I have experienced it first hand with, get this, a genuine ASUS chromebook. The "seller" had stuck their own inventory stickers on the box indicating the computer was a red/gold version, and Amazon shipped me one of these machines, when I open the box I find a blue/white machine. It's the correct model and spec, but *underneath* the incorrectly applied "seller"'s inventory sticker, the ASUS box clearly shows the correct colour of the machine contained in the box. Amazon had commingled the inventory though, and gone off what the "seller"'s sticker said, since it covered the actual ASUS sticker. I kept the machine... which I suppose just supports them continuing this practice, but if it happens with genuine products, what's to stop it from happening with knock-offs as well?
It was running continuously (used to be a workstation for an electron microscope system at a university, and in my possession it was a mail server, even well past the point at which replacing it would have been the smart thing to do) except for one hard drive replacement until early 2008.
Even today, I'm 100% sure it would boot without issue if it were turned back on. 3-slot desk-side VME-bus machine with convective cooling and some of the highest quality circuits boards and components I have ever seen in real life. I gave it to a friend, who has definitely used it since then for entertainment purposes, but it no longer does any work for a living.
for you challenged in maths, that's 22 years of continuous use. and as of last know it STILL worked, which, at 30, makes it older than most of you I'll bet.
I'm a Verizon customer (i live in northern Vermont, Verizon OWNS this part of the world, if i actually want to have LTE I have no choice), my last sanctioned update was Christmas last year. I have, in fact, run the battery dead since then.
Agreed, the last time I restarted my 928 was because it ran out of Battery. Before the 8.2(denim) update I had some cell-radio failures every once in a while that required a restart to resolve, and camera freak-outs with failure to reinitialize auto exposure, but since the update it has "just worked" all the time, every time, Apps may crash but the system stays up, all feature work as advertised, and it's tough as nails too. I may be moving to an Icon soon, I certainly WILL NOT be getting an Android or iOS device. I admit to occasionally wishing there was the embarrassment of app support those platforms have, but then I realize I have all the time wasters I need and most of the productivity stuff I need and I don't have to deal with all the other bullshit.
So, when do parrots and crows get the vote? I know parrots who are clearly smarter, more emotionally mature, and have better reasoning skills than a depressingly large portion of the US population.
On a complete randon tanget probability is proof that time is not infinite: if time were infinite all things would have an equal probability of happening. perhaps we don't have large enough samples yet, but there are certian things that are just VASTLY more likely to happen than others and this seems to support a non-infinite timeline.
I use multiple strands of CAT5e adding up to 12 guage as my speaker cables and a double twisted pair with floating ground for my interconnects. I add $15/pr gold-plated RCA ends for the best sounding $30 interconnects on the face of planet earth. No seriously. They sound notably better (subjective I know, but I used to write high-end music reviews for a magazine some of you may remember called (are you ready?) Ultimate Audio. So I've spent *A LOT* of time listening to high end systems...) than anything else I've used excepting that time a borrowed a set of $1000/meter 99.9% pure silver cables from an audio-nut friend of mine. Insanity. CAT5e makes excellent audio cable:)
I agree, whatever other crap they are pushing thier webserver seems to have taken the slashdot effect without a hitch. This sort of resiliency is usualy only available to huge corporate entities, which atomcorp clearly isn't. Maybe they have a quad-Quantum-II server in a 1-u rack space with 35TB of ram?
Ok, great visual aid. Total props. What I don't understand, and perhaps thats because I'm not a physicist (even much an arm-chair one) is this:
If these additive frequency pulses can measured (which it seems thay can), wouldn't it be possible to create a broad spectrum signal and modulate the individual component frequencies of the broad-band signal to modify the location of the "ftl" peaks? I can see how this wouldn't work over N(unknown) distance, as the pulses would eventualy "catch up" to previous modulations and cancel or confuse each other, but wouldn't it be possible to do it over X(known, measured, planed) distance, alowing data to move FTL over distances less than the wavelength of your longest frequency? Or am I confused, and it would just work better to increase the frequency used for greater data through-put?
The FWG-114P is a killer unit. The price looks high at first, but it contains the following:
802.11b/g with a high-gain antenna (VERY good range) USB print server Serial port (ISDN modems supported) VPN support PPP Dial-in for your network when the wan port is active as the main internet connection instead of the serial port.
The version 1.x firmwares were utter crap (so bad in-fact that many v 1.x units were returned as "defective"), but they fixed it nicely in version 2.x. It packs an ass-load of functionality into a box only slightly bigger than a standard wireless router. I have used several in restaraunts with a modem configured for automatic fall-back so credit -card processing never gets interupted.
No, it's not as compact a the "WiFlyer", and it doesn't support data compression over modem, but it does a hell of a lot more for about the same money.
From your (not unfounded stand) OS-X, which is widely regarded as the most inovative OS out there, is really a bit of a step backward. Why? because it goes back to POSIX and wrapers for many of its major OS level functions. I Love the flexability and power of OS-X, but from a "changing the paradigm" point of view Mac OS-9 was/is a far more dramitic step forward at the basic OS level.
Remember, OS-9's API structure is inherently secure. Many people moaned about how it limited remote administratability, hence it's failure as widely accepted corporate desktop and server platform, but I for one would have loved to see OS-9 taken farther. Truley a low-level OS with a high-level interface and none of that "wrapers and scripts" crap that adds computaional and user-level complexity. OS-X is an elegant solution for the user interface, but it realy solves none of the problems that 7/8/9 already did!
I think Corporate IT departments are as much to blame for the OS and software stagnation as anyone. No one operating a big network or server farm wants to have to compleltly re-learn everything to administer their system. If you think OS-X was purely created because of innovation you've got only half the idea. The other half was "we need something to make the corporate world take us serriously as a server and corporate desktop provider". And the answer unfortuneatly was not to extend OS-9 (New) but to fall back to UNIX (Old).
I wish Apple had decided to take a real lead and extend OS-9 development instead of capitulating to the market, but remember, as others have said, it's economics now, not innovation that drives the computing world.
This sounds kind of like a thing I read about in Science about 5-6 years ago, some guy experimented in his back yard with a spread spectrum system that used extremely broad frequency coverage, but extremely low power (>1 mw). It worked across bands from around 30mhz to 2.4ghz. His system utilized precision clock information, which sychronized the transmitter and receiver. The tx and rx would sychronize and then talk via ultra-low-power pulses "below the noise floor". Because they were in lock-step with each other the rx knew when to look for data from the tx, by knowing what the signal should look like at either end of the used spectrum, the bands in between were used to cary data based on time delays and pulse lengths. He aparently had it tested sending digital audio data over distances of 5-7 miles with about 1 milli-watt of power. Never heard anything about it again, and it was mentioned that there could be FCC problems due to it using frequencies already licenced for other purposes, including some military freqs. It was also mentioned that the precision clocks needed to make it work were mucho $$$$. I wonder if this system has anything to do with that guy?
I don't think the original poster is offtopic at all. If 100,000 innocent people in your country were killed in "collateral" damage wouldn't you be pissed? This is not to say I'm blaming Iraq, as a matter of fact they are probably the LEAST equiped to mount and organize an attack of this sort out of al the Islamic states, wether having ties to Al Q'aeda or not. (not it seems, that is untill the invasion gave them reason to have ties...) Iraq, wether ruled by a heinous dictator or not, was relatively MODERATE by Islamic fundamentalist (Al Q'aeda) standards, and as a result the general populous of Iraq was NOT largely in support of the actions of terrorists. The feelings of hoplessnes, loss and anger raised since the invasion has INCREASED popular support for terror activities in Iraq since 9/11. Although the place is in such a shambles and dealing with internal problems and mounting an "insurgency" (wouldn't you?) I doubt they had much, if anything to do with this event, but if you think the invasion of Iraq has helped quell terrorism you aren't thinking like an angry, irrational human being who's seen thier house, place of work, place of worship, etc blown up and or defaced and derided by an invading force of foreigners who can't be bothered to even learn enough of your language to tell you to "get down with your hands on your head" while arresting a memeber of your family for vauge and undefined reasons.
I'm not saying terrorism is a good response (it's not), I'm not saying it's an effective political tool (it just makes more people angry and hurt and irrational), but I'm saying people under stress do irrational things and the US and "The West" have done very little to address the (very) personal stress experienced by people in poor and/or politicaly opressive countries. Invading and dismantaling a country is NOT stress reducing. If there are drivers on the road in the USA who feel the need to rear-end people who cut them off in fits of irrational road-rage, what do you think thier unstable stress-monky counterparts are likey to do when they see hundreds of thousands of people like them (or they themselves) killed and left homeless (wether for thier long term good or not).
War of any kind breeds hate and irrational behavior. Others have mentioned the "two ways to win the win the war on terror" Kill 'em all, or get out. I think there needs to be a third idea mentioned, take some of the crazy wealth of our "Western" nations, spread it arround, with a good heaping portion of good-will and non-military aid and watch people suddenly get content and rational. Watch dictatorships and radical fundamentalism dry up as people find fewer and fewer things to be angry about. Watch them fix little problems, or things that have been on the back burner (like AIDS, Global Warming, and the Impending Energy Crisis) instead of devoting thier time to being mad the person next-door.
Never underestimate the power of a decent standard of living.
nope, modified Magnepan MG-IIc planer magnetics. Missed the bit about using head-phones. The forward imaging was superb, but I've head as good before. The side was very believable, but if you've ever listed to the KLF's "Chill Out" you'll realize it's just way way better than average, not groundbreaking. The rear image was quite good, and I can ony imagine it WOULD be better with headphones...
like the original poster said, too bad it's patented, it deserves more development and application.
Slashdot Mirror
same here. It's becoming a bigger problem the more marketplace sellers there are.
/youdon'tsay.jpg
Smartwatches: the most useless product yet to be bouyed into semi-relevance by the Apple Hype-train.
This. Exactly this.
I have experienced it first hand with, get this, a genuine ASUS chromebook. The "seller" had stuck their own inventory stickers on the box indicating the computer was a red/gold version, and Amazon shipped me one of these machines, when I open the box I find a blue/white machine. It's the correct model and spec, but *underneath* the incorrectly applied "seller"'s inventory sticker, the ASUS box clearly shows the correct colour of the machine contained in the box. Amazon had commingled the inventory though, and gone off what the "seller"'s sticker said, since it covered the actual ASUS sticker. I kept the machine... which I suppose just supports them continuing this practice, but if it happens with genuine products, what's to stop it from happening with knock-offs as well?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
That's why my Sun 3/110 went away. The joke was I kept it around because it effectively doubled as a space heater...
manufacture date 1986.
It was running continuously (used to be a workstation for an electron microscope system at a university, and in my possession it was a mail server, even well past the point at which replacing it would have been the smart thing to do) except for one hard drive replacement until early 2008.
Even today, I'm 100% sure it would boot without issue if it were turned back on. 3-slot desk-side VME-bus machine with convective cooling and some of the highest quality circuits boards and components I have ever seen in real life. I gave it to a friend, who has definitely used it since then for entertainment purposes, but it no longer does any work for a living.
for you challenged in maths, that's 22 years of continuous use. and as of last know it STILL worked, which, at 30, makes it older than most of you I'll bet.
I have a Lumia 928 on Verizon.
I'm a Verizon customer (i live in northern Vermont, Verizon OWNS this part of the world, if i actually want to have LTE I have no choice), my last sanctioned update was Christmas last year. I have, in fact, run the battery dead since then.
Agreed, the last time I restarted my 928 was because it ran out of Battery. Before the 8.2(denim) update I had some cell-radio failures every once in a while that required a restart to resolve, and camera freak-outs with failure to reinitialize auto exposure, but since the update it has "just worked" all the time, every time, Apps may crash but the system stays up, all feature work as advertised, and it's tough as nails too. I may be moving to an Icon soon, I certainly WILL NOT be getting an Android or iOS device. I admit to occasionally wishing there was the embarrassment of app support those platforms have, but then I realize I have all the time wasters I need and most of the productivity stuff I need and I don't have to deal with all the other bullshit.
So, when do parrots and crows get the vote? I know parrots who are clearly smarter, more emotionally mature, and have better reasoning skills than a depressingly large portion of the US population.
On a complete randon tanget probability is proof that time is not infinite: if time were infinite all things would have an equal probability of happening. perhaps we don't have large enough samples yet, but there are certian things that are just VASTLY more likely to happen than others and this seems to support a non-infinite timeline.
[/random]
I use multiple strands of CAT5e adding up to 12 guage as my speaker cables and a double twisted pair with floating ground for my interconnects. I add $15/pr gold-plated RCA ends for the best sounding $30 interconnects on the face of planet earth. No seriously. They sound notably better (subjective I know, but I used to write high-end music reviews for a magazine some of you may remember called (are you ready?) Ultimate Audio. So I've spent *A LOT* of time listening to high end systems...) than anything else I've used excepting that time a borrowed a set of $1000/meter 99.9% pure silver cables from an audio-nut friend of mine. Insanity. CAT5e makes excellent audio cable :)
to rant about the ones they left out! I mostly agree with the order, except for a few places...but where are these in the list?
in no particular order:
Red Dwarf: Comic genious, in SPAAACE! The Cat alone deserves to make the list!
Farscape: Better than BSG(new) IMHO, Not #1, but it shoulda been there SOMEWHERE, and higher than BSG(new).
ST: DS9: My LEAST favorite trek series, but still deserves to be on the list. MMMmmmm... Dax.
The Prisoner: I've only seen one episode and it was good enough to make me belive it ought to be on the list.
SeaQuest DSV: Campy writing, but cool SFX and fun to watch. Definately better than Flash Gordon, but not better than The Thunder Birds.
Logan's Run: Oh, wait! They included it, cool!
UFO: Space 1999, The ThunderBirds, but no UFO? balls.
Thats My 2 cents.
I second the pre-emptive impeachment.
OK, so it aparently DOES run linix, but like OP noted, it sure has taken a slashdotting in stride..
Netcraft Results
Mod parent uP!
I agree, whatever other crap they are pushing thier webserver seems to have taken the slashdot effect without a hitch. This sort of resiliency is usualy only available to huge corporate entities, which atomcorp clearly isn't. Maybe they have a quad-Quantum-II server in a 1-u rack space with 35TB of ram?
Ok, great visual aid. Total props. What I don't understand, and perhaps thats because I'm not a physicist (even much an arm-chair one) is this:
If these additive frequency pulses can measured (which it seems thay can), wouldn't it be possible to create a broad spectrum signal and modulate the individual component frequencies of the broad-band signal to modify the location of the "ftl" peaks? I can see how this wouldn't work over N(unknown) distance, as the pulses would eventualy "catch up" to previous modulations and cancel or confuse each other, but wouldn't it be possible to do it over X(known, measured, planed) distance, alowing data to move FTL over distances less than the wavelength of your longest frequency? Or am I confused, and it would just work better to increase the frequency used for greater data through-put?
now THAT would be so sickly cool even I'd buy one!
A+, best rant I've read this summer!
The FWG-114P is a killer unit. The price looks high at first, but it contains the following:
802.11b/g with a high-gain antenna (VERY good range)
USB print server
Serial port (ISDN modems supported)
VPN support
PPP Dial-in for your network when the wan port is active as the main internet connection instead of the serial port.
The version 1.x firmwares were utter crap (so bad in-fact that many v 1.x units were returned as "defective"), but they fixed it nicely in version 2.x. It packs an ass-load of functionality into a box only slightly bigger than a standard wireless router. I have used several in restaraunts with a modem configured for automatic fall-back so credit -card processing never gets interupted.
No, it's not as compact a the "WiFlyer", and it doesn't support data compression over modem, but it does a hell of a lot more for about the same money.
From your (not unfounded stand) OS-X, which is widely regarded as the most inovative OS out there, is really a bit of a step backward. Why? because it goes back to POSIX and wrapers for many of its major OS level functions. I Love the flexability and power of OS-X, but from a "changing the paradigm" point of view Mac OS-9 was/is a far more dramitic step forward at the basic OS level.
Remember, OS-9's API structure is inherently secure. Many people moaned about how it limited remote administratability, hence it's failure as widely accepted corporate desktop and server platform, but I for one would have loved to see OS-9 taken farther. Truley a low-level OS
with a high-level interface and none of that "wrapers and scripts" crap that adds computaional and user-level complexity. OS-X is an elegant solution for the user interface, but it realy solves none of the problems that 7/8/9 already did!
I think Corporate IT departments are as much to blame for the OS and software stagnation as anyone. No one operating a big network or server farm wants to have to compleltly re-learn everything to administer their system. If you think OS-X was purely created because of innovation you've got only half the idea. The other half was "we need something to make the corporate world take us serriously as a server and corporate desktop provider". And the answer unfortuneatly was not to extend OS-9 (New) but to fall back to UNIX (Old).
I wish Apple had decided to take a real lead and extend OS-9 development instead of capitulating to the market, but remember, as others have said, it's economics now, not innovation that drives the computing world.
hey, I'm special too!
This sounds kind of like a thing I read about in Science about 5-6 years ago, some guy experimented in his back yard with a spread spectrum system that used extremely broad frequency coverage, but extremely low power (>1 mw). It worked across bands from around 30mhz to 2.4ghz. His system utilized precision clock information, which sychronized the transmitter and receiver. The tx and rx would sychronize and then talk via ultra-low-power pulses "below the noise floor". Because they were in lock-step with each other the rx knew when to look for data from the tx, by knowing what the signal should look like at either end of the used spectrum, the bands in between were used to cary data based on time delays and pulse lengths. He aparently had it tested sending digital audio data over distances of 5-7 miles with about 1 milli-watt of power. Never heard anything about it again, and it was mentioned that there could be FCC problems due to it using frequencies already licenced for other purposes, including some military freqs. It was also mentioned that the precision clocks needed to make it work were mucho $$$$. I wonder if this system has anything to do with that guy?
I don't think the original poster is offtopic at all. If 100,000 innocent people in your country were killed in "collateral" damage wouldn't you be pissed? This is not to say I'm blaming Iraq, as a matter of fact they are probably the LEAST equiped to mount and organize an attack of this sort out of al the Islamic states, wether having ties to Al Q'aeda or not. (not it seems, that is untill the invasion gave them reason to have ties...) Iraq, wether ruled by a heinous dictator or not, was relatively MODERATE by Islamic fundamentalist (Al Q'aeda) standards, and as a result the general populous of Iraq was NOT largely in support of the actions of terrorists. The feelings of hoplessnes, loss and anger raised since the invasion has INCREASED popular support for terror activities in Iraq since 9/11. Although the place is in such a shambles and dealing with internal problems and mounting an "insurgency" (wouldn't you?) I doubt they had much, if anything to do with this event, but if you think the invasion of Iraq has helped quell terrorism you aren't thinking like an angry, irrational human being who's seen thier house, place of work, place of worship, etc blown up and or defaced and derided by an invading force of foreigners who can't be bothered to even learn enough of your language to tell you to "get down with your hands on your head" while arresting a memeber of your family for vauge and undefined reasons.
I'm not saying terrorism is a good response (it's not), I'm not saying it's an effective political tool (it just makes more people angry and hurt and irrational), but I'm saying people under stress do irrational things and the US and "The West" have done very little to address the (very) personal stress experienced by people in poor and/or politicaly opressive countries. Invading and dismantaling a country is NOT stress reducing. If there are drivers on the road in the USA who feel the need to rear-end people who cut them off in fits of irrational road-rage, what do you think thier unstable stress-monky counterparts are likey to do when they see hundreds of thousands of people like them (or they themselves) killed and left homeless (wether for thier long term good or not).
War of any kind breeds hate and irrational behavior. Others have mentioned the "two ways to win the win the war on terror" Kill 'em all, or get out. I think there needs to be a third idea mentioned, take some of the crazy wealth of our "Western" nations, spread it arround, with a good heaping portion of good-will and non-military aid and watch people suddenly get content and rational. Watch dictatorships and radical fundamentalism dry up as people find fewer and fewer things to be angry about. Watch them fix little problems, or things that have been on the back burner (like AIDS, Global Warming, and the Impending Energy Crisis) instead of devoting thier time to being mad the person next-door.
Never underestimate the power of a decent standard of living.
nope, modified Magnepan MG-IIc planer magnetics. Missed the bit about using head-phones. The forward imaging was superb, but I've head as good before. The side was very believable, but if you've ever listed to the KLF's "Chill Out" you'll realize it's just way way better than average, not groundbreaking. The rear image was quite good, and I can ony imagine it WOULD be better with headphones...
like the original poster said, too bad it's patented, it deserves more development and application.
Hey, atleast he bothered to reply! I'd fogotten thier'd even been an "Ask WW" done, and he replied well, Kudos Will.