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  1. Software Defined Radio is too power hungry on How Many Wireless Technologies Can We Handle? · · Score: 1

    I'm glad someone else out there sees the immense benefits software defined radio provides. i don't understand why all these companies are still wasting their time with hardware based solutions

    I do. The computational requirements of digital radios greatly exceed the capabilities of practical embeddable processors. You need dedicated hardware or at least a special purpose processor with an exotic architecture to keep up.

    Reconfigurable logic systems (fast, but the development model is nearly intractable), augmented vector processors, VLIW. They were all tried in the late 1990's early 2000's. All those projects and companies are dead because they could not deliver enough computational power with a low enough power requirement, and a practical development model. There are number companies trying again today. The technology has improved some but the modulations are now much more computationally demanding.

    We all like to make everything soft. But, to make this happen, computational demands must stabilize so that processor technology can catch up. Wireless communication technology shows no sign of slowing its apetite for more MIPS.

  2. Re:Why not? Here's why... on Thousands and Thousands of Hours of PVR TV · · Score: 1

    Moreover, there's no need -- TV listings are announced, you know what's going to be on, you can narrow down significantly what you know is highly unlikely to be of any interest to you

    Except that the listings are inaccurate. The shows start and finish at random deltas from their listed times. The listings themselves only go out two weeks which means you have to stay on top of it. Go on vacation or just get busy and only the re-occuring stuff gets recorded. Finally, haven't you ever found out about something worth watching *after* it has already shown?

    The problem is solveable, but not in the simplistic Tivo manner. Instead of a giant PVR at everyone's home, you have one one or several giant PVR's in the neighborhood. Smaller PVR's in each home. Impulse viewing is done with VOD from the the server. Re-occuring shows are recorded as they happen on the local PVR, saving bandwidth and load on the server. A little software magic to keep it all seemless.

  3. Raid 10 is cheaper than RAID 5 on Basics of RAID · · Score: 1

    Raid 10 needs 4 drives but a much less expensive controler. Adequate performance for Raid5 means a hardware XOR engine. Such a controler starts at about $150. A 4th 200GB drive is available for less than $100.

    RAID 10 is both faster and more reliable than RAID 5. (Though the chance on losing data for either is mighty low)

    RAID5 really only makes sense for arrays built out of the largest disks available.

  4. What does "online" mean? on Weighing the Internet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trouble with these kinds of measurements is not that it is hard to get the data. The trouble is that it is hard to get data that makes any sense and even harder to define what sort of sense it is supposed to make.

    This isn't the 80's. People don't connect to the Internet in discrete blocks every few days. They are connected 24x7 either at home, work, even on their phones. Who is to say that somone who doesn't visit some popular website isn't online? Who is to say that a particular visit to a web site is even represents a person?

  5. Owning the mean of production on In SIlicon Valley: Profits up. Employment Down. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    n 1950, the top 10% of people owned more than 90% of listed companies' shares! Insane, but true.

    Now, the number is more like 50%


    Sure, but what percentage of workers were employed by listed companies in 1950 vs today?

    Joe's grandfather owned a hardware store in 1950. He might not have owned any stock but it's didn't matter that much becuase he owned the whole store.

    Joe doesn't own a hardware store. He works for Osh. As a corporate employee, he either owns stock or he owns nothing.

    Corporate America has expanded a great deal since 1950 at the expense of sole propriterships and partnerships. The rank and file now own more stock then they did in 1950. But do they actually own more of the means of production? That's not clear.

  6. Travel agents don't play those kinds of games on Online Shoppers Naive About Online Prices · · Score: 1

    I think they program the software so that the more hits they get on a product page served to your [preset] "cookie", the more they edge the price up on you, figuring, I guess, that you're really interested in the product, and that maybe they can "scare" you into purchasing it [or maybe somehow bleed that extra $10 of profit out of you on account of your insatiable desire for the product]. And no, I don't think this is primarily a supply and demand thing - I think these price change engines are primarily driven by some [previously arcane] theory of marketing psychology. The airline/hotel reservation systems [Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz] are particularly guilty of this [and, again, I do NOT believe that it is primarily attributable to a finite supply of airline tickets or a finite supply hotel rooms].

    The travel agencies are not playing games with you. The "problem" stems from the pool of available tickets beeing distributed among differently priced buckets. Temporary holds take tickets out of these buckets. This may mean that there are no more tickets available in cheap buckets so the price appears to rise, somtimes multiple times throughout the day.

    The key information is that at the end of the day, holds expire and the remaining tickets are reallocated. You've never seen the price go down? That's becuase you haven't been checking at the right time. Try between midnight and 7:00am. Often those cheap tickets are available again.

  7. A crisis in the making? on Innovators Are Older Than Ever · · Score: 1

    If we had any brains in our heads, we'd be exposing 8-12 year olds to ground breaking work, when their brains are still maleable.

    It wouldn't do much good. 8-12 year olds don't know enough to understand the existing knowledge base and extend it to new areas.

    And it sounds like even early 20 somethings are having trouble knowing enough to understand and extend ground breaking work. This could represent a serious problem in the making.

    If the original "golden age" conjecture is right, then people above a certain age are generally incapable of much ground breaking work. The trouble is, it is taking longer and longer to learn enough of the existing knowledge base to extend it to new frontiers.

    Some time in the future, our best and brightest may consume their entire "golden age" coming up to speed, leaving only greatly diminished capacitate available to explore the new.

    A possible solution might be identify those with talent early on focus their learning so that they are ready to do research, at least in a particular field, much sooner. I wonder, though, if this sort of shepherding may crush the very gifts we want to nurture.

  8. Old notebooks as stereo equipment on Nuclear Battery That Runs 10 Years · · Score: 1

    I have a similar machine, but worse, except for the battery. P120, 80MB RAM. My stereo tuner died so I pressed the Thinkpad into service as a replacement. It works pretty well, sitting right where my tuner used to be with it's output going to my intergrated amplifier. Now my "radio" comes in through the Internet. I really should put a wifi card in there to reduce the cable clutter, though.

  9. 2004 spam for one user costs $0.55 on Using Email Networks as P2P Spam Filters · · Score: 1

    For people that have to pay the costs associated with building out network capacity and maintaining it, spam's bulk is indeed the main problem.

    No, actually it isn't. I run my own mail server. I keep all mail, including spam. I get something like 200 spams/day. All spam for 2004 amounts to a bit more than 100MB. At the somewhat inflated price of $0.50/GB, that is about 5 cents to store all the spam for 2004. You may quibble over the exact number but you would be hard pressed to come up with storage costs over $1.

    My ISP charges $5/GB for excess bandwith when web hosting. That means a bandwidth charge for all of 2004 spam of about $0.50

    That means the total is still under a buck.

  10. Spam degrades the reliability of the medium on Using Email Networks as P2P Spam Filters · · Score: 1

    People forget that the true detriment of spam these days is the traffic it causes, not cluttering your inbox (if you're smart)

    You've got to be kidding. Spam is text, or very nearly so (HTML). Unless you are using floppies and a 2400bps modem, the bandwidth/storage costs are irrelevent.

    What is relevent is that it forces people to either use spam filters that randomly throw good messages away or they miss good messages becuase they can't be seen among all that spam. In either case, the loss rate goes from negligable to very noticeable and that makes email a whole lot less useful than it should be.

    *Worms*, on the other hand are a storage problem, since they include largish binaries. But the methods for dealing with worms is rather different than for spam.

  11. Single die, no internal connections on Intel Ships Dual-Core Chips · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Xeon parts to come are SIP, but it looks like the EE is a single die. Though, with no on-chip interconnect, it seems a distinction without a difference. EETimes.com - Potholes seen in latest Intel road map

    Free login required. Messy to reach the article if not already logged in. The login dumps you at the the main page, not the page you wanted. Click on the link again after logging in.

  12. Re:Why go for CMP and skip SMT? on Intel Ships Dual-Core Chips · · Score: 1

    Does anyone else have any other opinions regarding this matter, or any idea why no one seems to be fully embracing SMT's potential?

    It's a great deal easier to build N 1-way processors then it is to build 1 N-way SMT processor, even if you start both designs from scratch.

    1) Longer, more complex paths. Clock rate is limited by distance a signal must travel and the logic in the way. Every functional unit you share means the signal must travel through more muxes and, because those muxes and functional consume area, the signal must travel a greater distance as well. A functional unit added in the form of another independent processor is a don't care. It isn't in your path.

    2) Design and verification complexity. An N-way SMT processor is > N-times more complex than a 1-way processor (modulo shared resources like I/O buses). That means a much more difficult design that it is much more difficult to verify. The core logic of an N-Way CMP is much simpler and need only be designed and verified once for all the cores. Then it's just a relatively simple matter of designing and verifying the shared interconnect.

  13. Re:Rush to market? on Intel Ships Dual-Core Chips · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think these are the "phony" dual cores. Two dice bonded together in the same package.

  14. Loss of ozone on Sea Life Wiped Out by Neutron Star Collision? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Any gamma burst from a single point will only fall on half the Earth's surface directly. What stops us from just hopping across to the other half, instead of needing scifi tech to survive?

    Short Answer: RTFA
    Long Answer:

    The Gamma rays would destroy the ozone on the unlucky side. Once the ozone redistbutes, you are down to 50% everywhere. That is, aparently, enough to kill plankton. Probably would kill land plants, too.

    So, on the unlucky side everybody dies. On the lucky side, crops fail for several years. Very bad news, though I doubt it would actually exterminate the human race. Plants would still grow in UV filtered green houses.

  15. Vipul's razor false positives on People are More Accepting of Spam · · Score: 1

    I am beginning to sour on Vipul's Razor. I used to think the human element would keep it free of false positives but that's just not the case.

    1) My sister's emails are frequently tagged as spam. These aren't forwards of jokes or web pages. These are person to person, written from scratch. Something is not right in Razor's hash generation/checking.

    2) Many of the people submitting to Razor don't seem to know what spam is. I have a mailbox where I keep all communication with commerical entities. There is absolutely no spam in there. I use tagged addresses to ensure that. Razor-check thinks it is throughly infested, if not majority spam. It looks to me like the majority of Razor users can not be trusted to distinguish between spam and legitimate, pre-existing business relations.

    On an unrelated note, I'm not to crazy about filter before accept either. Filters fail. When they do, I want the option to dig the message out of my spam folder.

  16. Too many TLD's == fewer on ICANN Officially Approves .jobs and .travel TLD's · · Score: 1

    Is there any technical reason why TLDs cannot be created by anyone with the capability?

    Yes, because doing so would collapse the hierarchy. If everone can get a top level domain, then everyone will want one. .com moves up one level and soon the masses will be complaining that it is too hard to get a decent domain name at the root anymore. Only this time, expansion will be impossible.

    It may sound strange, but new TLD's only increase the size of the name space if their supply is limited.

  17. Another solution on The World's Most Devious Alarm Clock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While an alarm clock that hides is, admitedly a lot more fun, the same effect could be achieved with only electronics.

    Have an alarm clock with a keypad and a multi-digit display. When the alarm goes off, display a randomly generated multi-digit code. The user must enter the correct code to stop the noise.

    I think the ability to read and correctly key a code requires a level of consiousness similar to searching a room. The complexity of the code could vary depending on the user's ability to handle numerical data entry when half asleep.

  18. Re:Nothing for you to see here. on Fermilab Reports Dark Energy Not Needed · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

    Wouldn't that be, nothing for you to *not* see here?

  19. Not much demand for exotic meat on Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Fossil · · Score: 1

    There are lot of exotic meats available right now but not many people seem interested in eating it. A little bison ranching. Some raise ostriges. But there doesn't seem to be much demand for roo-steaks. I'm sure the Ausies would be eager to capitalize on it if there were. Go to Africa and, with the exception of a few restuarants cateringly exlusively to tourists, you won't find antelope or wildebeast on the menu.

    For the most part, I think few are really interesting in trying exotic foods. It's really about radicaly different preparation. There is little demand of new meats that aren't very similar to existing meats. Not much demand for new vegitables that aren't similar to existing vegetables. The new exotic new foods that have been successful have gone the route of either being healthier or easier/cheaper to produce. I can't guess about the health benefits of eating dinosaur but I can't imagine raising them would be cheap.

  20. Hasbro does not own Jared's game on e-Scrabble gets Cease and Desist Order from Hasbro · · Score: 1

    But since Hasbro owns the copyright, then Jared's game is derivative, and thus Hasbro already owns it.

    Ah, but Jarad's game is not *soley* a dervitive of Hasbro's IP. The actual source code that impliments the game is owned by Jared. Hasbro can't use it with Jared's permission. And because it impliments a game design owned by Hasbro, Jared can't use it without Hasbro's permission.

  21. Only analog copies allowed on BBC on DRM and Trusted Computing · · Score: 1

    There is no way to allow users to listen to/read/watch content that prevents that user from generating a copy of it

    True. However, a trusted computing system can prevent access to the unencrypted digital form. The player software would disable any non-encrypted digital outputs. The OS would not allow an unsigned driver to load. Getting a driver signed would involve signing a legally binding agreement to honor DRM.

    Analog I/O's will still be free and unecrypted content could still be brought into the system. However, one could envision a time when those go away too. Analog video might only be available inside the monitor. Analog audio might be available only in the speaker cables.

  22. Fry's replaces Radio Shack on Faulty Chips Might Just be 'Good Enough' · · Score: 1

    For all the flack that Fry's gets and deserves, it really is a better Radio Shack than Radio Shack. Fry's may be a lousy place to get a DVD recorder but, if it's 5:05 on a Sunday evening and you need a wire wrap socket, where else you gonna go?

    You won't find Fry's in every major city but there are many in California and a few in other states as well.

    I still don't understand how Radio Shack stays in business in competition with stores like Fry's.

  23. Re:i486 SX vs DX? on Faulty Chips Might Just be 'Good Enough' · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, there's no difference. If the supply of 486's with defective FPU's exceeded the demand for 486SX's, then all 486SX's shipped would have disabled defective FPU's. If the demand supply of 486's with deffective FPU was less than the demand for 486SX's, then Intel would disable the FPU's on perfectly functional 486's and sell them as 486SX.
    Manufacturer's do the same trick with speed grades. That's the principle reason why CPU's can often be overclocked beyond their rated maximum.

    A more interesting thing about the 486SX/486SX is that the 487SX was, in fact, a complete 486. When plugged into the FPU socket, it disabled the 486SX entirely.

    Intel claimed that the disabled FPU in the 486SX was only a temporary thing. Eventually, there would be a unique die for the 486SX and it wouldn't have an FPU at all. I kind of doubt this ever happened. The 486SX wasn't very popular.

  24. Odometers and asymptotes on date +%s Turning 1111111111 · · Score: 1

    Don't you get excited when your car rolls over to 100000 miles? It's somthing simple and nice -- and well worth taking pleasure in.

    I'm still waiting for mine to roll over but it never seems to get there. You see, my odometer has been slowly failing since about 96000 miles. The more I drive, the more slowly (actually infrequently) it records the miles. At this point, I begin to doubt if it will ever reach 100,000.

  25. Wimax does not yet have mobility on German Railways To Get WLAN RailNet · · Score: 1

    Wimax gear soon to be available is fixed wireless.
    As of the fall, Mobility was still being worked on. Certainly no hardware available. So I still wonder how they are going to do this. Maybe just don't intend to deploy all that soon.