This law specifically ALLOWS spam to be sent. It just requires that spammers include a valid return email address and that they remove people from their list who want to be removed.
The spammer is required to place "AVD:" in the first four characters of the subject line. It also requires notice of the return address or a toll free number in the first line of the message. Even if it "only" required valid return address and true blocking of future messages, it would be a great thing.
It also only covers spammers who have their equipment located in California.
I believe it covers all email that is communicated TO a mail server within California. It doesn't seem to matter where the spammer is sending from. Did I misread it?
The only good thing I see about this is that it requires the subject to have "ADV:" in it.
I expect absolutely no change in the amount of spam I get as a result of this law.
Perhaps you are fortunate enough to be missed by all the fraudlent get-rich-quick schemes. Maybe you haven't needed to endure a beastiality porn ad every couple days? Sex enhancing pills, fradulent credit (dup'ing SS#'s), work-from-home scams, bogus vacation/free-computer offers, and so on. If you only get "legitimate spam", such as ads from companies with bonefide products, then this law won't change much for you (except that they might do a better job of really blocking future messages when you request it).
These fraudlent practices and questionable products are the real social evil that needs to be wiped out.
Sure, it might be nice to have a law the completely prohibits all spam... but it just ain't gonna happen. Being able to respond to the spammer and have them truely block all future messages is a pretty good second.
I just read through most of the timeline, and it struck me a truely sad that history will primarily remember the criminals and their prosecution. The vast majority of the entries are news articles about various busts by the FBI.
I called a lot of BBS's from '86 to '88, and it was great fun. There was a lot more good than bad, and I met a lot of great people (some even in person at some get-togethers we organized).
It makes me sad to see that the lingering public memory will primarily be of small-time criminals getting busted for phreaking (cheating the phone system), trading calling card numbers, breaking into remote systems and later pirating software. The days of 'old were so much more to so many people. I hope the video manages to capture some of that.
.... how any jow schmoe with some university webspace was on equal footing with a multinational....
Ah yes, the good 'ole days of '94, when everyone who had 'net access had (or was persuit of) an advanced degree at a university. Hardly "any Jow Schmoe".
Throw in the unwashed masses, and you get lots of personal pages along the lines of My Cat Fluffy's Grand Adventure On The Day I Bought The Digital Camera!
Now there are still a lot of good non-profit pages out there, and the number may actually be increasing... but they are saddly an ever shrinking fraction of the total. Even with better search engines, it's getting harder and harder to find or even bother looking for the really good pages that're out there somewhere.
I'm putting a new PC together for family members. Most of what they do with it is play games. They sometimes surf the net and read email, and on rare occasions they might even do some light word/excel work. They're on a budget, so I put the money mostly into an AMD 1800 CPU and the affordable GeForce3 card (Ti 200), and opted for a SB live value and a mid-priced 4+sub Altec Lansing speaker set.
Does EAX really make a difference in games ??
My PC has a SB AWE64, so I've never personally heard any EAX effects... and I haven't really played any games since Quake2 and Baldurs Gate. I really curious to hear from anyone who's got the Live or Audigy about what kind of a difference and how noticable these EAX effects really are in today's games (not what may come in the future).
I'm in an area that for quite some time did not have DSL available. I tried filling out the "contact me when it's ready" forms at Verizon (then GTE), Covad and lots of local ISPs. Nobody ever emailed, called or sent a letter. I assumed I'd never get DSL in my area, and I had a high speed wireless service that was working ok, as well as an (expensive) low speed fractional T1 circuit.
Several times people told me that they thought DSL was available in my area, or as least "should be". One day, I checked back at the Verizon web site, and the status had changed from a definate no to the web page not responding.
So, I called my favorite local ISP (who has great service and only a slightly higher price). They took several days and eventually emailed back saying that DSL was not available in my area. I tried the Verizon web page once more, and the complete lack of response from their server has turned into an error message page which said the database wasn't working for my area and suggested calling Verizon.
Natually, I called Verizon and the woman I talked with tried to look up my number but could not tell if DSL was actually available in my area or not. Our conversation proceeded something like this:
Verizon: Do you want my to put the work order in anyway?
Me: What does that mean?
Vz: (Some jargon about their system and accounting proceedures)
Me: So what will really happen?
Vz: A technician will be scheduled to make the installation.
Me: Will I have to pay if they can't install it?
Vz: No, the order will be canceled, do you want me to put it in?
Me: Sure, why not?
Vz: Which service do you want
Me: What's the best one
Vz: 1.5 Mbps down and 384 kbps up, for $79 (and a bunch of stuff about the others, which I ignored)
Me: Only $79, that's great. Do I get a static IP number?
Vz: That's another department, would you like me to transfer you?
Me: NO! I mean, no, you've been very helpful and I'd like you to just put the work order in for me and we'll see how it if they manage to install it.
A couple weeks later, the box with the DSL modem showed up, and another week after that someone called to let me it was connected.
I checked back with their website a few weeks after the installation, and the page still said they could not determine if DSL was available in my area.
I don't see an antitrust conspiracy here... I think it's just a careless mistake on Verizon's part that their database doesn't properly reflect the status of DSL availability in my area. However, the net effect is that I can not get DSL service via my favorite local ISP (who I would gladly pay a bit extra to), but I can get it from Verizon... though perhaps only because I was lucky enough to have my call answered by a woman who cared so little that she'd just toss the work order in without being able to check wether the service was even available.
One final note: I had expected Verizon's service to be terrible based on all the problems Robin (girlfriend) has with their billing on her cell phone and all the DSL horror stories. In fact, the service was excellent. Someone called to let me know it was connected, and someone else made a followup call a few days later to check if it was working (I hadn't plugged the modem in yet). When I finally did hook it up, the speed was 1.5Mbps/128kbps. I called the toll-free tech support number and I got a real person within 1 minute. He was a front-line guy who trasfered me to a real tech, who picked up after only a few rings. I talked with the tech for a few minutes and she believe me and said she'd re-provision the line. She called back 20 minutes later to verify that the line had come back up and was running at the correct speed. It's been running well ever since, with only a few small outages, 10-15 minutes every couple weeks.
Some time ago, I read through a bunch of microsoft documentation about their "advanced streaming format". One of the claimed features was the ability of the format to include the codec together with the data, so that the user's machine would automatically get the new codec installed (presumably only x86 binary code, compatible only with windows). Has anyone else noticed this?
Maybe there's security measures in place... I do not know, but given Microsoft's history of security conscious design (lack thereof), there's probably a very interesing WMA/WMV security alert or virus opportunity (depending on the shade of one's hat, I suppose). It'd be really amazing if consumer DVD players had a typical Microsoft security hole in them.... but since they're not networked it's hard to imagine it becoming a major problem. However, consumers have much higher quality standards and generally expect warranty coverage for their DVD player components (something Microsoft doesn't know much about from their buggy-software perpetual-upgrade business model). It's not clear if these new DVD players will just execute code from Microsoft or if the manufactures will re-implement the WMV/WMA "standards".
Anyway, I thought I'd pass along this little tidbit, which I really don't know anything about (but hey, this is slashdot....) It I'm totally off-base, just mod me down.
The first truely hackable player....
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 3, Informative
Rob (cmdrtaco) writes:
And this is the first MP3 player I've seen that things like this are possible because the code is right there and ready to rip apart.
Just over one year ago, Rob posted
a
story about my little Open-Source MP3 Player Project... which also isn't the first open-source design (but it may be the first open-source player that you can buy the hardware instead of buying all the individual chips and soldering them yourself).
Well, enough shameless self promotion for one day....
I noticed the LED with AC current patent comment and was going to post about it, but it look like you beat me to it.
Actually, I suppose they in some way change the AC sine wave from the transformer (make it a 6VAC transformer) into some approximation of a square wave, then apply some form of DC offset voltage such that the waveform ran from 0-12VDC - but somehow I think that would be overkill...
Diodes and LEDs are fundamentally current mode devices... the forward voltage is relatively constant and the output depends on how much current the external circuitry allows. Somewhere, something needs to be in series with the LED(s) to establish the current, since what you get from the power company is (fairly) constant voltage. The most "efficient" thing to use to limit the current is an inductor (or perhaps a capacitor, but high frequency noise and spikes become problematic)... at least outside some EU countries that have power factor regulations.
Perhaps they're using a transformer, but an application like this has no need for voltage isolation (just like normal xmas lights running at about 3 volts each).
There's no need for DC. Don't forget that most LEDs have a very low reverse breakdown voltage, so you'd need to connect them in parallel in criss-crossed pairs so that the forward voltage drop on one "protects" the other from seeing a substantial reverse voltage. This also keeps the current from having a DC bias, which means much smaller magnetic components, if there is undeed a transformer or inductor somewhere in the current loop.
... why don't we try to at least educate the public into not opening things they don't know about...
If you could "change the world" somehow, it'd be a lot simpler to just edit the client software or even add filtering at all the mail servers to delete all executable attachments before the user ever has an opportunity to execute them.
There really isn't any compelling reason for people to distribute software via email attachments. It is rarely done, and it's very unsafe.
For everybody else, tough. The world doesn't revolve around you and people have to eat. If you don't like it, go find other sites to see.
Yes, and they're practically starving having tried ever increasingly annoying ads, so why not make them even more annoying? Maybe they'll break through that "barrier" of annoyance and get the user to notice them (and respond positively) and finally make a buck.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but in case anyone takes this seriously...
Just get a A->D chip, hook it up to a USB bridge, and read it a certain number of times a second (500, I think; most D/A converters can handle this IIRC). Connect a probe, voltage limiting circutry, and ground (and a timer, so your software doesn't have to raise the read pin 500 times a second:).
Oh, you will learn much along the way, which could be much more easily learned by looking at some of the free 'scope designs mentioned by other posts.
You'll need an amplifier to buffer the signal (you want that 1 Meg Ohm and ~22 pF input impedence for the probes, right).
Don't forget to be able to change the gain somehow, unless you only plan to look at 0-5 volt signals (or whatever the input range of your A/D chip is).
While you're at it, try sampling at some speed that'll let you look at things more interesting than nearly DC.
Don't forget to add some circuitry to trigger (begin sampling) at a predictable level/event, as the latency up and back down the USB isn't predictable and isn't in your control as a USB device.
Being a USB device (not the host PC), you aren't in control of when you get to transmit data, so be sure you have at least a little buffering.
If the government would require on all their networks IPv6 and IPSEC... Nothing else needs to be done.
So everyone can get their email virus executable attachments over encrypted links, and of course be duped into clicking on them by friendly-sounding language (as we saw once more just yesterday, Dec 4, 2001).
All those encrypted packets are also going to somehow magically stop the worms that exploit known bugs (default.ida, etc), rather than simply encrypt the malicious queries as they make their transit to the public servers they compromise.
The sad truth is that security bugs (or simply poor design, like allowing arbitrary code in attachments to be executed, not even in a sandbox) aren't going to get any better by encrypting the malicious data as it travels from the attacker to the victim. Encryption might even make companies like Microsoft even less concerned with their poor security design (if one can imagine that!), particularily when it comes to warning or preventing users from executing code that came from somewhere on the Internet.
Neither will those fancy ciphers help to educate users, who are routinely duped into compromising the security of their computers/networks. It might even give them a false sense of security... "this attachment must be ok since our network uses encrypted packets"
Encryption also doesn't help overworked, lazy or unknowledgable system admins who leave holes in their firewalls (or don't have a firewall). Those malicious packets come in, get decrypted, and do the same damage they would have over unencrypted IPv4.
I like your idea though, and it would be cool to have an "optional" interface where you would get the same content, but you would choose your interface. Hell, people could even make their own slashdot "skins" that would plugin to slashcode and view slashdot however they want.
The Homepage Usability book has a guideline specifically about this very topic.
Quoting from the book, page 32:
100: Don't offer users features to customize the basic look of the homepage UI, such as color schemes. It's better to focus resources on coming up with the best design that will be the most readable for the greatest number of users. You should respect users' browser preferences, however, such as font size, by using relative rather than absolute sizes.
Now they do have a section where they say that most sites "should" break about 5% of the guidelines due to special needs of that site, so perhaps this is of those 5% for slashdot?
I purchased this book, and used it a few days ago to make a redesign of my site's home page. I still have more work to do, but in just a few hours I managed to make a lot of improvements that I had been considering for a over a year (but without a clear plan).
The Homepage Usability book has many guidelines that would make the web a much better place. About half of them are "Don't" guidelines, like:
Don't use "Click Here" or generic instructions
Don't use generic links "More..."
Don't link to homepage on the homepage
Don't use made up words for categories
Don't put advanced search on homepage, link or inside search results
Don't offer "search the web"
Don't use background image
Don't use animation unless absolutely necessary
Don't credit search engine, favorite brower, server software (works best with..., powered by..., etc)
Don't animate logo, tag line, headlines
Don't make splash screen the default
A portion of the book is about what they call the site's "Tag Line". They claim that all homepages should have the company/organization name or logo near the top of the page, with a breif description of exactly the company/site actually does. They say that people who've never been to the site need to be able to quickly look at the top and see what company/organization this is, and what they can expect to get from the site. I hadn't really thought about this much, but it seems to make a lot of sense, particularly for a smaller site like mine where nobody would be familiar with the name. Robin and I talked about it for about an hour over Thansgiving and we came up with "PJRC: Electronic Projects, Resources and Open-Source Code, With Components Available For Worldwide Delivery". I've shown the site to some people over the years, and usually they initially ask some questions about what it is. I showed it to someone just the other day, and this tag line at the top made the site's purpose immediately obvious.
Another really insightful part of the book is about what to put into the title. They say you must begin with the most important word, and never something like "Welcome" or "The".
They claim that all sites should have search on the homepage, and they give some suggestions about how to make it appear. They don't go into detail much about the search, probably because Neilson's company sells a report about search usability.
They have some other really insightful suggestions... here is a short list of some:
Explain how site makes money, if not obvious
Non-breaking spaces where needed
Actual examples of site's content, not just description
Link to archives of items recently featured on home page
If your MP3 player was open source, you wouldn't have to worry about it doing undesirable things behind your back... or at the very least you could hack on it to make it do whatever you want.
There actually is an open-source MP3 player. It's not a shiny polished product like a Rio, but I can say with 100% confidence that is has absolutely no SDMI features, since I designed it!
A couple years ago I designed a product with an embedded modem (H8800-1 at this page). I used a rockwell chip and associated components, which is a hardware modem.
Device is the keyword here, and the device (winmodem) has already been certified. The software driving the device doesn't need certification.
This may not true. When we tested the H8800-1 for FCC part 68 compliance, the test was for the whole system. We had to provide ways for them to access the modem to test both originate and answer modes (though the H8800-1 only answers and never originates). We had to do this, despite the fact that the signals were all generated by the Rockwell chip.
However, the majority of the trouble with FCC part 68 is the surge tests. The basic idea behind these tests is to apply a massive surge on the line which is certain to destroy the modem. The modem is required to fail in a manner where it does not conduct, so it looks like it's on-hook (not in use) to the phone network. This is purely a function of the hardware. The lab we sent the prototypes to did many other tests, but they were all pretty easy to pass (using the rockwell chip).
Reading through these regularity requirement documents is a mind-numbing experience (if you can stay awake).
If you're feeling maschoistic,
here is the page for requesting the Part 68 technical requirements. If anyone takes the time to actually read and make some sense out of this stuff, please post your informed opinions. Part 68 applies only to the US, so repeat for whatever other countries you're interested in...
Together with Robin, I run a small e-commerce site. We have a conventional visa merchant account with our bank. I can say from experience that fraud really sucks. When a fraudlent transaction occurs, somebody is going to lose money. With a conventional merchant account, most of the time the merchant is the one who will end up bearing all the loss.
It's easy for guys like our infamous slashdot editor to comment:
I find PayPal pretty annoying today - a lot of the anti-fraud, privacy-invasive measures which this article applauds make Paypal much less enticing to me than it used to be.
Well, that's an armchair critic opinion if I've ever heard one. PayPal is now less enticing to "michael of slashdot".
The cold reality of the world is that there's a small number of crooks out there who will commit fraud, given the opportunity. Any party in the transaction who may be exposed to the potential for a loss would be acting irresponsibly by not taking reasonable measures to detect fraud before making the transaction.
In the conventional visa merchant world, the consumer is protectedby the fact that their bank will handle their dispute with the merchant and issue a chargeback to the merchant to recover the funds.
The bank is protected by their ability to issue a chargeback to the merchant. If the bank believes the merchant may not have the funds to cover chargebacks, they will hold a "reserve", which basically means they won't give the merchant some portion of their money for many months, sometimes even a year or two! (we had this shitty situation when we got started and consquently had to carry quite a bit more debt than we expected as we weren't getting the money for most of the products we sold!)
The merchant isn't really protected by much of anything in the conventional visa transaction, other than their own efforts to verify that the buyer really is the legitimate cardholder and that the goods are shipped to the correct destination. Actually, a card swipe and signature are more-or-less proof that the buyer received the goods, but with internet and mail order sales, it's a risky business for the merchant.
PayPal is in a tough situation, being in the middle of a transaction. It's really amazing that they can make this work at all, built on top of the conventional infrastructure which puts most of the risk onto the seller's side. They really need to do everything they can to detect and prevent fraud... even if it doesn't appeal to michael's tastes.
PS: I will agree that it's very un-cool to take personal customer information and use it for any purpose other than the reason it was provided. We don't do this, partly based on ethical grounds, partly because we're so small that there's no incentive, but mostly because nothing is more important than satisfied customers.
Re:Its the squeeky wheel that gets the most attent
on
Interview With Linus
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
... perfectly reasonable for me to loath the company and its leadership for its business practices.
But hate Windows, per se? Like most folks, I need to use it from time to time, and other Microsoft products. Some of them work well enough, none of them are worth hating.
Karl Fogel, author of The CVS Book, points out that open-source software is designed differently than closed source software. He makes many rather insightful observations in the odd numbered chapters (in the printed book) about how open-source software is different. I spent a few minutes searching for a couple great quotes... but saddly his text is heavily designed towards a tutorial and not a reference.
One of the really important differences is that open-source software is designed to expose to the user a good conceptual model of how it works and what it's really doing internally. Perhaps this is because the author of the code also designs the user interface, but it's often times done this way so that users can understand the inner workings of the program, at least in a conceptual way, and perhaps become involved in the coding. (Karl's CVS book is well worth the money for the chapters that aren't downloadable if you're interested in the reasons for these sort of design issues)
Now some might argue that users are better off on a "need to know" basis, and the point of software is to bundle up all algorithms so the user doesn't need to worry about them. People who feel this way probably like closed source software quite a bit and it seems likely they would be uncomfortable using many open source programs.
Personally, I quite like having a deeper understanding of what software is really doing. Sometimes I don't bother to read the finer details, but it's nice to know that they are there and available should I want to know. It's empowering to have that sort of information readily available (as well as the source code itself) should I have questions or run into complex problems. It is more work than calling some tech support number, but investing the time to read about and learn what is really going on almost always leads to better solutions that some lame tech support help desk could provide, and (at least for me) I end up with a better long-term knowledge base.
After many years, particularly in the modern age of thriving open/free software, it's easy to get very used to this sort of openness, where the source is provided, and the design of the program and its documentation is such that you can really learn and understand what it's really doing. It's easy to get used to having command line switches or config files where you can really control things, and documentation that explains not just the "what", but also the "how" and "why" behind the configurable parameters.
It really does become easy to hate closed software, where the innards are some proprietary secret. It becomes easy to truely hate the overall design of "no servicable parts inside", where you get only a few simple dialog boxes to choose only a couple basic parameters, and even the "advanced" dialogs don't really provide access to really control much. It's easy to hate documentation which is a giant inventory of the radio buttions and check boxes, with simple brain-dead descriptions of each that would have been obvious, without any information about how the software really works.
That is the reason I hate Microsoft Windows "per se". Actually, Windows itself isn't so bad... you can actually learn quite a bit about how it works internally (I have a couple good books on the topic), and there are lots of good 3rd party tools that can give access to much of the internal workings. Still, it is the overall closed design that I personally hate about much of the world's closed source software.
Since when does anyone, anywhere have the right to send email? Since when does anyone have the right to have their data go over a network that they don't own?
Likewise...
phone companies have the "right" to block calls, perhaps to areas
postal service has the "right" to refuse delivery to certain places, such as bad neighborhoods
utilities (power, water, gas) have the "right" to offer service to only those they like
banks and insurance companies have the "right" to red-line (refuse services in low-income areas, even for otherwise good customers)
Not if your packets happen to travel through abovenet. Vixie, founder of MAPS, is the CTO at abovenet, and they regularily drop packets based on MAPS RBL.
I see you're posting quite a bit, so you'll probably see this message and reply (at least I hope you will)
The GPL works when no one is trying to capitalize and exploit it. In instances like those, the GPL is pointless, and GPL'ing your code is akin to hanging a sign on your ass saying "screw me over".
Most of the code I've released for free is microcontroller firmware, and I just put it into the public domain so it can get combined with proprietary code without any strings attached.
The result has been that my little 8051 microcontroller web page has grown in popularity over the years and regularily swaps with a page at Reynold's as the #1 or #2 search result at google (for the query "8051"). A few years ago we started selling circuit boards and pre-programmed chips.
Long ago the site was hosted at a university (for free), and they refusted to continue hosting it. That was about the same time the boards started selling. In the last year, the web site has actually been able to pay for it's (rather spendy) hosting and other expenses, and soon the site will pay me back for all the electronic parts and other expenses over the last couple years.
I won't be rich from this, and in fact I probably won't ever be able to quit my day job and do it full time... but seeing it stand on its own financially is a long way from "screw me over", and it's almost all due to giving away source code, schematics, and know-how for free (public domain, not even GPL'd) and somewhere along the way enough people wanted to buy the circuit board. I never intended to sell anything when I stated the site in 1995, but after getting message after message asking for a source for the special parts or if I would make just one board for them, I had to do something. It's all worked out quite well.. and while it can be a lot of work at times, it's something I started simply to share my own projects and ideas with others for free.
Slashdot Mirror
Definately not. Seriously, you should read that page to appreciate how reasonable and understand Hormel has been.
The spammer is required to place "AVD:" in the first four characters of the subject line. It also requires notice of the return address or a toll free number in the first line of the message. Even if it "only" required valid return address and true blocking of future messages, it would be a great thing.
It also only covers spammers who have their equipment located in California.
I believe it covers all email that is communicated TO a mail server within California. It doesn't seem to matter where the spammer is sending from. Did I misread it?
The only good thing I see about this is that it requires the subject to have "ADV:" in it.
I expect absolutely no change in the amount of spam I get as a result of this law.
Perhaps you are fortunate enough to be missed by all the fraudlent get-rich-quick schemes. Maybe you haven't needed to endure a beastiality porn ad every couple days? Sex enhancing pills, fradulent credit (dup'ing SS#'s), work-from-home scams, bogus vacation/free-computer offers, and so on. If you only get "legitimate spam", such as ads from companies with bonefide products, then this law won't change much for you (except that they might do a better job of really blocking future messages when you request it).
These fraudlent practices and questionable products are the real social evil that needs to be wiped out.
Sure, it might be nice to have a law the completely prohibits all spam... but it just ain't gonna happen. Being able to respond to the spammer and have them truely block all future messages is a pretty good second.
I called a lot of BBS's from '86 to '88, and it was great fun. There was a lot more good than bad, and I met a lot of great people (some even in person at some get-togethers we organized).
It makes me sad to see that the lingering public memory will primarily be of small-time criminals getting busted for phreaking (cheating the phone system), trading calling card numbers, breaking into remote systems and later pirating software. The days of 'old were so much more to so many people. I hope the video manages to capture some of that.
Ah yes, the good 'ole days of '94, when everyone who had 'net access had (or was persuit of) an advanced degree at a university. Hardly "any Jow Schmoe".
Throw in the unwashed masses, and you get lots of personal pages along the lines of My Cat Fluffy's Grand Adventure On The Day I Bought The Digital Camera!
-
http://members.aol.com/ltutihasi/cr-f.html
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http://www.rubricity.com/album/
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http://community.webshots.com/album/9189298zIBwSD
n MyO
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/9616/pets /newpictures.html
Now there are still a lot of good non-profit pages out there, and the number may actually be increasing... but they are saddly an ever shrinking fraction of the total. Even with better search engines, it's getting harder and harder to find or even bother looking for the really good pages that're out there somewhere.That doesn't sound like such a good deal.
What if you need to download two 600 meg ISO images to install the latest RedHat?
If you use "that other OS", you could easily reach the download cap with just a couple of their larger service packs.
Does EAX really make a difference in games ??
My PC has a SB AWE64, so I've never personally heard any EAX effects... and I haven't really played any games since Quake2 and Baldurs Gate. I really curious to hear from anyone who's got the Live or Audigy about what kind of a difference and how noticable these EAX effects really are in today's games (not what may come in the future).
Several times people told me that they thought DSL was available in my area, or as least "should be". One day, I checked back at the Verizon web site, and the status had changed from a definate no to the web page not responding.
So, I called my favorite local ISP (who has great service and only a slightly higher price). They took several days and eventually emailed back saying that DSL was not available in my area. I tried the Verizon web page once more, and the complete lack of response from their server has turned into an error message page which said the database wasn't working for my area and suggested calling Verizon.
Natually, I called Verizon and the woman I talked with tried to look up my number but could not tell if DSL was actually available in my area or not. Our conversation proceeded something like this:
Verizon: Do you want my to put the work order in anyway?
Me: What does that mean?
Vz: (Some jargon about their system and accounting proceedures)
Me: So what will really happen?
Vz: A technician will be scheduled to make the installation.
Me: Will I have to pay if they can't install it?
Vz: No, the order will be canceled, do you want me to put it in?
Me: Sure, why not?
Vz: Which service do you want
Me: What's the best one
Vz: 1.5 Mbps down and 384 kbps up, for $79 (and a bunch of stuff about the others, which I ignored)
Me: Only $79, that's great. Do I get a static IP number?
Vz: That's another department, would you like me to transfer you?
Me: NO! I mean, no, you've been very helpful and I'd like you to just put the work order in for me and we'll see how it if they manage to install it.
A couple weeks later, the box with the DSL modem showed up, and another week after that someone called to let me it was connected.
I checked back with their website a few weeks after the installation, and the page still said they could not determine if DSL was available in my area.
I don't see an antitrust conspiracy here... I think it's just a careless mistake on Verizon's part that their database doesn't properly reflect the status of DSL availability in my area. However, the net effect is that I can not get DSL service via my favorite local ISP (who I would gladly pay a bit extra to), but I can get it from Verizon... though perhaps only because I was lucky enough to have my call answered by a woman who cared so little that she'd just toss the work order in without being able to check wether the service was even available.
One final note: I had expected Verizon's service to be terrible based on all the problems Robin (girlfriend) has with their billing on her cell phone and all the DSL horror stories. In fact, the service was excellent. Someone called to let me know it was connected, and someone else made a followup call a few days later to check if it was working (I hadn't plugged the modem in yet). When I finally did hook it up, the speed was 1.5Mbps/128kbps. I called the toll-free tech support number and I got a real person within 1 minute. He was a front-line guy who trasfered me to a real tech, who picked up after only a few rings. I talked with the tech for a few minutes and she believe me and said she'd re-provision the line. She called back 20 minutes later to verify that the line had come back up and was running at the correct speed. It's been running well ever since, with only a few small outages, 10-15 minutes every couple weeks.
Maybe there's security measures in place... I do not know, but given Microsoft's history of security conscious design (lack thereof), there's probably a very interesing WMA/WMV security alert or virus opportunity (depending on the shade of one's hat, I suppose). It'd be really amazing if consumer DVD players had a typical Microsoft security hole in them.... but since they're not networked it's hard to imagine it becoming a major problem. However, consumers have much higher quality standards and generally expect warranty coverage for their DVD player components (something Microsoft doesn't know much about from their buggy-software perpetual-upgrade business model). It's not clear if these new DVD players will just execute code from Microsoft or if the manufactures will re-implement the WMV/WMA "standards".
Anyway, I thought I'd pass along this little tidbit, which I really don't know anything about (but hey, this is slashdot....) It I'm totally off-base, just mod me down.
Just over one year ago, Rob posted a story about my little Open-Source MP3 Player Project... which also isn't the first open-source design (but it may be the first open-source player that you can buy the hardware instead of buying all the individual chips and soldering them yourself).
Well, enough shameless self promotion for one day....
Diodes and LEDs are fundamentally current mode devices... the forward voltage is relatively constant and the output depends on how much current the external circuitry allows. Somewhere, something needs to be in series with the LED(s) to establish the current, since what you get from the power company is (fairly) constant voltage. The most "efficient" thing to use to limit the current is an inductor (or perhaps a capacitor, but high frequency noise and spikes become problematic)... at least outside some EU countries that have power factor regulations.
Perhaps they're using a transformer, but an application like this has no need for voltage isolation (just like normal xmas lights running at about 3 volts each).
There's no need for DC. Don't forget that most LEDs have a very low reverse breakdown voltage, so you'd need to connect them in parallel in criss-crossed pairs so that the forward voltage drop on one "protects" the other from seeing a substantial reverse voltage. This also keeps the current from having a DC bias, which means much smaller magnetic components, if there is undeed a transformer or inductor somewhere in the current loop.
If you could "change the world" somehow, it'd be a lot simpler to just edit the client software or even add filtering at all the mail servers to delete all executable attachments before the user ever has an opportunity to execute them.
There really isn't any compelling reason for people to distribute software via email attachments. It is rarely done, and it's very unsafe.
Yes, and they're practically starving having tried ever increasingly annoying ads, so why not make them even more annoying? Maybe they'll break through that "barrier" of annoyance and get the user to notice them (and respond positively) and finally make a buck.
Just get a A->D chip, hook it up to a USB bridge, and read it a certain number of times a second (500, I think; most D/A converters can handle this IIRC). Connect a probe, voltage limiting circutry, and ground (and a timer, so your software doesn't have to raise the read pin 500 times a second :).
Oh, you will learn much along the way, which could be much more easily learned by looking at some of the free 'scope designs mentioned by other posts.
You'll need an amplifier to buffer the signal (you want that 1 Meg Ohm and ~22 pF input impedence for the probes, right).
Don't forget to be able to change the gain somehow, unless you only plan to look at 0-5 volt signals (or whatever the input range of your A/D chip is).
While you're at it, try sampling at some speed that'll let you look at things more interesting than nearly DC.
Don't forget to add some circuitry to trigger (begin sampling) at a predictable level/event, as the latency up and back down the USB isn't predictable and isn't in your control as a USB device.
Being a USB device (not the host PC), you aren't in control of when you get to transmit data, so be sure you have at least a little buffering.
So everyone can get their email virus executable attachments over encrypted links, and of course be duped into clicking on them by friendly-sounding language (as we saw once more just yesterday, Dec 4, 2001).
All those encrypted packets are also going to somehow magically stop the worms that exploit known bugs (default.ida, etc), rather than simply encrypt the malicious queries as they make their transit to the public servers they compromise.
The sad truth is that security bugs (or simply poor design, like allowing arbitrary code in attachments to be executed, not even in a sandbox) aren't going to get any better by encrypting the malicious data as it travels from the attacker to the victim. Encryption might even make companies like Microsoft even less concerned with their poor security design (if one can imagine that!), particularily when it comes to warning or preventing users from executing code that came from somewhere on the Internet.
Neither will those fancy ciphers help to educate users, who are routinely duped into compromising the security of their computers/networks. It might even give them a false sense of security... "this attachment must be ok since our network uses encrypted packets"
Encryption also doesn't help overworked, lazy or unknowledgable system admins who leave holes in their firewalls (or don't have a firewall). Those malicious packets come in, get decrypted, and do the same damage they would have over unencrypted IPv4.
The Homepage Usability book has a guideline specifically about this very topic.
Quoting from the book, page 32:
Now they do have a section where they say that most sites "should" break about 5% of the guidelines due to special needs of that site, so perhaps this is of those 5% for slashdot?
The Homepage Usability book has many guidelines that would make the web a much better place. About half of them are "Don't" guidelines, like:
A portion of the book is about what they call the site's "Tag Line". They claim that all homepages should have the company/organization name or logo near the top of the page, with a breif description of exactly the company/site actually does. They say that people who've never been to the site need to be able to quickly look at the top and see what company/organization this is, and what they can expect to get from the site. I hadn't really thought about this much, but it seems to make a lot of sense, particularly for a smaller site like mine where nobody would be familiar with the name. Robin and I talked about it for about an hour over Thansgiving and we came up with "PJRC: Electronic Projects, Resources and Open-Source Code, With Components Available For Worldwide Delivery". I've shown the site to some people over the years, and usually they initially ask some questions about what it is. I showed it to someone just the other day, and this tag line at the top made the site's purpose immediately obvious.
Another really insightful part of the book is about what to put into the title. They say you must begin with the most important word, and never something like "Welcome" or "The".
They claim that all sites should have search on the homepage, and they give some suggestions about how to make it appear. They don't go into detail much about the search, probably because Neilson's company sells a report about search usability.
They have some other really insightful suggestions... here is a short list of some:
There actually is an open-source MP3 player. It's not a shiny polished product like a Rio, but I can say with 100% confidence that is has absolutely no SDMI features, since I designed it!
Ok, mod me down for shameless self promotion now.
This may not true. When we tested the H8800-1 for FCC part 68 compliance, the test was for the whole system. We had to provide ways for them to access the modem to test both originate and answer modes (though the H8800-1 only answers and never originates). We had to do this, despite the fact that the signals were all generated by the Rockwell chip.
However, the majority of the trouble with FCC part 68 is the surge tests. The basic idea behind these tests is to apply a massive surge on the line which is certain to destroy the modem. The modem is required to fail in a manner where it does not conduct, so it looks like it's on-hook (not in use) to the phone network. This is purely a function of the hardware. The lab we sent the prototypes to did many other tests, but they were all pretty easy to pass (using the rockwell chip).
Reading through these regularity requirement documents is a mind-numbing experience (if you can stay awake). If you're feeling maschoistic, here is the page for requesting the Part 68 technical requirements. If anyone takes the time to actually read and make some sense out of this stuff, please post your informed opinions. Part 68 applies only to the US, so repeat for whatever other countries you're interested in...
It's easy for guys like our infamous slashdot editor to comment:
Well, that's an armchair critic opinion if I've ever heard one. PayPal is now less enticing to "michael of slashdot".
The cold reality of the world is that there's a small number of crooks out there who will commit fraud, given the opportunity. Any party in the transaction who may be exposed to the potential for a loss would be acting irresponsibly by not taking reasonable measures to detect fraud before making the transaction.
In the conventional visa merchant world, the consumer is protectedby the fact that their bank will handle their dispute with the merchant and issue a chargeback to the merchant to recover the funds.
The bank is protected by their ability to issue a chargeback to the merchant. If the bank believes the merchant may not have the funds to cover chargebacks, they will hold a "reserve", which basically means they won't give the merchant some portion of their money for many months, sometimes even a year or two! (we had this shitty situation when we got started and consquently had to carry quite a bit more debt than we expected as we weren't getting the money for most of the products we sold!)
The merchant isn't really protected by much of anything in the conventional visa transaction, other than their own efforts to verify that the buyer really is the legitimate cardholder and that the goods are shipped to the correct destination. Actually, a card swipe and signature are more-or-less proof that the buyer received the goods, but with internet and mail order sales, it's a risky business for the merchant.
PayPal is in a tough situation, being in the middle of a transaction. It's really amazing that they can make this work at all, built on top of the conventional infrastructure which puts most of the risk onto the seller's side. They really need to do everything they can to detect and prevent fraud... even if it doesn't appeal to michael's tastes.
PS: I will agree that it's very un-cool to take personal customer information and use it for any purpose other than the reason it was provided. We don't do this, partly based on ethical grounds, partly because we're so small that there's no incentive, but mostly because nothing is more important than satisfied customers.
But hate Windows, per se? Like most folks, I need to use it from time to time, and other Microsoft products. Some of them work well enough, none of them are worth hating.
Karl Fogel, author of The CVS Book, points out that open-source software is designed differently than closed source software. He makes many rather insightful observations in the odd numbered chapters (in the printed book) about how open-source software is different. I spent a few minutes searching for a couple great quotes... but saddly his text is heavily designed towards a tutorial and not a reference.
One of the really important differences is that open-source software is designed to expose to the user a good conceptual model of how it works and what it's really doing internally. Perhaps this is because the author of the code also designs the user interface, but it's often times done this way so that users can understand the inner workings of the program, at least in a conceptual way, and perhaps become involved in the coding. (Karl's CVS book is well worth the money for the chapters that aren't downloadable if you're interested in the reasons for these sort of design issues)
Now some might argue that users are better off on a "need to know" basis, and the point of software is to bundle up all algorithms so the user doesn't need to worry about them. People who feel this way probably like closed source software quite a bit and it seems likely they would be uncomfortable using many open source programs.
Personally, I quite like having a deeper understanding of what software is really doing. Sometimes I don't bother to read the finer details, but it's nice to know that they are there and available should I want to know. It's empowering to have that sort of information readily available (as well as the source code itself) should I have questions or run into complex problems. It is more work than calling some tech support number, but investing the time to read about and learn what is really going on almost always leads to better solutions that some lame tech support help desk could provide, and (at least for me) I end up with a better long-term knowledge base.
After many years, particularly in the modern age of thriving open/free software, it's easy to get very used to this sort of openness, where the source is provided, and the design of the program and its documentation is such that you can really learn and understand what it's really doing. It's easy to get used to having command line switches or config files where you can really control things, and documentation that explains not just the "what", but also the "how" and "why" behind the configurable parameters.
It really does become easy to hate closed software, where the innards are some proprietary secret. It becomes easy to truely hate the overall design of "no servicable parts inside", where you get only a few simple dialog boxes to choose only a couple basic parameters, and even the "advanced" dialogs don't really provide access to really control much. It's easy to hate documentation which is a giant inventory of the radio buttions and check boxes, with simple brain-dead descriptions of each that would have been obvious, without any information about how the software really works.
That is the reason I hate Microsoft Windows "per se". Actually, Windows itself isn't so bad... you can actually learn quite a bit about how it works internally (I have a couple good books on the topic), and there are lots of good 3rd party tools that can give access to much of the internal workings. Still, it is the overall closed design that I personally hate about much of the world's closed source software.
Ok, mod be down for shameless self promotion! But you gotta admit, it doesn't get much more hackable than this.
Since when does anyone, anywhere have the right to send email? Since when does anyone have the right to have their data go over a network that they don't own?
Likewise...
Not if your packets happen to travel through abovenet. Vixie, founder of MAPS, is the CTO at abovenet, and they regularily drop packets based on MAPS RBL.
Not much choice there for end users.
The GPL works when no one is trying to capitalize and exploit it. In instances like those, the GPL is pointless, and GPL'ing your code is akin to hanging a sign on your ass saying "screw me over".
Most of the code I've released for free is microcontroller firmware, and I just put it into the public domain so it can get combined with proprietary code without any strings attached.
The result has been that my little 8051 microcontroller web page has grown in popularity over the years and regularily swaps with a page at Reynold's as the #1 or #2 search result at google (for the query "8051"). A few years ago we started selling circuit boards and pre-programmed chips.
Long ago the site was hosted at a university (for free), and they refusted to continue hosting it. That was about the same time the boards started selling. In the last year, the web site has actually been able to pay for it's (rather spendy) hosting and other expenses, and soon the site will pay me back for all the electronic parts and other expenses over the last couple years.
I won't be rich from this, and in fact I probably won't ever be able to quit my day job and do it full time... but seeing it stand on its own financially is a long way from "screw me over", and it's almost all due to giving away source code, schematics, and know-how for free (public domain, not even GPL'd) and somewhere along the way enough people wanted to buy the circuit board. I never intended to sell anything when I stated the site in 1995, but after getting message after message asking for a source for the special parts or if I would make just one board for them, I had to do something. It's all worked out quite well.. and while it can be a lot of work at times, it's something I started simply to share my own projects and ideas with others for free.