Actually, it's a sensitivity to red. Apparently some women (termed tetrachromats) have an extra cone along down the red way allowing them to make more distinction when there are red hues in a color. The article was in Wired if you want to narrow your search.
Speaking of mice and since you are getting an iBook, I'd recommend highly trying out SideTrack, a replacement touchpad driver that adds TONS of useful features like a scroll area (horizonal and vertical) and up to 5 extra mouse buttons (center tap and 4 corners tap).
It also gives you several options of acceleration profiles; one of which is similar to PC trackpad accelerations if you are used to them.
I only ask because I wrote it:) I was very excited at the end of last year when XM was really getting into supporting the XMPCR hackers. We were all very nervous that they would turn on us, but they very suprisingly did the opposite. It's highly unfortunate that they seem to have changed their tune.
Another poster mentioned that the SkyFi 2 radio that is supposedly forthcoming is rumored to have a USB port and be computer controllable. If they are canning the XMPCR for this, then I can't say that I really blame them. Delphi makes the SkyFi and XM probably doesn't want to hurt sales of a new radio by offering a product with similar functionality for a lot less money (ie why would you buy a $150 skyfi2 for your computer when you could buy a $50 xmpcr?) XM makes the money from selilng the module to delphi anyway, so it's not like they are making any less money stopping the distribution of the PCR.
Now here's a tangent...
It's also worth noting that if the skyfi 2 USB rumor has truth to it, it might be a good opportunity for them to fix some of the problems with the XMPCR such as the slow (9600bps) communications speed between the radio and the computer. It would also be slick if they added the ability to receive data through the unit - their network is capable of it -- XM weather radios that download and present gobs of data are available, but expensive.
Something like USB (or bluetooth!) + a data cpable SkyFi 2 + A PocketPC could SIGNIFICANTLY enhande their traffic+weather offerings to provide maps, etc. right alongside the broadcast. As XM are currently fighting a war with local broadcast stations who are trying to prevent them from broadcasting "in their markets", this would certainly give them an edge in the fight, as it would turn XM into a 'weather data' service and not simply a radio broadcast. [To go further aside, this is a battle that I'd really like to see XM win.]
I'm glad to hear this! Things were looking down there. Hopefully, it will be more than just a rumor. The original XMPCR while minimalistic, inexpensive, and straight-to-the-point, had a significatn setback for control software -- the interface was stuck at 9600 bps! It takes over 20 seconds to grab the list of stations and what's playing. This slow refresh time is quite a hindrance when the radio internally is updating it much faster..
As I said in another post, you can take apart any XM radio, remove the XM module (it's a one-piece SIPP package) add a usb/serial converter and a DAC to it and make your own identical XMPCR device. There is no need to reverse engineer anything at all. The protocol has been documented by people writing software for it. The PC->radio protocol is the same used internally by the microcontrollers in every commercial product out there.
Except the poster completely misread the question and answered a one that was not asked.... Of course it can decode HDTV! It's just (basically) MPEG2. Most recent GPU's are capable of the feat (if there is support from drivers and software to do so, of course)
First of all, XM are complete pieces of shit for doing this. The XMPCR was the only reason I even bought into satellite radio service in the first place. I use the XM-PCR on my Car PC and listen to it for hours every day.
It's worth noting, though, that the XMPCR is a pretty simple device. It would be incredibly easy to build a DIY one out of any XM radio. Here's why:
XM sells a receiver module to radio manufacturers. Essentially the satellite part of the radio hardware is made by XM and is the same on all units. This module exposes a serial interface (9600 baud TTL level) for control and it outputs digital audio (I forget what format). It's powered on 5V (or 3.3V -- i forget)
Anyway, all the XMPCR has in it is a simple power supply circuit, a USB/Serial converter, a DAC and an antenna jack. All you would have to do to make your own is take the tuner module out of an existing radio and wire it up the same way. You could even use the same USB/Serial converter to make it 100% identical to the regular XMPCR. The serial number (used for activation and whatnot) can be queried out of the module with a command (or taken off the donor radio's label of course).
If you are worried about the key fob being taken, you could put it inside the computer case, either on the motherboards "front panel" usb headers. Also some USB PCI cards have an internal port that would be perfect for this sort of thing.
Well while it's a hoax, the image itself is mostly real. That is a powerbook box and most likely the image was overexposed so that you couldn't tell that the styrofoam molds where the same as in a powerbook box.
Unfortunately in the case of the XM application, "Fair use" goes out the window because you specifically waive the right when you agree to the ToS from XM which specifically disallows recording. Thus, it is a little "black hat" in that this guy broke his contract with XM and encouraged others to do so.
The question of whether or not XM ought to be allowed to enforce such a restriction in their contract or whether such a restriction is legal or fair is a related, but completely different argument. You can say that it would be a lot like your cable company putting a 'no record' contract in your contract, then suing TiVo because they are selling a device that makes recordings. (Note that this is precicely what happened when VCR's started becoming commonplace.) The TiVo analogy differs from the XM analogy in an important way, though. TiVo would not have been subject to the same no-recording restrictions as you, and thus, only you would actually be in violation. The real problem is that anyone trying to restrict broadcast TV or radio in this manner would (and did) generate enormous public outcry, but XM doing the same thing does not. If 1,000,000 of their paying customers decided to raise a stink about it and leave, then they would certainly do something about it. As it stands, there are disturbingly few people who actually seem to care about it anymore...
You have to sync atomic clocks every time you move them around a good deal (notebooks/portables); plus if you want a fairly reliable stratum-1 timeserver now, you can use GPS, for which you can buy a reasonable OEM receiver for about $50.
Simply not true. You can transmit 1 Watt with 802.11b in the US, but the most powerful cards can only be pumped up to about a 1/4 Watt.
I'm sure you know this, but part 15 actually limits you to 1W (30dB) EIRP (technically in some situation you can push 36dB but we will not get into that) which is not the same as your radio being able to output 1W or not. Antenna gain generally plays the biggest part in this. I would put good money that a lot of people out there running 200mW cards with a high gain directional antenna are actually operating illegally. Higher power radios with low-gain omni's are often great for indoor spaces, but by the time you stick a big 24dB antenna up on a pole, you don't need that much power from the radio.
As an aside (and more or a reply to the grandparent post) there are a lot of good reasons for needing to get around the FCC restrictions in the driver -- using the radio in countries outside the US is the main need, but there are other situations where it's good to allow it such as when ham radio guys (legally) use frequencies outside the ISM band...
This is true, but it will make X require a modern gfx card.
How do you figure? There are software fallbacks on every windowing system out there that does hardware-accelerated compositing - even the X work. Before you hit reply there to say "But it's slower!" remember a couple things: Modern 3d graphics cards are getting slower and slower software framebuffers (ie copying raw pixel data to the screen) as they put more focus on the hardware acceleration stuff (ie copying around texture data via DMA or somesuch) -- you will take a speed hit if you DONT implement more and more hardware assisted techniques. Next, you really have to define what you mean by a "modern graphics card" because there are almost no devices out there that require X to simply draw to a raw framebuffer except for maybe some embedded platforms. Even framebuffer-only devices implement minimal hardware acceleration such as page-flipping. We can hope that any software-only fallback is going to be as efficient as possible, so it's naive to assume that writing software routines to emulate the hardware compositing will be any slower than the software routines that are 'faking it' now via various techniques. In all likelyhood, it would actually be faster, or if not faster, it would require less of a memory footprint.
Re:Compositing
on
The Power of X
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Compositing is not all about transparency you know. Being able to do things like offload drawing onto the powerful graphics cpu's present in most new computers these days is the most obvious beneft. There is also a nice benefit to the multi-desktop pagers and desktop preview widgets out there, since it's a lot less work to capture and resize image windows. For users without a lot of screen real-estate, switching techniques such as Apple's Expose can in many cases give a user a real benefit. Most of these things would be slow or impossible to do without good compositing. Every time I drag my kterm across a thunderbird window, I feel the pain of X (Nvidia's drivers do not help much either)
Most of the AP's around my are are encrypted. I'd suggest that only about 25% are free of WEP. Part of this has to do with SBC DSL providing the '2wire' DSL routers that include WiFi (even if you don't need it) to their customers. I get about 1 open AP per 2 blocks of driving, but I get 2-4 WEP AP's per block.
If there's one thing that's kind of nice about living in Texas and travelling all over the place, it's that people in the world tend to know the location of Texas.
Still, people in the United States can't seem to get a grip on the size of the state. I have heard "Can you drive to Houston to meet me for a meeting tomorrow?" a suprisingly large number of times. Companies put their "Regional" sales office in Dallas or San Antonio and give me the third degree when I ask if it's OK to go meet with their Oklahoma City office people instead (it's 1/2 the distance)
I usually don't post replies like this, but this question is ridiculously underresearched. OCR is a hard problem. Sure, a OSS alternative would be nice, but until a solution matures, when you really need OCR you need it because it's generally unreasonable either from a time standpoint or a budget standpoint to any alternative. That is why people pay for software sometimes.
TextBridge, PaperPort, and a host of other entry level programs are available for windows under a $100 price point. Generally if you buy a decent scanner (ie not a $50 piece of crap), you'll get some software capable of doing OCR bundled for free.
Higher-end OCR packages with better accuracy, more features, etc. often cost quite a bit more. OmniPage Pro is a decent package for only slightly more than $100. ReadIris is a really good program, and is reportedly very quick in comparison to some of the others. I imagine this is the reason that it costs $400.
There are document management packages out there that have very good OCR integrated that cost a hell of a lot more than $400. Trust me, though, if you're looking at the time or cost of converting a few thousand pages of data into editible text documents, a program that costs even $400 should be a steal.
It's going to disagree a bit anyway. The odometer reading is not available over OBD-II (well, it might be with some vendor-specific extensions) -- so the only way they can calculate distance is to do an integral based on their speedometer measurements. Since OBD-II updates are not that fast -- maybe 1/2 second intervals at best, this calculated distance is going to vary somewhat from the odometer measured distance no matter what you do.
The only standard way this data is available on vehicles is via OBD-II. Such dataloggers are already commonly available and used by mechanics to diagnose problems, but here is the real problem -- you could dupe them VERY esily. It would take any sensible programmer with a copy of the (free) standards less than a day to create some kind of simulator that you plug the device into instead of your car.
The only real benefit I see to this problem is that if you call them out on it, you'll probably be able to get the 'safe' rate without having to plug the thing into your own car.
Incedentally, you can get the footage for DL for Daphne from the Dragons Lair DVD's that are out (man playing that on the DVD player has GOT to suck!) Instructions for ripping it so Daphne can use it are all over the place. Using the DL roms without a machine, though, is definately a grey area situation, though.
Haha yeah it sucks. The current version is a little better than version 4, though you can change the color schemes to something a little more sane in both.
If you really never want to see it you can delve into the hysteria of the arkc command line client with it's ten million options and modes.
Try Daphne with an arcade conroller of some sort and you'll get pretty much the real deal (minus the scoreboard) -- if you buy a real Dragon's Lair scoreboard, you can build an interface to have Daphne control it, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's a sensitivity to red. Apparently some women (termed tetrachromats) have an extra cone along down the red way allowing them to make more distinction when there are red hues in a color. The article was in Wired if you want to narrow your search.
Speaking of mice and since you are getting an iBook, I'd recommend highly trying out SideTrack, a replacement touchpad driver that adds TONS of useful features like a scroll area (horizonal and vertical) and up to 5 extra mouse buttons (center tap and 4 corners tap).
It also gives you several options of acceleration profiles; one of which is similar to PC trackpad accelerations if you are used to them.
A car pc, do you say? Do you happen to use this program:
p =1 25414
:) I was very excited at the end of last year when XM was really getting into supporting the XMPCR hackers. We were all very nervous that they would turn on us, but they very suprisingly did the opposite. It's highly unfortunate that they seem to have changed their tune.
...
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?
I only ask because I wrote it
Another poster mentioned that the SkyFi 2 radio that is supposedly forthcoming is rumored to have a USB port and be computer controllable. If they are canning the XMPCR for this, then I can't say that I really blame them. Delphi makes the SkyFi and XM probably doesn't want to hurt sales of a new radio by offering a product with similar functionality for a lot less money (ie why would you buy a $150 skyfi2 for your computer when you could buy a $50 xmpcr?) XM makes the money from selilng the module to delphi anyway, so it's not like they are making any less money stopping the distribution of the PCR.
Now here's a tangent
It's also worth noting that if the skyfi 2 USB rumor has truth to it, it might be a good opportunity for them to fix some of the problems with the XMPCR such as the slow (9600bps) communications speed between the radio and the computer. It would also be slick if they added the ability to receive data through the unit - their network is capable of it -- XM weather radios that download and present gobs of data are available, but expensive.
Something like USB (or bluetooth!) + a data cpable SkyFi 2 + A PocketPC could SIGNIFICANTLY enhande their traffic+weather offerings to provide maps, etc. right alongside the broadcast. As XM are currently fighting a war with local broadcast stations who are trying to prevent them from broadcasting "in their markets", this would certainly give them an edge in the fight, as it would turn XM into a 'weather data' service and not simply a radio broadcast. [To go further aside, this is a battle that I'd really like to see XM win.]
I'm glad to hear this! Things were looking down there. Hopefully, it will be more than just a rumor. The original XMPCR while minimalistic, inexpensive, and straight-to-the-point, had a significatn setback for control software -- the interface was stuck at 9600 bps! It takes over 20 seconds to grab the list of stations and what's playing. This slow refresh time is quite a hindrance when the radio internally is updating it much faster..
As I said in another post, you can take apart any XM radio, remove the XM module (it's a one-piece SIPP package) add a usb/serial converter and a DAC to it and make your own identical XMPCR device. There is no need to reverse engineer anything at all. The protocol has been documented by people writing software for it. The PC->radio protocol is the same used internally by the microcontrollers in every commercial product out there.
Except the poster completely misread the question and answered a one that was not asked.... Of course it can decode HDTV! It's just (basically) MPEG2. Most recent GPU's are capable of the feat (if there is support from drivers and software to do so, of course)
First of all, XM are complete pieces of shit for doing this. The XMPCR was the only reason I even bought into satellite radio service in the first place. I use the XM-PCR on my Car PC and listen to it for hours every day.
It's worth noting, though, that the XMPCR is a pretty simple device. It would be incredibly easy to build a DIY one out of any XM radio. Here's why:
XM sells a receiver module to radio manufacturers. Essentially the satellite part of the radio hardware is made by XM and is the same on all units. This module exposes a serial interface (9600 baud TTL level) for control and it outputs digital audio (I forget what format). It's powered on 5V (or 3.3V -- i forget)
Anyway, all the XMPCR has in it is a simple power supply circuit, a USB/Serial converter, a DAC and an antenna jack. All you would have to do to make your own is take the tuner module out of an existing radio and wire it up the same way. You could even use the same USB/Serial converter to make it 100% identical to the regular XMPCR. The serial number (used for activation and whatnot) can be queried out of the module with a command (or taken off the donor radio's label of course).
If you are worried about the key fob being taken, you could put it inside the computer case, either on the motherboards "front panel" usb headers. Also some USB PCI cards have an internal port that would be perfect for this sort of thing.
Well while it's a hoax, the image itself is mostly real. That is a powerbook box and most likely the image was overexposed so that you couldn't tell that the styrofoam molds where the same as in a powerbook box.
Unfortunately in the case of the XM application, "Fair use" goes out the window because you specifically waive the right when you agree to the ToS from XM which specifically disallows recording. Thus, it is a little "black hat" in that this guy broke his contract with XM and encouraged others to do so.
The question of whether or not XM ought to be allowed to enforce such a restriction in their contract or whether such a restriction is legal or fair is a related, but completely different argument. You can say that it would be a lot like your cable company putting a 'no record' contract in your contract, then suing TiVo because they are selling a device that makes recordings. (Note that this is precicely what happened when VCR's started becoming commonplace.) The TiVo analogy differs from the XM analogy in an important way, though. TiVo would not have been subject to the same no-recording restrictions as you, and thus, only you would actually be in violation. The real problem is that anyone trying to restrict broadcast TV or radio in this manner would (and did) generate enormous public outcry, but XM doing the same thing does not. If 1,000,000 of their paying customers decided to raise a stink about it and leave, then they would certainly do something about it. As it stands, there are disturbingly few people who actually seem to care about it anymore...
You have to sync atomic clocks every time you move them around a good deal (notebooks/portables); plus if you want a fairly reliable stratum-1 timeserver now, you can use GPS, for which you can buy a reasonable OEM receiver for about $50.
Simply not true. You can transmit 1 Watt with 802.11b in the US, but the most powerful cards can only be pumped up to about a 1/4 Watt.
I'm sure you know this, but part 15 actually limits you to 1W (30dB) EIRP (technically in some situation you can push 36dB but we will not get into that) which is not the same as your radio being able to output 1W or not. Antenna gain generally plays the biggest part in this. I would put good money that a lot of people out there running 200mW cards with a high gain directional antenna are actually operating illegally. Higher power radios with low-gain omni's are often great for indoor spaces, but by the time you stick a big 24dB antenna up on a pole, you don't need that much power from the radio.
As an aside (and more or a reply to the grandparent post) there are a lot of good reasons for needing to get around the FCC restrictions in the driver -- using the radio in countries outside the US is the main need, but there are other situations where it's good to allow it such as when ham radio guys (legally) use frequencies outside the ISM band...
This is true, but it will make X require a modern gfx card.
How do you figure? There are software fallbacks on every windowing system out there that does hardware-accelerated compositing - even the X work. Before you hit reply there to say "But it's slower!" remember a couple things: Modern 3d graphics cards are getting slower and slower software framebuffers (ie copying raw pixel data to the screen) as they put more focus on the hardware acceleration stuff (ie copying around texture data via DMA or somesuch) -- you will take a speed hit if you DONT implement more and more hardware assisted techniques. Next, you really have to define what you mean by a "modern graphics card" because there are almost no devices out there that require X to simply draw to a raw framebuffer except for maybe some embedded platforms. Even framebuffer-only devices implement minimal hardware acceleration such as page-flipping. We can hope that any software-only fallback is going to be as efficient as possible, so it's naive to assume that writing software routines to emulate the hardware compositing will be any slower than the software routines that are 'faking it' now via various techniques. In all likelyhood, it would actually be faster, or if not faster, it would require less of a memory footprint.
Compositing is not all about transparency you know. Being able to do things like offload drawing onto the powerful graphics cpu's present in most new computers these days is the most obvious beneft. There is also a nice benefit to the multi-desktop pagers and desktop preview widgets out there, since it's a lot less work to capture and resize image windows. For users without a lot of screen real-estate, switching techniques such as Apple's Expose can in many cases give a user a real benefit. Most of these things would be slow or impossible to do without good compositing. Every time I drag my kterm across a thunderbird window, I feel the pain of X (Nvidia's drivers do not help much either)
Most of the AP's around my are are encrypted. I'd suggest that only about 25% are free of WEP. Part of this has to do with SBC DSL providing the '2wire' DSL routers that include WiFi (even if you don't need it) to their customers. I get about 1 open AP per 2 blocks of driving, but I get 2-4 WEP AP's per block.
If there's one thing that's kind of nice about living in Texas and travelling all over the place, it's that people in the world tend to know the location of Texas.
Still, people in the United States can't seem to get a grip on the size of the state. I have heard "Can you drive to Houston to meet me for a meeting tomorrow?" a suprisingly large number of times. Companies put their "Regional" sales office in Dallas or San Antonio and give me the third degree when I ask if it's OK to go meet with their Oklahoma City office people instead (it's 1/2 the distance)
I blame commonly used map projections!
Hey now wait! MCA had some advantages like.... uh.. well the connector was smaller, and they had those handy blue handles!
I usually don't post replies like this, but this question is ridiculously underresearched. OCR is a hard problem. Sure, a OSS alternative would be nice, but until a solution matures, when you really need OCR you need it because it's generally unreasonable either from a time standpoint or a budget standpoint to any alternative. That is why people pay for software sometimes.
TextBridge, PaperPort, and a host of other entry level programs are available for windows under a $100 price point. Generally if you buy a decent scanner (ie not a $50 piece of crap), you'll get some software capable of doing OCR bundled for free.
Higher-end OCR packages with better accuracy, more features, etc. often cost quite a bit more. OmniPage Pro is a decent package for only slightly more than $100. ReadIris is a really good program, and is reportedly very quick in comparison to some of the others. I imagine this is the reason that it costs $400.
There are document management packages out there that have very good OCR integrated that cost a hell of a lot more than $400. Trust me, though, if you're looking at the time or cost of converting a few thousand pages of data into editible text documents, a program that costs even $400 should be a steal.
It's going to disagree a bit anyway. The odometer reading is not available over OBD-II (well, it might be with some vendor-specific extensions) -- so the only way they can calculate distance is to do an integral based on their speedometer measurements. Since OBD-II updates are not that fast -- maybe 1/2 second intervals at best, this calculated distance is going to vary somewhat from the odometer measured distance no matter what you do.
The only standard way this data is available on vehicles is via OBD-II. Such dataloggers are already commonly available and used by mechanics to diagnose problems, but here is the real problem -- you could dupe them VERY esily. It would take any sensible programmer with a copy of the (free) standards less than a day to create some kind of simulator that you plug the device into instead of your car.
The only real benefit I see to this problem is that if you call them out on it, you'll probably be able to get the 'safe' rate without having to plug the thing into your own car.
If you really want a challenge, try to make them stand up on their own.
I got the deer to do it, but the horse is still giving me trouble.
If the author doesn't even have the final say about the TITLE OF HER OWN BOOK, then something else is seriously wrong.
Incedentally, you can get the footage for DL for Daphne from the Dragons Lair DVD's that are out (man playing that on the DVD player has GOT to suck!) Instructions for ripping it so Daphne can use it are all over the place. Using the DL roms without a machine, though, is definately a grey area situation, though.
Haha yeah it sucks. The current version is a little better than version 4, though you can change the color schemes to something a little more sane in both.
If you really never want to see it you can delve into the hysteria of the arkc command line client with it's ten million options and modes.
Try Daphne with an arcade conroller of some sort and you'll get pretty much the real deal (minus the scoreboard) -- if you buy a real Dragon's Lair scoreboard, you can build an interface to have Daphne control it, though.