Black said that production costs were five million South African rand (about £450,000).
You must be joking... USD to ZAR is currently 1: 5.93346. By my calculation that's either $842,678.639 if you convert from R5 mil, or R2,670,057 if you convert from $450,000
Even the Apple II ran a pretty good Pascal development environment (in 64k of memory), with a decent screen oriented editor, menu bars, and an integrated compile/edit/run/debug system.
I absolutely loathed the Apple II implementation of Pascal editor and compiler that I was made to use. I suppose it would have been a little better if there had been two disk drives, but we didn't have such luxuries. With the editor and compiler on opposite sides of the same (!) disk, you had to keep flipping the disk between editing and compiling, and it was incredibly slow and painful. This unfortunate encounter, at high school level in those days, led me to write my final course project in Apple BASIC (interpreted, no compiler, yay!) and made up at least 30% of my decision to choose engineering over CS at university where the former favoured C and the latter, Pascal. I won't knock the language, but that particular implementation did it no favours.
In South Africa it is mandatory for hikers to sign a register at the beginning and end of their hike. On it you include information such as number of hikers, expected return date and time, experience level of everyone, colours of packs, type of equipment (waterproof, cold-proof, tents, first aid) and even mobile telephone numbers in case they can get a signal to you. A low tech solution, and no need to spoil the environment with electronic equipment (no matter how much you try to hide it).
Rather than spending money on permanent intrastructure which will then need field maintenance, if anything I would suggest spending it on personal distress transmitters which could be loaned to hikers for a refundable deposit.
The problem with jamming cellphones is that a jamming device is non-selective and renders the entire phone useless, even when it is not necessary. For example, in a movie theatre all you want is to disable the voice services and alert tones, but there is no reason to disable text/SMS reception and sending, if individuals want to do that. In fact jamming the cellphone signal can be counterproductive. GSM phones will up their transmit power if they can't get decent reception, in effect reducing battery time and *increasing* the possibility of interference with nearby electronic equipment. In an environment with sensitive electronic equipment, jamming is the last thing you want.
What I would like to see is some way of providing context information to a cellphone, so that the cellphone can decide for itself what would be appropriate behaviour. A movie theatre, for example, might have a small [bluetooth] transmitter that tells all nearby phones that they are in a theatre, and the phones automatically switch off voice services and ring tones. In a hospital context the phone might switch its transmitter off automatically, but still allow the owner to look at the onboard phonebook. A library context might switch off the ring tone and switch on the vibrating alert.
This is obviously something that would have to be supported by the manufacturer. I hope they are reading.
I don't see the benefit of an implanted RFID tag to replace cash. You're still going to have to carry a wallet around, unless the plan is a whole array of tags for the driver's licence, pictures of your SO, shopping list, etc. And I don't even want to know how they're going to implant a Durex, even less how you're meant to get it out again in a hurry.
And of course, pickpockets are going to have to start carrying knives.
A few months ago local newspapers were reporting that an ATM had been physically stolen from C.R. Swart building. Now theft of an ATM, as odd as it sounds, is one thing, but what makes this story particularly bizarre is the fact that C.R. Swart building happens to be the central headquarters of the South African Police Service in Durban, South Africa. The cash machine in question was installed inside the building, not even on the ground floor if I remember correctly, for the benefit of the local police men and women.
Now I'm curious to know who they called when they discovered the theft.
I would have thought that arcing from the starter motor and electrical devices under the bonnet/hood would have a far greater risk than the vague threat of a spark jumping the several microns between the contacts of a microswitch in a cellphone.
Fortunately they don't insist that we push our cars to a safe distance before starting them. Yet.
I have someone who calls every case the "file server", because I once pointed to the actual file server and mentioned that it had crashed and needed resetting. My fault I guess, I should have been more specific.
I'd wager that RAM failure rates are less than hard drive failure rates
While this may be true now, I'm concerned about the reliability of RAM in years to come. Noting how reliability is on the decline in almost every other category of hardware, what makes RAM so special that it should defy the trend? I refer for example to hard disks, now warrantied to only a year; 3.5" disks, where the term "certified 100% error free" seems only to refer to the spelling on the box; monitors that are outlived by those twice their age.
I wonder if these would even work in an electronics retailer - say like Best Buy. You've got a wall of TV's, cell phones, radio, etc all over the store. Unless you had a large number of distributed receivers, how would you counteract the interference.
Choose a frequency away from common interference sources. The radios in the store are still able to receive despite the presence of other electronic devices; there's no reason to believe an RFID can't also coexist with the other electronic devices if properly designed.
Nearly all store shelving is metal. In particular, Wal-Marts have those big 8 foot high shelves in certain sections of the store. Grocery stores are completely filled with metal shelving and refrigeration units.
Hardly an insurmountable problem, unless all the goods are kept inside metal boxes. However it does suggest an interesting idea. If you're that concerned about privacy you might try lining a shopping bag with metal foil to make a Faraday cage. But you might have to drag a grounding chain behind you. Shoplifters, don't forget to line your pockets with foil.
You needn't worry about that. They can't catch the real criminals here yet, and those that they do catch either escape or are released when Mr Mandela has a birthday, as a special present to the country. (It happened, really!)
Remember that the advertisers aren't placing their ads out of the goodness of their hearts as a charity to television producers. They have a product that they want to tell consumers about, and they're going to have to find some way to do that. Subscription channels are all very well while there are other channels that will play the ads, but if EVERY channel went subscription only, you would still end up seeing those ads one way or another. Generic Big Corporation still has more dollars to give to a television channel in advertising than you do in subscription fees.
Data still needs to be readable
on
CD Copy Stopper
·
· Score: 1
The medium of storage is irrelevant because ultimately the content of the CD has to be transferred onto the computer in order to be of any value, and at that time a copy can be made. The same has been said of music files with embedded limitations of playability. At some point it has to become an audio stream, which can be intercepted and dumped to a file.
The most recent CD I bought was supposedly copy-protected, using that scheme that prevents it from playing on a PC. Even though the disc wouldn't play properly on my PC, Audiograbber was fortunately able to rip it perfectly, presumably because the CDROM drive is quite old and not as bothered by the copy protection as more recent drive. The first thing I did was to burn a new disc without the copy protection, so now I can play it anywhere I like. Likewise, this clever little protection scheme they think they have come up with will only last as long as it takes for the first copy to be made.
Reliability has definitely dropped within the last 10 years. I now routinely copy a file onto a floppy, eject the disk, reinsert, and copy it back off again to make sure it is still readable. At a guess I'd say it fails about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20.
(The eject/reinsert thing is to work around the cache.)
In my experience, the easier you make computers, the stupider (some) users become. There are some people who have convinced themselves that they don't understand computers, and no matter what you do to make it easier for them, they will go out of their way to prove that they still don't understand. Very often these are smart people, but it's like they check their brains in at the door when they enter a computer room.
In this country (South Africa), just about every DVD player on the market is openly advertised as being "multi-zone". If there were hardware restrictions built into new VCRs that prevented recording of certain programmes, I have no doubt that before long every VCR on the market would be advertised as "non-crippled".
This is offtopic, but I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the number of comments that mention Al Gore having inventing the Internet, obviously in reference to his idiotic claim to have done so when he obviously did not. You know it's meant to be sarcastic and so do I, but my concern is that there are going to be a lot of people reading these comments, not recognising the sarcasm, and next thing you know history will record that it really was all Al's work. I think we need to be more careful when making comments. Perhaps include something that implies the intended sarcasm.
This is pure speculation on my part. Bear with me.
There have been various discussions in things like National Geographic and TV documentaries about the ancient Egyptians. Specifically how they managed to build the pyramids and so on. I vaguely remember one discussion where they suggested that the Egyptians were quite advanced technologically, and they had tools and skill that were subsequently lost over the thousands of years.
Here's where the speculation comes in. Could it be possible that the ancient Egyptians had technology on a similar scale to what we have today, and the reason we don't realise it is that thousands of years ago they suffered the same problems that we have now, not being able to store information suitably.
What if 5000 years from now, all our carefully archived information will also have have been lost due to the issues raised in the subject article. It could happen that the civilisation that exists in AD7000 knows about as much about us, as we do about the ancient Egyptians.
(Not intended to a discussion about Egyptians specifically. I'm curious to know what would result if digital storage really did become a significant problem.)
I must've been dreaming... I'm sure I saw something about a Simpsons movie - maybe a "making of" or something - as a filler between programmes on some obscure satellite channel. They were talking about computer animation and 3D graphics, but I was channel hopping and went past it too fast to notice. Can anyone confirm any of this, or was I really dreaming?
Slashdot Mirror
Black said that production costs were five million South African rand (about £450,000).
You must be joking... USD to ZAR is currently 1: 5.93346. By my calculation that's either $842,678.639 if you convert from R5 mil, or R2,670,057 if you convert from $450,000
£450000, not $450000.
Even the Apple II ran a pretty good Pascal development environment (in 64k of memory), with a decent screen oriented editor, menu bars, and an integrated compile/edit/run/debug system.
I absolutely loathed the Apple II implementation of Pascal editor and compiler that I was made to use. I suppose it would have been a little better if there had been two disk drives, but we didn't have such luxuries. With the editor and compiler on opposite sides of the same (!) disk, you had to keep flipping the disk between editing and compiling, and it was incredibly slow and painful. This unfortunate encounter, at high school level in those days, led me to write my final course project in Apple BASIC (interpreted, no compiler, yay!) and made up at least 30% of my decision to choose engineering over CS at university where the former favoured C and the latter, Pascal. I won't knock the language, but that particular implementation did it no favours.
In South Africa it is mandatory for hikers to sign a register at the beginning and end of their hike. On it you include information such as number of hikers, expected return date and time, experience level of everyone, colours of packs, type of equipment (waterproof, cold-proof, tents, first aid) and even mobile telephone numbers in case they can get a signal to you. A low tech solution, and no need to spoil the environment with electronic equipment (no matter how much you try to hide it).
Rather than spending money on permanent intrastructure which will then need field maintenance, if anything I would suggest spending it on personal distress transmitters which could be loaned to hikers for a refundable deposit.
The problem with jamming cellphones is that a jamming device is non-selective and renders the entire phone useless, even when it is not necessary. For example, in a movie theatre all you want is to disable the voice services and alert tones, but there is no reason to disable text/SMS reception and sending, if individuals want to do that. In fact jamming the cellphone signal can be counterproductive. GSM phones will up their transmit power if they can't get decent reception, in effect reducing battery time and *increasing* the possibility of interference with nearby electronic equipment. In an environment with sensitive electronic equipment, jamming is the last thing you want.
What I would like to see is some way of providing context information to a cellphone, so that the cellphone can decide for itself what would be appropriate behaviour. A movie theatre, for example, might have a small [bluetooth] transmitter that tells all nearby phones that they are in a theatre, and the phones automatically switch off voice services and ring tones. In a hospital context the phone might switch its transmitter off automatically, but still allow the owner to look at the onboard phonebook. A library context might switch off the ring tone and switch on the vibrating alert.
This is obviously something that would have to be supported by the manufacturer. I hope they are reading.
I don't see the benefit of an implanted RFID tag to replace cash. You're still going to have to carry a wallet around, unless the plan is a whole array of tags for the driver's licence, pictures of your SO, shopping list, etc. And I don't even want to know how they're going to implant a Durex, even less how you're meant to get it out again in a hurry.
And of course, pickpockets are going to have to start carrying knives.
A few months ago local newspapers were reporting that an ATM had been physically stolen from C.R. Swart building. Now theft of an ATM, as odd as it sounds, is one thing, but what makes this story particularly bizarre is the fact that C.R. Swart building happens to be the central headquarters of the South African Police Service in Durban, South Africa. The cash machine in question was installed inside the building, not even on the ground floor if I remember correctly, for the benefit of the local police men and women.
Now I'm curious to know who they called when they discovered the theft.
I would have thought that arcing from the starter motor and electrical devices under the bonnet/hood would have a far greater risk than the vague threat of a spark jumping the several microns between the contacts of a microswitch in a cellphone.
Fortunately they don't insist that we push our cars to a safe distance before starting them. Yet.
I have someone who calls every case the "file server", because I once pointed to the actual file server and mentioned that it had crashed and needed resetting. My fault I guess, I should have been more specific.
I'd wager that RAM failure rates are less than hard drive failure rates
While this may be true now, I'm concerned about the reliability of RAM in years to come. Noting how reliability is on the decline in almost every other category of hardware, what makes RAM so special that it should defy the trend? I refer for example to hard disks, now warrantied to only a year; 3.5" disks, where the term "certified 100% error free" seems only to refer to the spelling on the box; monitors that are outlived by those twice their age.
What in the world do we call the collective group of those people who make computers work properly?
Imaginary.
Choose a frequency away from common interference sources. The radios in the store are still able to receive despite the presence of other electronic devices; there's no reason to believe an RFID can't also coexist with the other electronic devices if properly designed.
Hardly an insurmountable problem, unless all the goods are kept inside metal boxes. However it does suggest an interesting idea. If you're that concerned about privacy you might try lining a shopping bag with metal foil to make a Faraday cage. But you might have to drag a grounding chain behind you. Shoplifters, don't forget to line your pockets with foil.
You needn't worry about that. They can't catch the real criminals here yet, and those that they do catch either escape or are released when Mr Mandela has a birthday, as a special present to the country. (It happened, really!)
Remember that the advertisers aren't placing their ads out of the goodness of their hearts as a charity to television producers. They have a product that they want to tell consumers about, and they're going to have to find some way to do that. Subscription channels are all very well while there are other channels that will play the ads, but if EVERY channel went subscription only, you would still end up seeing those ads one way or another. Generic Big Corporation still has more dollars to give to a television channel in advertising than you do in subscription fees.
The medium of storage is irrelevant because ultimately the content of the CD has to be transferred onto the computer in order to be of any value, and at that time a copy can be made. The same has been said of music files with embedded limitations of playability. At some point it has to become an audio stream, which can be intercepted and dumped to a file.
The most recent CD I bought was supposedly copy-protected, using that scheme that prevents it from playing on a PC. Even though the disc wouldn't play properly on my PC, Audiograbber was fortunately able to rip it perfectly, presumably because the CDROM drive is quite old and not as bothered by the copy protection as more recent drive. The first thing I did was to burn a new disc without the copy protection, so now I can play it anywhere I like. Likewise, this clever little protection scheme they think they have come up with will only last as long as it takes for the first copy to be made.
Could be embarrassing if you're out in public when you forget to renew your subscription and the clothes disappear.
...Can I help?
I wonder whether Satan the Paperclip would've made it any easier for those folks in Florida?
Reliability has definitely dropped within the last 10 years. I now routinely copy a file onto a floppy, eject the disk, reinsert, and copy it back off again to make sure it is still readable. At a guess I'd say it fails about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20. (The eject/reinsert thing is to work around the cache.)
Subject says it. How long before someone figures out a virus that exploits some aspect of TNEF that MS didn't think anyone would figure out?
In my experience, the easier you make computers, the stupider (some) users become. There are some people who have convinced themselves that they don't understand computers, and no matter what you do to make it easier for them, they will go out of their way to prove that they still don't understand. Very often these are smart people, but it's like they check their brains in at the door when they enter a computer room.
In this country (South Africa), just about every DVD player on the market is openly advertised as being "multi-zone". If there were hardware restrictions built into new VCRs that prevented recording of certain programmes, I have no doubt that before long every VCR on the market would be advertised as "non-crippled".
The ship that sank in this case was an iron ore carrier, not a fuel/oil tanker. The oil causing the slick is in fact fuel oil for its engines.
So they swallowed up US Robotics, and now they're spinning it off again. Change of heart, I guess.
This is offtopic, but I'm starting to get a bit concerned about the number of comments that mention Al Gore having inventing the Internet, obviously in reference to his idiotic claim to have done so when he obviously did not. You know it's meant to be sarcastic and so do I, but my concern is that there are going to be a lot of people reading these comments, not recognising the sarcasm, and next thing you know history will record that it really was all Al's work. I think we need to be more careful when making comments. Perhaps include something that implies the intended sarcasm.
This is pure speculation on my part. Bear with me.
There have been various discussions in things like National Geographic and TV documentaries about the ancient Egyptians. Specifically how they managed to build the pyramids and so on. I vaguely remember one discussion where they suggested that the Egyptians were quite advanced technologically, and they had tools and skill that were subsequently lost over the thousands of years.
Here's where the speculation comes in. Could it be possible that the ancient Egyptians had technology on a similar scale to what we have today, and the reason we don't realise it is that thousands of years ago they suffered the same problems that we have now, not being able to store information suitably.
What if 5000 years from now, all our carefully archived information will also have have been lost due to the issues raised in the subject article. It could happen that the civilisation that exists in AD7000 knows about as much about us, as we do about the ancient Egyptians.
(Not intended to a discussion about Egyptians specifically. I'm curious to know what would result if digital storage really did become a significant problem.)
I must've been dreaming... I'm sure I saw something about a Simpsons movie - maybe a "making of" or something - as a filler between programmes on some obscure satellite channel. They were talking about computer animation and 3D graphics, but I was channel hopping and went past it too fast to notice. Can anyone confirm any of this, or was I really dreaming?