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I've had the same experience with canon.. I have sent them an email and got a polite reply that they would send my comments to the appropriate person. After that i didn't hear a word from them..

Well we are not doomed afterall.. There is still work in progress going on and I actually got my scanner (canoscan 656u) to work (not with the nice sane interface), so I could use it under linux.

Here are a few links regarding canon usb scanners that might prove useful:

Canon N650U Linux Driver Development

SANE backend / Tools for Canon USB Scanners

It might pay off if some more people wrote to canon about the need for linux-drivers:

Canon eCare <CareCenter@cits.canon.com>

The reduction in artifacts is the real benefit IMO. Sometimes you just have to push the quality level up to ridiculous levels to get acceptable images with JPEG, and as the quality goes above around 90, the file size starts ballooning.

For a particularly excruciating example, see this image of Buddhist prayer flags against a plain blue sky from my recent holiday. (Blue skys seem to be particularly susceptible to artifacts.) IIRC, the qualitly level here is 85, and really, it is not acceptable. The trouble was, even at 85, the file was rather bigger than I wanted.

Ok, so I've gotten into this geocaching thing lately, and while working on a cache to be hidden in about 60 feet of water off the coast, it occured to me that a blinking LED might make it easier for divers to spot. No problem, whip up a blinker circuit with an LM3909 and a super-bright green LED and we're set. But what about power? Sure, four D-cells would let it run for close to a decade, but where's the fun in that? The undersea environment is quite dynamic, and there's got to be some power down there that can be harnessed. What I need are some ideas on how to do that.

We keep seeing stories here about tidal power, and that's cool, but I don't see how it can be done without a column rising all the way to the surface. So here are the ideas I've got right now. Keep in mind that the device will probably be housed in a length of 4-inch PVC or ABS pipe, and it needs about 0.5 ma at 1.5 volts:

• Surge power. Put a couple of funnels back-to-back with a CPU cooling fan-sized turbine and generator in the middle, and run the output through a rectifier and capacitor. But how reliable will those moving parts be after years underwater?
• Self-winding watch concept. Float the thing tethered to the bottom and install some sort of pendulum inside with a magnet on it, moving through a coil. The moving parts are protected, but will it be enough power?
• Yank the chain. Again, tether it, but use the varying tension on the tether to drive a dynamo of some sort.
• Nukes. Anyone got a spare radioisotope thermoelectric generator? Any idea how many smoke detectors I'd need to cannibalize to get enough Americium-241?
• Magnetohydrodynamic generator. Like the surge power thing, but using the flow of cunductive seawater through a magnetic field to generate a current. I have no idea how much power this would generate, if any, or how to deal with ion accumulation at the electrodes.

The generator need not fit inside the 4-inch cache tube, but it shouldn't be huge, either. It needs to be practical to build, and not terribly expensive. Above all it's got to be reliable and enduring. Any ideas?

I found these when i started working for big blue... they scare me severely.

OUR I. B. M. SALESMEN
Tune: "Jingle Bells"

1. I. B. M., Happy men, smiling all the way.
Oh what fun it is to sell our products night and day.

I. B. M., Watson men, partners of T. J.
In his service to mankind-that's why we are so gay.

There is a player for the original music from Sinclair Spectrum and Amstrad CPC games, called ``aylet'', here. There is an XMMS plugin being developed for this too, here.

Mmmmmm, Bubble Bobble.... doo doo doo doo dooooo, doo doo doo doooo...

;)

Some people said it was slashdotted(?).. so here's a mirror.. Mirror Here

I doctored one of those "I am 10" badges by adding a 9 in the upper-right hand corner, to read "I am 10^9".

You can see the invitation on my web site (PDF, 55kb) for a while.

Because it would cost a lot of money and time, and since they're not losing any actual money from Medievia's misuse of the license, they couldn't sue for damages. Someone a few comments up pointed to an informative page on the subject.

Of course, this new Entropia project gets to write their own license, assuming they're not basing their code on one of the many fine free mud codebases (where your equipment might degrade through use, but not due to economic externalities!)

Here is a mirror of the review of sorcerer as the distrowatch site appears to have had the obvious done to it already :/

I personnally use !SmbServer under RiscOS in order to efficiently share some files and printers with Linux and Windows machines.
I just find it amazing and it IMHO has become a true protocol, much beyond its original Linux/Windows filesharing scope.
Thanks !

The resulting angry reaction in the ntl newsgroups was fascinating to watch, and as someone who uses ssh to connect home, I was interested in the results.

It appears that NTL did in the end listen, as the terms and conditions for hosting servers were changed substantially. In brief (see section 16. Servers), NTL provide detailed rules that seem to amount to simply requiring responsible use.

I have found a picture of the American Football Helmet Camera as well now...

CueCamera

Look here for one of the first pictures of a rugby ball with video camera capabilities...

Unfortunately the UK's RIP bill is worded such that you have to prove that you don't know it. Bit tricky that.

Jack Straw, then the home secetary, (the very one that lied about performing a real inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster) has in his posession an encrypted confession to a crime sent to him by a group showing the dumb nature of the bill. Under UK law, he can be prosecuted by his own bill, because he cannot prove he doesn't know the key.

The trouble is that the market here has been hoisted on its own petard - when no subscription, toll-free, ad-free dial-up is available (though for how much longer, no-one knows), Joe User can't see the point in broadband.

This is sad news. I've just been reading one of his Andromeda sci-fi books, which were also produced a British TV series in the early sixties.

The story involves a criminal entity/corporation called 'Intel' no less! Also a lot of VERY CLOSE parallels to Carl Sagan's 'Contact' (which I also love).

Great stuff, full of good science and a classic Brit feel, written by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot.

I've put up a mirror here.

In the UK a pitiful number of users have broadband access. The lucky ones get 512kb/s async access. The rest are stuck with modem access that's supposed to give 56kb/s but often provides just 33.6.

Essentially, we have two offerings (though you have to be lucky to get either!):

1. ADSL. Offered by our single, monopolistic telephone provider. Available in tiny amounts of the country.
2. Cable. A better, and cheaper offering, but still only async. 512kb/s. Availability is limited to large towns.

The Register had a good story on how the uk and europe trailed the US and Canada.....

I'm connected to Cable via NTL and am very happy. Sure, the 2mb/s link at work is nice - but 512kb/s is plenty for SSH ;)

• AltaVista admits service a sham
• Alta Vista's world crumbles
• AltaVista mystery ends today
• AltaVista: the silence continues and the farce continues
• CMGI to buy ISP for Altavista