It's actually a pretty good book. The problem just is that their own programmers mostly ignore it (read the chapter on consistency and then compare the behaviour of some of their major apps - grin).
Check out Pirates, a game where a key factor is the people in your physical (meatspace) vicinity.
I remember playing "community" strategy games on BBSs about 15 years ago (remember Trade Wars?), where a) the graphics were terrible (ascii), b) connection was slow (1200 bps modem), c) there wasn't much in terms of messaging or community either (although you could send messages). Lot's of fun.
Why? Because the concept was different, new and exiting, that's why. You'd play against other humans, not a dumb computer opponent.
So while I agree that the community part is important, there are definitely interesting ways to achieve that (e.g. Pirates). Technically you'd just use Bluetooth, GPS, or telco triangulation techniques for it.
So if at least some of these people are innovative we should see some pretty neat apps. And I mean neat apps, I couldn't care less if downloadable primitive shoot-em-ups fail to be successful on mobiles.
Indeed I experienced a similar effect while living in a student dorm that was right next (20 meters, overhead powerlines clearly visible through the window) to a major railway line (where the trains are powered by electricity, not diesel).
Whenever a train was approaching you'd notice the flicker on your CRT way before you could hear the train, because the fluctuations in the powerlines generated EM-fields as the train was sucking power.
On TVs it wasn't noticable because the contrast is much lower, but on computer screens it was quite annoying.
The disadvantage of LCDs is that if you office/room has fluorescent light tubes flickering at a different frequency than your LCD panels refresh rate, you get that nice strobe effect. The same thing you see when they film CRTs on TV, since the refresh rate of the TV camera is different from the CRTs refresh rate.
They're not swedish but swiss. Read again carefully and watch what you say online.;-)
Albeit I agree somehow. The research would have been more interesting if it found out and told us how to implement such a system/society and have the benefits (all join in for the common good) while avoiding the negative side effects mentioned in the article (groups splitting in factions, mafia, etc.).
I have a Canon Powershot S40 with the 1 GB MD. The camera uses custom LiIon batteries which are expensive, but well worth it.
I bought one spare and get around 250-300 pictures out of the 2 batteries over a time of 4-6 hours, e.g. at a party with people always wanting to see the last couple of pictures in the display (heavy-duty use).
Without recharging in the meantime, mind you (just so we don't confuse anthing here).
I carry the camera dangling around in my backpack on my bike, or people shake it heavily while they hold it and so far the drive hasn't failed me since. It also worked fine after being chilled to at least -10 degrees (Celsius) while skiing.
A friend of mine working in an IBM sales department once summarized how selling works in the big league:
Out of all the sales decisions customers make:
40% buy it because of the "vision" you get across
40% buy it because of the price
20% buy it because of the products technical features
And then he said:
I take that back. Actually half of the sales decisions are made on the golf course, and for the other half what I just said holds true.
GPS and/or DCF77 time signal receiver
on
The Dream Handheld
·
· Score: 1
Any mobile device would have a GPS receiver of course.
Alternatively it would have a DCF77 receiver to get the official (atomic clock) UTC time wherever I am, since the GPS time is inaccurate and I am such a perfectionist;-).
I still have a big box of legos (mostly from the Space series). No instructions however, but I don't remember that spoiling any fun. We would build the sets according to the instructions maybe once, to learn what could be done with the parts. Now the instruction booklets are all lost, but Lego still is fun.
If you get a kick out of creating your own and don't like the price or the fact that the new sets contain less "generic" parts, try flea markets and garage sales. You can get bags full of old-style blocks really cheap!
I think part of what kills Legos sales is that their "toy" lasts so long and doesn't really go out of style. So they think they have to invent all this new stuff, tricky situation for them. On the other hand: one can never have enough parts, really (I built my own StarWars ships after I saw the movies as a kid, and my parts were just enough for an X-Wing and the Falcon, the latter had a diameter of about 30 cm. If I'd had enough bricks, I certainly would have built that 3 meter long Star Destroyer...).
There is an additional problem with unicode in that you can convert from/to any encoding to unicode, but the encodings are not necessarily compatible.
E.g. we had that with two different japanese kanji encodings (on Sun workstations and Windowze boxes). Both encodings converted to Unicode and back, but they both had characters not present in the other encoding. So if you created, say, a filename on one system, converted the string to unicode and back to the other encoding on the other system, then all you got was a lot of gibberish.
So storing your data in unicode alone doesn't solve all your problems. All the clients that access that data need to support the same encodings used. (e.g. your american windowze box cannot handle unicode with kanji stuff unless you have the right language pack installed)
Essentially it boils down to: all your clients and servers must use the same encoding, wether you use unicode or something else.
Mapping fun with GPS receivers
on
GPS Drawings
·
· Score: 1
Check out the Degree Confluence Project for some mapping fun with GPS receivers. Or travel the world safely from your home.
Many websites (restaurant guides, etc.) that use some kind of Geographical Info System display the Latitude and Longitude in the URL query string. Hacking that is fun, but I still have to come up with a clever use for it. Check out mapquest too, e.g.: http://www.mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_free?lat=501000 &lng=30000&level=6
After reading some info on HERF devices and microwaves recently:
How about building a strong microwave emitter and sweeping the ground with it. Would that cause the mines to explode (due to heating up)?
Alternatively a strong electromagnetic field could fry the electronics, so the trigger wouldn't work anymore. If the mines are covered mostly in plastic, to avoid easy detection, they don't have a faraday cage to protect them from EM pulses either?
Only works for mines close to the surface I guess.
Disclaimer: it's just an idea, I don't know anything about mines and little about EM beam devices.
According to the article, phones would have to exchange and update their routing information all the time, even while everything was working normally (because by definition a phone can not know if a neighboring base station that's just out of reach is still working or not). Every phone would continuously keep broadcasting a list of every other phone and base station in it's reach.
This overhead alone (just to update the routing tables) would consume a big chunk of the bandwith all the time. Since a base station dropout or overload is an exception (hopefully), a dynamic on-demand routing protocol would make much more sense in this case.
As some other posters mentioned, it is difficult to count the number of Linux boxen since the number of sold distros doesn't tell you how often they've been installed.
Instead, try to find out how often commercial packages for Linux have been sold (e.g. AutoCAD,...). Instead of comparing it to Windows, compare it to other Unixes. Many companies working with a commercial Unix try to move to Linux because the hardware is cheaper.
These companies will be a good argument for Linux: for desktop apps, it is as good or better as any commercial Unix.
I would assume that this effect is in part due to the nature of port-scanning a wide range of IP adresses with a small data packet. This kind of traffic is different from "regular" traffic where a lot more data gets sent along the same route.
Consequently, since routes time out after a while (and get cached), the IP adress sweeping increases the necessity to figure out more seperate routes than usually (or FIFO caches are too small so routes get purged from the cache faster?).
This would logically increase the load on route discovery protocols such as BGP.
A whole new class of DoS attacks...
Hey Phil, you say that the Posts article was fair, yet two sentences later you admit that they wrote you were "overwhelmed with guilt" when that simply wasn't true.
So their article was good and fair? By whose standards?
If you consider media in general to be a whore who'd do anything to sell, well then maybe they've behaved comparably good and fair. IMHO that's a load of bullshit though, since just because most others are worse doesn't make the Post good.
A phrase like "overwhelmed with guilt" is an exagerated, hyped-up eye catcher, that will leave a certain impression on the reader. An impression that's far from the truth. They know that very well which is why they knowingly use such a phrase on purpose, because it sells their stupid paper.
So why do you make excuses for them just because they've done comparably well and others would have completely bullshitted you?
I just don't see why we should lower our standards of what's "good and fair" media just because that whole economy wrote off their souls long ago...
If the Internet gives you the freedom to tell the whole truth, unfiltered, straight-from-your-mouth, PGP signed and approved, why do you even bother with papers?
Libraries had this a long time ago? Man, have you ever done a research for relevant papers in a library? Even with all their CD-Rom and online catalogs it still sucks, because it's still keyword based, like Altavista.
That changed with citeseer, a search DB that specifically links publications and calculates their relevance based on common citations.
Great for doing research, check it out.
The most important aspect of a good DVD IMHO is the number of languages I get.
On a region 2 DVD I want at least english, plus two others (german, french, spanish,..). Learning foreign languages was never so much fun.
After all, that's what DVDs are about.
Yet recently, there have been alle these DVDs where you suddenly cannot turn the subtitles off anymore, if you watch it in a foreign language. Really annoying crippleware (their argument being "licensing reasons"). What? As if I would buy it twice just to watch it in another language without subtitles?
I'll wait and see how the region 2 version of Phantom Menace turns out in that aspect, before I make a judgement.
Exactly, governments should stick to the things they know. And you know what?
Governments/Municipalities are experts at digging up the ground and running pipes and cables: water, gas, electricity, etc. They are already doing that all the time (at least in Europe, maybe not in the US, where everything is outsourced to some company).
So doesn't it make perfect sense to put an additional cable (fiber) into the ground, since they already have the infrastructure for doing just that?
They don't necessarily have to provide the service themselves, they could rent out capacity on the fiber to several companies to actually run the show (phone, internet, etc.).
As a matter of fact, that is exactly the way it's done in some some cities in Germany, like Köln. The result: netcologne, best and cheapest internet and phone service in the whole country...
The polypod looks more like a rainworm to me. Ah yeah, seperate pieces can self-assemble into a larger worm.
Now add a replication device, so the worm can actually grow itself...
(Oh no, it's taken over southern California!)
But can you imagine the implications a separate vendor (like, say, Adobe) would have if they had to concern themselves with 30 or 50 different versions of their software based on the different "sanctions" adopted by each state?
You mention Europe, yet your view is so US-centric. Software vendors like Adobe that sell all over the world already have to deal with that. There are countries that do not allow shrink-wrap licenses for example, or countries that do not allow "licensing" of software at all.
E.g. you buy it, you own it, you have many rights that cannot be taken from you by the software vendor.
Now if it wasn't for the fact that software in other countries is often translated to other languages, you could actually re-import and use the same stuff with a more relaxed license (and possibly cheaper?).
Maybe it's time to learn a little spanish or german, eh?;-)
I would think there is a big difference between free speech as in "publishing something on a web site for interested parties to download" and free speech as in "forcing something into someone else's mailbox".
If I sit in front of my house on the porch on a sunday afternoon and you come over for a discussion, that's your choice (even if you disagree with my opinion). That is free speech.
If I come to your house and start yelling my rants while it's obvious you do not want that, that's not free speech. That would be molesting you, I would guess.
ACLs (Access Control Lists) are a very nifty feature in a network environment. They provide a much better control for the end user.
But nobody ever uses them. Why? Because there is no real standard (just a draft), every Unix (Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, AIX) and WinNT on top of it uses its own scheme, and they're all incompatible.
So part of the problem is standardization. The Mac file TYPE has the same problem. While Apple theoretically is the single authority on this, there are many non-registered file type fields in use and it keeps getting worse.
Guess what happens if two applications use the same file or creator type, but with different content? - Ay problema!
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually a pretty good book. The problem just is that their own programmers mostly ignore it (read the chapter on consistency and then compare the behaviour of some of their major apps - grin).
I remember playing "community" strategy games on BBSs about 15 years ago (remember Trade Wars?), where a) the graphics were terrible (ascii), b) connection was slow (1200 bps modem), c) there wasn't much in terms of messaging or community either (although you could send messages). Lot's of fun.
Why? Because the concept was different, new and exiting, that's why. You'd play against other humans, not a dumb computer opponent.
So while I agree that the community part is important, there are definitely interesting ways to achieve that (e.g. Pirates). Technically you'd just use Bluetooth, GPS, or telco triangulation techniques for it.
So if at least some of these people are innovative we should see some pretty neat apps. And I mean neat apps, I couldn't care less if downloadable primitive shoot-em-ups fail to be successful on mobiles.
Whenever a train was approaching you'd notice the flicker on your CRT way before you could hear the train, because the fluctuations in the powerlines generated EM-fields as the train was sucking power.
On TVs it wasn't noticable because the contrast is much lower, but on computer screens it was quite annoying.
The disadvantage of LCDs is that if you office/room has fluorescent light tubes flickering at a different frequency than your LCD panels refresh rate, you get that nice strobe effect. The same thing you see when they film CRTs on TV, since the refresh rate of the TV camera is different from the CRTs refresh rate.
Works very nice for me.
And while you're at it, vote for "Linux on the desktop" as the most important technology in 2002 as well. ;-)
Albeit I agree somehow. The research would have been more interesting if it found out and told us how to implement such a system/society and have the benefits (all join in for the common good) while avoiding the negative side effects mentioned in the article (groups splitting in factions, mafia, etc.).
I bought one spare and get around 250-300 pictures out of the 2 batteries over a time of 4-6 hours, e.g. at a party with people always wanting to see the last couple of pictures in the display (heavy-duty use).
Without recharging in the meantime, mind you (just so we don't confuse anthing here).
I carry the camera dangling around in my backpack on my bike, or people shake it heavily while they hold it and so far the drive hasn't failed me since. It also worked fine after being chilled to at least -10 degrees (Celsius) while skiing.
Highly recommended, as far as I can say. :-)
Too many MBAs at all levels and not enough people with a technical understanding of what could and needed to be built.
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it.
Out of all the sales decisions customers make:
40% buy it because of the "vision" you get across
40% buy it because of the price
20% buy it because of the products technical features
And then he said:
I take that back. Actually half of the sales decisions are made on the golf course, and for the other half what I just said holds true.
Alternatively it would have a DCF77 receiver to get the official (atomic clock) UTC time wherever I am, since the GPS time is inaccurate and I am such a perfectionist ;-).
If you get a kick out of creating your own and don't like the price or the fact that the new sets contain less "generic" parts, try flea markets and garage sales. You can get bags full of old-style blocks really cheap!
I think part of what kills Legos sales is that their "toy" lasts so long and doesn't really go out of style. So they think they have to invent all this new stuff, tricky situation for them. On the other hand: one can never have enough parts, really (I built my own StarWars ships after I saw the movies as a kid, and my parts were just enough for an X-Wing and the Falcon, the latter had a diameter of about 30 cm. If I'd had enough bricks, I certainly would have built that 3 meter long Star Destroyer...).
E.g. we had that with two different japanese kanji encodings (on Sun workstations and Windowze boxes). Both encodings converted to Unicode and back, but they both had characters not present in the other encoding. So if you created, say, a filename on one system, converted the string to unicode and back to the other encoding on the other system, then all you got was a lot of gibberish.
So storing your data in unicode alone doesn't solve all your problems. All the clients that access that data need to support the same encodings used. (e.g. your american windowze box cannot handle unicode with kanji stuff unless you have the right language pack installed)
Essentially it boils down to: all your clients and servers must use the same encoding, wether you use unicode or something else.
Many websites (restaurant guides, etc.) that use some kind of Geographical Info System display the Latitude and Longitude in the URL query string. Hacking that is fun, but I still have to come up with a clever use for it. Check out mapquest too, e.g.: http://www.mapquest.com/cgi-bin/ia_free?lat=501000 &lng=30000&level=6
After reading some info on HERF devices and microwaves recently:
How about building a strong microwave emitter and sweeping the ground with it. Would that cause the mines to explode (due to heating up)?
Alternatively a strong electromagnetic field could fry the electronics, so the trigger wouldn't work anymore. If the mines are covered mostly in plastic, to avoid easy detection, they don't have a faraday cage to protect them from EM pulses either?
Only works for mines close to the surface I guess.
Disclaimer: it's just an idea, I don't know anything about mines and little about EM beam devices.
Interested readers should probably read A Performance Comparison of Multi-Hop Wireless Ad Hoc Network Routing Protocols to find out why this is difficult.
According to the article, phones would have to exchange and update their routing information all the time, even while everything was working normally (because by definition a phone can not know if a neighboring base station that's just out of reach is still working or not). Every phone would continuously keep broadcasting a list of every other phone and base station in it's reach.
This overhead alone (just to update the routing tables) would consume a big chunk of the bandwith all the time. Since a base station dropout or overload is an exception (hopefully), a dynamic on-demand routing protocol would make much more sense in this case.
Instead, try to find out how often commercial packages for Linux have been sold (e.g. AutoCAD, ...). Instead of comparing it to Windows, compare it to other Unixes. Many companies working with a commercial Unix try to move to Linux because the hardware is cheaper.
These companies will be a good argument for Linux: for desktop apps, it is as good or better as any commercial Unix.
Consequently, since routes time out after a while (and get cached), the IP adress sweeping increases the necessity to figure out more seperate routes than usually (or FIFO caches are too small so routes get purged from the cache faster?).
This would logically increase the load on route discovery protocols such as BGP. A whole new class of DoS attacks...
So their article was good and fair? By whose standards?
If you consider media in general to be a whore who'd do anything to sell, well then maybe they've behaved comparably good and fair. IMHO that's a load of bullshit though, since just because most others are worse doesn't make the Post good. A phrase like "overwhelmed with guilt" is an exagerated, hyped-up eye catcher, that will leave a certain impression on the reader. An impression that's far from the truth. They know that very well which is why they knowingly use such a phrase on purpose, because it sells their stupid paper.
So why do you make excuses for them just because they've done comparably well and others would have completely bullshitted you? I just don't see why we should lower our standards of what's "good and fair" media just because that whole economy wrote off their souls long ago...
If the Internet gives you the freedom to tell the whole truth, unfiltered, straight-from-your-mouth, PGP signed and approved, why do you even bother with papers?
Libraries had this a long time ago? Man, have you ever done a research for relevant papers in a library? Even with all their CD-Rom and online catalogs it still sucks, because it's still keyword based, like Altavista.
That changed with citeseer, a search DB that specifically links publications and calculates their relevance based on common citations.
Great for doing research, check it out.
The most important aspect of a good DVD IMHO is the number of languages I get.
On a region 2 DVD I want at least english, plus two others (german, french, spanish,..). Learning foreign languages was never so much fun. After all, that's what DVDs are about.
Yet recently, there have been alle these DVDs where you suddenly cannot turn the subtitles off anymore, if you watch it in a foreign language. Really annoying crippleware (their argument being "licensing reasons"). What? As if I would buy it twice just to watch it in another language without subtitles?
I'll wait and see how the region 2 version of Phantom Menace turns out in that aspect, before I make a judgement.
Exactly, governments should stick to the things they know. And you know what?
Governments/Municipalities are experts at digging up the ground and running pipes and cables: water, gas, electricity, etc. They are already doing that all the time (at least in Europe, maybe not in the US, where everything is outsourced to some company).
So doesn't it make perfect sense to put an additional cable (fiber) into the ground, since they already have the infrastructure for doing just that?
They don't necessarily have to provide the service themselves, they could rent out capacity on the fiber to several companies to actually run the show (phone, internet, etc.).
As a matter of fact, that is exactly the way it's done in some some cities in Germany, like Köln. The result: netcologne, best and cheapest internet and phone service in the whole country...
The polypod looks more like a rainworm to me. Ah yeah, seperate pieces can self-assemble into a larger worm.
Now add a replication device, so the worm can actually grow itself...
(Oh no, it's taken over southern California!)
But can you imagine the implications a separate vendor (like, say, Adobe) would have if they had to concern themselves with 30 or 50 different versions of their software based on the different "sanctions" adopted by each state?
;-)
You mention Europe, yet your view is so US-centric. Software vendors like Adobe that sell all over the world already have to deal with that. There are countries that do not allow shrink-wrap licenses for example, or countries that do not allow "licensing" of software at all. E.g. you buy it, you own it, you have many rights that cannot be taken from you by the software vendor.
Now if it wasn't for the fact that software in other countries is often translated to other languages, you could actually re-import and use the same stuff with a more relaxed license (and possibly cheaper?).
Maybe it's time to learn a little spanish or german, eh?
I would think there is a big difference between free speech as in "publishing something on a web site for interested parties to download" and free speech as in "forcing something into someone else's mailbox".
If I sit in front of my house on the porch on a sunday afternoon and you come over for a discussion, that's your choice (even if you disagree with my opinion). That is free speech.
If I come to your house and start yelling my rants while it's obvious you do not want that, that's not free speech. That would be molesting you, I would guess.
ACLs (Access Control Lists) are a very nifty feature in a network environment. They provide a much better control for the end user.
But nobody ever uses them. Why? Because there is no real standard (just a draft), every Unix (Solaris, HPUX, IRIX, AIX) and WinNT on top of it uses its own scheme, and they're all incompatible.
So part of the problem is standardization. The Mac file TYPE has the same problem. While Apple theoretically is the single authority on this, there are many non-registered file type fields in use and it keeps getting worse.
Guess what happens if two applications use the same file or creator type, but with different content? - Ay problema!