I think your usage is probably vastly different. I am assuming you use the laptop more than the camera, and perhaps more importantly you probably drain it more consistently.
Although I did visit your website, and you had a LOT of photos, so you must use the camera quite extensively. (I really liked some of the Arizona ones.) Oh, and have you built a kite photography rig yet? Your page just linked to a AKA guy's site.
They're two different tools, used for different tasks and designed differently as a result. It's like you're trying to compare how many miles per gallon you get in a motorcycle vs. a chainsaw. One of those measurements won't make much sense.
Your G1 draws far less current at a far lower rate than your laptop. Your laptop has a hard drive that's probably constantly spinning while you're using it, while your camera's only motor is in the zoom lens. (OK, you might have a microdrive, but that doesn't stay spinning nearly as long as the drive in your PC.) Your camera's backlit screen has about 5 in^2 of illuminated area, but your laptop's screen is closer to 180 in^2, a 36 times larger screen that draws close to 36 times as much power. Flashes are also not a constant power draw. Finally, its off to your CPU to check current draw. Camera CPUs are more closely related to dedicated microcontrollers than they are to the general purpose CPUs found in your laptop. Microcontrollers are designed for minimal current draw, they power themselves down nicely (and frequently. While your Pentium was designed with low power laptops in mind, it still draws a frightfully large amount of current in comparison to the little processor inside your camera.
If you were able to wire up your camera's battery to power your laptop, you'd find you'd get maybe ten minutes of battery life. There's not magic inside that battery, and that's basically the point of the whole article.
According to this link, the study was conducted by spamming the Linux Kernel mailing list and random SourceForge developers.
Is it significant that 34% of SourceForge developers responded but only 2.4% of Linux Kernel list subscribers? Does this survey prove anything more than "SourceForge developers are more likely to be successfully trolled than Linux Kernel list subscribers?"
You're absolutely correct in that a substantially larger die will result in substantially lower yields (excepting any magical breakthroughs in chip fabrication, which are always possible.)
But there are segments of today's market that are willing to pay almost any price for a high-performance chip. These people will fork over a $1000 without blinking an eye if they think it will speed up their business.
Look at any commercial server available today. They're priced around $15000 - $20000. If chip prices go to $1000 instead of the $400 they're probably paying, that makes a difference of $2400, or about 12%, in a 4 way box. Even if chip prices went to $2000, it's a $5600 difference, or a 28% difference. If your processors are your bottleneck, then you've gained a lot of improvement for not-very-much delta in money.
Sure, a $2000 chip is out of reach for most home users today, but there is always a market for just about anything faster they can produce.
And there are enough crazed overclockers out there that'll spend whatever it takes to raise their frame rates on Quake III. It'll sell. It'll also drive the market to a new standard, which also sells chips.
At all of our high-risk locations, and most of our other locations, we use a digital recording system made by Loronix. It scales well, we have some buildings with dozens of cameras feeding into the system and some with hundreds. They can accept both analog and/or digital camera inputs to each recording unit. Keeping some of our older analog cameras preserved quite a bit of investment; saving not only the cost of new cameras but saving the installation costs (which are actually higher than the camera costs in some locations!)
I recall either 8 or 16 cameras per rack-mounted machine, but I imagine they've gotten bigger / better / faster in the last five years. A higher number of simultaneous inputs reduces the frame rates, so we chose the maximum number of inputs that could give us the frame rates we desired (3.5 frames/sec, I think.)
They have digital tape jukeboxes parked next to the racks, and even our largest site keeps at least 90 days of video.
They provide client software that allows us to remotely access the video stream via our internal network, and they modified their system to include a SQL database of a journal of the accompanying financial transactions being performed. They identify each computer with a camera, and upon request deliver this journal synchronized with the video stream. We also have some public safety cameras feeding the system that are not tied to the transaction system.
It's elegant for the investigators, who are non-techies. They have search capabilities on that data, and can speed right to the relevant transactions. They can also simply click a button and burn a CD with the selected video stream and it even comes with the required digitally-signed proprietary viewer.
Another thing it has that you maybe haven't yet considered is that their company has experts who will testify in court on our behalf that their system is valid, and that the images haven't been tampered with. We have used their imagery as evidence in many successful prosecutions. IANAL, but having a built-in Trusted Third Party strikes me as a strong benefit.
So, with a wonderful system like this, what are the drawbacks? Money, plain and simple. You have to be willing to invest money (and people) to get a top notch system, but the cost-avoidance was definitely worth it for us.
Oh, and before anyone goes off about Big Brother, you should know that the transactions we are recording are financial in nature, and cash is involved. The computers are ours, and the users know they are being recorded. Just that knowledge provides a huge fraud deterrent. We honestly much prefer deterring theft up front than prosecuting our own employees after the fact. And armed with this system, we have no problem prosecuting thieves.
Disclaimer: I do not have any financial investment in Loronix, I am just a very satisfied customer.
This is a brilliant observation! (where are those mod points when you need them?)
I think the biggest problem, of course, would be the potential for a cat fight to control Linux. I can see several big corporations jumping in to fill the void: IBM and Red Hat, just to name the most prominent.
Of course, this then begs the question of what's poor Linus to do? If he says to the world, "Hey, world, I need to form a Linux junta," the lineup of people and corporations would extend across the pond.
I have to assume he feels there's an unwritten agreement amongst the core maintainers, but dissecting unwritten agreements are the IBM legal department's specialty.
Even if he doesn't delegate, he ought to at least put it in his will.
Re:And the disturbing thought is...
on
EverQuest and the UN
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· Score: 3, Interesting
An interesting comparison would be that I heard an NPR commentator announcing that WalMart had become the largest corporation on earth, passing Exxon. But his point was "They make nothing."
While I think the interview was tantamount to preaching to the choir around here, I think Mr. Lessig quite eloquently makes the arguments sound reasonable.
I still want to know if there's any chance lawmakers are listening when these talks come out, or if wonderful voices like this are drowned out by the cash of the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists. And what can we do? Writing letters goes only so far (lately they've been going to the "check for anthrax heap".) The current Administration has shown an amazing abilility to empathize with the big oil and energy industries. Should we expect any less regal treatment of the next MPAA petitioner?
Yes, apparently I'm the other guy who watched it. I really enjoy what they did with the Batmanuel character.
Oh, well, I watched it on ReplayTV and skipped the commercials anyway, so I'm sure I made them no money.
Re:it's a breast implant dammit!@!@#!
on
New iMac Announced
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· Score: 2, Funny
He's right. It's the iTit.
I had Apple figured all wrong. I always thought they were somewhat decent engineers with a creative flair. People defended the G3 by saying "Look, it has doors! Ooo, how novel! How much better than a PC!". Then came the iMac with the least functional cabinet I've ever seen, and those same people said "Look at the styling! Ooo, how cool! How much better than a PC!"
There's no defending this design. As Cartman might say, it's hella-gay.
Three Game Cubes for the kids with quick eyes,
Seven PlayStation 2s for the teens who are stoned.
Nine XBoxes for mortal men, doomed to play Project Gotham Racing until 4:00 AM,
One gamepad for the pocket and home.
One gamepad to play them all,
One gamepad to find them,
One gamepad to play Tony Hawk
And in the darkness grind 'em.
In the land of Microsoft
Where the shadows lie.
I disagree. I don't really have time for that kind of stuff, and I imagine I will have walked away from/. long before the "ascii art" foes go away.
If the newbie starts making enough sense to get modded up occasionally, maybe I'll see him, maybe I won't. Either way, I'm pretty much assured that my quality of life won't really be degraded if I don't read his posts.
What I guess I'm saying is I'm probably not going to grow as much as the newbie poster will, and I've kind of decided I don't really care, either.
Besides, I just have "friends" in my list. No "foes" (yet.) I also have the friend modifier set to +6, and the foe modifier still at zero.
Dude, it's very simple. First, take the job. You and yours need to eat and pay bills, and it's not like it's completely illegal.
Just try to perform it as "morally correct" as your conscience demands. That means if you discover an anti-spamming law that you can comply with by changing some code, change that code. If you know that the DMA maintains a list of addresses that have requested "No spam, please," then try to keep that list current on your systems. Just because your boss is "ethically challenged" doesn't mean you have to always do it his way. (Just when he's looking over your shoulder;-)
Hell, who knows, you might eventually drive his company in a more legitimate direction, which might even prove to be more profitable in the long run. Y'know, you could even then legitimately advertise your services as "ANTI-SPAM S.xxxx compliant"
Just do the rest of the hacker world a favor and make his spam-slinging engine leave some spammy header traces that our spam filters can spot, please! Spam plays the numbers game, and if 5% of us are savvy enough to filter it out, SO WHAT? It doesn't cost you any business you would have otherwise tricked us into giving you.
Hell, it'll even save you time NOT sending it to the spam-hating addresses. It might even keep the rabid anti-spam crowd from chasing your IP address back a day early, letting you operate a bit longer each time.
Oh, absolutely it's a good thing. I think this exchange program is wonderful (assuming it's taken advantage of by folks who can't otherwise afford the $5.00 for a digital thermometer.) I'm just disappointed that the ones I've seen are powered by button batteries, which almost invariably contain mercury.
Speaking of recycling ALL batteries, is there any environmental hazard created by alkaline or carbon-zinc batteries? I saved the dead ones for years, and had a pail of them in the basement next to the dead NiCds and button batteries. When I hauled my recyclables to the center, they took the NiCds and the button batteries, but they would not take the others, and they advised me to throw them in the regular garbage. I did, (what else could I do with them if the recycling center wouldn't take them?) but I still wonder what environmental effect they have, other than occupying landfill space.
Dakota County in Minnesota (where I live) has an exchange program underway where if you bring a mercury thermometer to the recycling center, they'll exchange it for a digital thermometer (free of charge, while supplies last.) They're doing this to get mercury out of homes.
I believe it is also illegal in some locales to sell mercury-based thermometers.
Of course, the mercury-filled button batteries powering most of those thermometers will probably end up in the trash next week...sigh.
The realities of transporting and delivering hydrogen to the end user make raw hydrogen a more expensive fuel than a liquid fuel source such as methanol, even after taking account the cost and size of the cracking unit.
At least this is what Daimler Chrysler has found for vehicular fuel cells. When you're talking cell phone sized, however, I don't know if that's still true.
I've got a four foot hole in the downstairs wall where a fireplace is going to sit. And some very very cold air is currently being kept at bay by some masonite siding and buffalo board. So, I'll be having a construction marathon once I get home this afternoon. I hope I stay awake till midnight.
Yeah, I know. I'm taking advantage of a loose interpretation by Microsoft's Visual C++ 6.0 where it converts the pointer with a warning instead of an error. It's just much shorter (and prettier) without all the needed casting. Plus, I personally think the casts give away the magic.
Oh, and I assume you're on a little endian box, too. Lots of assumptions, eh?
These are excellent points as they pertain to micropayments. But we're talking about something a little bit bigger here. If I were downloading three ISO images for Mandrake 8.1 (for example), I'd see, oh, about 3 * 660MB worth of traffic flowing, and I might say, "hey, that's a lot of data." So maybe I'm willing to pay $4.00 / CD for that data transfer, or maybe $10.00 for the lot. There's more than a micropayment worth of expenses.
A T1 goes for what, $900/mo? Electricity, lease payments, repairs, etc., all add up to some monthly expense. The transaction costs could easily be in the $1.00 to $3.00 range per CD distributed. And, of course, you load Yahoo!s $0.30 into the front end amount, ending up with about $1.30 to $3.30 per ISO image. It covers the Yahoo! expense, and it may even be enough to keep FreeBSD afloat.
Oh, and the problem with your lump-sum solution above is that Visa will want transaction fees on every donor to middleman transaction as well as on every middleman to recipient transaction. So, your middleman organization has to make sure that they hold on to the user's account long enough to get a whole lump amount from each credit card. It might be a better solution to have a web counter at the destination site that you register with; one that promises not to withdraw money until the user uses more than $X worth of services (or maybe monthly, whichever comes first.) And that comes with its own raft of fraud issues, too, but that's not a huge deal for a mostly voluntary payment scheme...
The biggest thing is I don't want any volunteer organization collecting my Visa info. Just look at the attack tree! You have volunteer groups holding either Visa account information or tokens that are worth lots of cash; you have a payment website to secure and insure; and you still have to pay Visa lots of money to play. It'd take a bank's worth of money just to create a middleman site like this. FreeBSD may do better just to issue their own Visa cards.
Sorry, but I just think the financial risks involved to everyone concerned in the middleman scheme would pretty much prevent it from taking off.
Slashdot Mirror
Film is 24FPS, but each frame is projected twice (the shutter has two interruptors) making the flicker rate 48Hz, and therefore much less noticeable.
Although I did visit your website, and you had a LOT of photos, so you must use the camera quite extensively. (I really liked some of the Arizona ones.) Oh, and have you built a kite photography rig yet? Your page just linked to a AKA guy's site.
John
They're two different tools, used for different tasks and designed differently as a result. It's like you're trying to compare how many miles per gallon you get in a motorcycle vs. a chainsaw. One of those measurements won't make much sense.
Your G1 draws far less current at a far lower rate than your laptop. Your laptop has a hard drive that's probably constantly spinning while you're using it, while your camera's only motor is in the zoom lens. (OK, you might have a microdrive, but that doesn't stay spinning nearly as long as the drive in your PC.) Your camera's backlit screen has about 5 in^2 of illuminated area, but your laptop's screen is closer to 180 in^2, a 36 times larger screen that draws close to 36 times as much power. Flashes are also not a constant power draw. Finally, its off to your CPU to check current draw. Camera CPUs are more closely related to dedicated microcontrollers than they are to the general purpose CPUs found in your laptop. Microcontrollers are designed for minimal current draw, they power themselves down nicely (and frequently. While your Pentium was designed with low power laptops in mind, it still draws a frightfully large amount of current in comparison to the little processor inside your camera.
If you were able to wire up your camera's battery to power your laptop, you'd find you'd get maybe ten minutes of battery life. There's not magic inside that battery, and that's basically the point of the whole article.
John
Sign me up!
Either that, or this system may be inadvertently bridging X-10 signals, so we get to watch our neighbors X-10 cameras. Hmm... choices.
Is it significant that 34% of SourceForge developers responded but only 2.4% of Linux Kernel list subscribers? Does this survey prove anything more than "SourceForge developers are more likely to be successfully trolled than Linux Kernel list subscribers?"
But there are segments of today's market that are willing to pay almost any price for a high-performance chip. These people will fork over a $1000 without blinking an eye if they think it will speed up their business.
Look at any commercial server available today. They're priced around $15000 - $20000. If chip prices go to $1000 instead of the $400 they're probably paying, that makes a difference of $2400, or about 12%, in a 4 way box. Even if chip prices went to $2000, it's a $5600 difference, or a 28% difference. If your processors are your bottleneck, then you've gained a lot of improvement for not-very-much delta in money.
Sure, a $2000 chip is out of reach for most home users today, but there is always a market for just about anything faster they can produce.
And there are enough crazed overclockers out there that'll spend whatever it takes to raise their frame rates on Quake III. It'll sell. It'll also drive the market to a new standard, which also sells chips.
I recall either 8 or 16 cameras per rack-mounted machine, but I imagine they've gotten bigger / better / faster in the last five years. A higher number of simultaneous inputs reduces the frame rates, so we chose the maximum number of inputs that could give us the frame rates we desired (3.5 frames/sec, I think.)
They have digital tape jukeboxes parked next to the racks, and even our largest site keeps at least 90 days of video.
They provide client software that allows us to remotely access the video stream via our internal network, and they modified their system to include a SQL database of a journal of the accompanying financial transactions being performed. They identify each computer with a camera, and upon request deliver this journal synchronized with the video stream. We also have some public safety cameras feeding the system that are not tied to the transaction system.
It's elegant for the investigators, who are non-techies. They have search capabilities on that data, and can speed right to the relevant transactions. They can also simply click a button and burn a CD with the selected video stream and it even comes with the required digitally-signed proprietary viewer.
Another thing it has that you maybe haven't yet considered is that their company has experts who will testify in court on our behalf that their system is valid, and that the images haven't been tampered with. We have used their imagery as evidence in many successful prosecutions. IANAL, but having a built-in Trusted Third Party strikes me as a strong benefit.
So, with a wonderful system like this, what are the drawbacks? Money, plain and simple. You have to be willing to invest money (and people) to get a top notch system, but the cost-avoidance was definitely worth it for us.
Oh, and before anyone goes off about Big Brother, you should know that the transactions we are recording are financial in nature, and cash is involved. The computers are ours, and the users know they are being recorded. Just that knowledge provides a huge fraud deterrent. We honestly much prefer deterring theft up front than prosecuting our own employees after the fact. And armed with this system, we have no problem prosecuting thieves.
Disclaimer: I do not have any financial investment in Loronix, I am just a very satisfied customer.
I think the biggest problem, of course, would be the potential for a cat fight to control Linux. I can see several big corporations jumping in to fill the void: IBM and Red Hat, just to name the most prominent.
Of course, this then begs the question of what's poor Linus to do? If he says to the world, "Hey, world, I need to form a Linux junta," the lineup of people and corporations would extend across the pond.
I have to assume he feels there's an unwritten agreement amongst the core maintainers, but dissecting unwritten agreements are the IBM legal department's specialty.
Even if he doesn't delegate, he ought to at least put it in his will.
EverQuest makes nothing, too. Or does it?
Yeah, but what is its equivalent overclocked speed in Athlon MHz?
I still want to know if there's any chance lawmakers are listening when these talks come out, or if wonderful voices like this are drowned out by the cash of the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists. And what can we do? Writing letters goes only so far (lately they've been going to the "check for anthrax heap".) The current Administration has shown an amazing abilility to empathize with the big oil and energy industries. Should we expect any less regal treatment of the next MPAA petitioner?
Oh, well, I watched it on ReplayTV and skipped the commercials anyway, so I'm sure I made them no money.
I had Apple figured all wrong. I always thought they were somewhat decent engineers with a creative flair. People defended the G3 by saying "Look, it has doors! Ooo, how novel! How much better than a PC!". Then came the iMac with the least functional cabinet I've ever seen, and those same people said "Look at the styling! Ooo, how cool! How much better than a PC!"
There's no defending this design. As Cartman might say, it's hella-gay.
Three Game Cubes for the kids with quick eyes,
Seven PlayStation 2s for the teens who are stoned.
Nine XBoxes for mortal men, doomed to play Project Gotham Racing until 4:00 AM,
One gamepad for the pocket and home.
One gamepad to play them all,
One gamepad to find them,
One gamepad to play Tony Hawk
And in the darkness grind 'em.
In the land of Microsoft
Where the shadows lie.
If the newbie starts making enough sense to get modded up occasionally, maybe I'll see him, maybe I won't. Either way, I'm pretty much assured that my quality of life won't really be degraded if I don't read his posts.
What I guess I'm saying is I'm probably not going to grow as much as the newbie poster will, and I've kind of decided I don't really care, either.
Besides, I just have "friends" in my list. No "foes" (yet.) I also have the friend modifier set to +6, and the foe modifier still at zero.
John
Is this a great country or what? :-)
John
Just try to perform it as "morally correct" as your conscience demands. That means if you discover an anti-spamming law that you can comply with by changing some code, change that code. If you know that the DMA maintains a list of addresses that have requested "No spam, please," then try to keep that list current on your systems. Just because your boss is "ethically challenged" doesn't mean you have to always do it his way. (Just when he's looking over your shoulder ;-)
Hell, who knows, you might eventually drive his company in a more legitimate direction, which might even prove to be more profitable in the long run. Y'know, you could even then legitimately advertise your services as "ANTI-SPAM S.xxxx compliant"
Just do the rest of the hacker world a favor and make his spam-slinging engine leave some spammy header traces that our spam filters can spot, please! Spam plays the numbers game, and if 5% of us are savvy enough to filter it out, SO WHAT? It doesn't cost you any business you would have otherwise tricked us into giving you.
Hell, it'll even save you time NOT sending it to the spam-hating addresses. It might even keep the rabid anti-spam crowd from chasing your IP address back a day early, letting you operate a bit longer each time.
John
Does this mean I will have to wear a Nomex® headsock to use my cell phone? :-)
John
Speaking of recycling ALL batteries, is there any environmental hazard created by alkaline or carbon-zinc batteries? I saved the dead ones for years, and had a pail of them in the basement next to the dead NiCds and button batteries. When I hauled my recyclables to the center, they took the NiCds and the button batteries, but they would not take the others, and they advised me to throw them in the regular garbage. I did, (what else could I do with them if the recycling center wouldn't take them?) but I still wonder what environmental effect they have, other than occupying landfill space.
And not all cranks are wrong, either...
John
I believe it is also illegal in some locales to sell mercury-based thermometers.
Of course, the mercury-filled button batteries powering most of those thermometers will probably end up in the trash next week...sigh.
John
At least this is what Daimler Chrysler has found for vehicular fuel cells. When you're talking cell phone sized, however, I don't know if that's still true.
John
Blah.
John
Oh, and I assume you're on a little endian box, too. Lots of assumptions, eh?
Anyway, here's the new Linty Fresh(TM)®© version.
long k[]={0,178};char*p=(char*)&k[1];main(){while(p---( char*)k)putchar(72+((k[1]>>(p-(char*)k)*2)&3 |(!((p-(char*)k)&1)<<2)));}
It's just uglier.
John
A T1 goes for what, $900/mo? Electricity, lease payments, repairs, etc., all add up to some monthly expense. The transaction costs could easily be in the $1.00 to $3.00 range per CD distributed. And, of course, you load Yahoo!s $0.30 into the front end amount, ending up with about $1.30 to $3.30 per ISO image. It covers the Yahoo! expense, and it may even be enough to keep FreeBSD afloat.
Oh, and the problem with your lump-sum solution above is that Visa will want transaction fees on every donor to middleman transaction as well as on every middleman to recipient transaction. So, your middleman organization has to make sure that they hold on to the user's account long enough to get a whole lump amount from each credit card. It might be a better solution to have a web counter at the destination site that you register with; one that promises not to withdraw money until the user uses more than $X worth of services (or maybe monthly, whichever comes first.) And that comes with its own raft of fraud issues, too, but that's not a huge deal for a mostly voluntary payment scheme...
The biggest thing is I don't want any volunteer organization collecting my Visa info. Just look at the attack tree! You have volunteer groups holding either Visa account information or tokens that are worth lots of cash; you have a payment website to secure and insure; and you still have to pay Visa lots of money to play. It'd take a bank's worth of money just to create a middleman site like this. FreeBSD may do better just to issue their own Visa cards.
Sorry, but I just think the financial risks involved to everyone concerned in the middleman scheme would pretty much prevent it from taking off.
John
Are you suggesting banknotes migrate?