Here's a related topic to this whole Mindstorm business. I have a system that LEGO designed way way before the Mindstorms and even MIT's LEGO brick (which became the basis of the Mindstorms) called LEGO Technic TC. It consisted of a very simple 8-bit ISA card that connected to a black box with a ribbon cable. Basically it was a relay control card. The thing had 6 "output ports" that could either drive a motor forward and backward or operate a light. It also had two input ports for 1-bit touch sensors or optical sensors (or any other 1-bit sensor you could build for that matter).
The whole system was programmed in a LOGO (Remember that one, geeks?) environment called LEGO TC LOGO. It ran under DOS. I have been unable to find any control programs for this thing except for the stupid worthless DOS based LOGO.
Is anyone else still using this system? Is there anything for it under Linux?
This is simply a case of an entity charging a service fee for packaging free data. HELLO this is what RedHat and all the other linux distros do. You want it on a CD? You (or somebody) pays (at the very least) shipping and handling (cover our costs) charges. In some cases you pay big bucks for value added services such as support. This is no different than what the post office is doing.
You want the entire list for free? Go to the post office and you may freely molest the paper zip code directory chained to the counter. You can even hand copy or photograph each page if you so desire. Its when you need the data in your hot little hands that money starts to be an issue. Sure the zip code information is politically free but what about the people who sit around all day assigning zones and keeping the central database updated? What about the people that typeset that enormous tome chained to the post office counter? That's going to cost you money! This is a no brainer. The post office is in the right!
Here's an idea: How about some nice resourceful individuals get off of their bitch-against-corporate-america asses and start an open information project like the one for road maps of the USA (I forget the name/address) and compile a list of zip codes and their associated information into a nice manageable database and give it out free?
What is particularly interesting to note is that the quality of these Internet Raido shows is generally fairly poor. The voice recognition and dictation software that I have toyed with before have always suggested using better microphones and higher sampling rates to achieve decent results. Some even claimed that low quality audio results in a severe accuracy penalty.
It is very remarkable that this thing can index these low quality streams with the accuracy that they do! I hope that searchable media (other than text) continues to get better like this. Companies like Virage and Compaq definately deserve our support. I hope that standard interfaces appear soon.
I had an ircii (ok well it was BitchX, but probably would have worked on ircii) that worked with babelfish to translate stuff. I will try to dig it up and post a url (or you could e-mail me) It was called gtrans.bx and I dont know if anyone out there kept it up to date.. anyway it wasn't even that bad in realtime since it made a seperate connection for each translation it did.. There was some latency, sure, but it could do 10 or 20 translations at once. I suppose it could have worked on a queue system with http 1.1 to further expedite things but i really didnt get that deep with it. Anyway, it worked like this:
/mylang Sets your default language (put in your startup)
/de,/en,/es,/pt,/fr,/it Translates your typing into the language of choice and funnels it to the current dialog. With all of the translation commands if $mylang is set to a non-english, translation to english is done before translating to another language due to babelfish.
/mde,/men,/mes,/mpt,/mfr,/mit Sends a message to in the specified language
/flag Sets autotranslation of a person or a channel. This was really the coolest command. If some spanish-speaking person came in, you can just/flag juan es and everything you/msg juan was translated to spanish and everything juan said was translated from spanish. Also if you addressed juan in the channel.. eg. said "juan:" it would print in both spanish and your language.
/trans Self explanitory. Output for your eyes only.
Additionally, there were some new functions that people could use to implement their own fun foreign language commands..
I have heard there is a babelfish library out there that provides a standard way to interface a program with babelfish. Plus, only one thing has to be updated for all of your babelfish-ized programs to work. With a client like BitchX this would be very easy to simply load and use!
This GPLTrans thing sounds very exciting and i'd very much like to see about building a new (better) irc script on top of it!
~GoRK
PS. Since the site is slashdotted, could anyone who knows please tell us a little more about it? Can we do the translation on our own hardware or is it central-server based? Can it directly translate between languages where english is neither the source nor the target? Does it provide a standard (e.g..so loadable lib) interface for other programs to call?
I would very much like some day to see all of my basic network communications apps (mail client, newsreader, web browser, instant messenger, irc client, etc) have the ability to machine-translate both incoming and outgoing stuff. Everyone seems to be so bent on how "good" the translation is. If a machine can translate something so that I have a basic grasp of what is going on, then the translation has been a monumental success! I would like to machine translation people focus on getting the technology more widespread before they go trying to make their software translate everything perfectly!!
Somewhere I seem to remember an article that was about a neural net that read magazine articles every day and then asked a question to be answered by a human after each article. One day after it had accumulated a wealth of its virtual knowledge, the operator fed it an article on religion. The computer spit back a perplexing query. It was "If God does not exist, then why does Man have religion?" In many ways it was both shocking and frightening that a machine could formulate such a question.
You control a geeky computer user who browses the web while wasting time at work. The objective is for you to lose money faster than you can earn it. The game simulates the valuation of memes and your currency in the game is measured in karma. You need this karma to keep from crashing. The geekier you get the more likely your karma is to increase, but the more likely your salary will increase as well, making it difficult to effectively lose money by wasting time.
I noticed there wasnt an address or an active petition linked anywhere.. Thought these address from the GT Interactive "Contact Us" page might be of use:
Customer Service If you have a general inquiry about existing or upcoming GT titles, choose from the following list of customer service agents:
f you are a member of the PRESS with a product-specific inquiry, write to Product Communications.
~GoRK
Re:Looking At It In Different Ways
on
Using Samba
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· Score: 1
In practical use, there are sometimes quite a few little bitty differences/tweaks on the client side that can optimize performance with a samba server vs. a regular NT server. Even in replacement situations, this chapter gives valuable advice on how best to configure the *CLIENTS* for *SAMBA* since it really doesn't work 100% exactly like NT.
I motion that this article be deleted from slashdot and all comments et. al. be stricken from the database. Please indicate your support for this motion by replying to this thread.
Who cares about Linux on Jeopardy? I just want to see Eddy back on there! Let's get that blind ass-kicking sportswriter back! Eddy is my all-time favorite Jeopardy player. These teen tournaments are making me sick. All the contestants are so obnoxious.
There was a deaf guy at work who pronounced "gigabyte" which everyone in the entire world seems to pronounce "gig-uh-bite" but he used a soft g so he said "jig-uh-bite" and of course he was deaf so we couldn't really explain it to him.
If this is a commercial venture and you're looking at offering news kind of like a 'portal' does (god i hate buzzwords) then there are a couple companies that eliminate the need to do-it-yourself and will also eliminate the legal hassles for delivering news content... if it fits your bill, that is.
Here are the two that I know of. I have used both services and they have been fairly decent content providers.
1) Screaming Media http://www.screamingmedia.net/ - These guys let you pick and choose what goes on your site. Articles appear as if they came from your site. Good hands-on approach. Good content, too.
2) iSyndicate http://www.isyndicate.com/ - These guys let you publish your content back to their network as well as letting you use their syndicated content. I really like the way it works. I dont know if you have as much say as to what comes down the pipes from them though.. E.G. not wanting to put your competitor's press release on your site..
Anyway that's just a glimpse of the content providers out there. I have seen tens upon tens of them.. these are the two that i had settled on before. I hope that you might find some use with them. iSyndicate used to have a free program too.. i dont know what (if anything) happened to that.. possibly it's still there.
Sorry to say it, but yeah, an LCD can be used to snoop on you too. So can your keyboard. So can your hard drive; processor; printer; scanner; etc. Pretty much any computer part that has electricity running through it is a security hazard when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Read some of the articles on the Complete TEMPEST Information Page if you want to really scare yourself. Convieniently, there are also links to companies there who produce TEMPEST-spec computer equipment and peripherals.
What you're talking about here is probably impossible with the current kernel/process/user design of almost all modern computing.
The easiest way to think about this problem is to think about what causes the kernel to die. So, what can happen?
If it's a hardware fault, e.g. failed memory, disk, processor then the only real way to fix it is with hardware redundancy. Yes, i know there are software workarounds including a patch for the linux kernel that allows it to detect and avoid bad memory segments; but if these are included in a running kernel, a redundant sort of kernel isnt going to do any good anyway.
If it's a software fault and the kernel dies then how do you suppose the "other kernel" can pick up right where the first left off? It can't pick right up or it's going to crash for the same reason the first one did. You can't use a different kernel version as your redundant kernel because it has to work exactly the same way as the kernel that just crashed. So at the very least you'd have to drop all of your process and go through kernel bootstrap again. In order for this to work you'd have to basiclly keep kernel 2 a certain amount of time behind kernel 1. Take the model that the EROS operating system uses. Every so many minutes the system state is saved in such a way that you can go back and restore the state of the computer at any time. This is the only way to really pull off software redundancy. It's also highly doubtful that it could ever be implemented in today's mainstream operating systems.
So what's the best way to do things today? Hardware parallelism and software-managed high-availability are the way to go for servers. Hardware and Software watchdog timers can already reboot unresponsive computers.
There is something close to what you are talking about, though. Redundant systems are available that use one Fibre-Channel RAID storage array between two completely seperate (hardware) systems in one chassis. If hardware set 1 fails, hardware set 2 reads in the saved system state and resumes operation. If the software crashes a hardware set, though, the system still goes down -- but then the other hardware set comes up by loading a post-boot image so the downtime is only a few seconds while another clean system comes up.
~GoRK
As far as redundancy in your desktop computer -- well
For those of you who just HAVE to have your old IBM clickey keyboard on your palm pilot -- or ANY other (Non-XT) keyboard for that matter -- why don't you just pick up one of THESE nifty little cradles from the Happy Hacking Keyboard people that lets you use ANY PS/2 (or AT with adaptor) keyboard on your palm?
Here's the dirt that they don't really publicize though. Some of it very cool some of it is kind of a gripe.. anyway, here it is:
The thing doesnt support the Palm V or Vx without a serial port adaptor. It should work fine with an adaptor though.
The keyboard is powered by 2 AA batteries located in the cradle assembly. I would guess that some keyboards can really suck power. I've powered many devices with the 5V on my kbd port, so i know it puts out:) No mention of an A/C adaptor, although it wouldnt be all that hard to create that feature yourself...
You can attach a modem as well as a keyboard with this cradle; which is very good for e-mailing and other fun things. Again, if you want to use a Palm V modem with it, you'll need yet another adaptor. On the other hand, if you use a Palm V in the cradle, you could confortably attach a non Palm-V modem on the cradle.
Anyway, it's not a bad accessory. I like devices like this that take the proprietary hardware out of the Palm. I seem to remember a PCMCIA (sic.) slot attachment somewhere that allowed you to use standard wireless network cards or standard modems; etc. Very cool.
Sorry, slashdot was on the fritz. What else is new? I waited like 5 minutes each time and then eventually BOOM and i get three posts. I really think that Rob should code something in here that detects absolutely byte-identical posts from the same IP and the same user. My karma is hurting. I lost 4 points...... ooooh and I was only 3 away from the bonus!!!!!!!
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
This is a player that plays nearly every format imaginable. DVD 1.0, VideoCD 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, Super-VideoCD (MPEG 2 on a normal CD), CDDA, and MP3. The format of the discs is ISO9660. Of course, discs can be recorded with Joliet or Rock Ridge extentions, but you can't see the long filenames. Filenames can be in either Big5 (Chinese) or English. The structure consists of one level deep directories with any number of MP3 files inside each directory.
I was meeting about 3 weeks ago with a representative from Shock Technology Corp., a speaker manufacturer in Taiwan, and the guy had brought along some prototype flat-panel speakers. These are fairly new and many people have seen them. What most people have not done, though, is hear them. They sound terriffic and are 1/4" thick with the plastic housing. The entire flat face of the speaker is used as a resonating board. I don't know about the "directional beaming" in this other method, but the accoustic properties of a resonating panel are omnidirectional. Unlike conventional cone speakers, there is no difference in volume or definition whether you are in front or behind the speaker.
The most interesting part of the whole deal was that he said that the technology is directly applicable to LCD panels. Apparently there is little change in sound quality when you change materials or even thickness of the sounding board. As long as it's rigid and withstands a little vibration, it makes sound. Prototypes were already being produced by the company for internal testing. I saw a photo and the man said that the sound quality was just as good and just as loud as the flat speakers we were listening to. They were very loud, by the way -- loud enough you didnt feel comfortable turning the dial up past about 50%! I think that in the near future, all laptop sound will be produced this way instead of via those little quarter-size speakers.
As for this article, the application of a clicking LCD is limited. Another thing I'd be interested is the source of the clicking. Something is oscillating in there (capacitors discharging probably) and the last time I built a sound machine out of discharging ceramic disc capacitors (3rd grade) the best it could do was buzz. The frequency range seems pretty limited in retrospect. Plus I blew up a lot of capacitors.
Here's something interesting. PARENTS are the people who drive the whole Beanie Baby frenzies. This is stupid. People and firms that go around doing this junk for publicity should be killed. I hope I never have to meet a person like this. I will probably be forced to kill them. On a side note, I hate government, but as long as we've got it, why don't we pass some stupidity and idiocy laws? I think that anyone who loses a frivilous lawsuit should do jail time! I also hate Pokemon and I REALLY hate beanie babies. I purposely ask people selling them on street corners if they have some of the ones that are (for some reason) worth more than a hunk of gold weighing the same amount as the fabric used to make the cotton ball. They then proceed to tell me how great it is that they have 'such and such' -- why they call them by name escapes me -- and that they'd be willing to part with it for no less than 'ridiculous sum.' I tell them "I'll come back to you when the market falls out of them." OK, there's a bizarre comment!!! ~GoRK
Somehow, I don't really think that ANYONE working at Transmeta would leak a secret for the amount of money they are probably going to make. Just a thought.
~GoRK
Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing
on
Taiwan Earthquake
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· Score: 1
Seeing as everyone seems to be going off about Turkey and all that, I suppose I should start a thread talking about the other side to this story: economics. (Note: I do care about all those people in both Taiwan and Turkey. I just want to address the other side. I know many people living in Taipei and I sincerely hope they and their families are OK. I will be trying to contact them all tonight -- their daytime.) Last week a "major" power outage of a mere several hours in Taipei caused RAM prices to skyrocket again. The manufacturing cost of a 128MB SDRAM DIMM is over $180, sources claim. This puts 128 MB of memory for your average PC user at nearly $300 retail. The major memory manufacturers have recently been leaving the low-profit-margin RAM markets to begin manufacturing higher-margin flash memory. The increasing demand for RAM brought about as people begin to hurredly upgrade their computers for something some bozo decided to call "Y2K" that everyone thinks will be the end of the world -- so why would you need extra RAM anyway? So these people have caused the memory manufacturers to begin to switch back to producing RAM recently, but man, if you want a setback you got a setback. Good luck getting RAM. Get it while it's still cheap. Soon you will be paying $200 for 64MB SDRAM!
The word Harakiri translates roughly as "gut cutting." It is a rougher term for "seppuku" which is the formal ritual suicide practiced in feudal Japan. Seppuku is usually performed because one disgraces himself, his family, or his people. Properly enacted, seppuku requires two people. The person enacting the suicide is to cut himself (females did not practice this) side to side across his stomach and then up to the base of his breastbone. His "second" then was to remove the man's head. Often, the second followed suit with his own suicide. The most interesting thing about the whole ordeal was that one was not to make a noise or show any pain while slicing himself up. If he did either of these, he failed the ritual and disgraced himself again in death.
Now please don't you clickey moderators go moderating this down as 'offtopic' It's on topic with this thread. Your karma will regret it!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a related topic to this whole Mindstorm business. I have a system that LEGO designed way way before the Mindstorms and even MIT's LEGO brick (which became the basis of the Mindstorms) called LEGO Technic TC. It consisted of a very simple 8-bit ISA card that connected to a black box with a ribbon cable. Basically it was a relay control card. The thing had 6 "output ports" that could either drive a motor forward and backward or operate a light. It also had two input ports for 1-bit touch sensors or optical sensors (or any other 1-bit sensor you could build for that matter).
The whole system was programmed in a LOGO (Remember that one, geeks?) environment called LEGO TC LOGO. It ran under DOS. I have been unable to find any control programs for this thing except for the stupid worthless DOS based LOGO.
Is anyone else still using this system? Is there anything for it under Linux?
~GoRK
This is simply a case of an entity charging a service fee for packaging free data. HELLO this is what RedHat and all the other linux distros do. You want it on a CD? You (or somebody) pays (at the very least) shipping and handling (cover our costs) charges. In some cases you pay big bucks for value added services such as support. This is no different than what the post office is doing.
You want the entire list for free? Go to the post office and you may freely molest the paper zip code directory chained to the counter. You can even hand copy or photograph each page if you so desire. Its when you need the data in your hot little hands that money starts to be an issue. Sure the zip code information is politically free but what about the people who sit around all day assigning zones and keeping the central database updated? What about the people that typeset that enormous tome chained to the post office counter? That's going to cost you money! This is a no brainer. The post office is in the right!
Here's an idea: How about some nice resourceful individuals get off of their bitch-against-corporate-america asses and start an open information project like the one for road maps of the USA (I forget the name/address) and compile a list of zip codes and their associated information into a nice manageable database and give it out free?
~GoRK
What is particularly interesting to note is that the quality of these Internet Raido shows is generally fairly poor. The voice recognition and dictation software that I have toyed with before have always suggested using better microphones and higher sampling rates to achieve decent results. Some even claimed that low quality audio results in a severe accuracy penalty.
It is very remarkable that this thing can index these low quality streams with the accuracy that they do! I hope that searchable media (other than text) continues to get better like this. Companies like Virage and Compaq definately deserve our support. I hope that standard interfaces appear soon.
~GoRK
I had an ircii (ok well it was BitchX, but probably would have worked on ircii) that worked with babelfish to translate stuff. I will try to dig it up and post a url (or you could e-mail me) It was called gtrans.bx and I dont know if anyone out there kept it up to date.. anyway it wasn't even that bad in realtime since it made a seperate connection for each translation it did.. There was some latency, sure, but it could do 10 or 20 translations at once. I suppose it could have worked on a queue system with http 1.1 to further expedite things but i really didnt get that deep with it. Anyway, it worked like this:
/en, /es, /pt, /fr, /it
/men, /mes, /mpt, /mfr, /mit
/flag juan es and everything you /msg juan was translated to spanish and everything juan said was translated from spanish. Also if you addressed juan in the channel.. eg. said "juan:" it would print in both spanish and your language.
.so loadable lib) interface for other programs to call?
/mylang
Sets your default language (put in your startup)
/de,
Translates your typing into the language of choice and funnels it to the current dialog. With all of the translation commands if $mylang is set to a non-english, translation to english is done before translating to another language due to babelfish.
/mde,
Sends a message to in the specified language
/flag
Sets autotranslation of a person or a channel. This was really the coolest command. If some spanish-speaking person came in, you can just
/trans
Self explanitory. Output for your eyes only.
Additionally, there were some new functions that people could use to implement their own fun foreign language commands..
I have heard there is a babelfish library out there that provides a standard way to interface a program with babelfish. Plus, only one thing has to be updated for all of your babelfish-ized programs to work. With a client like BitchX this would be very easy to simply load and use!
This GPLTrans thing sounds very exciting and i'd very much like to see about building a new (better) irc script on top of it!
~GoRK
PS. Since the site is slashdotted, could anyone who knows please tell us a little more about it? Can we do the translation on our own hardware or is it central-server based? Can it directly translate between languages where english is neither the source nor the target? Does it provide a standard (e.g.
I would very much like some day to see all of my basic network communications apps (mail client, newsreader, web browser, instant messenger, irc client, etc) have the ability to machine-translate both incoming and outgoing stuff. Everyone seems to be so bent on how "good" the translation is. If a machine can translate something so that I have a basic grasp of what is going on, then the translation has been a monumental success! I would like to machine translation people focus on getting the technology more widespread before they go trying to make their software translate everything perfectly!!
~GoRK (again)
Somewhere I seem to remember an article that was about a neural net that read magazine articles every day and then asked a question to be answered by a human after each article. One day after it had accumulated a wealth of its virtual knowledge, the operator fed it an article on religion. The computer spit back a perplexing query. It was "If God does not exist, then why does Man have religion?" In many ways it was both shocking and frightening that a machine could formulate such a question.
~GoRK
SimSlashdot:
You control a geeky computer user who browses the web while wasting time at work. The objective is for you to lose money faster than you can earn it. The game simulates the valuation of memes and your currency in the game is measured in karma. You need this karma to keep from crashing. The geekier you get the more likely your karma is to increase, but the more likely your salary will increase as well, making it difficult to effectively lose money by wasting time.
I noticed there wasnt an address or an active petition linked anywhere.. Thought these address from the GT Interactive "Contact Us" page might be of use:
Customer Service
If you have a general inquiry about existing or upcoming GT titles, choose from the following list of customer service agents:
The one to contact: customerservice@gtinteractive.com
And for those of you for whom it is appropriate:
Press Inquries,
Product-specific
f you are a member of the PRESS with a product-specific inquiry, write to Product Communications.
~GoRK
In practical use, there are sometimes quite a few little bitty differences/tweaks on the client side that can optimize performance with a samba server vs. a regular NT server. Even in replacement situations, this chapter gives valuable advice on how best to configure the *CLIENTS* for *SAMBA* since it really doesn't work 100% exactly like NT.
~GoRK
I motion that this article be deleted from slashdot and all comments et. al. be stricken from the database. Please indicate your support for this motion by replying to this thread.
Who cares about Linux on Jeopardy? I just want to see Eddy back on there! Let's get that blind ass-kicking sportswriter back! Eddy is my all-time favorite Jeopardy player. These teen tournaments are making me sick. All the contestants are so obnoxious.
~GoRK
There was a deaf guy at work who pronounced "gigabyte" which everyone in the entire world seems to pronounce "gig-uh-bite" but he used a soft g so he said "jig-uh-bite" and of course he was deaf so we couldn't really explain it to him.
~GoRK
If this is a commercial venture and you're looking at offering news kind of like a 'portal' does (god i hate buzzwords) then there are a couple companies that eliminate the need to do-it-yourself and will also eliminate the legal hassles for delivering news content... if it fits your bill, that is.
Here are the two that I know of. I have used both services and they have been fairly decent content providers.
1) Screaming Media http://www.screamingmedia.net/ - These guys let you pick and choose what goes on your site. Articles appear as if they came from your site. Good hands-on approach. Good content, too.
2) iSyndicate http://www.isyndicate.com/ - These guys let you publish your content back to their network as well as letting you use their syndicated content. I really like the way it works. I dont know if you have as much say as to what comes down the pipes from them though.. E.G. not wanting to put your competitor's press release on your site..
Anyway that's just a glimpse of the content providers out there. I have seen tens upon tens of them.. these are the two that i had settled on before. I hope that you might find some use with them. iSyndicate used to have a free program too.. i dont know what (if anything) happened to that.. possibly it's still there.
~GoRK
Sorry to say it, but yeah, an LCD can be used to snoop on you too. So can your keyboard. So can your hard drive; processor; printer; scanner; etc. Pretty much any computer part that has electricity running through it is a security hazard when it comes to this kind of stuff.
Read some of the articles on the Complete TEMPEST Information Page if you want to really scare yourself. Convieniently, there are also links to companies there who produce TEMPEST-spec computer equipment and peripherals.
~GoRK
What you're talking about here is probably impossible with the current kernel/process/user design of almost all modern computing.
The easiest way to think about this problem is to think about what causes the kernel to die. So, what can happen?
If it's a hardware fault, e.g. failed memory, disk, processor then the only real way to fix it is with hardware redundancy. Yes, i know there are software workarounds including a patch for the linux kernel that allows it to detect and avoid bad memory segments; but if these are included in a running kernel, a redundant sort of kernel isnt going to do any good anyway.
If it's a software fault and the kernel dies then how do you suppose the "other kernel" can pick up right where the first left off? It can't pick right up or it's going to crash for the same reason the first one did. You can't use a different kernel version as your redundant kernel because it has to work exactly the same way as the kernel that just crashed. So at the very least you'd have to drop all of your process and go through kernel bootstrap again. In order for this to work you'd have to basiclly keep kernel 2 a certain amount of time behind kernel 1. Take the model that the EROS operating system uses. Every so many minutes the system state is saved in such a way that you can go back and restore the state of the computer at any time. This is the only way to really pull off software redundancy. It's also highly doubtful that it could ever be implemented in today's mainstream operating systems.
So what's the best way to do things today?
Hardware parallelism and software-managed high-availability are the way to go for servers. Hardware and Software watchdog timers can already reboot unresponsive computers.
There is something close to what you are talking about, though. Redundant systems are available that use one Fibre-Channel RAID storage array between two completely seperate (hardware) systems in one chassis. If hardware set 1 fails, hardware set 2 reads in the saved system state and resumes operation. If the software crashes a hardware set, though, the system still goes down -- but then the other hardware set comes up by loading a post-boot image so the downtime is only a few seconds while another clean system comes up.
~GoRK
As far as redundancy in your desktop computer -- well
Here's the dirt that they don't really publicize though. Some of it very cool some of it is kind of a gripe.. anyway, here it is:
- The thing doesnt support the Palm V or Vx without a serial port adaptor. It should work fine with an adaptor though.
- The keyboard is powered by 2 AA batteries located in the cradle assembly. I would guess that some keyboards can really suck power. I've powered many devices with the 5V on my kbd port, so i know it puts out
:) No mention of an A/C adaptor, although it wouldnt be all that hard to create that feature yourself... - You can attach a modem as well as a keyboard with this cradle; which is very good for e-mailing and other fun things. Again, if you want to use a Palm V modem with it, you'll need yet another adaptor. On the other hand, if you use a Palm V in the cradle, you could confortably attach a non Palm-V modem on the cradle.
Anyway, it's not a bad accessory. I like devices like this that take the proprietary hardware out of the Palm. I seem to remember a PCMCIA (sic.) slot attachment somewhere that allowed you to use standard wireless network cards or standard modems; etc. Very cool.~GoRK
Sorry, slashdot was on the fritz. What else is new? I waited like 5 minutes each time and then eventually BOOM and i get three posts. I really think that Rob should code something in here that detects absolutely byte-identical posts from the same IP and the same user. My karma is hurting. I lost 4 points ...... ooooh and I was only 3 away from the bonus!!!!!!!
~GoRK
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
~GoRK
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
~GoRK
No need to use cookies. Browsers pass the language encoding in the headers. It's a very standardized system and many, many, many websites use it. Like almost all sites in France... Most people never notice it because their default language preference is set up for only their language and they can't tell what other languages are available. There are entire companies that build new multilingual sites or translate existing sites.
The best part about the language stuff in HTTP is the 1st, 2nd, 3rd preferences... I have mine set to show me english first, then japanese, then spanish, which is the order in which I can comprehend languages from perfect to something that I can read most of to something that bablefish can machine translate!
~GoRK
http://www.raite.com.tw/eproduct/e715.htm
This is a player that plays nearly every format imaginable. DVD 1.0, VideoCD 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, Super-VideoCD (MPEG 2 on a normal CD), CDDA, and MP3. The format of the discs is ISO9660. Of course, discs can be recorded with Joliet or Rock Ridge extentions, but you can't see the long filenames. Filenames can be in either Big5 (Chinese) or English. The structure consists of one level deep directories with any number of MP3 files inside each directory.
~GoRK
I was meeting about 3 weeks ago with a representative from Shock Technology Corp., a speaker manufacturer in Taiwan, and the guy had brought along some prototype flat-panel speakers. These are fairly new and many people have seen them. What most people have not done, though, is hear them. They sound terriffic and are 1/4" thick with the plastic housing. The entire flat face of the speaker is used as a resonating board. I don't know about the "directional beaming" in this other method, but the accoustic properties of a resonating panel are omnidirectional. Unlike conventional cone speakers, there is no difference in volume or definition whether you are in front or behind the speaker.
The most interesting part of the whole deal was that he said that the technology is directly applicable to LCD panels. Apparently there is little change in sound quality when you change materials or even thickness of the sounding board. As long as it's rigid and withstands a little vibration, it makes sound. Prototypes were already being produced by the company for internal testing. I saw a photo and the man said that the sound quality was just as good and just as loud as the flat speakers we were listening to. They were very loud, by the way -- loud enough you didnt feel comfortable turning the dial up past about 50%! I think that in the near future, all laptop sound will be produced this way instead of via those little quarter-size speakers.
As for this article, the application of a clicking LCD is limited. Another thing I'd be interested is the source of the clicking. Something is oscillating in there (capacitors discharging probably) and the last time I built a sound machine out of discharging ceramic disc capacitors (3rd grade) the best it could do was buzz. The frequency range seems pretty limited in retrospect. Plus I blew up a lot of capacitors.
~GoRK
Here's something interesting. PARENTS are the people who drive the whole Beanie Baby frenzies. This is stupid. People and firms that go around doing this junk for publicity should be killed. I hope I never have to meet a person like this. I will probably be forced to kill them. On a side note, I hate government, but as long as we've got it, why don't we pass some stupidity and idiocy laws? I think that anyone who loses a frivilous lawsuit should do jail time! I also hate Pokemon and I REALLY hate beanie babies. I purposely ask people selling them on street corners if they have some of the ones that are (for some reason) worth more than a hunk of gold weighing the same amount as the fabric used to make the cotton ball. They then proceed to tell me how great it is that they have 'such and such' -- why they call them by name escapes me -- and that they'd be willing to part with it for no less than 'ridiculous sum.' I tell them "I'll come back to you when the market falls out of them." OK, there's a bizarre comment!!! ~GoRK
Somehow, I don't really think that ANYONE working at Transmeta would leak a secret for the amount of money they are probably going to make. Just a thought.
~GoRK
Seeing as everyone seems to be going off about Turkey and all that, I suppose I should start a thread talking about the other side to this story: economics. (Note: I do care about all those people in both Taiwan and Turkey. I just want to address the other side. I know many people living in Taipei and I sincerely hope they and their families are OK. I will be trying to contact them all tonight -- their daytime.)
Last week a "major" power outage of a mere several hours in Taipei caused RAM prices to skyrocket again. The manufacturing cost of a 128MB SDRAM DIMM is over $180, sources claim. This puts 128 MB of memory for your average PC user at nearly $300 retail.
The major memory manufacturers have recently been leaving the low-profit-margin RAM markets to begin manufacturing higher-margin flash memory. The increasing demand for RAM brought about as people begin to hurredly upgrade their computers for something some bozo decided to call "Y2K" that everyone thinks will be the end of the world -- so why would you need extra RAM anyway? So these people have caused the memory manufacturers to begin to switch back to producing RAM recently, but man, if you want a setback you got a setback. Good luck getting RAM. Get it while it's still cheap. Soon you will be paying $200 for 64MB SDRAM!
~GoRK
The word Harakiri translates roughly as "gut cutting." It is a rougher term for "seppuku" which is the formal ritual suicide practiced in feudal Japan. Seppuku is usually performed because one disgraces himself, his family, or his people. Properly enacted, seppuku requires two people. The person enacting the suicide is to cut himself (females did not practice this) side to side across his stomach and then up to the base of his breastbone. His "second" then was to remove the man's head. Often, the second followed suit with his own suicide. The most interesting thing about the whole ordeal was that one was not to make a noise or show any pain while slicing himself up. If he did either of these, he failed the ritual and disgraced himself again in death.
Now please don't you clickey moderators go moderating this down as 'offtopic' It's on topic with this thread. Your karma will regret it!
~GoRK