Re: Only took Apple 2 years...
Still x2 overpriced.
9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
"Not Life as we know it, Jim." A simulation slightly related to how some organisms replication is affected by environment. But not alive in any sense at all.
It is a fascinating algorithm. Though ultimately Conway thought it overshadowed his more important work.
Can that be done by a drive by java attack, maybe in an advert?
The JS in the Browser checks default IP addresses, user names and passwords of routers. Then programs in a malicious DNS to spoof a variety of websites and repositories.
I always change the default router passwords. I notice loads of people don't. Not all companies with expensive equipment have IT depts. Many businesses now think they can use the "Cloud" and have no IT staff at all and have no better password security than a home user. Or put all the passwords in a spreadsheet "in the Cloud". Or entirely rely on MS 365 accounts.
The PS/2 used different I/O cards. MCA. It never had an open BIOS. Nor did the PC/XT/AT.
The compatibles of the PC non-PS/2 systems didn't have an Open BIOS either. Compaq developed their own and the Phoenix BIOS a commercial clone supposedly created by a separate team reverse engineering the IBM PC BIOS (not PS/2) and issuing a spec. It was licenced. It was never open source at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS
The IBM PS/2 was really the third generation IBM-PC. Unlike the first which used catalogue HW, IBM proprietary BIOS and MS's version of a reverse engineered CP/M-86, it had more proprietary HW and more IBM designing in it.
"These models were in the strange position of being incompatible with the IBM-compatible hardware standards previously established by IBM and adopted in the PC industry. "
The higher spec models were supposed to run OS/2, incompatible with DOS. The lower spec models were inferior spec to PC-AT clones at the same price, so despite about 3M corporate sales, the PS/2 was a failure. The PCjr even more so outside the USA.
No PS/2 models could take the popular ISA expansion cards.
Ironically the PS/2 came out the same year as the Archimedes running on ARM. 1987.
PS/2 and OS/2 were too little, a couple of years too late.
What have iPhones or Apples to do with it? Also Apple is for people with money to spare. Us plebs buy $99 android phones and $400 laptops, some of the laptops run Linux.
The PS/2 didn't have an open BIOS and was a failure in the market place.
Real Quantum computers may or may not happen. Currently they need cryogenics, so even a "small" tower cased sized one might need a room full of support.
Also Quantum computers are not simply faster computers. They handle specialised sorts of problems, so even if really useable ones ever exist you'd probably not want one.
-
Fusion power might be closer, it's hard to say. Basically unless there is a sort of working prototype of something any forecast is total guess work.
Prototypes can take 6 months to 10 years to be commercial:
See Passenger Jet Aircraft (idea is from 1938!). LED is 1924 or 1962. Radio 1898, but home in 1922. Electronic TV proposed 1905, working 1935. LCDs.
Lithium cells nearly 20 years before used in phones and laptops.
Since when did Linux fans care about Windows or Unix / Linux subsystems on them?
I looked at MS Unix offerings for NT4.0 in 1998 and instead ran dual boot with Red Hat Linux.
Now I just run Linux Mint.
Windows 7 was sort of OK, Win10 was horrible.
Even you have to run a business application that only works on Win10, a VM on Linux with Win7 or XP for that application is better. Use Linux for the Internet.
Also one reason for Mac / Windows used to be Adobe. But with Indesign being rent only at nearly $240 pa and rubbish now compared to alternates? Or twice as much on a month to month basis. Even serious Photoshop users now only use it if corporate rented.
Unless there is a nearby hippo.
Hippos also dispose of small yappy dogs.
Last thought of a Croc springing out at a shadow on the bank that's a hippo.
"Oh no"
The croc can't easily abort the spring out of the water. Hippos are bad tempered and really don't like crocs anyway.
Also 128K is too low for stereo even if AAC / DAB+
In practice DAB+ is used to offer 64K stereo at slightly less quality.
Ironically the artefacts are worse for people with impaired hearing as the compression schemes are based on a normal healthy person average perception.
And now it's a duplication of stations on DTT. Also niche nationwide stations are far cheaper to run on the Internet. The only use for Broadcast is mass market content. FM does that very well locally and a few totally nationwide sport / talk / news stations get better coverage on LW and MW.
Only TV, FM/DAB and Satellite. TV and Sat LNB 75 Ohm cable wants to be rather better stuff than the 75 Ohm equivalent to "cheapernet" which is 50 Ohm like RG58. The 75 Ohm equivalent is RG59, only used for FM radio/DAB now. RG6 / PF100 etc is the usual 75 ohm cable now.
BNC is usually 50 Ohms, though 75 Ohm exist. PL259 is 50 Ohms (CB, Marine radio, Ham Radio). N-type is usually 50 Ohms, but a 75 Ohm version for cable similar size to RG213 does exist.
Almost all other radio applications use 50 Ohms. Though I'd only use RG58 for patch cords or a shortwave receive only cable. The RG213 (much fatter than RG6) 50 Ohm is better for VHF/UHF receivers or transmitters.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Standards
Coax ethernet (Vampire Tapped and certainly Cheaper net) was probably pre-existing RF cable?
I've some 92 Ohm cable that was used for some sort of terminal.
Ha, the ZX Spectrum did 1500 bps!
I remember 4 Mbps token ring and 10 Mbits "cheapernet".
The coax based 10 Mbps could easily drop to 500 kbps. I demonstrated this to a customer and he upgraded to Cat5. Though a lot of the PCs were still 10 Mbps, it used a switch, not a hub. The 10 Mbps Cat5 with a hub was just as slow as coax, but you didn't have to check the back of every PC to see where the BNC cable had come off the T-piece. We did add plastic T-shells to some offices too mean to upgrade to Cat5. Twenty five years later I'm still using some of the scrapped 50 Ohm cable to make patch cables occasionally for radio gear.
I dumped the last box of swapped out Token Ring ISA cards at the recycling centre only a couple of years ago, with a couple of token ring "hubs" and the giant hermaphroditic auto closing plug//socket patch cables.
Well meaning comment from the New Statesman:
"Platforms such Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could delete these posts themselves, listening to warnings from users on cases of misinformation and introduce a specific tool to report fake news on coronavirus." -- https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/04/how-celebrities-became-biggest-peddlers-5g-conspiracy-theory-coronavirus-covid-19
Add WhatsApp, LinkedIn, YouTube.
That doesn't work. Accounts need to be PRE-MODERATED by humans till they prove trustworthy and then a link on EVERY post to report to Moderators. Just like every decent Forum.
But SM sites hide behind "Safe harbor" [sic] because they are not really providing a service like Forums, but purely monetising personal information to sell adverts. So they will not do anything that reduces posting volume or requires human labour without being forced to by law.
And the solution isn't to abolish copyright, or pirate the books of living writers and books in print, but reform copyright.
The extensions to copyright have done nothing for Authors, nor employees in corporations producing music, software, screenplays, animations, filming etc who only get their wages and no cut of the royalties.
The fact that creatives are exploited and copyright has pointlessly been extended mainly to suit music and film publishers is no excuse to do this. The books are a soft target and the most vulnerable creatives as almost none are paid a salary by a publisher, they are self employed relying on the royalties.
Even the Bern 50 years is worthless to authors and not huge value to book publishers. It's for music, TV and cinema. Corporate owned works that get re-releases. Book sellers / publishers even publish classic public domain content and sell it, that you can easily legally download.
IA is attacking a soft target and the one that suffers the most. Writers.
Yes, copyright has been wilfully extended, mainly to suit USA music, film, TV and animation producers/distributors.
It's still the original Berne Convention Life + 50 in many countries, though life +25 would be plenty. USA insists on their version, plus DRM on trade treaties.
However the ills of the system and totally evil DRM do not give IA any right whatsoever to do this.
When did any Government suspend copyright for the emergency?
Little of it is Educational. Almost all is in copyright and much in print.
They are using the Covid-19 crisis to justify their own attack on copyright that has been years in the making.
US libraries are still lending ebooks. The Internet Archive "Open Library" has been running for some time. I didn't realise till recently that it licences nothing and pays no royalties.
The abusive extending of copyright and addition of DRM doesn't excuse this immoral behaviour.
Earlier
https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2020/03/24/internet_archive_ebooks_national_emergency_library/
Jupiter Ace had 1 K RAM and could run Pacman written in Forth on that. I had one and even got a 2nd for work to control some test gear.
Allegedly it was a sort of cost reduced Spectrum, according to Wikipedia, because I've forgotten most of what I knew. It had 8 K ROM. I did remember that the designers had worked on the ZX81 and Spectrum. Nowadays in the USA, they'd likely have to work at something else for years due to Serf contracts.
I gave it away maybe less than a year after buying it in 1983. I was using an ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000) in work (replaced later by an Apricot) which made the IBM look stupid when I first used it in 1982. I'd had a Spectrum as a test card generator in 1982 to align and check Thorn TX10 CTVs customised as AV/Computer monitor/TVs for Apple & BBC Micro and VHS.
But for what size of area / projected number of users?
Bare in mind that ONE street cabinet, even for cable or VDSL, might have 100 times that capacity of fibre feeding it and at least more than twice. Just for maybe 1/2 a street ( short suburban European/UK one, not the US concept).
Though the US led increase from Berne 50 to 75 & 95 is Corporate greed and DRM is evil, it doesn't give the Internet Archive any right to do this. They are cynically exploiting the covid 19 pandemic to advance their own aims, they have started scanning more than 10 years ago and the "Open Library" ages ago, which pays no licence fees or royalty.
Yes, it should be life +25, the children of the Author. I'm an author with about 30 books. The repeated extension of copyright is wrong.
However all of the ills of current copyright, stupidity of publishers etc don't affect the fact that Archive org is depriving LIVING authors still in print!
They started this Open Library a while ago. Real Libraries buy a copy and pay royalties.
https://nwu.org/book-division/cdl/faq/
I appreciate the service that Archive.org provides in "saving" copies of vanished websites. AKA "Wayback Machine".
They have Google's attitude to scanning copyright works and not just archiving dead websites, but providing copies of copyright works, beyond webpages, with no remuneration to those selling them.
Also from time to time a book, comic, song, video or program might be distributed "free of charge" by the copyright holder or publisher. That doesn't put it in the Public Domain, nor does it give ANYONE the right to redistribute it.
No author or publisher should have to search to opt out of anything. See also Clearview.
it is just blatant copyright violation, far beyond what Google is allowed (snippets on web pages). Why does Google need to scan an entire copyright work to produce a web snippet? I think we can all work out why. Also the "snippet" is disingenuous as tests show that Google has OCRed entire copyright text and will respond to ANY unique text in the book. The results often come higher than sellers of the book.
My initial reaction:
- This sounds good.
Second reaction:
-- Oh, no! It's stupid because it supports Cryptocurrency, which is only useful to support evil!
+
Third reaction:
--- "The system is also going to suffer from the exact same problems as the dark web. It attracts fraudsters and criminals and so scares off most users while drawing in law enforcement like a magnet. And then to top it all off, there is the price for a .crypto domain: $200."
So a scam that enables scammers. However there is the glimmer of an interesting idea in it.
The better solution is to scrap ICANN, Verisign and the other parasites and put it all under the ITU, despite all the failings of the UN and ITU (which predates the UN by nearly 75 years?)
I don't know, aren't some of these Cloudy Corporations more like the speech he gave on the Wheel in the Third Man? Though not spoiled by the inaccuracy. Germans, not Swiss, invented the Cuckoo Clock. Though the Swiss were tardy at giving votes to Women and joining the UN. Perhaps they are related to Ents.
"Folks covered by the EU’s GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and similar laws, can ask Clearview – the controversial face-recognition startup that scraped three billion images of people from the internet – to reveal what images it may have of you in its database and delete them."
Really that's crazy. They should be fined by EU and California and forced to delete all of them. Most people impacted will never have heard of Clearview.
BT keyboards sleep and miss characters or randomly unpair and can take ages to setup. Sometimes they work. However proprietary 2.4 GHz wireless mini-keyboards with a USB mini-dongle work better even on an Android phone.
It's a niche product for someone that wants a nearly real pocket computer, like what a version today of the 2001/2002 Nokia 9210i would be like. Unfortunately by 2003 Nokia Phone division Management had seriously lost the plot on management and GUI choices/development.
Most of the darker skinned people in the World are not USA Citizens.
Most actual Africans, or non-Americans of African origin do not use African American Vernacular English (AAVE).
Lots of Black people in the USA don't seem to use AAVE either. At least not the ones I met. Perhaps it's particular urban socio-economic groups in the USA that use AAVE.
Personally I think Speech recognition has hardly improved since the 1990s and over 15 years ago when it was on devices locally. I suspect a major reason for the Speech Recognition using the remote server now is the invasive capture of your behaviour. Maybe it's really much better for a certain narrow class of White Americans.
There is negligible difference genetically between a tall fair, blue eyed Scandinavian and an African bush person. There are more genetic differences within Africa.
The tint of the skin or your height, eye or hair color or kind of hair is irrelevant to Speech Recognition. The very idea of Race was only invented to justify exploitation of various ethnic groups by more powerful groups.