Devil's Advocate: The Purposes of the Crap
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The Hype of the Rings
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· Score: 4, Interesting
(Lemme open up by saying I may or may not agree with what I am about to say. This sort of duplicity makes me an excellent candidate for political office.)
So far, I've seen the Burger King glasses, the action figures, a great many re-published copies of the book with the movie as the cover. I've seen the board game, the cartoon, the ten-minute TNT blip, the one-hour Sci-Fi blip. The bedsheets are on order at my local K-Mart, the costumes are being put on back-order, the card game is selling briskly, and the pornographic feature based upon the film is in high demand at the local adult bookstore.
All this stuff (with the possible exception of the porno) goes to help defray the insanely high intial costs of the trilogy. Keep in mind, for those of you who've been living in a cave since, oh, the last millenium, that they a) shot all three films at once and therefor WILL be released; b) they cost a LOT of money. If you think that $6000 for a Microsoft-proof laptop is a painful yet fun investment, think that the studio coughs up mega-million dollar budgets with shocking regularity. In fact, I'm torn on whether the casinos or Hollywood are the folks to duplicate for the handling of insanely large quantities of cash.
The crap has a double purpose. It gets people Movie Stuff, and simultaneously promotes the film.
Hey, I agree. Don't own it yet, but it has the dead sexy appeal courtesy of Apple's amazing design department. (I'd get an iBook and convert it to Linux if I could afford it. Oh well. Guess I'll have to stick to the Vaio for now.)
Something to keep in mind is that no small number of players are limited only by the software included. I have a RaveMP by Sensory Science and it'll transfer the music to my Linux box courtesy OS software.
This is a really useful piece of hardware. It's a lot quieter than a regular case. In addition, because water's both cheap and extremely effective as a conuctor of heat, it can keep the temperatures of your CPU, graphics card, hard drives, anything you can slide a copper plate on near room temperature. It really increases systemic longevity.
Of course, you could just have your motherboard immerced in a vat of mineral oil and have a similar effect.. (Mineral oil is non-conductive. And before you say I'm full of it, this was the at the demo the Koolance people used at Comdex Chicago.)
Unless you happen to be some kind of alien (or corporate) super-genius, you can't just take a 5 GHz antenna, slap it onto a 2.4 GHz transmitter, repackage it, and call it 802.11a.
First off, the componants for a 5GHz transmitter need to be (and are) smaller than the componants for a 2.4GHz system. This is why 2.4GHz phones and 802.11b cards have effective antennas within such a small form factor, and this is also why 11a cards have greater range. The antenna that can be fit into a Type II or CF slot would provide approx. a 10 dB gain (or double the effective radiated power) of the 2.4 antenna. (Besides that, a 5 GHz signal can be sent from a 2.4 GHz antenna with a little shrinking for that gain.)
The reason the transmitter is smaller is that the signal is much more easily affected by the environment, and by shrinking the distances between componants (and the componants themselves) one reduces that possibility.
In addition, the hardware has to be capable of handling the increased thoroughput. If you put a 100baseTX card on a Cat4 based network, it ain't gonna get you full bandwidth; likewise, a 10baseT on a Gigabit Ethernet connection can't do squat. 11a's guts are different from 11b's.
Also... about security in wireless: Let's make this clear. Any form of broadcast-based system, be it wired (like Ethernet) or wireless (802.11x), IS VULNERABLE TO EAVESDROPPING. Security has to be made application-level, like IPsec, SSL, SSH, and not hardware level. Especially if everyone has access to (sufficiently similar) hardware.
Five years ago, those of us who knew the Mysteries of the Web Host were preparing for a mass conversion of people to the Ways of the Net. We were telling people (and ourselves) that Faster Is The Future(tm), More Is Better(tm), and Wait'll You See What We Have In Store For You(tm).
Then, most of those morons signed up for the Great Satans of AOL and MSN.:)
Seriously, though, this is hardly a shock. Firstly, modems have relatively minimal drain on bandwidth resources, and since there are infinitely more providers of modemic service than fatpipe, it's easier to conect (provided you have either a mom-n-pop shop or a few numbers to call).
Fatpipe is also expensive. Cable modems are somewhere near $40 a month for unreliable party-line bandwidth; DSL is more cash for less hash; and satellite two-way has bad lag (so would you after a 100k mile trip per packet).
In this economic dounturn, more people are looking to save money, and this is one easy way to do it. (Most people surf the web to find a few relatively important sites to them and then maybe putz around for other items of interest.)
The lesson MS has learned (as well as most other obscenely large corps) is that with enough money and enough lawyers, anything is possible.
Also, let's be clear on exactly what the problem is: It's not the OS per se, but the fact that they're bundling all this drek along with it and is forcing it onto the OEM's. The problem is the use of its (reluctantly stated) legal monopoly on operating systems to force others out of other, non-OS markets. Think of the last time your Windows machine was marketed with Navigator, Corel's office suite or StarOffice, etc.
Microsoft's OS won in the OS market because they, at first, made it more attractive. Same as VHS over the technical superiority of Beta. Nowadays, there's nothing consumer that's in Beta (and even professional Beta machines are getting the boot). Very little consumer hardware is not in Windows.
You've got a point, XP is a case of arrogance to the nth degree. However, the settlement mentioned was a virtual slap on the wrist made with a feather instead of a ruler. One of the three people that would oversee MS's books and code would be a Microsoft designee, the second would need Microsoft's approval as well as the (fill in the blank). They couldn't share information with the outside world. To boot, it only would last a maximum of 7 years. To a corporation as pervasive as MS, seven years is nil.
It's amazing what campaign contributions will buy you nowadays.
First off, school's a bitch, to put it bluntly. Day in, day out in this small splace with generally small-minded proffessors. I know, I've been through the meat grinder as well.
There are a few things you could do. If you can get certifications, get them and start working as a roving prostitute.. err... consultant. Good money, hotel rooms, and you can screw with peoples' networks at will. Tee hee hee.
You're too far along in school to check out other options, realistically.. but maybe see what other things you have interest in and try to cross-pollinate those interests.
Maybe try becoming a kernel hacker. Either it'll cook you or you'll be helping out Everyone And Their System.
The last option I can think of is PROZAC. You may be sufferring from depression (can't blame you.. like I said, it's a bitch!), so maybe a visit to the shrink would help.
1. Yes, it is eminently hackable.. but on Sharp's site, they say that it won't be possible to make it into a microserver. (However, a CF II slot means that you CAN connect a pricey 802.11b card to it... ultra-small, ultra-portable Web surfing and hacking).
2. Unless you've a wallet large enough to deserve a combination lock, it's not gonna be that good an MP3 player at first. Granted, they're working on Microdrive support, but the RAM is only 32 MB and the only other media slot is SD (or SmartMedia..? I've never messed with SD before.).
3. If you register with their site, you can pre-order a Developer's Version for $400. Delivery by end of month.
(ps: Those site refs are very incomplete; just click the hyperlinks.)
Put a user in front of a Wintel box. Chances are, they could putz around, figure out how to use the mousey-pointy-thing, and get the idea of clicking around to do simple, uninteresting tasks. If they want to do something fancy, like find a file, they can't do it. They'll ask a person in tech support (like you, most likely) to tell them how to do that, and they'll come to you with issues of the utmost idiocy that you, as a *nixer, would be able to do in less than twenty keystrokes from a commmand line.
The terse answer to this is simple: Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while *nix is hard to learn but easy to use.
Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks at the cost of whatever files the employee or student was working on. (At least when my power spikes, I know Emacs has an annoying tilde file with most of my data in it;)
Age != Beauty, or The Other Good Things Abt Linux
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"Lindows" Coming Soon?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Linux is much more than 'a ten-year-old product.'
It's also:
-A network fileserver which can do RAID entirely in software (my in-house fs is doing an IDE and a SCSI RAID 5.. you need that kind of reliability when you're making movies!);
-Able to take advantage of almost any configuration of hardware, from an 80386 with 4MB RAM and a 40 MB HD to an multiprocessor Itanium with gigs of RAM and teras of HD, to distributed supercomputing a la Beowulf (To contrast: WinXP Home can only use a 300Mc+ single processor Intel32/AMD architecture; Pro can use up to eight SMP processors of the Intel32/AMD variety;Mac OS X needs a G3 or better; both need at least 256 MB RAM and more than a gig of HD to be run properly.)
-The most configurable Internet servers possible;
-Great workstations for almost any apps you can think of;
-The most evolutionary software product out there.
That last feature is The Big Deal(tm). Linux is a kernel which has been evolving since release 0.0.1. It's gradually expanded to every kind of processor possible, developing the ability to work with a wicked lot of hardware, growing to PCMCIA utilization; video acceleration support; USB & 1394 access; and ust about any filesystem of significance can be at least read by Linux.
Now.. I haven't had the chance or the excuse to use WINE yet, but I hope it works (so I don't need a Windows partition on my new laptop.. a vaio.. (drool)... (cleaning off my chin... sorry)) because I want to be able to use an old, pre-DMCA (can we say no Macrovision problems? I knew we could!) PCMCIA card which could both capture video without processor overhead at 1/2 resolution (it accepts PAL, SECAM, and NTSC input) and act as a TV tuner anywhere in the world. I haven't seen any info on it working under Linux, so I must use the mabnufacturer-provided software and perform acts of RevEnge on it (since the pricks at Nogatech have refused to give me any useful data on the card.... jerks)
If this 'Lindows' distribution works, it would be a boon for all us open-source types, because one more barrier to entry would be lowered and the bar of stability under Linux (or *BSD, for that matter) is miles above that of even this new bastard XP. (I'd place money they've got some GPL code in there. I can just smell it.)
Now, seriously.. Not many people really need this 'service'. Sure, it's nice to have less-than-zero ping times for Q3A (or whatever massively multiplayer game thou hast the time to waste playing), or for *loading kernels, but outisde Silicon Valley in the more 'traditional business' areas, not too many people would really need it.
The worst part is that those bandwidth would have to be peak bandwidths, as that much pipe costs an awful lot of money. (Have you priced T3's and OC's lately?)
The dot-bomb implosion, the fall of Nasdaq, the recessionary economy, and the 11-9 aftermath killed 'em. People with the money to spend started to cut their personal costs, and this sort of service went poof.
I believe that the only way to get reliable fat pipe for the forseeable future is from the established telcos, and it's going to be a little more expensive.
By law, these devices can only emit 100 mW at peak. In addition, they must not cause harmful interference.
Right now, with 11a, you may have less to worry about; however, there are a LOT of users of 11b's radiospace. Cordless phones primarily, but you have to also worry about the neighboring services, like wireless broadband and DBS/DSS reception (which grabs a fairly sensitive signal).
Not to mention radio amateurs, who have a bit more priority over the spectrum than you do. (If you're a ham, and can figure out a way for the stations to emit callsigns in a clear, common, and unencrypted way, then game-on.)
This is one of those catch-22 stories, something which makes me simultaneously dislike and love the prospects.
I am one who believes that software patents are bad with three M's and a silent Q. I mean, the base concepts aren't too original, so what's the point of issuing 28-year patents on things which, within less than a quarter of that term, are so behind the SOTA (State Of The Art) that everyone and their granny could think of it and possibly code it if they (a) were technically capable and (b) otherwise unencumbered by it.
That's the dislike part.
Now the love parts.
First off, IBM's investments in one of our favorite offspring from the fount of the Open Source, Linux, is rather impressive. Most of their hardware runs exceedingly well on Linux, and probably BSD as well (though that's not what I personally use often.. it's good in ultra-security apps, though...)
Second, it allows Big Blue ammunition to attack our Great Satan And Enemy Of Everything We Love, Microsoft.
This is a potential legal matchup that makes Vegas bookies drool in anticipation, like the matchup between two undefeated boxers or the ALCS. (Granted, Seattle has a bit of an advantage IMHO, but (a) they were wiped by the Yanks last year and (b) their power probably is an extention of Redmond's satanic verses... )
Iff Big Blue wins, it's more money to (potentially) feed into the Linux R&D pool. Iff Microsoft wins, it still loses a lot of legal fee money and IBM gets one less patent in its portfolio.
Choices, choices, choices..
Doesn't affect me, though. I use echo to code html:)
Sample code alone won't break a system (unless a sysadmin is dumb enough to run it themselves).
This is a case of obfuscation masking as security. Or, perhaps better, your availability as a mask for my deficiencies.
It's like me saying "I'm going to sue you for tripping on your front steps" because I broke my arm using a sledgehammer and am feeling litigious today.
Not that I ever would, mind you.. Yes, I know Your Honor, I'm not discussing this case, honestly...;)
Generally speaking, the higher the frequency, the lower the traffic. The highest frequency services in wide-area local use are in the 2.7 GHz band (for Sprint's wireless broadband service), 1.9GHz (for digital cellphones) and around 1.8 GHz (for DBS/DSS services).
The wavelength of a 5 GHz signal is a little less than half that of a 2.4 GHz signal; at the low power we're talking about for 802.11x signals (less than a tenth of a watt peak emitted power), a 2.4 antenna should work with a 5 source.
It also means that it is more subject to physical interference, and that bullhorn antennas are now an option;)
Also true is that the politians have form letters prepared on issues perceived to be major (I have multiple letters from Sen. Fitzgerald (R-IL) about removing American nukes from hair-trigger alert that are identical. Tax money at work;)
However, there should be someone there with an IQ point or two that can sort the 'bad terrorist, bad' general bulldrek messages (the kind that are responded to with a parental 'shh, it's okay sweetie, the big bad terrorists won't eat you while you sleep') to those about real issues.
A suggestion (stolen from Dave Ross, a commentator on CBS Radio) is to make the main points of your letter up top and leave the finery for the rest of the letter, as the header is about all that the average letter-reader can absorb (what with all the mail coming in). (Another good tip is to remind the politian about the $50,000 you donated to his/her (re-)election campaign last year... )
I also have a couple of interesting suggestions...
1. Mail your reps and senators a copy of the 500 character Perl script 'qrpff' with a note saying 'Surprise! You're a felon now!'
2. Blitz your reps with letters and get similarly minded people in your area to do so. I don't know many hacks where I am, mainly due to the fact most of my work is still under destruction...;)
All I can say is "Thank Standards" its about time that you can use the same phone in the rest of the world and still have it work in the States without having to buy a bulky tri-band number. Now if the billing issues could be sorted out then it would be great.
Now, if sir would go to the clue bag and get a clue.
The US came late to the digital cell party. We use 1900 MHz frequencies for digital cellular services. Europe and the rest of the world use 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequencies for GSM et al.
Tribanders are necessary unless you happen to have two cell phones.
Why is the US always at least 2 years behind the rest of the planet for Wireless ?
Because:
A: We use different sets of frequencies.
B: We don't have One Solid Standard for 1900 MHz cellular.
c: You're wrong. I got a Mototorola V.100 phone, which looks like an iMac blue clamshell and is for a lot of SMS work (look at the qwerty chiclet keyboard!) before my EU friends. (I went to HAL2001 and I saw nothing like the v.100; however, some of their phones were wicked cool.)
Let me write this down in big letters so everyone can read this.
NO SYSTEM IS 100% PERFECT.
I spoke with a Dutch journalist who wanted info on this, and I told her, flat out, that there is way too much false positive and false negative for biometric systems to be considered good enough for wide use. Even FP/FN rates of as little as.1% can be exploited. (That's one per thousand. That's pretty common.)
(Definition time: False positive is when I, an unauthorized user, successfully masquerade as an authorized user. False negative is when I, an authorized user, am not recognized as such by the system.)
Besides that, any installation concerned about security should (according to Robert Steele of oss.net, a website specializing in open source intelligence) have no less than two humans on guard, with at least one of them off-site.
Biometrics are a dangerous technology. Not because they supposedly can identify you, but that they are presupposed to identify a person absolutely.
QUOTE: Won't you run out of xenon eventually? If you use up your propellant, why not stick to the traditional jet fuels?
Firstly, jet propulsion is not possible in space. A jet engine operates with excess atmospheric oxygen to rotate a turbine. The turbine forces air to be pulled through and thus, the motion. (Oversimplified like hell, bu tI'm short on time.)
If you mean like shuttle launches which use O2 + 4 H2 to yield 2 H2O, you need a LOT of additional hardware. Flow regulation for both sets of tanks, one-way valves, hardened tanks for the H2. Besides, the mass of H2O is quite small compared to Xenon for the same amount of space. Gases occupy the same amount of space for a given temperature and pressure. (22.4 Litres per mol at 300K, 1 Atmosphere.) So.. the heaviest gas possible should be utilized for the most ejected mass.
(Time for a lesson: In order for the space shuttle to get off the ground, it has to eject the H2O for an action-reaction effect. It doesn't push off the pad; it ejects a wicked lot of mass out in the opposite direction to get the momentum to lift off. In order to do so, it needs to eject nine times the shuttle mass in H2O. It loses 90% of pre-launch mass in the liftoff. That's the reason those additional tanks are so goddamn huge.)
Secondly.. Unfortunately, the only form of space propulsion possible at this point in human history requires Newtonion reactions.
This means that in order to go one way, you need to throw something the other way in space. Even solar sails work in a Newtonian way; the momentum of the ejected particles transfer their momenta to the craft moving.
Iff (if and only if, for those who think it's a typo) we learn to bend spacetime without messing up subjective reality too badly, then we can talk about either Startrekian warpdrives or Babylon5ish artificial wormholes operating with merely controlled energy utilization.
So get your degree in quantum mechanics before you bitch about the fact that mass is needed to be ejected to move this sonnabitch along.
First things first, you need a spacecraft as light as possible. Anything not needed goes away. Basically, you're left with the instrumentation, the navigation, the cameras, solar panels, batteries, and a couple of sizeable tanks of xenon.
Yes. Xenon. The heaviest non-radioactive noble gas.
Now, xenon is normally inert like other noble gases. I mean, there are no natural compounds containing any noble gas because they have no natural need to enhance their electron shell configuration.
However, xenon is pretty large (as atoms go) and, given enough juice (courtesy our light and ability to live, the sun, hence the solar panels), you can ionize xenon. You can strip off an electron or two and it's useful (For example, the compound XeF6, xenon hexafloride. What it's good for? Dunno. Still doesn't change the fact it exists.) More importantly, it's charged and can be directed.
Then, it's a simple matter of a small aperture (which can be directed), a positively-charged grid, and the xenon leaves in the direction opposite the spacecraft goes.
Don't expect this to power any spacefighters, however. At full power, the force this produces will barely move a piece of paper in front of it. The beauty of ion engine, though, is that because in space, inertia isn't hampered except by collision or a gravity field, this little bit gets larger as time increases. It's not much force, but given time it gets zooming.
Slashdot Mirror
(Lemme open up by saying I may or may not agree with what I am about to say. This sort of duplicity makes me an excellent candidate for political office.)
So far, I've seen the Burger King glasses, the action figures, a great many re-published copies of the book with the movie as the cover. I've seen the board game, the cartoon, the ten-minute TNT blip, the one-hour Sci-Fi blip. The bedsheets are on order at my local K-Mart, the costumes are being put on back-order, the card game is selling briskly, and the pornographic feature based upon the film is in high demand at the local adult bookstore.
All this stuff (with the possible exception of the porno) goes to help defray the insanely high intial costs of the trilogy. Keep in mind, for those of you who've been living in a cave since, oh, the last millenium, that they a) shot all three films at once and therefor WILL be released; b) they cost a LOT of money. If you think that $6000 for a Microsoft-proof laptop is a painful yet fun investment, think that the studio coughs up mega-million dollar budgets with shocking regularity. In fact, I'm torn on whether the casinos or Hollywood are the folks to duplicate for the handling of insanely large quantities of cash.
The crap has a double purpose. It gets people Movie Stuff, and simultaneously promotes the film.
Hey, I agree. Don't own it yet, but it has the dead sexy appeal courtesy of Apple's amazing design department. (I'd get an iBook and convert it to Linux if I could afford it. Oh well. Guess I'll have to stick to the Vaio for now.)
Something to keep in mind is that no small number of players are limited only by the software included. I have a RaveMP by Sensory Science and it'll transfer the music to my Linux box courtesy OS software.
I saw this at Comdex in Chicago. in APRIL.
Send in a post. No response. But enough bitching.
This is a really useful piece of hardware. It's a lot quieter than a regular case. In addition, because water's both cheap and extremely effective as a conuctor of heat, it can keep the temperatures of your CPU, graphics card, hard drives, anything you can slide a copper plate on near room temperature. It really increases systemic longevity.
Of course, you could just have your motherboard immerced in a vat of mineral oil and have a similar effect.. (Mineral oil is non-conductive. And before you say I'm full of it, this was the at the demo the Koolance people used at Comdex Chicago.)
The only thing I really hate about this is that the sixth book will officially make this a series, as opposed to a trilogy.
Sigh.
Unless you happen to be some kind of alien (or corporate) super-genius, you can't just take a 5 GHz antenna, slap it onto a 2.4 GHz transmitter, repackage it, and call it 802.11a.
First off, the componants for a 5GHz transmitter need to be (and are) smaller than the componants for a 2.4GHz system. This is why 2.4GHz phones and 802.11b cards have effective antennas within such a small form factor, and this is also why 11a cards have greater range. The antenna that can be fit into a Type II or CF slot would provide approx. a 10 dB gain (or double the effective radiated power) of the 2.4 antenna. (Besides that, a 5 GHz signal can be sent from a 2.4 GHz antenna with a little shrinking for that gain.)
The reason the transmitter is smaller is that the signal is much more easily affected by the environment, and by shrinking the distances between componants (and the componants themselves) one reduces that possibility.
In addition, the hardware has to be capable of handling the increased thoroughput. If you put a 100baseTX card on a Cat4 based network, it ain't gonna get you full bandwidth; likewise, a 10baseT on a Gigabit Ethernet connection can't do squat. 11a's guts are different from 11b's.
Also... about security in wireless: Let's make this clear. Any form of broadcast-based system, be it wired (like Ethernet) or wireless (802.11x), IS VULNERABLE TO EAVESDROPPING. Security has to be made application-level, like IPsec, SSL, SSH, and not hardware level. Especially if everyone has access to (sufficiently similar) hardware.
Five years ago, those of us who knew the Mysteries of the Web Host were preparing for a mass conversion of people to the Ways of the Net. We were telling people (and ourselves) that Faster Is The Future(tm), More Is Better(tm), and Wait'll You See What We Have In Store For You(tm).
:)
Then, most of those morons signed up for the Great Satans of AOL and MSN.
Seriously, though, this is hardly a shock. Firstly, modems have relatively minimal drain on bandwidth resources, and since there are infinitely more providers of modemic service than fatpipe, it's easier to conect (provided you have either a mom-n-pop shop or a few numbers to call).
Fatpipe is also expensive. Cable modems are somewhere near $40 a month for unreliable party-line bandwidth; DSL is more cash for less hash; and satellite two-way has bad lag (so would you after a 100k mile trip per packet).
In this economic dounturn, more people are looking to save money, and this is one easy way to do it. (Most people surf the web to find a few relatively important sites to them and then maybe putz around for other items of interest.)
I mean, $15/mo $40.
The lesson MS has learned (as well as most other obscenely large corps) is that with enough money and enough lawyers, anything is possible.
Also, let's be clear on exactly what the problem is: It's not the OS per se, but the fact that they're bundling all this drek along with it and is forcing it onto the OEM's. The problem is the use of its (reluctantly stated) legal monopoly on operating systems to force others out of other, non-OS markets. Think of the last time your Windows machine was marketed with Navigator, Corel's office suite or StarOffice, etc.
Microsoft's OS won in the OS market because they, at first, made it more attractive. Same as VHS over the technical superiority of Beta. Nowadays, there's nothing consumer that's in Beta (and even professional Beta machines are getting the boot). Very little consumer hardware is not in Windows.
You've got a point, XP is a case of arrogance to the nth degree. However, the settlement mentioned was a virtual slap on the wrist made with a feather instead of a ruler. One of the three people that would oversee MS's books and code would be a Microsoft designee, the second would need Microsoft's approval as well as the (fill in the blank). They couldn't share information with the outside world. To boot, it only would last a maximum of 7 years. To a corporation as pervasive as MS, seven years is nil.
It's amazing what campaign contributions will buy you nowadays.
Lemme be clear: I tossed in humor to make the bitter pill easier to swallow. I'm somewhat good at that.
I was very, very serious about the possibility of depression.
First off, school's a bitch, to put it bluntly. Day in, day out in this small splace with generally small-minded proffessors. I know, I've been through the meat grinder as well.
There are a few things you could do. If you can get certifications, get them and start working as a roving prostitute.. err... consultant. Good money, hotel rooms, and you can screw with peoples' networks at will. Tee hee hee.
You're too far along in school to check out other options, realistically.. but maybe see what other things you have interest in and try to cross-pollinate those interests.
Maybe try becoming a kernel hacker. Either it'll cook you or you'll be helping out Everyone And Their System.
The last option I can think of is PROZAC. You may be sufferring from depression (can't blame you.. like I said, it's a bitch!), so maybe a visit to the shrink would help.
1. Yes, it is eminently hackable.. but on Sharp's site, they say that it won't be possible to make it into a microserver. (However, a CF II slot means that you CAN connect a pricey 802.11b card to it... ultra-small, ultra-portable Web surfing and hacking). 2. Unless you've a wallet large enough to deserve a combination lock, it's not gonna be that good an MP3 player at first. Granted, they're working on Microdrive support, but the RAM is only 32 MB and the only other media slot is SD (or SmartMedia..? I've never messed with SD before.). 3. If you register with their site, you can pre-order a Developer's Version for $400. Delivery by end of month. (ps: Those site refs are very incomplete; just click the hyperlinks.)
I contacted my rep last Friday about this issue, and she actually voted against the anti-terrorism bill.
It passed regardless, but it shows that you can have some influence on your rep's decisions.
Let's put it this way...
Put a user in front of a Wintel box. Chances are, they could putz around, figure out how to use the mousey-pointy-thing, and get the idea of clicking around to do simple, uninteresting tasks. If they want to do something fancy, like find a file, they can't do it. They'll ask a person in tech support (like you, most likely) to tell them how to do that, and they'll come to you with issues of the utmost idiocy that you, as a *nixer, would be able to do in less than twenty keystrokes from a commmand line.
The terse answer to this is simple: Windows is easy to learn and hard to use, while *nix is hard to learn but easy to use.
;)
Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks at the cost of whatever files the employee or student was working on. (At least when my power spikes, I know Emacs has an annoying tilde file with most of my data in it
Linux is much more than 'a ten-year-old product.'
It's also:
-A network fileserver which can do RAID entirely in software (my in-house fs is doing an IDE and a SCSI RAID 5.. you need that kind of reliability when you're making movies!);
-Able to take advantage of almost any configuration of hardware, from an 80386 with 4MB RAM and a 40 MB HD to an multiprocessor Itanium with gigs of RAM and teras of HD, to distributed supercomputing a la Beowulf (To contrast: WinXP Home can only use a 300Mc+ single processor Intel32/AMD architecture; Pro can use up to eight SMP processors of the Intel32/AMD variety;Mac OS X needs a G3 or better; both need at least 256 MB RAM and more than a gig of HD to be run properly.)
-The most configurable Internet servers possible;
-Great workstations for almost any apps you can think of;
-The most evolutionary software product out there.
That last feature is The Big Deal(tm). Linux is a kernel which has been evolving since release 0.0.1. It's gradually expanded to every kind of processor possible, developing the ability to work with a wicked lot of hardware, growing to PCMCIA utilization; video acceleration support; USB & 1394 access; and ust about any filesystem of significance can be at least read by Linux.
Now.. I haven't had the chance or the excuse to use WINE yet, but I hope it works (so I don't need a Windows partition on my new laptop.. a vaio.. (drool)... (cleaning off my chin... sorry)) because I want to be able to use an old, pre-DMCA (can we say no Macrovision problems? I knew we could!) PCMCIA card which could both capture video without processor overhead at 1/2 resolution (it accepts PAL, SECAM, and NTSC input) and act as a TV tuner anywhere in the world. I haven't seen any info on it working under Linux, so I must use the mabnufacturer-provided software and perform acts of RevEnge on it (since the pricks at Nogatech have refused to give me any useful data on the card.... jerks)
If this 'Lindows' distribution works, it would be a boon for all us open-source types, because one more barrier to entry would be lowered and the bar of stability under Linux (or *BSD, for that matter) is miles above that of even this new bastard XP. (I'd place money they've got some GPL code in there. I can just smell it.)
You know, there something that's been driving me mad for the past eight years and change that I've been online.
Why is it that bandwidth is measured in multi-bit capacities whereas everything else is in multibyte capacities?
Nice play with semantics.
Now, seriously.. Not many people really need this 'service'. Sure, it's nice to have less-than-zero ping times for Q3A (or whatever massively multiplayer game thou hast the time to waste playing), or for *loading kernels, but outisde Silicon Valley in the more 'traditional business' areas, not too many people would really need it.
The worst part is that those bandwidth would have to be peak bandwidths, as that much pipe costs an awful lot of money. (Have you priced T3's and OC's lately?)
The dot-bomb implosion, the fall of Nasdaq, the recessionary economy, and the 11-9 aftermath killed 'em. People with the money to spend started to cut their personal costs, and this sort of service went poof.
I believe that the only way to get reliable fat pipe for the forseeable future is from the established telcos, and it's going to be a little more expensive.
By law, these devices can only emit 100 mW at peak. In addition, they must not cause harmful interference.
Right now, with 11a, you may have less to worry about; however, there are a LOT of users of 11b's radiospace. Cordless phones primarily, but you have to also worry about the neighboring services, like wireless broadband and DBS/DSS reception (which grabs a fairly sensitive signal).
Not to mention radio amateurs, who have a bit more priority over the spectrum than you do. (If you're a ham, and can figure out a way for the stations to emit callsigns in a clear, common, and unencrypted way, then game-on.)
Link: Part 15 Rules
This is one of those catch-22 stories, something which makes me simultaneously dislike and love the prospects.
:)
I am one who believes that software patents are bad with three M's and a silent Q. I mean, the base concepts aren't too original, so what's the point of issuing 28-year patents on things which, within less than a quarter of that term, are so behind the SOTA (State Of The Art) that everyone and their granny could think of it and possibly code it if they (a) were technically capable and (b) otherwise unencumbered by it.
That's the dislike part.
Now the love parts.
First off, IBM's investments in one of our favorite offspring from the fount of the Open Source, Linux, is rather impressive. Most of their hardware runs exceedingly well on Linux, and probably BSD as well (though that's not what I personally use often.. it's good in ultra-security apps, though...)
Second, it allows Big Blue ammunition to attack our Great Satan And Enemy Of Everything We Love, Microsoft.
This is a potential legal matchup that makes Vegas bookies drool in anticipation, like the matchup between two undefeated boxers or the ALCS. (Granted, Seattle has a bit of an advantage IMHO, but (a) they were wiped by the Yanks last year and (b) their power probably is an extention of Redmond's satanic verses... )
Iff Big Blue wins, it's more money to (potentially) feed into the Linux R&D pool. Iff Microsoft wins, it still loses a lot of legal fee money and IBM gets one less patent in its portfolio.
Choices, choices, choices..
Doesn't affect me, though. I use echo to code html
Sample code alone won't break a system (unless a sysadmin is dumb enough to run it themselves).
;)
This is a case of obfuscation masking as security. Or, perhaps better, your availability as a mask for my deficiencies.
It's like me saying "I'm going to sue you for tripping on your front steps" because I broke my arm using a sledgehammer and am feeling litigious today.
Not that I ever would, mind you.. Yes, I know Your Honor, I'm not discussing this case, honestly...
Generally speaking, the higher the frequency, the lower the traffic. The highest frequency services in wide-area local use are in the 2.7 GHz band (for Sprint's wireless broadband service), 1.9GHz (for digital cellphones) and around 1.8 GHz (for DBS/DSS services).
;)
The wavelength of a 5 GHz signal is a little less than half that of a 2.4 GHz signal; at the low power we're talking about for 802.11x signals (less than a tenth of a watt peak emitted power), a 2.4 antenna should work with a 5 source.
It also means that it is more subject to physical interference, and that bullhorn antennas are now an option
Undoubtably, this is true.
;)
;)
Also true is that the politians have form letters prepared on issues perceived to be major (I have multiple letters from Sen. Fitzgerald (R-IL) about removing American nukes from hair-trigger alert that are identical. Tax money at work
However, there should be someone there with an IQ point or two that can sort the 'bad terrorist, bad' general bulldrek messages (the kind that are responded to with a parental 'shh, it's okay sweetie, the big bad terrorists won't eat you while you sleep') to those about real issues.
A suggestion (stolen from Dave Ross, a commentator on CBS Radio) is to make the main points of your letter up top and leave the finery for the rest of the letter, as the header is about all that the average letter-reader can absorb (what with all the mail coming in). (Another good tip is to remind the politian about the $50,000 you donated to his/her (re-)election campaign last year... )
I also have a couple of interesting suggestions...
1. Mail your reps and senators a copy of the 500 character Perl script 'qrpff' with a note saying 'Surprise! You're a felon now!'
2. Blitz your reps with letters and get similarly minded people in your area to do so. I don't know many hacks where I am, mainly due to the fact most of my work is still under destruction...
B: We don't have One Solid Standard for 1900 MHz cellular.
c: You're wrong. I got a Mototorola V.100 phone, which looks like an iMac blue clamshell and is for a lot of SMS work (look at the qwerty chiclet keyboard!) before my EU friends. (I went to HAL2001 and I saw nothing like the v.100; however, some of their phones were wicked cool.)
I spoke up a bit at HAL2001 about biometrics.
.1% can be exploited. (That's one per thousand. That's pretty common.)
Let me write this down in big letters so everyone can read this.
NO SYSTEM IS 100% PERFECT.
I spoke with a Dutch journalist who wanted info on this, and I told her, flat out, that there is way too much false positive and false negative for biometric systems to be considered good enough for wide use. Even FP/FN rates of as little as
(Definition time: False positive is when I, an unauthorized user, successfully masquerade as an authorized user. False negative is when I, an authorized user, am not recognized as such by the system.)
Besides that, any installation concerned about security should (according to Robert Steele of oss.net, a website specializing in open source intelligence) have no less than two humans on guard, with at least one of them off-site.
Biometrics are a dangerous technology. Not because they supposedly can identify you, but that they are presupposed to identify a person absolutely.
QUOTE: Won't you run out of xenon eventually? If you use up your propellant, why not stick to the traditional jet fuels?
Firstly, jet propulsion is not possible in space. A jet engine operates with excess atmospheric oxygen to rotate a turbine. The turbine forces air to be pulled through and thus, the motion. (Oversimplified like hell, bu tI'm short on time.)
If you mean like shuttle launches which use O2 + 4 H2 to yield 2 H2O, you need a LOT of additional hardware. Flow regulation for both sets of tanks, one-way valves, hardened tanks for the H2. Besides, the mass of H2O is quite small compared to Xenon for the same amount of space. Gases occupy the same amount of space for a given temperature and pressure. (22.4 Litres per mol at 300K, 1 Atmosphere.) So.. the heaviest gas possible should be utilized for the most ejected mass.
(Time for a lesson: In order for the space shuttle to get off the ground, it has to eject the H2O for an action-reaction effect. It doesn't push off the pad; it ejects a wicked lot of mass out in the opposite direction to get the momentum to lift off. In order to do so, it needs to eject nine times the shuttle mass in H2O. It loses 90% of pre-launch mass in the liftoff. That's the reason those additional tanks are so goddamn huge.)
Secondly.. Unfortunately, the only form of space propulsion possible at this point in human history requires Newtonion reactions.
This means that in order to go one way, you need to throw something the other way in space. Even solar sails work in a Newtonian way; the momentum of the ejected particles transfer their momenta to the craft moving.
Iff (if and only if, for those who think it's a typo) we learn to bend spacetime without messing up subjective reality too badly, then we can talk about either Startrekian warpdrives or Babylon5ish artificial wormholes operating with merely controlled energy utilization.
So get your degree in quantum mechanics before you bitch about the fact that mass is needed to be ejected to move this sonnabitch along.
This is simple physics, boys and girls.
First things first, you need a spacecraft as light as possible. Anything not needed goes away. Basically, you're left with the instrumentation, the navigation, the cameras, solar panels, batteries, and a couple of sizeable tanks of xenon.
Yes. Xenon. The heaviest non-radioactive noble gas.
Now, xenon is normally inert like other noble gases. I mean, there are no natural compounds containing any noble gas because they have no natural need to enhance their electron shell configuration.
However, xenon is pretty large (as atoms go) and, given enough juice (courtesy our light and ability to live, the sun, hence the solar panels), you can ionize xenon. You can strip off an electron or two and it's useful (For example, the compound XeF6, xenon hexafloride. What it's good for? Dunno. Still doesn't change the fact it exists.) More importantly, it's charged and can be directed.
Then, it's a simple matter of a small aperture (which can be directed), a positively-charged grid, and the xenon leaves in the direction opposite the spacecraft goes.
Don't expect this to power any spacefighters, however. At full power, the force this produces will barely move a piece of paper in front of it. The beauty of ion engine, though, is that because in space, inertia isn't hampered except by collision or a gravity field, this little bit gets larger as time increases. It's not much force, but given time it gets zooming.