Betamax was before the big media revolution. Back then, people wanted a VCR to plug into their TV. There wasn't different TV standards. But now, from the average unwashed consumer's point of view, it's very confusing out there. When that consumer goes out to buy a TV now, there's regular or HD. There's narrow or wide screen. There's Component or HDMI. And of course the salesman is going to tell the consumer that he needs a high definition source to take advantage of that new HD TV. I think it's easy for the consumer to confuse 'high definition' (generic) with 'HD-DVD' (brand). BluRay doesn't exactly say high definition, does it? I think BluRay will follow in a long line of Sony probably-technically-better-but-no-one-adopts-it technologies like Betamax, MemoryStick, UMD...
Funny you should mention this. I was out buying a television set last night (just a small 28" to replace a worn-out set in the living room - not the monster one in the basement). The salesman pointed to a Sony set and showed off the slot right in the TV for putting in memory cards from a camera for displaying on the TV. Being a Sony TV, it was that stupid Sony Memory Stick technology. I explained to him that if it was at least some sort of accepted standard like SD I would have at least contemplated it. Will Sony ever learn with their proprietary formats?
Are the Adsense subscribers going to get screwed with this settlement? Imagine if Google gives out $90 million in credits, and displays those ads contextually via Adsense, but decides to pay the Adsense subscriber well below (or even 0) the normal rate for the ad. Who will know? It'll look like a PSA to the Adsense subscriber. He has no idea how much the placement of that ad on his/her website cost the advertizer. And Google gets to burn through $90 million without it costing anything for themselves.
Canadians have enjoyed free downloads because of a tax that we pay on blank media. It will be interesting to see if the customer list of allofmp3.com gets 'acquired' by any law enforcement or copyright holder in North America. If so, I wonder if any Canadian downloader would have broken any laws? I suspect not, but IANAL.
Except for the fact that this asteroid is viewable by many amateur astronomers around the world. It's a simple matter to independently gather trajectory information and verify the mathematics. It would be extremely difficult for a single entity such as NASA to cover this one up.
True, the interstellar medium would have a slowing effect, but it would be the same value for all frequencies of electrmagnetic radiation, and therefore no difference in speed between radio and light.
Check out The Speed of Light for a reference to the fact that light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation are the same thing, and therefore travel at the same speed.
Now, if they're travelling through different mediums, then their speed is different. An interesting chart showing the different speeds through different mediums can be found here.
Interesting link for searching pi. I tried every 7-digit phone number in my head (my hom enumbers, work numbers, friends, etc), and it found all of them! Spooky.
I read the article with great interest. I noted the meticulous care that these people used to decode every step of the process. That's a lot of work. And its very impressive.
Then I read the press release.
The experts discovered
that ten different hardware components form the basis for a hardware
ID, which is sent to the activation central during
activation. However, due to the method employed to generate the
hardware ID, it is very likely that many hardware configurations
result in the same ID. Consequently, determining the actual hardware
configuration corresponding to a given hardware ID is an infeasible
task. In addition to the hardware ID only information derived from the
product key - a kind of serial number accompanying each distributed
copy of Windows XP - is transmitted.
Hmmm... sounds almost like propoganda. People are getting concerned about this 'draconian' registration scheme. Big corporate customers are getting upset at Microsoft. Messages on bulletin boards are starting to ask if identifiable information is being transmitted. All of a sudden, this group from Germany has completely decoded the mechanism, as well as put out a press release saying "Well guys, it's actually not that bad. This is all that it's doing. Don;t worry about it. Microsoft knows what's best for you".
I, for one, am a little concerned about the real source of this info. If they don't get prosecuted, then maybe I'm right...
I've noticed recently that when someone posts a story about a neat hardware hack like this, there's a whole bunch of "Where can I buy one" posts. Comments like "If the site gets slashdotted so quick, I wouldn't want to buy from them". This isn't a product for sale. It's a step-by-step description of a hardware hack - a rather cool one at that!
Do you have any proof that there is Windows in Space?
I don't know about critical systems, but they are using Windows on laptops and for videoconferencing. If you watch NASA TV, you'll see many instances of screenshots of Windows desktops with videoconferencing going on. I haven't been able to figure out what videoconferencing software they're using yet, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I found a screenshot over at Snapzilla.
Betamax was before the big media revolution. Back then, people wanted a VCR to plug into their TV. There wasn't different TV standards. But now, from the average unwashed consumer's point of view, it's very confusing out there. When that consumer goes out to buy a TV now, there's regular or HD. There's narrow or wide screen. There's Component or HDMI. And of course the salesman is going to tell the consumer that he needs a high definition source to take advantage of that new HD TV. I think it's easy for the consumer to confuse 'high definition' (generic) with 'HD-DVD' (brand). BluRay doesn't exactly say high definition, does it? I think BluRay will follow in a long line of Sony probably-technically-better-but-no-one-adopts-it technologies like Betamax, MemoryStick, UMD...
Funny you should mention this. I was out buying a television set last night (just a small 28" to replace a worn-out set in the living room - not the monster one in the basement). The salesman pointed to a Sony set and showed off the slot right in the TV for putting in memory cards from a camera for displaying on the TV. Being a Sony TV, it was that stupid Sony Memory Stick technology. I explained to him that if it was at least some sort of accepted standard like SD I would have at least contemplated it. Will Sony ever learn with their proprietary formats?
Are the Adsense subscribers going to get screwed with this settlement? Imagine if Google gives out $90 million in credits, and displays those ads contextually via Adsense, but decides to pay the Adsense subscriber well below (or even 0) the normal rate for the ad. Who will know? It'll look like a PSA to the Adsense subscriber. He has no idea how much the placement of that ad on his/her website cost the advertizer. And Google gets to burn through $90 million without it costing anything for themselves.
Canadians have enjoyed free downloads because of a tax that we pay on blank media. It will be interesting to see if the customer list of allofmp3.com gets 'acquired' by any law enforcement or copyright holder in North America. If so, I wonder if any Canadian downloader would have broken any laws? I suspect not, but IANAL.
Except for the fact that this asteroid is viewable by many amateur astronomers around the world. It's a simple matter to independently gather trajectory information and verify the mathematics. It would be extremely difficult for a single entity such as NASA to cover this one up.
Finally something that I can run on my Tuxscreen telephone. Great job guys!
True, the interstellar medium would have a slowing effect, but it would be the same value for all frequencies of electrmagnetic radiation, and therefore no difference in speed between radio and light.
Check out The Speed of Light for a reference to the fact that light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation are the same thing, and therefore travel at the same speed.
Now, if they're travelling through different mediums, then their speed is different. An interesting chart showing the different speeds through different mediums can be found here.
Light and Radio are both forms of electromagnetic radiation. They both travel at the same speed - 2.998x10^8 m/s in a vacuum.
Interesting link for searching pi. I tried every 7-digit phone number in my head (my hom enumbers, work numbers, friends, etc), and it found all of them! Spooky.
I read the article with great interest. I noted the meticulous care that these people used to decode every step of the process. That's a lot of work. And its very impressive.
Then I read the press release.
The experts discovered that ten different hardware components form the basis for a hardware ID, which is sent to the activation central during activation. However, due to the method employed to generate the hardware ID, it is very likely that many hardware configurations result in the same ID. Consequently, determining the actual hardware configuration corresponding to a given hardware ID is an infeasible task. In addition to the hardware ID only information derived from the product key - a kind of serial number accompanying each distributed copy of Windows XP - is transmitted.
Hmmm... sounds almost like propoganda. People are getting concerned about this 'draconian' registration scheme. Big corporate customers are getting upset at Microsoft. Messages on bulletin boards are starting to ask if identifiable information is being transmitted. All of a sudden, this group from Germany has completely decoded the mechanism, as well as put out a press release saying "Well guys, it's actually not that bad. This is all that it's doing. Don;t worry about it. Microsoft knows what's best for you".
I, for one, am a little concerned about the real source of this info. If they don't get prosecuted, then maybe I'm right...
I've noticed recently that when someone posts a story about a neat hardware hack like this, there's a whole bunch of "Where can I buy one" posts. Comments like "If the site gets slashdotted so quick, I wouldn't want to buy from them". This isn't a product for sale. It's a step-by-step description of a hardware hack - a rather cool one at that!
Do you have any proof that there is Windows in Space?
I don't know about critical systems, but they are using Windows on laptops and for videoconferencing. If you watch NASA TV, you'll see many instances of screenshots of Windows desktops with videoconferencing going on. I haven't been able to figure out what videoconferencing software they're using yet, though.
The interesting part about the article was that the last Multics machine was being run by the Canadian military! Only in Canada, eh?
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall a Multics system at U of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) when I was there around 1986. Can anyone confirm or Deny this?