Right now in many areas ISPs must be in bed with the local Bell monopoly, or use a DSL provider who may not be around tomorrow. If the county I was in provided such a network for any two points in the county to talk to each other (read not internet connection) then I would tunnel to my local ISP for my internet connection. This could also let people telecommute by tunneling to the company they work at (if you work in the same county you reside in, or the adjacent and they have an agreement).
Sounds like a win to me. Especially since the local Bell monopolies won't loose anything, just not get control of another market. Sign me up!
Of course asking your boss is the best way of approaching this, but they need obvious insentive to overcome the percieved problems. Most of us are more productive, less stressed, and probably willing to work more hours if telecommuting, but many employers don't look at it that way.
Here is the way to help push a large set of employers to start trying it. Convince the localities to start providing tax breaks. Figure out the annual cost of commuting a full work week is for the community (road building, maintanence, increased police, fire and rescue, etc.) Then convince them to provide half of the savings back to each business that can prove the telecommuting.
For example, say it costs my state $500 a year to provide commuting services for me (this number was picked at random). If my employer can prove that they let me work from home three days a week, they should get a $150 ($100/day, and half goes to company) tax break.
One, are they going decrypt all messages to make sure strong crypto isn't being used inside the one with backdoors? Otherwise all this will do is allow forensics teams to say, "Oh yeah, he also used strong crypto." It's not like strong crypto won't be available either. You can't take all of the software away from them, and unless you outlaw C compilers I doubt that this stuff will go away as computers become obsolete.
Two, how do you get this to be adopted as an international standard? Let's say I'm another country, why would I adopt encryption with a backdoor in it? If it is state run backdoors (like key escrow via government), then we'll start to see small countries selling non escrowed encryption as a revenue stream. Let's not mention that state sponsors would then also allow terrorist a secure communications.
If we don't get this adopted as an international standard then it will be useless. If nobody uses it, and standard crypto is outlawed, then there goes e-commerce, a lot of ASPs, and a serious blow to the economy is dealt.
We compare this to outlawing knives, which is probably a very accurate analogy (both can be made in one's home without anyone knowing). While this points out the ubsurdity to a techinical person, the lay community (read most everyone) doesn't see it that way. They are thinking in terms of Hollywood where all codes are crackable with hours or days and the correct intent of a large organization. I think it's time for education of the populace. It worked with DIVX and clipper, it can work again.
With much of the world moving towards nomarlized intellectual property laws it seems that the rights of the end users are being removed one by one to make each country "conform better" with trading partners. Is it likly that we may loose such things as fair use in the near future, if we haven't already. Sometimes it seems that people have forgotten the reason for Intellectual property protection (in the US atleast), was to allow the creator to make a profit before it became publicly available, not to profit eternally. If all of this really is happening, what can we do to try and change this "evolution" of law and regulation before it goes to far?
Damn, I guess a large scale SMP machine will be dual use convection oven then. Oh wait, by the time I add in FSB buffering and memory maybe that will be true of the workstations:-).
I did a Google search and found that it is still in the comp.compression FAQ. Of course they are talking about removing it at the end. Bad move in my mind, as this is one part of history that will repeat itself forever.
Back around 1990, there was a similiar thread going around Usenet about a company called Web technologies. They claimed to have some fantastic compression ratios, and to be able to compress compressed data again. They got a lot of press, but on Usenet it was quite obvious that they were full of &%$#.
In fact someone came up with a mathematical statement that said the only way their claims would hold water was if they just gave out 64 bit serial numbers and stored the data somewhere else. Not to different from what we call Freenet now.
Needless to say these guys ended up going under after the investors figured out they were not only full of it, but 10 lbs of it in a 5 lbs bag.
It's been around longer then three years. I remember seeing COTS components to do just this in the early 90's. Between being able to sample an entire IF, and use wide band mixers with software controlled Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) you can almost make an entire radio software defined, front and back end.
Your exactly right about costs. It's cheap and easy to make a simple radio that recieves a narrow band, and has a simple decoder. Adding total flexibility means you have a similiar component count, but instead of 10 for a penny they cost 1 for $10.
I don't think anyone will argue with the fact the Forth programming can allow one good programmer to generate small programs with amazing functionality compared to other languages, but do you feel that Forth advantages map well onto large scale projects? Forth has obviously been used for complicated embeded projects, but has it ever been used developing a GUI word processor or CAD program from scratch? If so, did it hold onto it's small application virtues, or if not do you feel that it would?
Thanks for delivering a language that has proven to be great on memory constrained systems for years.
Actually wireless ethernet maybe more suited for handhelds then you may think. 11 mbps is the way almost everyone runs it by default, but nothing says you can't use 1Mbps. By reducing the data rate, and power you can probably get a very low power PDA type connection with an acceptable range. In fact I've already seen CF cards that support 802.11 (from symbol), but there are no drivers for my TRGPro yet:-(.
What will plague both of these standards though is the half arse security design. Which ever one can address enterprise level security, wide range use (PDA to desktop), and enough bandwidth for the applications used (1Mbps is probably enough for small devices, but not for heavy file sharing. So which will be the driving factor?) will probably push the other out of the market.
Those terms don't apply well with modern processors. Pentiums class processors are primarly CISC with some RISC features/ideas (not many though). The Sparc family has been RISC with a lot of complexity thus making them be more CISC than say the Alpha. That has historically been why their clockspeed is lower than alpha, but still performs about the same for general purpose computing.
The Itanium is a branch off of a different tree, Very Long Instruction Word, which is a branch off of RISC. VLIW let's a compiler pack multiple commands to multiple execution units into a single long word. The idea is to use very RISCy commands to keep a superscalar set of execution units more fully utilized. Great idea, if your compiler can do it.
Ahhh, the good old days when there were some programs that were quicker to write than to load from your media. Atleast we weren't saying, "This &%$#ing paper tape broke again", or "Oh &%$@ I spilled my box of cards":-).
No one has ever shown that quantum computers could break a symmetric encryption at more than twice as fast as brute force, and the actual clocking of quantum gates is not that fast.
What everyone is talking about with encryption is Public Key, where quantum mechanics may be able to reduce the brute force test to n operations given an n bit key, and n quantum gates. This is particularly true of those built on prime numbers.
That sounds like a rather web-developer centric world view. As I use the web for little more than a reference tool and communications tool, let me assure you that the rest of the scientific and technical world is making leaps and bounds. Partly helped by the increase effeciency of tools like the web, partly by other advances (although I would find a web browser hard to term an advance as it is just a tool to standardize interfaces into one user "experience":-)).
The new technology in the semiconductor field alone has made the browser a usable tool. Do you remember using Mosaic in the early 90's? It was stripped down and still slow on anything short of a high end workstation.
What you are seeing is that those improvments that require you to make a paradigm shift for greater effeciency are "breakthroughs" (the web, a car 100 years ago, etc). Really all technology is just improvments on other technology. Some require change onthe users part, others are hidden from them to make their life better. All in all, the web browser is not the biggest breakthrough in the last 9 years, it just has the biggest social footprint.
One problem with all of these articles from the NYTimes (other than having to register, GRRRR) is that they don't always seem to know what they are talking about in the Engineering fields (of course the Washington Post is no better if not worse).
They seems to imply that the superconducting effect is created by applying a field effect to the polymer chain. Then right after that they instead imply that it is just forming a FET (type of transistor). Not much clarity.
If they did form a superconductor through field effect (created a superconducting channel in the FET) then the possibilities are interesting. The temprature may rise faster than rare earths and conventionals, but unless the effect is self forming when current is applied its application may be limited. Also, as in all FETs the carrying of current may pinch off the circuit causing a very low critical current (ordrs of magnitude lower than other types of superconductors).
I'll wait and see what Science News has to say about it next week.
I've watched a CS and EE department fight over how a computer engineering degree is defined, and what I really got out of it is that it depends on the professors that are in the department.
In general, a CE (computer engineering) degree is a digital design degree version of EE with a stronger emphasis on software and systems. Many schools though concentrate mostly on systems and software, while others are truly about architecture and hardware issues such as interfaces and integration. If there is a professors that teachs a lot of course on OS design, and none on the use of microcontrollers then it would be a very different degree from others, but a very valid degree.
I have a EE background with a strong emphasis in computer design and software due to a few professors with similiar interest. If CE was offered when I got my BS I probably would have been a fairly good fit for it. As a EE though I feel I got more of a background in the way things work than a CE, but no idea about higher level things like compiler design, OS (although I did work with real time executives), or computer graphics. So given that I'd say the following:
CS: If you are interested in programming languages, compilers, OS, graphics, and studies of general algorithms.
CE: If you like computer control, design, interfacing. In general a healthy mix of hardware and software leaning towards the later.
EE: If you want to know how all of the underlying technology works, but aren't interested in things like programming language design or databases. Up until a few years ago you could graduate from almost any EE program with very little programming, but this is changing quickly.
Most important though is to look at who teaches what courses and what their teaching and research interest are. If they are in stuff you don't like then you probably won't like the degree you'd get from them.
My daughter's software is a munition?
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 2
Um, if they included PGP in DSSAgent then that would classify it as a munition at the time they did it. I know for a fact that they had oversea sales and the box was not labeled "Not for Export". Now who do we go to for this blatant breach of a bad law by a bad company (see the export restrictions aren't all bad:-)?
None of those would work with a helicopter of this size, and would be hard to delpoy in general on any helicopter. The amount of energy stored in a helo blade is much higher than a plane's prop and wood isn't even usable in small models without a metal leading edge. Delayed deployment doesn't work in helos, you don't have a viable airframe to glide on if the rotors aren't being driven. This is kind of the point of autorotation. Dip down with the blades picking up speed, pull up and change the blade pitch to really bit into the air just before hitting the ground.
You can mount something above the blades, but this requires some pretty fancy rotor shafts if it doesn't have to rotate. Even then I'm not sure how well it would work. Would you have to wait until the rotor came down to a small velocity? Would there be enough time to do this and still deploy the chute?
Helicopters are a different beast from anything else that flies. I remember an AHS meeting where three papers in a row basically were about how we couldn't figure out a mathematical model to explain how they flew beyond hover.
They plan a parachute, but I don't see how it will work in more than a handful of cases. You've got a lot of energy stored in those blades (yes, helicopters store LOTS of energy in the blade flexing), and the parachute works under the assumption of dead weight pulling against the deployment. In an airplane the prop doesn't effect it much, but in a helicopter the blades are going to want to beat the air to disipate that energy. The risk of intanglement is huge. How do you mount the parachute so the ballistic deployment doesn't cause more problems?
I'll say it again, ultralite's are safer. In general you can glide down, and if you lose your lift surface then a parachute is useful. Of course just telecommuting solves almost all the problems.
My early graduate work was with autonomous helicopters, and I saw quite a few one man helicopters. Most of them were built from kits and customized for a variety of missions/flight profiles. We worked with models (much smaller and cheaper), but some people liked these because they could have a pilot and transistion between computer control and pilot.
The problems though were cost and reliablity. These things aren't cheap (the 60" models were around $3000), they need a LOT of maintanence, and invariably crash easily. This model looks much simplier, but I'm not sure you can do things like autorotate with it. If you can't, it's a flying death trap. Ballistic shouts aren't going to work well either if the blades are still rotating. How do you prevent a fatal tangle.
Would someone like to fill us in on when and where just the possesion of a specific tool became illegal. I have many tools that can be used in the process of theft and I'd like to know what jurisdictions I shouldn't carry them in.
Engineers can solve lots of problems back in the lab as a post mortem that aren't feasible in the real world, yet. Often this is due to a lack of processing power that can fit the problem as a solution. Recently we have started to see this reversing itself in products like ABS and traction control, digital video and sound, cell phones, and many others. With low power/high performance this area opens even more. Here are some of the things I expect to see.
-Consumer noise cancellation (Head phones that act like they are stereo speakers across the room, or liek you are in a sensory deprivation tank). -Consumer sensor suites. How many times would an image enhancement have helped you driving or walking. FLIR is just the sensor and first step, digital enhancement really makes it useful. -Improved wireless performance. We are getting to the point where some fancy signal decode/encode can be fielded that will make all types of wireless applications more reliable.
These are the broad brush topics. When we delve into specific industries the amount will vary. As an engineer it is an exciting and interesting time. I just don't know if the Chinese curse applies:-0 .
Slashdot Mirror
Let's face it, wouldn't you thrash and refuse to play a Michelle Jackson CD?
Right now in many areas ISPs must be in bed with the local Bell monopoly, or use a DSL provider who may not be around tomorrow. If the county I was in provided such a network for any two points in the county to talk to each other (read not internet connection) then I would tunnel to my local ISP for my internet connection. This could also let people telecommute by tunneling to the company they work at (if you work in the same county you reside in, or the adjacent and they have an agreement).
Sounds like a win to me. Especially since the local Bell monopolies won't loose anything, just not get control of another market. Sign me up!
Of course asking your boss is the best way of approaching this, but they need obvious insentive to overcome the percieved problems. Most of us are more productive, less stressed, and probably willing to work more hours if telecommuting, but many employers don't look at it that way.
Here is the way to help push a large set of employers to start trying it. Convince the localities to start providing tax breaks. Figure out the annual cost of commuting a full work week is for the community (road building, maintanence, increased police, fire and rescue, etc.) Then convince them to provide half of the savings back to each business that can prove the telecommuting.
For example, say it costs my state $500 a year to provide commuting services for me (this number was picked at random). If my employer can prove that they let me work from home three days a week, they should get a $150 ($100/day, and half goes to company) tax break.
One, are they going decrypt all messages to make sure strong crypto isn't being used inside the one with backdoors? Otherwise all this will do is allow forensics teams to say, "Oh yeah, he also used strong crypto." It's not like strong crypto won't be available either. You can't take all of the software away from them, and unless you outlaw C compilers I doubt that this stuff will go away as computers become obsolete.
Two, how do you get this to be adopted as an international standard? Let's say I'm another country, why would I adopt encryption with a backdoor in it? If it is state run backdoors (like key escrow via government), then we'll start to see small countries selling non escrowed encryption as a revenue stream. Let's not mention that state sponsors would then also allow terrorist a secure communications.
If we don't get this adopted as an international standard then it will be useless. If nobody uses it, and standard crypto is outlawed, then there goes e-commerce, a lot of ASPs, and a serious blow to the economy is dealt.
We compare this to outlawing knives, which is probably a very accurate analogy (both can be made in one's home without anyone knowing). While this points out the ubsurdity to a techinical person, the lay community (read most everyone) doesn't see it that way. They are thinking in terms of Hollywood where all codes are crackable with hours or days and the correct intent of a large organization. I think it's time for education of the populace. It worked with DIVX and clipper, it can work again.
With much of the world moving towards nomarlized intellectual property laws it seems that the rights of the end users are being removed one by one to make each country "conform better" with trading partners. Is it likly that we may loose such things as fair use in the near future, if we haven't already. Sometimes it seems that people have forgotten the reason for Intellectual property protection (in the US atleast), was to allow the creator to make a profit before it became publicly available, not to profit eternally. If all of this really is happening, what can we do to try and change this "evolution" of law and regulation before it goes to far?
Damn, I guess a large scale SMP machine will be dual use convection oven then. Oh wait, by the time I add in FSB buffering and memory maybe that will be true of the workstations :-).
I did a Google search and found that it is still in the comp.compression FAQ. Of course they are talking about removing it at the end. Bad move in my mind, as this is one part of history that will repeat itself forever.
Back around 1990, there was a similiar thread going around Usenet about a company called Web technologies. They claimed to have some fantastic compression ratios, and to be able to compress compressed data again. They got a lot of press, but on Usenet it was quite obvious that they were full of &%$#.
In fact someone came up with a mathematical statement that said the only way their claims would hold water was if they just gave out 64 bit serial numbers and stored the data somewhere else. Not to different from what we call Freenet now.
Needless to say these guys ended up going under after the investors figured out they were not only full of it, but 10 lbs of it in a 5 lbs bag.
It's been around longer then three years. I remember seeing COTS components to do just this in the early 90's. Between being able to sample an entire IF, and use wide band mixers with software controlled Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) you can almost make an entire radio software defined, front and back end.
Your exactly right about costs. It's cheap and easy to make a simple radio that recieves a narrow band, and has a simple decoder. Adding total flexibility means you have a similiar component count, but instead of 10 for a penny they cost 1 for $10.
I don't think anyone will argue with the fact the Forth programming can allow one good programmer to generate small programs with amazing functionality compared to other languages, but do you feel that Forth advantages map well onto large scale projects? Forth has obviously been used for complicated embeded projects, but has it ever been used developing a GUI word processor or CAD program from scratch? If so, did it hold onto it's small application virtues, or if not do you feel that it would?
Thanks for delivering a language that has proven to be great on memory constrained systems for years.
Actually wireless ethernet maybe more suited for handhelds then you may think. 11 mbps is the way almost everyone runs it by default, but nothing says you can't use 1Mbps. By reducing the data rate, and power you can probably get a very low power PDA type connection with an acceptable range. In fact I've already seen CF cards that support 802.11 (from symbol), but there are no drivers for my TRGPro yet :-(.
What will plague both of these standards though is the half arse security design. Which ever one can address enterprise level security, wide range use (PDA to desktop), and enough bandwidth for the applications used (1Mbps is probably enough for small devices, but not for heavy file sharing. So which will be the driving factor?) will probably push the other out of the market.
Those terms don't apply well with modern processors. Pentiums class processors are primarly CISC with some RISC features/ideas (not many though). The Sparc family has been RISC with a lot of complexity thus making them be more CISC than say the Alpha. That has historically been why their clockspeed is lower than alpha, but still performs about the same for general purpose computing.
The Itanium is a branch off of a different tree, Very Long Instruction Word, which is a branch off of RISC. VLIW let's a compiler pack multiple commands to multiple execution units into a single long word. The idea is to use very RISCy commands to keep a superscalar set of execution units more fully utilized. Great idea, if your compiler can do it.
You have to re engineer your abacus is all. Replace all of the beads with Java rings.
Ahhh, the good old days when there were some programs that were quicker to write than to load from your media. Atleast we weren't saying, "This &%$#ing paper tape broke again", or "Oh &%$@ I spilled my box of cards" :-).
What do you mean my java code isn't write once and run ANYWHERE? Geez, now I guess you're going to say it won't work on my Timex Sinclair either.
No one has ever shown that quantum computers could break a symmetric encryption at more than twice as fast as brute force, and the actual clocking of quantum gates is not that fast.
What everyone is talking about with encryption is Public Key, where quantum mechanics may be able to reduce the brute force test to n operations given an n bit key, and n quantum gates. This is particularly true of those built on prime numbers.
That sounds like a rather web-developer centric world view. As I use the web for little more than a reference tool and communications tool, let me assure you that the rest of the scientific and technical world is making leaps and bounds. Partly helped by the increase effeciency of tools like the web, partly by other advances (although I would find a web browser hard to term an advance as it is just a tool to standardize interfaces into one user "experience" :-)).
The new technology in the semiconductor field alone has made the browser a usable tool. Do you remember using Mosaic in the early 90's? It was stripped down and still slow on anything short of a high end workstation.
What you are seeing is that those improvments that require you to make a paradigm shift for greater effeciency are "breakthroughs" (the web, a car 100 years ago, etc). Really all technology is just improvments on other technology. Some require change onthe users part, others are hidden from them to make their life better. All in all, the web browser is not the biggest breakthrough in the last 9 years, it just has the biggest social footprint.
One problem with all of these articles from the NYTimes (other than having to register, GRRRR) is that they don't always seem to know what they are talking about in the Engineering fields (of course the Washington Post is no better if not worse).
They seems to imply that the superconducting effect is created by applying a field effect to the polymer chain. Then right after that they instead imply that it is just forming a FET (type of transistor). Not much clarity.
If they did form a superconductor through field effect (created a superconducting channel in the FET) then the possibilities are interesting. The temprature may rise faster than rare earths and conventionals, but unless the effect is self forming when current is applied its application may be limited. Also, as in all FETs the carrying of current may pinch off the circuit causing a very low critical current (ordrs of magnitude lower than other types of superconductors).
I'll wait and see what Science News has to say about it next week.
I've watched a CS and EE department fight over how a computer engineering degree is defined, and what I really got out of it is that it depends on the professors that are in the department.
In general, a CE (computer engineering) degree is a digital design degree version of EE with a stronger emphasis on software and systems. Many schools though concentrate mostly on systems and software, while others are truly about architecture and hardware issues such as interfaces and integration. If there is a professors that teachs a lot of course on OS design, and none on the use of microcontrollers then it would be a very different degree from others, but a very valid degree.
I have a EE background with a strong emphasis in computer design and software due to a few professors with similiar interest. If CE was offered when I got my BS I probably would have been a fairly good fit for it. As a EE though I feel I got more of a background in the way things work than a CE, but no idea about higher level things like compiler design, OS (although I did work with real time executives), or computer graphics. So given that I'd say the following:
CS: If you are interested in programming languages, compilers, OS, graphics, and studies of general algorithms.
CE: If you like computer control, design, interfacing. In general a healthy mix of hardware and software leaning towards the later.
EE: If you want to know how all of the underlying technology works, but aren't interested in things like programming language design or databases. Up until a few years ago you could graduate from almost any EE program with very little programming, but this is changing quickly.
Most important though is to look at who teaches what courses and what their teaching and research interest are. If they are in stuff you don't like then you probably won't like the degree you'd get from them.
Um, if they included PGP in DSSAgent then that would classify it as a munition at the time they did it. I know for a fact that they had oversea sales and the box was not labeled "Not for Export". Now who do we go to for this blatant breach of a bad law by a bad company (see the export restrictions aren't all bad :-)?
None of those would work with a helicopter of this size, and would be hard to delpoy in general on any helicopter. The amount of energy stored in a helo blade is much higher than a plane's prop and wood isn't even usable in small models without a metal leading edge. Delayed deployment doesn't work in helos, you don't have a viable airframe to glide on if the rotors aren't being driven. This is kind of the point of autorotation. Dip down with the blades picking up speed, pull up and change the blade pitch to really bit into the air just before hitting the ground.
You can mount something above the blades, but this requires some pretty fancy rotor shafts if it doesn't have to rotate. Even then I'm not sure how well it would work. Would you have to wait until the rotor came down to a small velocity? Would there be enough time to do this and still deploy the chute?
Helicopters are a different beast from anything else that flies. I remember an AHS meeting where three papers in a row basically were about how we couldn't figure out a mathematical model to explain how they flew beyond hover.
They plan a parachute, but I don't see how it will work in more than a handful of cases. You've got a lot of energy stored in those blades (yes, helicopters store LOTS of energy in the blade flexing), and the parachute works under the assumption of dead weight pulling against the deployment. In an airplane the prop doesn't effect it much, but in a helicopter the blades are going to want to beat the air to disipate that energy. The risk of intanglement is huge. How do you mount the parachute so the ballistic deployment doesn't cause more problems?
I'll say it again, ultralite's are safer. In general you can glide down, and if you lose your lift surface then a parachute is useful. Of course just telecommuting solves almost all the problems.
My early graduate work was with autonomous helicopters, and I saw quite a few one man helicopters. Most of them were built from kits and customized for a variety of missions/flight profiles. We worked with models (much smaller and cheaper), but some people liked these because they could have a pilot and transistion between computer control and pilot.
The problems though were cost and reliablity. These things aren't cheap (the 60" models were around $3000), they need a LOT of maintanence, and invariably crash easily. This model looks much simplier, but I'm not sure you can do things like autorotate with it. If you can't, it's a flying death trap. Ballistic shouts aren't going to work well either if the blades are still rotating. How do you prevent a fatal tangle.
Try ultralites, they are much safer.
Would someone like to fill us in on when and where just the possesion of a specific tool became illegal. I have many tools that can be used in the process of theft and I'd like to know what jurisdictions I shouldn't carry them in.
Engineers can solve lots of problems back in the lab as a post mortem that aren't feasible in the real world, yet. Often this is due to a lack of processing power that can fit the problem as a solution. Recently we have started to see this reversing itself in products like ABS and traction control, digital video and sound, cell phones, and many others. With low power/high performance this area opens even more. Here are some of the things I expect to see.
:-0 .
-Consumer noise cancellation (Head phones that act like they are stereo speakers across the room, or liek you are in a sensory deprivation tank).
-Consumer sensor suites. How many times would an image enhancement have helped you driving or walking. FLIR is just the sensor and first step, digital enhancement really makes it useful.
-Improved wireless performance. We are getting to the point where some fancy signal decode/encode can be fielded that will make all types of wireless applications more reliable.
These are the broad brush topics. When we delve into specific industries the amount will vary. As an engineer it is an exciting and interesting time. I just don't know if the Chinese curse applies