jam long enough to cause a disconnect. My guess would be that an many things (such as an arc welder) put out much more Radio Frequency Interference than any portable jammer, thus making your jamming pretty difficult for the FCC to detect.
This website details the design and construction of the "Wave Bubble": a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer. The device is lightweight and small for easy camouflaging: it is the size of a pack of cigarettes.
I reiterate: high-speed disks, redundant RAID array (SAN attached), UPSs, the ongoing costs of regular backups and Disaster Recovery, Electricity, Server Room AC, ect. Additionally there is an ongoing "Cost per year" for storage that has to be taken into account, like support contracts, licensing, and warranty costs. And I didn't even mention the cost of staffing.
So yes the ultimate cost to a company for high speed redundant storage that includes DR can indeed approach $3000.00 per gig.
Mightn't the 3K price for storage include the high-speed disks, redundant RAID array (SAN perhaps?), UPSs, the ongoing costs of regular backups and maybe even Disaster Recovery? Points to ponder; You are storing company data on a USB fob? A complete data loss (among other things) is just waiting to happen. Are you encrypting the fobs at least? If you lose the unencrypted fob, and the data is compromised, is that ok with your director? Forwarding Company email to an internet email account provider? Not a good idea. Blaming IT for a vendors software limitations? Microsoft writes exchange, not your IT staff. It's highly doubtful that your IT staff is arbitrarily making busy-work for themselves. Insuring the security and integrity of company data is likely the source of what you perceive as "hegemony ", and is what most IT departments do every day. It sounds like you may be actively working to compromise your company's data, if you are indeed doing the things that you describe above.
You see, it's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it."
Merovingian
I agree with your risk assessment Chris, however the Swiss do not and have shut the plant down entirely. Although still in it's infancy as a technology, the benefits of geothermal power generation are likely worth the risk. Obviously there is a bit more work to be done with the technology. I also think the same holds true for a mature technology like nuclear power. By utilizing fast breeder reactor technology, mankind can realize the benefits of clean efficient nuclear power with reasonable/manageable/trivial risk. Obviously we need to stop burning oil for energy, if for no other reason, when we run out we lose the raw material required to manufacture plastic.
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhvOja6QfkA
And there I was all worried about RFID chip implants.
Google Web Toolkit
Who'd a thunk?
I really dont want to carry all those gadgets around, especially at the beach. So if you could just inject that RFID tag into my neck right here...