If the TMS slows down the cognitave ability of the brain, then it could actually free the mind up to be able to put down lines more consistent with the memory of (in this case) a dog.
I normally can't draw worth sh!t, but I do remember a couple of times, when I just stopped being critical of myself and just tried drawing what I saw, I was able to get a pretty realistic likeness of a human face (good enough that my classmates were impressed). I'd let go of my inner inhibitions about drawing, and simply managed to let myself draw what I saw.
After that, I could recreate the drawing that I'd made, but I had a very hard time doing anybody else's face -- my own feelings about what I was drawing kept getting in the way. I think that this even makes sense of why some artists seem fussy and pendantic about things. They know that they can best produce stuff when they're in a state that allows them to just 'create' -- but getting into that state is still something of a black art.
If the TMS is doing what it seems to be doing in Snyder's lab, then my guess is that it is artificially putting people into that non-critical state that is so conducive to brilliance. I'm guessing that, currently, it's also crude enough that it probably has side effects -- hopefully (and apparently) any unpleasant side-effects are temporary.
Sorry, as a developer of almost 10 years I have to comment. I can't count how many closed-source projects I've seen... that never saw the light of day.....
The difference between open-source projects and closed source projects like this is that the self-destruct process is just as public as the code is.
Coherant or not, this guy sounds like an angry 13 year old. To me, this whole post boils down to "Oh ya? Who wants some? I'll kick all your assess!.....
Like I said: If you read his (more coherent and reasoned) comments pointed to in the main article, it's clear that he feels upset, betrayed, etc.
These posts were done soon after the NYT article went out, so if this was really him, he would still have been in the middle of the shock and upset. It's easy to look at those posts and think "what a childish response", but try recording the next four arguments with your Significant Other or close family member before you seriously suggest that you would do better under similar circumstances.
I, for one, would like to think that I would do better, but I'm not sure I'd bet my life on it.
Having been on the inside of some reasonably high-profile news events, I can say that the
media can get things very wrong -- sometimes willfully so. The first time I realized just how bad it could get, I was in shock for a while.
Obviously AOTheDeacon didn't bother to hit the 'preview' button when he posted, because he really did separate it into paragraphs... It's really obvious when I read the raw html... So obvious that I just grabbed the text and viewed it in VI. The next thing I did was :%s/^ *$/<P>/
Other than that, this is his post, unedited. I don't think it just makes it more readable, I think it actually makes it seem more coherent.
On thing I'll add: If this really was the deacon posting, I'll guess that he was still shell-shocked by the NYT article, pissed off at the press in general and found slashdot as the first place to express his anger/frustration. His posting on 'storm' seems a good bit more coherent, and makes a better read.
What's below is his words, not mine.
____________
Last year I cleared just under $100k after expenses. No, I'm not poor at all. in fact OMFGLOLROOFLESMAYO. Do the numbers. I make 50-100 per hour times 20-40 billable hours per week. That equals: a buttload more than half you bitches pull in:p
If the walls were "crashing down around me" and I was so poor, how the hell was I able to afford a $50 game and $200 in clothes that day?
Easy. The guy lied.
I mean, there's so much about the article that doesn't make sense. Yes, I'm oh so poor, let me lean back in my leather chair and play AO on my brand new 21" monitor.
Here's what I see you people writing:
"OMG this guy is such a loser, he plays MMORPGS and has no life, blah blah blah how pathetic. I think I'm going to spend the next 26 consecutive hours blasting him on the slashdot forums.
the very fact alone that you bother to read the article and then post flames about it makes you look far more pathetic than even that article could make you look.
You call those flames? Panty waists. Amateur flamers. Get some meat behind some of these weak ass jabs and maybe you'll be blessed enough to have Thedeacon own your Linux lubbin asses individually.
Um guys? YOU READ SLASHDOT. You read slashdot and troll the forums for all day. Hey, it's reality calling. JOO ARE A DORK.
I play for 40 hours a week. Heh, to be honest, when you consider how much TV (and forum trolling) most americans do, that number is not too horrible.
Of course that number is grossly exaggerated (I work for 9 hours a day, make dinner, watch a movie with my wife, I write, work out, I do stand up comedy, I read, etc, so it's a physical impossibility that I play that many hours, unless I've gained the magical ability to increase the length of the day by 6 hours or something).
Wow, the Linux freaks on this boards sure are in a place to talk. Lessee, "Slashdot: News for nerds". Um, "nerds". And you guys are proud of this. What does that say about you?
I think the flamers on this thread are more pissed that I play games and still get the pussy, while they're spanking it to midget porn.
People, get your collective heads out of your asses and don't be so naive......The article was a lie. Seth Schiesel (aka Amis ingame) harbored a grudge over an AO article I picked apart nearly a year back. His writing has the flow of an 8th grade essay and structure to match. You know the Times has to be hurting for talent and news when they make a post about a video game.
Really people, log off your super admin whatever Linux geek shit for a sec and think about it. Take a good hard look at your own hobbies and think about it again. Let's see: you spend all day arguing about Windows versus Linux on what it by far the nerdiest webpage in existence, based on what I've read so far today.
Look at the news post icons, look at the topics. Fuck man, look at yourself.
this is me: http://www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/juneau/RickS.JPG
After having read both his storm posts and that slashdot posts by 'deacon', I don't get that they are posted by the same person. His posting on storm are an order of magnitude more coherent and sane.
Now it's just possible that when he posted on slashdot he was still royally pissed at the spress in general, ready to take on all comers and slashdot just managed to be the first place he happened on where he could vent his frustrations, but I really don't have a whole lot to link the two entities.
That having been said, his original posting is a good bit more coherent when you read the raw HTML... It's pretty clear from looking at it that he did NOT expect to have to include <P> all over the place (or just change to 'plain old text')
In fact, I think that I'm just going to repost his post, because a simple reformatting job really does change the apparent tone.
Yep. but they'll have to hold on to the message to try again in an hour, or four. That adds to their bandwidth and memory requirements, and makes their spamming more expensive and slows them down.
You may be affected by the hacking of your computer but you don't have what the legal world calls 'standing' (the right to 'stand' in front of a judge and complain) on the issue of other people's losses -- including the ISP.
Sometimes a company will refuse to press charges (not wanting the adverse publicity) in that case, the FBI's hands are pretty much tied. There's no need to investigate what's not going to court.
BTW: if the issue is already in the public eye, then the company is going to be a bit more interested in pressing charges (methinks).
The next time you see them going for even more pervasive laws to snoop, investigate and charge people, pass your story (with all technical details) to someone who is lobbying against it. It'll help slow things down once people realize that the police can't do anything about the crimes that are already on the books now.
Turns out the guy has no driving license, insurance and has not paid his car tax. He shouldn't have been driving the van in the first place.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the guy would not be procescuted in any way.
Some newspaper reporters love stories like this.
You just have to find the right reporter, and frame the story in a way that gets his/her interest.
Your RSA password may not be at risk, but being MITM makes it easier for them to watch your session itself.
(I don't remember that the RSA key exchange mechanism frustrates MITM attacks on the actual session.)
If you SSH back out and they're watching your session, then they'll catch the password that you use then.
a class action lawsuit was just settled about theft of cars by tow companies a year or 2 ago...
Time to start a new one...
If it's the same company, check on the old class-action suit to see if there's a standing injunction as a result of the settlement. It's far easier to file for violating an injunction than to start your own lawsuit.
(IANAL)
BTW: I wouldn't be too hard on your ISP on this. They really do need to get this data into their system so that they can deal with it reasonably. Although a verbal report can give them a bit of a heads-up, a written report will give them a better idea of what they're facing and provide less risk of data-loss/corruption as a verbal report goes from person to person (have you ever played the whisper game?). Given the work you've done so far, I'd say it's worthwhile to do a little bit of bending over backwards to make sure that you can get this report into their system.
Also: they also probably get a lot of false-positives from their customers. They need enough information from you to distinguish your report from one of those. Unless your ISP is really small, the person you got on the phone is probably a low-level flunkie who's going to have to punch your report through 2-3 levels of management before it can get to someone who can properly deal with what you've noticed.
There aren't many people who can deal powerfully with a hack attack of this kind. If you're willing, you might want to let them know what else you're willing to do on either a paid, or unpaid basis.
I can see a couple of things here:
First of all, file the report. Ask the support person if you can fax in the report because you don't want to inform the hacker that (s)he's been spotted and you are reasonably clear that you can't get a secure channel to their web server.
If they absolutely insist that you go through their web pages, then do so. Give enough information to prove that you understand what's going on, and inform the person on their support line that you'll b expecting someone to call you with a phone number that you can call them back at.
(This is to prevent impersonation. I'd actually check the number to make sure that it belongs to the company in question) -- remember, the hacker may be seing your on-line communications.
Basically, the cops are right... about the only people who can force a real police investigation are at the ISP in question. If they can show that a couple hundred (or thousand) people have been affected by this hack then the cops may get involved.
If you want to be snarky, then you can ask the name of a good local journalist that you can tell your story to.. That might also light a fire somewhere. If nothing else, people in your community need to know that their communications are being logged by someone with clearly malicious intent. Be prepared to spend some time explaining things to the reporter. Someone with the stature to get furr flying is also unlikely to have serious technical computer knowledge. Be ready with a lead-in line to get his attention fast, like:
I've got an interesting story for you.. It appears that <X ISP's> servers have been badly hacked, and some malicious entity is now snooping on the communications of all their customers. Passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information are all at risk. I've tried contacting the ISP, the FBI and a couple of other entities with no satisfiction. Are
you interested?
These originally came with a battery rated for 2x6V - 7.2Ah I've found an inexpensive replacement battery: SBS60 rated at over 50Ah and I've done a little mod so the unit 'fit' together.
I can see two problems with this setup. One is the oft-mentioned capacity of the unit to handle a long-term outage and/or the resulting charge cycle (possibly fixable with bigger heatsinks).
The other is that you're talking about a 7-1 capacity ratio for the replacement battery. I'm guessing that the UPS may not recognize when your new batteries have reached charged state (at which time it's supposed to go to tricle-charge state). Most chargers recognize when this is happening by the current that the battery draws at a given voltage (or vice versa). It's quite possible that a fully charged 50AH battery is going to act (and be treated like) like an uncharged 7AH battery.
Earlier posters mentioned that a bigger battery would draw more current at a particular charging voltage. This is true, but irrelevant. The chargers are designed to be constant-current, or close to it. The current drain does not depend on voltage.
It depends on the charger. constant-voltage is generally considered to be better for the battery (good chargers will provide different voltages at different stages of the charge cycle).
Constant-current chargers can be easy to build and won't burn out with larger batteries, but they also may not provide a high-enough voltage at that current to properly charge the battery. In either case, installing a battery far beyond the intended capacity of your UPS is likely to cause you problems in the event of a prolonged power failure.
You can get both in-line and clamp-type meters. Clamp-type meters are designed to go around one (only one) of the power-lead wires to your appliance. They measure the current indirectly. to use it, you will probably need to build a special purpose extension cord (i.e. strip the outside shielding to expose the 3 separate cables. You can get either purpose made meters, or add-ons for your general purpose multimeter (they're designed to provide a straight-forward translation between resistance (I think) and amps).
Once you have an amp reading (over time) then you can do the math to generate watts, kilowatt--Hours/month or whatever you want.
units(1) is your friend on this. Some distributions (red-Hat) don't load it by default, so you may have to specify it manually.
$ units 5amps*110volts kilowatt-hours/month
* 401.76642
Note that that page talks about nickel oxide batteries but the information applies to lead acid batteries such as you find in a typical UPS (and cars, for that matter).
Rechargable batteries of different types have different characteristics. Beyond the most general platitudes, Nicad-type batteries are very different than led acid. and even the two families can variy between themselves. I managed to find a number of good books in the library about rechargable batteries that described the differences well.
Most notable about the differences: Nicad-type batteries like to be fully discharged from time to time. This helps to prevent the 'memory' effect.
Lead-acid batteries are almost precisely the opposite. Fully discharging a car battery is bad for it. It's designed for repeated partial discharge and recharge (i.e. starting the car). Jell cells (most common in UPSs) are similar to Lead Acid, but can better survive deep discharge and are less forgiving of being overcharged.
Both Lead and Nickel based batteries do much better under high-load conditions than conventional non-chargable batteries. This can also sometimes be a safety issue. I've seen small lead-acid batteries vaporize a 30 amp AGC (glass cylinder tube) fuse and heat a 16 gauge cable (used for cheaper extension cords) red-hot. If you directly short the terminals of a car battery, you could probably melt cheap jumper cables (presuming you don't cause an explosion first -- do not try this at home). Short lengths of 16 gauge wire are sometimes used as last-resort fuses in some parts of your auto electrical system.
If you're rolling your own with rechargabe batteries, always include fuses appropriate to the expected load. I would also suggest having the fuse as close to the power source as possible.
UPSs are usually designed with base electronics that would work across a range of capacities (i.e. battery sizes). if you have a UPS of a given size, you should be able to use batteries a good bit larger than what you've got and still get good results.
Car batteries, on the other hand are probably getting into a completely different scale of size. I'm not terribly surprised that the charger would fail going to that capacity size. It's It's like the difference between putting a small U-Hall trailer on your car and trying to pull something that would normally take an 18-wheeler.
It should also be noted: Some of the software being defended doesn't even physically alter the CD, or produce a new one. It simply contains an edit list of what scenes to skip over (and possibly what blocks of audio to not play). This means that if I was to simply sell my DVD to you, you'd still get the entire movie. There's no second DVD and no sliced copy. Copyright only allows authors to control the making of copies. it really can't touch how I view the copy that they sell me once I get it into the privacy of my own home.
Movies are a business. Businesses are there to make money. If a small portion of their target consumer wants something restrictive and that ends up losing them money, why should they continue to throw money at it?
If that small portion of peple is willing to buy the original, and then pay to have their copy sliced, diced and julien fried, that is their choice. They bought the CD, and they have the right to do what they want with it.
The movie studios coming into my living room and saying "You can't skip this part" is just as bad as the government coming into my bedroom and saying "you can't have sex in that position". As long as everybody involved is properly consenting, it's my choice what I do whether it's with my body or my DVD.
If it wasn't for libraries, very few people would learn to enjoy reading and the book industry would be screwed. The publishers should donate books to libraries to increase interest in their authors.
Sounds like the Napster argument, all over again (or, is that the other way 'round?).
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact."
Yep. and that's because SCO refuses to identify the protected code.
They also complain that Torvalds refuses to go hunting patents.. That's also appropriate. One of the best ways to avoid violating patented methods is to not know about them. If the solution is an obvious one, then the fact that you came to the same solution without konwing about the patent is almost a sufficient defence. On the other hand, if the solution is not an obvious one, then chances ar that you'll come up with a solution different enough from the pattern that the difference is a sufficient defence.
The purpose of a patent is to document a method such that (once the patent expires) anybody else can use it. The patent monopoly is just to ensure that people have an incentive to register their patents so that they ultimately do go into the public domain.
An interesting feature about the OS process is that -- once something goes into an OS project, it is (or at least should be) essentially unpatentable -- this is because any open source project is effectively published.. Especially for large and well-distributed projects like Linus, it's almost trivial to prove when that idea was published.
If you take the time to hunt patents before you use an idea, you run the risk of delaying the publication of an idea long enough for someone else to patent it.
The long and short result is that it's easier (and even better) to implement an idea and then wait to see if someone complains about a patent infringement than to go wandering through the patent office looking for something that may be the same as what you are using.
Reading through a patent application well enough to understand whether or not it applies to an idea is a long, difficult and dirty job. I'd much rather leave that to someone who's paid to do it (like the patent owner's lawer). Once the issue is raised by somene who cares about it then I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it.
I think that Linus has the same idea, and it sounds like he got it from his business colleagues.
Slashdot Mirror
I normally can't draw worth sh!t, but I do remember a couple of times, when I just stopped being critical of myself and just tried drawing what I saw, I was able to get a pretty realistic likeness of a human face (good enough that my classmates were impressed). I'd let go of my inner inhibitions about drawing, and simply managed to let myself draw what I saw.
After that, I could recreate the drawing that I'd made, but I had a very hard time doing anybody else's face -- my own feelings about what I was drawing kept getting in the way. I think that this even makes sense of why some artists seem fussy and pendantic about things. They know that they can best produce stuff when they're in a state that allows them to just 'create' -- but getting into that state is still something of a black art.
If the TMS is doing what it seems to be doing in Snyder's lab, then my guess is that it is artificially putting people into that non-critical state that is so conducive to brilliance. I'm guessing that, currently, it's also crude enough that it probably has side effects -- hopefully (and apparently) any unpleasant side-effects are temporary.
The difference between open-source projects and closed source projects like this is that the self-destruct process is just as public as the code is.
Like I said: If you read his (more coherent and reasoned) comments pointed to in the main article, it's clear that he feels upset, betrayed, etc.
These posts were done soon after the NYT article went out, so if this was really him, he would still have been in the middle of the shock and upset. It's easy to look at those posts and think "what a childish response", but try recording the next four arguments with your Significant Other or close family member before you seriously suggest that you would do better under similar circumstances.
I, for one, would like to think that I would do better, but I'm not sure I'd bet my life on it.
Having been on the inside of some reasonably high-profile news events, I can say that the media can get things very wrong -- sometimes willfully so. The first time I realized just how bad it could get, I was in shock for a while.
Other than that, this is his post, unedited. I don't think it just makes it more readable, I think it actually makes it seem more coherent.
On thing I'll add: If this really was the deacon posting, I'll guess that he was still shell-shocked by the NYT article, pissed off at the press in general and found slashdot as the first place to express his anger/frustration. His posting on 'storm' seems a good bit more coherent, and makes a better read.
What's below is his words, not mine.
____________
Last year I cleared just under $100k after expenses. No, I'm not poor at all. in fact OMFGLOLROOFLESMAYO. Do the numbers. I make 50-100 per hour times 20-40 billable hours per week. That equals: a buttload more than half you bitches pull in :p
If the walls were "crashing down around me" and I was so poor, how the hell was I able to afford a $50 game and $200 in clothes that day?
Easy. The guy lied.
I mean, there's so much about the article that doesn't make sense. Yes, I'm oh so poor, let me lean back in my leather chair and play AO on my brand new 21" monitor.
Here's what I see you people writing:
"OMG this guy is such a loser, he plays MMORPGS and has no life, blah blah blah how pathetic. I think I'm going to spend the next 26 consecutive hours blasting him on the slashdot forums.
the very fact alone that you bother to read the article and then post flames about it makes you look far more pathetic than even that article could make you look.
You call those flames? Panty waists. Amateur flamers. Get some meat behind some of these weak ass jabs and maybe you'll be blessed enough to have Thedeacon own your Linux lubbin asses individually.
Um guys? YOU READ SLASHDOT. You read slashdot and troll the forums for all day. Hey, it's reality calling. JOO ARE A DORK.
I play for 40 hours a week. Heh, to be honest, when you consider how much TV (and forum trolling) most americans do, that number is not too horrible.
Of course that number is grossly exaggerated (I work for 9 hours a day, make dinner, watch a movie with my wife, I write, work out, I do stand up comedy, I read, etc, so it's a physical impossibility that I play that many hours, unless I've gained the magical ability to increase the length of the day by 6 hours or something).
Wow, the Linux freaks on this boards sure are in a place to talk. Lessee, "Slashdot: News for nerds". Um, "nerds". And you guys are proud of this. What does that say about you?
I think the flamers on this thread are more pissed that I play games and still get the pussy, while they're spanking it to midget porn.
People, get your collective heads out of your asses and don't be so naive......The article was a lie. Seth Schiesel (aka Amis ingame) harbored a grudge over an AO article I picked apart nearly a year back. His writing has the flow of an 8th grade essay and structure to match. You know the Times has to be hurting for talent and news when they make a post about a video game.
Really people, log off your super admin whatever Linux geek shit for a sec and think about it. Take a good hard look at your own hobbies and think about it again. Let's see: you spend all day arguing about Windows versus Linux on what it by far the nerdiest webpage in existence, based on what I've read so far today.
Look at the news post icons, look at the topics. Fuck man, look at yourself.
this is me: http://www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/juneau/RickS.JPG
Now post your pics. The people flaming me are
Now it's just possible that when he posted on slashdot he was still royally pissed at the spress in general, ready to take on all comers and slashdot just managed to be the first place he happened on where he could vent his frustrations, but I really don't have a whole lot to link the two entities.
That having been said, his original posting is a good bit more coherent when you read the raw HTML... It's pretty clear from looking at it that he did NOT expect to have to include <P> all over the place (or just change to 'plain old text') In fact, I think that I'm just going to repost his post, because a simple reformatting job really does change the apparent tone.
Yep. but they'll have to hold on to the message to try again in an hour, or four. That adds to their bandwidth and memory requirements, and makes their spamming more expensive and slows them down.
Most companies doing this on a legitimate basis would use transparent proxies not DNS shenanigans.
Once again, a highly indignant reporter will sometimes results in warmed butts in action.
I call +1 Funny and demand moderation points!
Sometimes a company will refuse to press charges (not wanting the adverse publicity) in that case, the FBI's hands are pretty much tied. There's no need to investigate what's not going to court.
BTW: if the issue is already in the public eye, then the company is going to be a bit more interested in pressing charges (methinks).
The next time you see them going for even more pervasive laws to snoop, investigate and charge people, pass your story (with all technical details) to someone who is lobbying against it. It'll help slow things down once people realize that the police can't do anything about the crimes that are already on the books now.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the guy would not be procescuted in any way.
Some newspaper reporters love stories like this. You just have to find the right reporter, and frame the story in a way that gets his/her interest.
If you SSH back out and they're watching your session, then they'll catch the password that you use then.
Time to start a new one...
If it's the same company, check on the old class-action suit to see if there's a standing injunction as a result of the settlement. It's far easier to file for violating an injunction than to start your own lawsuit.
(IANAL)
Also: they also probably get a lot of false-positives from their customers. They need enough information from you to distinguish your report from one of those. Unless your ISP is really small, the person you got on the phone is probably a low-level flunkie who's going to have to punch your report through 2-3 levels of management before it can get to someone who can properly deal with what you've noticed.
There aren't many people who can deal powerfully with a hack attack of this kind. If you're willing, you might want to let them know what else you're willing to do on either a paid, or unpaid basis.
First of all, file the report. Ask the support person if you can fax in the report because you don't want to inform the hacker that (s)he's been spotted and you are reasonably clear that you can't get a secure channel to their web server.
If they absolutely insist that you go through their web pages, then do so. Give enough information to prove that you understand what's going on, and inform the person on their support line that you'll b expecting someone to call you with a phone number that you can call them back at.
(This is to prevent impersonation. I'd actually check the number to make sure that it belongs to the company in question) -- remember, the hacker may be seing your on-line communications.
Basically, the cops are right... about the only people who can force a real police investigation are at the ISP in question. If they can show that a couple hundred (or thousand) people have been affected by this hack then the cops may get involved.
If you want to be snarky, then you can ask the name of a good local journalist that you can tell your story to.. That might also light a fire somewhere. If nothing else, people in your community need to know that their communications are being logged by someone with clearly malicious intent. Be prepared to spend some time explaining things to the reporter. Someone with the stature to get furr flying is also unlikely to have serious technical computer knowledge. Be ready with a lead-in line to get his attention fast, like:
I can see two problems with this setup. One is the oft-mentioned capacity of the unit to handle a long-term outage and/or the resulting charge cycle (possibly fixable with bigger heatsinks).
The other is that you're talking about a 7-1 capacity ratio for the replacement battery. I'm guessing that the UPS may not recognize when your new batteries have reached charged state (at which time it's supposed to go to tricle-charge state). Most chargers recognize when this is happening by the current that the battery draws at a given voltage (or vice versa). It's quite possible that a fully charged 50AH battery is going to act (and be treated like) like an uncharged 7AH battery.
It depends on the charger. constant-voltage is generally considered to be better for the battery (good chargers will provide different voltages at different stages of the charge cycle). Constant-current chargers can be easy to build and won't burn out with larger batteries, but they also may not provide a high-enough voltage at that current to properly charge the battery. In either case, installing a battery far beyond the intended capacity of your UPS is likely to cause you problems in the event of a prolonged power failure.
Once you have an amp reading (over time) then you can do the math to generate watts, kilowatt--Hours/month or whatever you want.
units(1) is your friend on this. Some distributions (red-Hat) don't load it by default, so you may have to specify it manually.
$ units 5amps*110volts kilowatt-hours/month
* 401.76642
Rechargable batteries of different types have different characteristics. Beyond the most general platitudes, Nicad-type batteries are very different than led acid. and even the two families can variy between themselves. I managed to find a number of good books in the library about rechargable batteries that described the differences well.
Most notable about the differences: Nicad-type batteries like to be fully discharged from time to time. This helps to prevent the 'memory' effect.
Lead-acid batteries are almost precisely the opposite. Fully discharging a car battery is bad for it. It's designed for repeated partial discharge and recharge (i.e. starting the car). Jell cells (most common in UPSs) are similar to Lead Acid, but can better survive deep discharge and are less forgiving of being overcharged.
Both Lead and Nickel based batteries do much better under high-load conditions than conventional non-chargable batteries. This can also sometimes be a safety issue. I've seen small lead-acid batteries vaporize a 30 amp AGC (glass cylinder tube) fuse and heat a 16 gauge cable (used for cheaper extension cords) red-hot. If you directly short the terminals of a car battery, you could probably melt cheap jumper cables (presuming you don't cause an explosion first -- do not try this at home). Short lengths of 16 gauge wire are sometimes used as last-resort fuses in some parts of your auto electrical system.
If you're rolling your own with rechargabe batteries, always include fuses appropriate to the expected load. I would also suggest having the fuse as close to the power source as possible.
Car batteries, on the other hand are probably getting into a completely different scale of size. I'm not terribly surprised that the charger would fail going to that capacity size. It's It's like the difference between putting a small U-Hall trailer on your car and trying to pull something that would normally take an 18-wheeler.
It should also be noted: Some of the software being defended doesn't even physically alter the CD, or produce a new one. It simply contains an edit list of what scenes to skip over (and possibly what blocks of audio to not play). This means that if I was to simply sell my DVD to you, you'd still get the entire movie. There's no second DVD and no sliced copy. Copyright only allows authors to control the making of copies. it really can't touch how I view the copy that they sell me once I get it into the privacy of my own home.
If that small portion of peple is willing to buy the original, and then pay to have their copy sliced, diced and julien fried, that is their choice. They bought the CD, and they have the right to do what they want with it.
The movie studios coming into my living room and saying "You can't skip this part" is just as bad as the government coming into my bedroom and saying "you can't have sex in that position". As long as everybody involved is properly consenting, it's my choice what I do whether it's with my body or my DVD.
Sounds like the Napster argument, all over again (or, is that the other way 'round?).
Yep. and that's because SCO refuses to identify the protected code.
They also complain that Torvalds refuses to go hunting patents.. That's also appropriate. One of the best ways to avoid violating patented methods is to not know about them. If the solution is an obvious one, then the fact that you came to the same solution without konwing about the patent is almost a sufficient defence. On the other hand, if the solution is not an obvious one, then chances ar that you'll come up with a solution different enough from the pattern that the difference is a sufficient defence.
The purpose of a patent is to document a method such that (once the patent expires) anybody else can use it. The patent monopoly is just to ensure that people have an incentive to register their patents so that they ultimately do go into the public domain.
An interesting feature about the OS process is that -- once something goes into an OS project, it is (or at least should be) essentially unpatentable -- this is because any open source project is effectively published.. Especially for large and well-distributed projects like Linus, it's almost trivial to prove when that idea was published.
If you take the time to hunt patents before you use an idea, you run the risk of delaying the publication of an idea long enough for someone else to patent it.
The long and short result is that it's easier (and even better) to implement an idea and then wait to see if someone complains about a patent infringement than to go wandering through the patent office looking for something that may be the same as what you are using.
Reading through a patent application well enough to understand whether or not it applies to an idea is a long, difficult and dirty job. I'd much rather leave that to someone who's paid to do it (like the patent owner's lawer). Once the issue is raised by somene who cares about it then I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it.
I think that Linus has the same idea, and it sounds like he got it from his business colleagues.