Where, exactly, is modding prohibited?
on
XBox Linux HOWTOs
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Could someone please post the EULA for the Xbox. I'm 99% certain that it said, essentially, "you can't use the software that comes with the xbox for anything but your xbox." That is, you can't use their software on another computer (making Xbox-emulators pretty difficult). I don't think it said anything else.
Furthermore, this restriction was only printed in a small box on one side of the product's shipping box -- nowhere did I see any EULAs on the unit itself, when I booted it up, or on any kind of sticker when I opened it up.
I'm just curious if they've since made it more restrictive. I know I was VERY surprised not to find a typical Microsoft EULA attached to a big red sticker pasted over the power supply, or somesuch.
That said, the "live network" could certainly deny access two whomever it wants -- be they people from another timezone, another country, or people using modded xboxes. But Microsoft shouldn't have any leg to stand on to prevent people from modding their boxes, except for the obvious one of avoiding copy protection on duplicated games (which wouldn't apply to 3rd party software, and *shouldn't* apply to backups). And Microsoft shouldn't go telling game companies that you've got a modded xbox and save folders on the hard driver for games X, Y, and Z (infering that they're illegally copied games).
Of course, what's right and legal is irrelevant when they've got more laywer money than most geeks with modded xboxes....
Does anyone familar with this implementation have any idea how processor-heavy it is?
I ask because people have played with an earlier floating point implementation on the Rio Receiver, and have found that it wasn't terribly usable. I'm a little short on details, but I think it was too intensive for the low-speed CPU in the receiver.
On the other hand, there has been work to build replacement clients for the Rio Receiver that use FLAC lossless compression, and that apparently works pretty well. So the current thinking is to transcode.ogg to flac at the server level. Or just to rip everything to flac (which requires a whole lot more disk space.:( )
Wow. This must be the most replies any of my posts got. 17 (at this time). I'm impressed.
I have to admit, I never considered underclocking a 1GHz chip to, say, 200 MHz. That might be worth a try.
Also, ARM chips have been something I've been wondering about, especially for multimedia set-top use (they seem to work okay for Rios and (I think) TiVo). The Via board's kinda cool, as is that little 3-port SBC (I forget what it was called), though I'd have to use a PCI card on it for wireless (I want to keep that on its own DMZ, not actually "in" the net).
Thanks, all -- you took a one-off, "hey, anyone got any ideas" post that was actually vaguely offtopic, and saved me the trouble of putting together an AskSlashdot item.:)
Wasn't there a prize for the first team to loft 1 kg to 100 km? Would this qualify?
(no, it wasn't X-prize, that was for bringing people into space and re-launching in, what, a week?)
Been a while.
I'm disappointed, though, that they're being asked to keep the exact launch date a secret. If they can't protect a rocket in the middle of the Nevada desert from terrorists (or tourists), then we're all screwed.
If you are using another company's DVD burner, then you cannot use Apple's software.
How's this any different from Microsoft saying "If you throw away your PC and buy a new one, you can't use the software on that box?"
The DMCA allows, if I recall correctly, modifications to software to ensure interoperability. Here's software (iDVD) which doesn't work with a drive (external 3rd party DVD burner). Someone wrote software to make iDVD interoperable with the external drive. Perfectly legal.
In violation of an EULA? Well, that's up to Apple, the people using the patch, and all of us who haven't decided whether we believe EULAs are enforceable or not. Violation of DMCA? No. Can lawyers make your life hell even so? Certainly.
What it comes down to is this breaks Apple's business model for DVD burning. There's an easy solution: Stop giving away iDVD for free. Sheesh.
Any chance to underclock this beast at, say, 1.4 GHz w/ passive cooling?
I've been thinking about that a lot lately, myself. I'm trying to rebuild my network at home (now that I have a cable modem, but don't start me on that!:( ). It's occurred to me that 350MHz is probably too much for a firewall (plus, I need a box for experimentation), so I set out to try and build a simple, low-profile, low-speed box for a firewall.
Can't be done. Everywhere I look, I see 1GHz+ systems. I could find 500 MHz K6 CPUs, but that was about the lowest. And anything on eBay is both too fast and too big. I want something simple and small, that I can maybe put a four-port ethernet card into. Something like a 1U PIX, but running BSD.
This becomes more of an issue as I think about set-top boxes -- I want to be able to do video/audio/games/web to the TV, but I don't want to have whirring hard drives or whiny fans in my bedroom. Once again, I need a decent speed, but not super kick-ass (especially if I can do MPEG decoding in hardware), but, again, I'm out of luck. Stuff that slow (and cool) just isn't easy to find.
'course, I'm not looking *too* hard, either. And, no, I don't want to go the PC104 or SBC route -- if it comes to that, I'd just buy an Athlon 2600 and retire my Duron to firewall duty, for the same cost.
You know, I was just thinking about this the other day, for some reason.
I first read the story years ago on USENET (it might even have been when I was still in school, so late 80's early 90's). I remember that he even mentioned in his posting that "this is not an urban legend, so if it ever turns into one, you'll know it started with fact. Expect to see a journal article soon."
It looked a lot like the story at the darwin awards, but for the lack of mention of urban legends (of course, if I really *did* read it 12 years ago, then I may be having a memory lapse).
That said, the story looks more and more like a joke. I did a quick google USENET search, and didn't find the original article, but found plenty of reprints, mostly in joke groups. There's no mention of time (where and when did this happen?). And you'd certainly think that it would have made it to the journals by now.
So, has anyone found any definitive research on this story? I'd believed it was true, when I first read it, then forgot about it for years. Now, I'm not so sure. And snopes doesn't have anything on it.
Good thinking. Don't donate to them while they are in the midst of the legal battle
You're absolutely right, of course. I never meant to imply that I was being rational in being reluctant to donate.
However, honestly, how much will donating to one or another individual radio station help, right now? Today, we should probably be donating to whomever's working to overturn the law for *everyone*, rather than just to help any single radio station.
Plus, I really only just started listening about two weeks ago -- I'm not even convinced I'm going to keep doing it in the long term. (yes, I'm rationalizing.)
This, also, was part of the appeal of a getting a periodic usage summary -- a sort of "bill", as it were, to help guilt people like me into paying something.
I've just started messing around with Shoutcast streaming at home (into my Rio Receiver -- very nice!), and am amazed at the quality of independent stations out there. Like the bumper sticker on RadioParadise's monitor says, "Corporate Radio Sucks." I'd forgotten what it *could* be like.
That said, I'm honestly a little reluctant to make donations to any of these, for fear they'll just have to close up in October, anyway. But I've been wondering about two possible ways out, beyond requiring a subscription.
1) Can internet broadcasters join up with the Public Broadcasting System? They're already complying with the no-commercial ideals of PBS, and many are already accepting listener support via PayPal and such. What would it take to get some kind of formal support from PBS, in the form of grant dollars, legal support, technical advice, etc.? PBS has TV and Radio stations, maybe it's time they had an Internet arm, as well.
2) From what I understand, the most exorbitant fees are levied against internet-only broadcasters. Established radio stations (broadcasting via electromagnetic waves, insted of ethernet pulses) are exempt, or at least get to pay much lower fees. With the FCC trying to establish low-power radio stations (at one point, I'm not sure whether it's been quashed by ClearChannel or not), could stations like RadioParadise or KPIG simply apply for a low-power license, somewhere (not necessarily where their studio is), and use that as justification for lower rates?
Maybe they could combine the two?
Other ideas:
* Subsidies from big internet companies. Maybe AOL, Cox, AT&T, COVAD, etc. could pony up some money to help pay the fees, since, after all, the existence of quality streams will only get more people interested in broadband services.
* Tiered subscription models. Maybe lower rates for free streams, subsidized by people subscribing for higher bitrates? I figure if you're listening 4 hours a day, 15 songs per hour, it comes out to only $12 a month, or so.
Maybe we need plugins for WinAmp (or JReceiver or whatever) to give users a monthly report of how much they've listened, and to suggest a donation amount consistent with that usage. I know that if I can be shown that I've listened to $30 worth of internet radio in the last, say, 3 months, that I'd have no problem making a donation in that amount.
Are there any actual Internet streamers out there who can comment, on these questions or the overall story?
[preface: I first used perl back in version 3, something like 12 years ago. I first really learned perl, v4, about 9 years ago. It did everything I ever needed.
Then, perl 5 came out. I didn't bother "learning" it -- that is, I've been using it, and when I really need to, I've used some perl 5 features, but I've learned them as I go (by example), and I know I'm not really using the full capabilites. (plus, though I know what I'm doing, I don't always know what to call what I'm doing -- I got stumped the other day when someone asked me how to do pointers in perl. I drew a blank, not making the connection to all the weird hash magic I'd been doing lately. But I digress.)
Anyway, the bottom line of this is: Perl 5 looked interesting, but like more of the same, and wasn't really compelling for me to buckle down and learn all the new features. Perl 6, on the other hand, scares me. In a good way.
Here's a page-by-page description of how I read the article:
Page 1: Hm. Looks like they're describing a grammar with regex. Cool.
Page 2: I can intuitively match against a set of strings! Wild. These strings can be expressions themselves? Even better!
Page 3: It's a grammar. A full, honkin, real, honest-to-goodness grammar. That I can match against. Are those angels I hear singing?
Page 4: <head explodes>
Page 5: <drools>
Seriously, though, I was concerned at first that I'd have to learn something new, crazy, and difficult (given how screwed-up much of perl 5 has seemed, at times). I'm impressed. I'm very impressed. Yes, I have to learn somthing new and crazy, but it's not at all difficult. In fact, I think I've already learned it.
The power that this new system holds, and, more importantly, the simplicity of it all, is amazing.
So, unlike some other posters, I can't wait for Perl 6. When does this come out, again? And, more importantly, when can I buy the new book?
(also, was I the only one who expected, after the demonstration of matching method invocations, to be told that the entire source code for perl6 was just one giant RegEx/Grammar?)
This seems about the best answer I've seen so far. But there are still some shortfalls that I think might be problematic.
Coding as a hobby definitely demonstrates a personal interest in programming, and a willingness to spend the time (my own time, no less) to learn whatever it is I'd need for that hobby (and, hopefully, the ability to use what you learn).
Samples of source code are sort of good, but the applicant might only be able to bring "hobby code" from home (because the 'good stuff' belongs to his current company), and that probably won't be as well refined as the stuff you do professionally. Though it also might be more cool, elegant, or just innovative, depending on what work's like (you're leaving, remember?)
Actually going to a whiteboard to solve a problem seems about the best way to gauge an applicant, in my not-so-complete-interviewing-experience. You're getting the most real-world example of the applicant, with peers, discussing and analyzing a problem, then sketching an outline for how to solve it. The details (which language, what modules, should you use pointers here, etc.) seem (to me) to be irrelevant. You're hiring someone to solve problems -- so, solve a problem, with the team, just like you would on a normal work day.
However, a couple of other suggestions seem like they wouldn't work. Asking about open source involvement just measures someone's interest in the open source community. Plenty of people (including myself) do a lot of programming at home, for fun, on projects that are primarily of interest to no-one but the applicant.
Finding a bug in sample code might work, if it's a small enough sample (like a simple routine), but there you're treading too close to testing for book knowledge ("Ah! You forget that the squiggle goes on the LEFT of the arrow!"), and book knowledge generally flees an interviewee at warp speed as soon as they set foot in your building. (Plus, that's why we *have* books, and man pages, and CPAN, and....)
Finally, talking to associates and bosses is tough, especially in a tight job market where someone might be afraid to even *suggest* that they're unhappy, for fear of being laid off and replaced with someone desparate for work off the street.
I don't know. I hate interviewing people. I hate *being* interviewed even more. I'm just not sure there is a good way.
More Thruster, more lift... We need new ideas and bold steps in propulsion if we're ever going to graduate from the rocket age into bonafide space travel.
True. But this isn't just about "more lift." The EELV (Evolved Expendible Launch Vehicle) program (of which Atlas 5 is the first product) is designed to make rocket launches better, faster, cheaper. Certainly it's not a quantum leap to laser-powered boosters, but it's still much better than before.
From what I understand, some of the Atlas 5's benefits include:
Increased resistance to winds while on the pad and during launch (useful in hurricane-prone Florida)
Faster setup time on the pad (half-day for final setup and fueling, versus weeks) (no, I don't understand this one, but I heard it on the news last night)
Decreased reliance on complex launch gantry (look at the shuttle pad. Or the titan pad. then look at the atlas -- it's just got a little tower next to it, not a huge superstructure).
Modular design. If I recall correctly, current (Titan, Delta, and older Atlas) rockets require significant mission-specific construction details. Like, "oh, you're going to this orbit? Then we need to make the booster a little lighter. We'll have that booster ready in, oh, 18 months?" Now the core is the same for all payloads and all orbits, so it's "Ok, you'll need two strap-ons. How's next Friday?"
I will agree that we're not spending enough on research for alternative methods of accessing space. But that's not to say that the research isn't progressing -- the recent SCRAMJET tests are very promising for runway-to-LEO prospects, and several other projects are underway to develop alternate vertical heavy-lift systems. They're just still very far out.
The EELV program has been ongoing for several years (they were building out the pad when I was last on the Cape about 3 years ago -- and that was *after* all the heavy design work had been done). The "very radical ideas" that have come out in the last decade came far too late to influence EELV. "Oh, that's the New Paradigm Launch Vehicle. They're down the hall.":)
Anyway, this page (on the referenced Spaceflight Now site) gives a lot of high-level technical info on the Atlas 5. And talks about how it's almost "Dial-A-Rocket," and how they've even got an Atlas 5 Heavy planned that uses THREE of the common-core boosters. Imagine three of those rockets, plus additional strap-ons, bundled together. Way cool, even if there aren't any lasers (or microwaves or scramjets or.....)
So, no, it's not the holy grail. But it's a damned sight better than what we've had to date.
Like why the current Enterprise is a lot more high-tech looking than the one in TOS (which I actually think is kind of an error.)
Actually, I've dealt with that inconsistency by pretending it's the sets-and-props equivelant of Klingons.
That is, in the 60's, makeup sucked (and maybe imaginations weren't as good, either?), so the Klingons looked like, er, TOS Klingons. The same thing with set design, technologies (and budget!). So when I watch TOS, I think of it as a low-budget adaptation of a world that actually looks quite a bit cooler than it does on TV. Or something like that.
Why did the ST:TMP enterprise look so much better than TOS enterprise, even though they were only like 5 years apart, max, in the timeline?
Yes, several blacklists have been sued, but none of those suits have succeeded as far as I know.
Okay, here's a/. story from 2000:
An Anonymous Coward sent in "Direct Magazine is carrying the story Yesmail Gets Restraining Order Against MAPS Blacklist (curiously dated July 17). YesMail has apparently obtained a restraining order preventing MAPS from entering it into its Real-time Black-hole List."
(discussion here)
Naturally, the original article is gone, but the comments are there. From the summary, it appears that a judge did at least agree to a temporary restraining order against a blacklist.
An update a couple months later says:
droleary writes: "Something of an update to this Slashdot article, a Yahoo News story reports that a number of large ISPs are caving in to a massive lawsuit brought by Harris Interactive regarding the delivery of their "online polls" (aka, spam, according to MAPS). I find it disturbing that large ISPs are so willing to let external agencies control what runs through their systems."
(discussion)
I couldn't find any further details, but assuming nothing changed, I'd say that several "large ISPs are caving in to a massive lawsuit" says that the suit was successful. Maybe not legally decisive, but at least successful (for the plaintiff).
(I'm sure there are more instances and other details out there, and possibly later reversals-of-caving, but I wanted to at least show one instance where private-ownership of the resources didn't help.)
The three lines of a haiku should have 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.
Not necessarily, though I undestand the convention. A quick google search reveals: http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm which suggests that 5-7-5 might actually be *too many* english syllables for a "true" haiku experience.
But now I'm being defensive, and all I was really hoping was that a Flying Karamozov Brothers fan would recognize the poem.:)
Okay, let me get this straight...
on
Haiku vs Spam
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· Score: 2
[I know I'm bucking the trend by reading the article, but, trust me, I didn't inhale.]
So you've got an internet mail service that you subscribe to.
That mail service accepts an inbound email from someone.
If the inbound email does not contain a copyrighted string, then (and I'm making technical assumptions here), it returns it to the sender.
The sender reads the conditions for adding the mark, agrees to them, adds a special copyrighted haiku to the headers, and resends the message.
The internet mail service receives the message, sees the mark, and passes it into the recipient's mail spool.
The user sees a marked message, sees that it's spam, and since the message in some way violates the terms and conditions of using the mark, they can then turn around and sue the sender.
The user then looks at the email and despairs -- after all, this is SPAM, and it's near-impossible to tell who's sent the email.
Have I about got it? I suppose there'd be options to have all messages go through to a "suspicious" box, or to do some kind of SpamAssassin tagging for unmarked email, etc.
So, how exactly is this different from homebrew "whitelist only" systems? The only distinguishing mark is that the sender's acceptance of a legal contract involves addition of a copyrighted mark, in this case, a haiku poem in a header.
If I've got my own whitelist system, that returns a message saying "use this string 'Mtzlplck' and the message will go through, but by doing this you agree that you're not a spammer, and if you violate this trust, I'll sue you," then I should have the same protections as if they'd illegially used a copyrighted mark. Right?
Since their network is a private one, they certainly have the right to blacklist anybody they want.
Tell that to the folks who ran the SPAM mail-relay blacklists. If I recall correctly, one of 'em got sued and forced to remove someone from the blacklist. That was a private list, maintained by private individuals, utilized on privatly-owned systems, and they still got sued (and lost). (Someone help me out on the details here, please.)
So, just because they have a *right* to block the RIAA, doesn't mean that a judge will agree. And, in the end, that's all that matters -- whether you can convince a judge (or jury, or cop). If you can't convince them, or can't afford to try, then you've lost, no matter what the law says.
Okay, I'll grant you that calling something ".+zilla" and using a dinosaur/dragon-like logo is probably coming close to violating a Godzilla trademark.
But what ever happened to the concept of a restricted space within which trademarks are (were?) supposed to operate? I had understood that trademarks were only protected within the same general "realm" of a product -- which is how we've got Excel cars and Excel spreadsheets.
It's seemed to me, with the advent of the modern internet, that all these distinctions have been thrown away, and that the courts are allowing that diminished distinction. So Palm has to stop calling their Pilot a "Pilot" because a pen company complains.
Does anyone know what exactly is the deal here? Have domain-name disputes finally opened the door for a single, universal, all-encompasing product namespace?
If someone wants to call their browser Mozilla (or even Godzilla), then they should be able to, because the chances of someone confusing a web browser with a big lizard are pretty darned slim.
Or have I misunderstood this aspect of (US) trademark law all along?
If they price the DVDs competitively, people will buy the DVD.
And in many cases, people will even buy extra DVD players JUST to play those DVDs. I've got three DVD sets from Britain of US TV shows that simply haven't been released here, so I had to buy an Apex. Very annoying.
But I could have just copied them from the TiVo -- hell, I probably could have extracted the actual streams and burned them to DVD myself. But I'd rather just get the offical set. It's easier, and has nicer menus.:)
How about we all simply agree that we all know that NYT requires registration, and stop putting "free registration, blah blah blah" in all the damned stories!
Government, unable to trust it's own ability to get things done has been setting up these little extra-democractic bureaucracies to run the show without public input, in the hopes of getting something accomplished.
Hear, hear!
Excellent analysis. I hadn't quite thought of it this way, but this does seem to be how it's been going, doesn't it?
So, how do we fix things? It seems to me that these conversations always come back to needing a good, honest, centrist political party that actually *makes sense* and can win on those terms, without having to kowtow to the $$. If that party develops, and makes inroads, then maybe they can stop the madness. But you need a certain critical mass of people / opinions / visibility before a party could start winning elections, and then you need another critical mass inside congress to start actually making a difference.
If we could do that, then maybe we'd be able to start trusing ourselves again, and can start wittling back the extra-democratic controls that you spoke of.
About the only silver lining is that, eventually, any really crappy laws will get repealed. The problem is that we might have an entire generation or two (or many more, as was the case with slavery and civil rights reforms) before things "get better". And what will that do to our country as an economic power? *that* is my real fear. That as we try to sort out these stupid special interests, we end up hindering our own economy so much that the European Union destroys us in the long run (or the Far East, or, God help us if they ever unify and start governing effectively, Africa). There're plenty of SMART people out there (most of the planet). Just because we're kicking their butts today doesn't mean that, in a hundred years, the tables won't be turned.
Well, yeah, some of 'em. Others win sort of ambiguously (Bush in Florida), and still others are simply appointed to powerful posts with very little real voter control (Powell as FCC chairman).
The worst of it is there's really not much we can do about it. (I'm feeling cynical today). Here're the big problems, as I see it, with the US system:
Special interests pump lots of money into elections. They do this to get their issues voted on their way. Because they're so vocal, candidates get plenty of expensive press. Because (for example) the incumbent gets so much press, his opponents needs press to, so he goes to other special interests. And so on. This is why we need good campaign finance reform, but we won't get it (or something like it) until after the next round of elections, and even that is unclear if it'll survive a court test because of a little something we call Free Speech.
Politicians want to keep their jobs. Congressmen want to stay congressmen, and Senators *definitely* want to stay senators. So they have to run every few years. So they need money to run. And we're back to campaign finance reform (CFR, 'cause I'm tried of spelling it out). Basically, we need to reform campaign finance because, well, people are constantly campaigning. But, wait, we could institute term limits! Well, that can't be done at a state level (it's been tried, and I believe some state measures have been struck down). So, we need term limits in the US Constitution. Well, who writes and approves amemendments for presentation to the states? Congress. It took how many years for CFR? Any bets on when we might see an amendment for term limits?
We could bypass the congress and amend the constitution directly. It's possible to have a Constitutional Convention, bring together representatives from each state, and modify the constitution directly, without having to wait for congress. But the last time we did that, we threw out the old system ENTIRELY and created what we have now. I don't expect that we'd do anything quite as drastic, but I would expect that any delegates to a convention would be just as pressured by special interest groups as Congress is (if not, more). So, sure, we might get term limits. But we'd also get anti-abortion (or pro-choice, depending on who spends more), anti-flag-burning, DRM, permanent copyrights, and who knows what else. So this isn't an option.
So, to review, for those of you outside the US wondering why we keep electing these idiots:
We can't stop the money
We can't get 'em to voluntarily step down
We can't use the power of the populace to force them to step down
We can't even get reasonable opponents elected, 'cause they all tend to swing too far to the *other* side. (you need one loud special interest to beat out the other).
The only way, then, to "win," is to fight them at their own game -- with money. Campaign contributions, issue ads, strong PR campaigns, etc. But the "common folk" don't have a strong lobby. We don't have the money, we certainly don't have the party. There's simply no single unifying force for the vast majority of opinion in the US. So the majority ends up being ruled by some weird combination of minority (but well funded) views.
At least we've got one thing going for us -- we don't kick out our President every time he does something that pisses off the majority of the country (well, we do, but we have to wait up to 4 years to do it). I never understand how countries like Isreal, Great Britain, or Italy can survive with Prime Ministers losing all hold on power on, essentially, a popular whim. So at least our executive branch (current dictatorial fiats notwithstanding) isn't quite as screwed up as other countries'.
I've always thought this was a neat idea, but is there really a market for this kind of modification?
I wanted to buy one. I've been watching the Silicon Film company for some years now (at least 3 or 4, I think), since when they were called "ImageK" or somesuch. It's been frustrating that they can't deliver (they seem to be turning into the Moller Skycar of the digital camera world).
However, even if they were selling them today, I still wouldn't buy one yet. It's too slow (ISO 100 just doesn't cut it much of the time), and it doesn't use the full 35-mm frame. That is, the imaging area is only a little square in the middle of the frame (about as large as the typical focusing circle). I always thought that if they simply took that one sensor, and tiled it to fill the frame, they'd (a) have full-frame coverage, and (b) have serious uber-mega-pixel capability. I guess the electronics (or dies) simply didn't support that.
Also, it's hard to make something like this fit exactly within a film canister's volume (and the film's path). Sure, you can make the outside dimensions fit, but film is pretty darned thin, and I think that's where their plugin fails -- each camera's back "pressure plate" on the film varied enough that it's hard to make a "one size fits all" drop-in.
Also, a big advantage of dedicated digital cameras is having a viewscreen that you can use to review, zoom, delete, etc. And easily changed media. I'd written them, when they were still in early prototype stage, suggesting that they work out some kind of inductive pickup so you could transmit the image out of the camera and onto a thin screen / CF container velcroed to the back of the body. Dunno if they liked the idea, hated it, or found it unworkable. (or, more than likely, it never made it past the front lines).
Add to this the price tag (can't find one now -- at one time it was as high as $700). It's simply not an option, certainly not for casual hobbyists like me and most likely not for any serious photographers who'd most benefit from digital (especially, say, sports photographers).
As someone else has pointed out, the newer digital SLRs (designed from the ground up) are very good, and often take the full complement of their respective manufacturers' lenses. I recently saw the Canon SLR (last year's model, I think), and was blown away. It takes the same lenses as my Elan-II, and weighs about the same. It has the same interface as my pocket digital Elph (which I like a lot), but takes pictures at up to 800 speed (I think, it might have been up to 1/1600, even). Of course, it helps that it had VERY fast lenses attached. But it is definitely the best of both worlds, and newer models have improved resolution.
If they could make these with replacable imaging units (so you could swap in a better CCD when higher resolutions become available), then it'd be just about perfect.
So, yes, there is a market for drop-in replacements -- everyone with an SLR who wants to retain the control and flexibility of an SLR, and use their current lenses. But with major manufacturers making very good digital SLRs, the only remaining advantages are the ability to swap between film and digital with the same camera, as needed (which might be nice, but I'd rather carry two cameras and be able to switch on the fly), and the ability to upgrade the sensor (and considering that many people keep their $1000+ SLR bodies for *years*, this could be a significant advantage). Personally, I'm not sure it's worth it any more, especially if Canon and Nikon develop replacable imaging units.
Slashdot Mirror
Could someone please post the EULA for the Xbox. I'm 99% certain that it said, essentially, "you can't use the software that comes with the xbox for anything but your xbox." That is, you can't use their software on another computer (making Xbox-emulators pretty difficult). I don't think it said anything else.
Furthermore, this restriction was only printed in a small box on one side of the product's shipping box -- nowhere did I see any EULAs on the unit itself, when I booted it up, or on any kind of sticker when I opened it up.
I'm just curious if they've since made it more restrictive. I know I was VERY surprised not to find a typical Microsoft EULA attached to a big red sticker pasted over the power supply, or somesuch.
That said, the "live network" could certainly deny access two whomever it wants -- be they people from another timezone, another country, or people using modded xboxes. But Microsoft shouldn't have any leg to stand on to prevent people from modding their boxes, except for the obvious one of avoiding copy protection on duplicated games (which wouldn't apply to 3rd party software, and *shouldn't* apply to backups). And Microsoft shouldn't go telling game companies that you've got a modded xbox and save folders on the hard driver for games X, Y, and Z (infering that they're illegally copied games).
Of course, what's right and legal is irrelevant when they've got more laywer money than most geeks with modded xboxes....
Does anyone familar with this implementation have any idea how processor-heavy it is?
.ogg to flac at the server level. Or just to rip everything to flac (which requires a whole lot more disk space. :( )
I ask because people have played with an earlier floating point implementation on the Rio Receiver, and have found that it wasn't terribly usable. I'm a little short on details, but I think it was too intensive for the low-speed CPU in the receiver.
On the other hand, there has been work to build replacement clients for the Rio Receiver that use FLAC lossless compression, and that apparently works pretty well. So the current thinking is to transcode
Wow. This must be the most replies any of my posts got. 17 (at this time). I'm impressed.
:)
I have to admit, I never considered underclocking a 1GHz chip to, say, 200 MHz. That might be worth a try.
Also, ARM chips have been something I've been wondering about, especially for multimedia set-top use (they seem to work okay for Rios and (I think) TiVo). The Via board's kinda cool, as is that little 3-port SBC (I forget what it was called), though I'd have to use a PCI card on it for wireless (I want to keep that on its own DMZ, not actually "in" the net).
Thanks, all -- you took a one-off, "hey, anyone got any ideas" post that was actually vaguely offtopic, and saved me the trouble of putting together an AskSlashdot item.
david.
Wasn't there a prize for the first team to loft 1 kg to 100 km? Would this qualify?
(no, it wasn't X-prize, that was for bringing people into space and re-launching in, what, a week?)
Been a while.
I'm disappointed, though, that they're being asked to keep the exact launch date a secret. If they can't protect a rocket in the middle of the Nevada desert from terrorists (or tourists), then we're all screwed.
If you are using another company's DVD burner, then you cannot use Apple's software.
How's this any different from Microsoft saying "If you throw away your PC and buy a new one, you can't use the software on that box?"
The DMCA allows, if I recall correctly, modifications to software to ensure interoperability. Here's software (iDVD) which doesn't work with a drive (external 3rd party DVD burner). Someone wrote software to make iDVD interoperable with the external drive. Perfectly legal.
In violation of an EULA? Well, that's up to Apple, the people using the patch, and all of us who haven't decided whether we believe EULAs are enforceable or not. Violation of DMCA? No. Can lawyers make your life hell even so? Certainly.
What it comes down to is this breaks Apple's business model for DVD burning. There's an easy solution: Stop giving away iDVD for free. Sheesh.
Any chance to underclock this beast at, say, 1.4 GHz w/ passive cooling?
:( ). It's occurred to me that 350MHz is probably too much for a firewall (plus, I need a box for experimentation), so I set out to try and build a simple, low-profile, low-speed box for a firewall.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately, myself. I'm trying to rebuild my network at home (now that I have a cable modem, but don't start me on that!
Can't be done. Everywhere I look, I see 1GHz+ systems. I could find 500 MHz K6 CPUs, but that was about the lowest. And anything on eBay is both too fast and too big. I want something simple and small, that I can maybe put a four-port ethernet card into. Something like a 1U PIX, but running BSD.
This becomes more of an issue as I think about set-top boxes -- I want to be able to do video/audio/games/web to the TV, but I don't want to have whirring hard drives or whiny fans in my bedroom. Once again, I need a decent speed, but not super kick-ass (especially if I can do MPEG decoding in hardware), but, again, I'm out of luck. Stuff that slow (and cool) just isn't easy to find.
'course, I'm not looking *too* hard, either. And, no, I don't want to go the PC104 or SBC route -- if it comes to that, I'd just buy an Athlon 2600 and retire my Duron to firewall duty, for the same cost.
You know, I was just thinking about this the other day, for some reason.
I first read the story years ago on USENET (it might even have been when I was still in school, so late 80's early 90's). I remember that he even mentioned in his posting that "this is not an urban legend, so if it ever turns into one, you'll know it started with fact. Expect to see a journal article soon."
It looked a lot like the story at the darwin awards, but for the lack of mention of urban legends (of course, if I really *did* read it 12 years ago, then I may be having a memory lapse).
That said, the story looks more and more like a joke. I did a quick google USENET search, and didn't find the original article, but found plenty of reprints, mostly in joke groups. There's no mention of time (where and when did this happen?). And you'd certainly think that it would have made it to the journals by now.
So, has anyone found any definitive research on this story? I'd believed it was true, when I first read it, then forgot about it for years. Now, I'm not so sure. And snopes doesn't have anything on it.
Good thinking. Don't donate to them while they are in the midst of the legal battle
You're absolutely right, of course. I never meant to imply that I was being rational in being reluctant to donate.
However, honestly, how much will donating to one or another individual radio station help, right now? Today, we should probably be donating to whomever's working to overturn the law for *everyone*, rather than just to help any single radio station.
Plus, I really only just started listening about two weeks ago -- I'm not even convinced I'm going to keep doing it in the long term. (yes, I'm rationalizing.)
This, also, was part of the appeal of a getting a periodic usage summary -- a sort of "bill", as it were, to help guilt people like me into paying something.
> named the Square Kilometer Array or SKA
Truly, this is One Step Beyond.
I've just started messing around with Shoutcast streaming at home (into my Rio Receiver -- very nice!), and am amazed at the quality of independent stations out there. Like the bumper sticker on RadioParadise's monitor says, "Corporate Radio Sucks." I'd forgotten what it *could* be like.
That said, I'm honestly a little reluctant to make donations to any of these, for fear they'll just have to close up in October, anyway. But I've been wondering about two possible ways out, beyond requiring a subscription.
1) Can internet broadcasters join up with the Public Broadcasting System? They're already complying with the no-commercial ideals of PBS, and many are already accepting listener support via PayPal and such. What would it take to get some kind of formal support from PBS, in the form of grant dollars, legal support, technical advice, etc.? PBS has TV and Radio stations, maybe it's time they had an Internet arm, as well.
2) From what I understand, the most exorbitant fees are levied against internet-only broadcasters. Established radio stations (broadcasting via electromagnetic waves, insted of ethernet pulses) are exempt, or at least get to pay much lower fees. With the FCC trying to establish low-power radio stations (at one point, I'm not sure whether it's been quashed by ClearChannel or not), could stations like RadioParadise or KPIG simply apply for a low-power license, somewhere (not necessarily where their studio is), and use that as justification for lower rates?
Maybe they could combine the two?
Other ideas:
* Subsidies from big internet companies. Maybe AOL, Cox, AT&T, COVAD, etc. could pony up some money to help pay the fees, since, after all, the existence of quality streams will only get more people interested in broadband services.
* Tiered subscription models. Maybe lower rates for free streams, subsidized by people subscribing for higher bitrates? I figure if you're listening 4 hours a day, 15 songs per hour, it comes out to only $12 a month, or so.
Maybe we need plugins for WinAmp (or JReceiver or whatever) to give users a monthly report of how much they've listened, and to suggest a donation amount consistent with that usage. I know that if I can be shown that I've listened to $30 worth of internet radio in the last, say, 3 months, that I'd have no problem making a donation in that amount.
Are there any actual Internet streamers out there who can comment, on these questions or the overall story?
I first used perl back in version 3, something like 12 years ago. I first really learned perl, v4, about 9 years ago. It did everything I ever needed.
Then, perl 5 came out. I didn't bother "learning" it -- that is, I've been using it, and when I really need to, I've used some perl 5 features, but I've learned them as I go (by example), and I know I'm not really using the full capabilites. (plus, though I know what I'm doing, I don't always know what to call what I'm doing -- I got stumped the other day when someone asked me how to do pointers in perl. I drew a blank, not making the connection to all the weird hash magic I'd been doing lately. But I digress.)
Anyway, the bottom line of this is: Perl 5 looked interesting, but like more of the same, and wasn't really compelling for me to buckle down and learn all the new features. Perl 6, on the other hand, scares me. In a good way.
Here's a page-by-page description of how I read the article:
- Page 1: Hm. Looks like they're describing a grammar with regex. Cool.
- Page 2: I can intuitively match against a set of strings! Wild. These strings can be expressions themselves? Even better!
- Page 3: It's a grammar. A full, honkin, real, honest-to-goodness grammar. That I can match against. Are those angels I hear singing?
- Page 4: <head explodes>
- Page 5: <drools>
Seriously, though, I was concerned at first that I'd have to learn something new, crazy, and difficult (given how screwed-up much of perl 5 has seemed, at times). I'm impressed. I'm very impressed. Yes, I have to learn somthing new and crazy, but it's not at all difficult. In fact, I think I've already learned it.The power that this new system holds, and, more importantly, the simplicity of it all, is amazing.
So, unlike some other posters, I can't wait for Perl 6. When does this come out, again? And, more importantly, when can I buy the new book?
(also, was I the only one who expected, after the demonstration of matching method invocations, to be told that the entire source code for perl6 was just one giant RegEx/Grammar?)
This seems about the best answer I've seen so far. But there are still some shortfalls that I think might be problematic.
Coding as a hobby definitely demonstrates a personal interest in programming, and a willingness to spend the time (my own time, no less) to learn whatever it is I'd need for that hobby (and, hopefully, the ability to use what you learn).
Samples of source code are sort of good, but the applicant might only be able to bring "hobby code" from home (because the 'good stuff' belongs to his current company), and that probably won't be as well refined as the stuff you do professionally. Though it also might be more cool, elegant, or just innovative, depending on what work's like (you're leaving, remember?)
Actually going to a whiteboard to solve a problem seems about the best way to gauge an applicant, in my not-so-complete-interviewing-experience. You're getting the most real-world example of the applicant, with peers, discussing and analyzing a problem, then sketching an outline for how to solve it. The details (which language, what modules, should you use pointers here, etc.) seem (to me) to be irrelevant. You're hiring someone to solve problems -- so, solve a problem, with the team, just like you would on a normal work day.
However, a couple of other suggestions seem like they wouldn't work. Asking about open source involvement just measures someone's interest in the open source community. Plenty of people (including myself) do a lot of programming at home, for fun, on projects that are primarily of interest to no-one but the applicant.
Finding a bug in sample code might work, if it's a small enough sample (like a simple routine), but there you're treading too close to testing for book knowledge ("Ah! You forget that the squiggle goes on the LEFT of the arrow!"), and book knowledge generally flees an interviewee at warp speed as soon as they set foot in your building. (Plus, that's why we *have* books, and man pages, and CPAN, and....)
Finally, talking to associates and bosses is tough, especially in a tight job market where someone might be afraid to even *suggest* that they're unhappy, for fear of being laid off and replaced with someone desparate for work off the street.
I don't know. I hate interviewing people. I hate *being* interviewed even more. I'm just not sure there is a good way.
True. But this isn't just about "more lift." The EELV (Evolved Expendible Launch Vehicle) program (of which Atlas 5 is the first product) is designed to make rocket launches better, faster, cheaper. Certainly it's not a quantum leap to laser-powered boosters, but it's still much better than before.
From what I understand, some of the Atlas 5's benefits include:
- Increased resistance to winds while on the pad and during launch (useful in hurricane-prone Florida)
- Faster setup time on the pad (half-day for final setup and fueling, versus weeks) (no, I don't understand this one, but I heard it on the news last night)
- Decreased reliance on complex launch gantry (look at the shuttle pad. Or the titan pad. then look at the atlas -- it's just got a little tower next to it, not a huge superstructure).
- Modular design. If I recall correctly, current (Titan, Delta, and older Atlas) rockets require significant mission-specific construction details. Like, "oh, you're going to this orbit? Then we need to make the booster a little lighter. We'll have that booster ready in, oh, 18 months?" Now the core is the same for all payloads and all orbits, so it's "Ok, you'll need two strap-ons. How's next Friday?"
I will agree that we're not spending enough on research for alternative methods of accessing space. But that's not to say that the research isn't progressing -- the recent SCRAMJET tests are very promising for runway-to-LEO prospects, and several other projects are underway to develop alternate vertical heavy-lift systems. They're just still very far out.The EELV program has been ongoing for several years (they were building out the pad when I was last on the Cape about 3 years ago -- and that was *after* all the heavy design work had been done). The "very radical ideas" that have come out in the last decade came far too late to influence EELV. "Oh, that's the New Paradigm Launch Vehicle. They're down the hall."
Anyway, this page (on the referenced Spaceflight Now site) gives a lot of high-level technical info on the Atlas 5. And talks about how it's almost "Dial-A-Rocket," and how they've even got an Atlas 5 Heavy planned that uses THREE of the common-core boosters. Imagine three of those rockets, plus additional strap-ons, bundled together. Way cool, even if there aren't any lasers (or microwaves or scramjets or
So, no, it's not the holy grail. But it's a damned sight better than what we've had to date.
Like why the current Enterprise is a lot more high-tech looking than the one in TOS (which I actually think is kind of an error.)
Actually, I've dealt with that inconsistency by pretending it's the sets-and-props equivelant of Klingons.
That is, in the 60's, makeup sucked (and maybe imaginations weren't as good, either?), so the Klingons looked like, er, TOS Klingons. The same thing with set design, technologies (and budget!). So when I watch TOS, I think of it as a low-budget adaptation of a world that actually looks quite a bit cooler than it does on TV. Or something like that.
Why did the ST:TMP enterprise look so much better than TOS enterprise, even though they were only like 5 years apart, max, in the timeline?
Okay, here's a
An update a couple months later says:
I couldn't find any further details, but assuming nothing changed, I'd say that several "large ISPs are caving in to a massive lawsuit" says that the suit was successful. Maybe not legally decisive, but at least successful (for the plaintiff).
(I'm sure there are more instances and other details out there, and possibly later reversals-of-caving, but I wanted to at least show one instance where private-ownership of the resources didn't help.)
The three lines of a haiku should have 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.
:)
Not necessarily, though I undestand the convention. A quick google search reveals: http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm which suggests that 5-7-5 might actually be *too many* english syllables for a "true" haiku experience.
But now I'm being defensive, and all I was really hoping was that a Flying Karamozov Brothers fan would recognize the poem.
Have I about got it? I suppose there'd be options to have all messages go through to a "suspicious" box, or to do some kind of SpamAssassin tagging for unmarked email, etc.
So, how exactly is this different from homebrew "whitelist only" systems? The only distinguishing mark is that the sender's acceptance of a legal contract involves addition of a copyrighted mark, in this case, a haiku poem in a header.
If I've got my own whitelist system, that returns a message saying "use this string 'Mtzlplck' and the message will go through, but by doing this you agree that you're not a spammer, and if you violate this trust, I'll sue you," then I should have the same protections as if they'd illegially used a copyrighted mark. Right?
Or am I missing something significant?
The
Time flies like arrow
Box flies like box
Fruit flies like bananas.
(gimme a break, it's the only haiku I know. and it wasn't even mine!)
Since their network is a private one, they certainly have the right to blacklist anybody they want.
Tell that to the folks who ran the SPAM mail-relay blacklists. If I recall correctly, one of 'em got sued and forced to remove someone from the blacklist. That was a private list, maintained by private individuals, utilized on privatly-owned systems, and they still got sued (and lost). (Someone help me out on the details here, please.)
So, just because they have a *right* to block the RIAA, doesn't mean that a judge will agree. And, in the end, that's all that matters -- whether you can convince a judge (or jury, or cop). If you can't convince them, or can't afford to try, then you've lost, no matter what the law says.
Okay, I'll grant you that calling something ".+zilla" and using a dinosaur/dragon-like logo is probably coming close to violating a Godzilla trademark.
But what ever happened to the concept of a restricted space within which trademarks are (were?) supposed to operate? I had understood that trademarks were only protected within the same general "realm" of a product -- which is how we've got Excel cars and Excel spreadsheets.
It's seemed to me, with the advent of the modern internet, that all these distinctions have been thrown away, and that the courts are allowing that diminished distinction. So Palm has to stop calling their Pilot a "Pilot" because a pen company complains.
Does anyone know what exactly is the deal here? Have domain-name disputes finally opened the door for a single, universal, all-encompasing product namespace?
If someone wants to call their browser Mozilla (or even Godzilla), then they should be able to, because the chances of someone confusing a web browser with a big lizard are pretty darned slim.
Or have I misunderstood this aspect of (US) trademark law all along?
If they price the DVDs competitively, people will buy the DVD.
:)
And in many cases, people will even buy extra DVD players JUST to play those DVDs. I've got three DVD sets from Britain of US TV shows that simply haven't been released here, so I had to buy an Apex. Very annoying.
But I could have just copied them from the TiVo -- hell, I probably could have extracted the actual streams and burned them to DVD myself. But I'd rather just get the offical set. It's easier, and has nicer menus.
How about we all simply agree that we all know that NYT requires registration, and stop putting "free registration, blah blah blah" in all the damned stories!
Sorry. Too much caffeine today.
Government, unable to trust it's own ability to get things done has been setting up these little extra-democractic bureaucracies to run the show without public input, in the hopes of getting something accomplished.
Hear, hear!
Excellent analysis. I hadn't quite thought of it this way, but this does seem to be how it's been going, doesn't it?
So, how do we fix things? It seems to me that these conversations always come back to needing a good, honest, centrist political party that actually *makes sense* and can win on those terms, without having to kowtow to the $$. If that party develops, and makes inroads, then maybe they can stop the madness. But you need a certain critical mass of people / opinions / visibility before a party could start winning elections, and then you need another critical mass inside congress to start actually making a difference.
If we could do that, then maybe we'd be able to start trusing ourselves again, and can start wittling back the extra-democratic controls that you spoke of.
About the only silver lining is that, eventually, any really crappy laws will get repealed. The problem is that we might have an entire generation or two (or many more, as was the case with slavery and civil rights reforms) before things "get better". And what will that do to our country as an economic power? *that* is my real fear. That as we try to sort out these stupid special interests, we end up hindering our own economy so much that the European Union destroys us in the long run (or the Far East, or, God help us if they ever unify and start governing effectively, Africa). There're plenty of SMART people out there (most of the planet). Just because we're kicking their butts today doesn't mean that, in a hundred years, the tables won't be turned.
Well, yeah, some of 'em. Others win sort of ambiguously (Bush in Florida), and still others are simply appointed to powerful posts with very little real voter control (Powell as FCC chairman).
The worst of it is there's really not much we can do about it. (I'm feeling cynical today). Here're the big problems, as I see it, with the US system:
Special interests pump lots of money into elections. They do this to get their issues voted on their way. Because they're so vocal, candidates get plenty of expensive press. Because (for example) the incumbent gets so much press, his opponents needs press to, so he goes to other special interests. And so on. This is why we need good campaign finance reform, but we won't get it (or something like it) until after the next round of elections, and even that is unclear if it'll survive a court test because of a little something we call Free Speech.
Politicians want to keep their jobs. Congressmen want to stay congressmen, and Senators *definitely* want to stay senators. So they have to run every few years. So they need money to run. And we're back to campaign finance reform (CFR, 'cause I'm tried of spelling it out). Basically, we need to reform campaign finance because, well, people are constantly campaigning. But, wait, we could institute term limits! Well, that can't be done at a state level (it's been tried, and I believe some state measures have been struck down). So, we need term limits in the US Constitution. Well, who writes and approves amemendments for presentation to the states? Congress. It took how many years for CFR? Any bets on when we might see an amendment for term limits?
We could bypass the congress and amend the constitution directly. It's possible to have a Constitutional Convention, bring together representatives from each state, and modify the constitution directly, without having to wait for congress. But the last time we did that, we threw out the old system ENTIRELY and created what we have now. I don't expect that we'd do anything quite as drastic, but I would expect that any delegates to a convention would be just as pressured by special interest groups as Congress is (if not, more). So, sure, we might get term limits. But we'd also get anti-abortion (or pro-choice, depending on who spends more), anti-flag-burning, DRM, permanent copyrights, and who knows what else. So this isn't an option.
So, to review, for those of you outside the US wondering why we keep electing these idiots:
- We can't stop the money
- We can't get 'em to voluntarily step down
- We can't use the power of the populace to force them to step down
- We can't even get reasonable opponents elected, 'cause they all tend to swing too far to the *other* side. (you need one loud special interest to beat out the other).
The only way, then, to "win," is to fight them at their own game -- with money. Campaign contributions, issue ads, strong PR campaigns, etc. But the "common folk" don't have a strong lobby. We don't have the money, we certainly don't have the party. There's simply no single unifying force for the vast majority of opinion in the US. So the majority ends up being ruled by some weird combination of minority (but well funded) views.At least we've got one thing going for us -- we don't kick out our President every time he does something that pisses off the majority of the country (well, we do, but we have to wait up to 4 years to do it). I never understand how countries like Isreal, Great Britain, or Italy can survive with Prime Ministers losing all hold on power on, essentially, a popular whim. So at least our executive branch (current dictatorial fiats notwithstanding) isn't quite as screwed up as other countries'.
I've always thought this was a neat idea, but is there really a market for this kind of modification?
I wanted to buy one. I've been watching the Silicon Film company for some years now (at least 3 or 4, I think), since when they were called "ImageK" or somesuch. It's been frustrating that they can't deliver (they seem to be turning into the Moller Skycar of the digital camera world).
However, even if they were selling them today, I still wouldn't buy one yet. It's too slow (ISO 100 just doesn't cut it much of the time), and it doesn't use the full 35-mm frame. That is, the imaging area is only a little square in the middle of the frame (about as large as the typical focusing circle). I always thought that if they simply took that one sensor, and tiled it to fill the frame, they'd (a) have full-frame coverage, and (b) have serious uber-mega-pixel capability. I guess the electronics (or dies) simply didn't support that.
Also, it's hard to make something like this fit exactly within a film canister's volume (and the film's path). Sure, you can make the outside dimensions fit, but film is pretty darned thin, and I think that's where their plugin fails -- each camera's back "pressure plate" on the film varied enough that it's hard to make a "one size fits all" drop-in.
Also, a big advantage of dedicated digital cameras is having a viewscreen that you can use to review, zoom, delete, etc. And easily changed media. I'd written them, when they were still in early prototype stage, suggesting that they work out some kind of inductive pickup so you could transmit the image out of the camera and onto a thin screen / CF container velcroed to the back of the body. Dunno if they liked the idea, hated it, or found it unworkable. (or, more than likely, it never made it past the front lines).
Add to this the price tag (can't find one now -- at one time it was as high as $700). It's simply not an option, certainly not for casual hobbyists like me and most likely not for any serious photographers who'd most benefit from digital (especially, say, sports photographers).
As someone else has pointed out, the newer digital SLRs (designed from the ground up) are very good, and often take the full complement of their respective manufacturers' lenses. I recently saw the Canon SLR (last year's model, I think), and was blown away. It takes the same lenses as my Elan-II, and weighs about the same. It has the same interface as my pocket digital Elph (which I like a lot), but takes pictures at up to 800 speed (I think, it might have been up to 1/1600, even). Of course, it helps that it had VERY fast lenses attached. But it is definitely the best of both worlds, and newer models have improved resolution.
If they could make these with replacable imaging units (so you could swap in a better CCD when higher resolutions become available), then it'd be just about perfect.
So, yes, there is a market for drop-in replacements -- everyone with an SLR who wants to retain the control and flexibility of an SLR, and use their current lenses. But with major manufacturers making very good digital SLRs, the only remaining advantages are the ability to swap between film and digital with the same camera, as needed (which might be nice, but I'd rather carry two cameras and be able to switch on the fly), and the ability to upgrade the sensor (and considering that many people keep their $1000+ SLR bodies for *years*, this could be a significant advantage). Personally, I'm not sure it's worth it any more, especially if Canon and Nikon develop replacable imaging units.
Too bad. It was a very geeky-cool idea.