Then how much space does a 1.44 MB floppy disk hold? Hint, the stated capacity combines both binary and si units. The actual capacity is 1440 KiB (1024 * 1440). Using binary units (1 MiB = 1048576 bytes), it works out to 1.40 MiB, using SI units (1MB = 1000000 bytes) it is 1.47 MB.
You can also get an unlock code within the first 3 (or is it 6?) months of the contract. Just tell them you are planning a trip over seas, and you need to be able to use a local sim card. At least that used to be their policy, don't know if it has changed recently.
Install cygwin & sshd, then you can ssh into the windows box. Also configure VNC to only accept local connections and ssh port forward. Instant secure remote admin.
But I thought you only had one year from publication to patent something. So the trick of patenting parts of a system years after it was first put into use shouldn't work. Unless the patent office doesn't actually count the publishing of a program as the same as publishing the description of the object being patented.
I'm in the exact same position. I released a simple interpreted language on Sourceforge and get a few downloads a week, and only a couple support / feature requests, and no traffic on the mailing list. Whenever I have an update I post to freshmeat.net, then I get a surge of downloads but thats about it. However I was getting some feedback from a particular user -- I didn't really grasp what he was asking for at first (and didn't see the need for those requests), but once I started looking into it I ended up adding those features which endedup making for a better product. So it was worth it in my case.
What about hacking the legal system in order to establish precedence? Let's say I want to establish a precedence in a particular type of issue. I higher someone to let me sue them, and have them present a very week defense (so week that the judge would have to rule in my favor). Then go through the same fake process during appeal. Since I'm controlling the lawyers on both sides, I can almost guarantee a victory for the side I want to win, and with an actuall judgement we have a precedence. Of course if the legal system found out that this was a "fixed" case I'm sure there would be contempt of court charges filed. But if someone does this and doesn't get caught, will the precedence stand up even if it is evident that the loosing side had "bad" representation?
Well, your best bet if you are putting together your own cell phone design would be to grab one of those GM862 GSM modules they have at sparkfun.com. You address them via a standard rs232 interface (I think some of them have usb also), and issue standard GSM AT commands for communications; ie. open a serial connection, issue "ATDphone-number" and the cellular connection is then made, routing the audio in/out to seperate audio pins on the module. These audio pins you then connect to the line in / line out on your sound card/chip. Combine this with a pxa270-based Gumstix module, add case/LCD/battery/speaker/mic, and you have about as open of a cell phone as your likely to get (unless you want to fab the processors yourself).
Re:Programming languages based on English
on
Programming Erlang
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I kind of like what Donnald Knuth had proposed, which is using a typesetting system to display code. So you'd use regular ascii symbols that are close to what you want when typing it out, but they get converted to a more graphical symbol in your editor automatically.
Re:Programming languages based on English
on
Programming Erlang
·
· Score: 1
Sure, no problem. In return, I'm looking for a proper symbol to represent a "continue" and "break". I'm thinking of !: for break, and !? for continue, but asthetically that doesn't look right (too hard for the eye to catch in the code). The way break and continue would work, is they will be implimented as unary operators (most like unary postfix), where the operand of a "continue" operator will be the return result of the expression if the condition is false on the next evaluation, and the operand of the "break" ends up being the final result of the iterative conditional expression if it is used.
Also note that in both the conditional and iterative conditional, if a lower precedence operator is encountered before the ":" (else) operator appears (or and unmatched closing parenthese), it automatically assumes a ": 0" sequence (else zero). So that you don't have to always specify an "else" if you are using this control structure outside of a larger expression. This is explained further in the documentation on the project page.
BTW, I've set up the interpreter to be useful as a teaching tool to go along with a paper I'm writting up as a tutorial on putting together an interpreter. I've got another round of cleanup work to do on it before it becomes useful for that purpose, but feel free to grab any ideas from there you need.
I followed his link in that bullet point to his page describing his concepts for avoiding "algorithmic programming" (what I think he means is imperative or sequential programming). What is described there (as circuit programming?) kind of looks like pipeline programming, where you have modules that take input and deliver output just like a Unix pipe, but instead of only one input and one output you get multiple inputs/outputs. This is actually looks like a Hartman Pipeline, combined with a standardized (structured?) message passing framework.
Or, maybe I completely missed what he was saying, and that's the best interpretation I can come up with. My brain still hasn't kicked in yet.
Programming languages based on English
on
Programming Erlang
·
· Score: 1
I've put some thought into this particular topic a while ago. I wondered what it would be like to have a computer language that didn't use english (or any human language) tags for it's keywords. The thinking was, what is easier to read or write: 1 + 2, or 1 plus 2? To me, the symbol form seems more natural. An example of using symbols where you would normally have a keyword is in C's conditional expression, " x y ? z : n ", which is read as "(if) x y (then) z (else) n". What if this syntax was used wherever an if/else pair is used, would it be more readable? And, can it be extended to loops, so that you had an iterative inline conditional, such as "x y ?? z : n", which is read as "(while) x y (do) z (else) n", where the "else" clause is executed only if the initial condition started off false. So the entire expression returns eiter the final result of z, or n in the case that z never gets evaluated. So to try this out, I started putting together an interpreter that used this syntax (it's on lang2e.sourceforge.net if any one is interested). So far it seems to be working out ok, but the one area that I couldn't get away from using english keywords is in the standard function library. But technically that isn't part of the core language definition, but it is included with the base interpreter.
Won't work. The "Post Office Patent", as it's called, is not valid in any court case, because nothing stops you from mailing an unsealed envelope to yourself and later filling it with material.
Not only that, but you can also run the 32-bit versions of your programs on a 64-bit OS install. In the case of Flash, just install the 32-bit version of Firefox, then all your 32-bit plugins will work fine. The only problem that will be encountered when running a 64-bit install is if you have a binary-only driver (kernel module) that is only available for 32-bit.
First question -- yes they do have a working dialer application.
Second -- Yep, you can use all the services you are subscribed too on your regular t-mobile phone. T-mobile is fairly good about not locking you into their own phones (with the exception of the my-faves application, you either have to make your selections on a supported phone or online).
Third -- As long as you have a data plan of some sort, you can do any type of network app you want. The 5.99 t-zones plan limits which ports you can connect through, but you can always set up a proxy server on your home dsl/cable connect server if you want. The 29.99 plan has most of the ports open (except certain streaming media ports I think).
There really needs to be a wiki page for using it on each carrier, that would help a lot. Your questions get asked all the time on the mailing lists, and the answers vary a bit.
Because the GPL V3 is incompatible with GPLv2-only code, such as the Linux Kernel. Sun want's to get most of the advantages of open source, however they DON'T want any unique Solaris code ending up in the Linux kernel. If the Linux kernel was GPLv2-or-later, then Sun woudn't be touching any gpl license within a 100 yards of their Solaris kernel.
That is the exact reason that businesses pay bucks to companies like Red Hat. And that is also part of why Red Hat standardized on ext3 instead of reiserfs -- much more robustness in the backend development. If they would have used reiserfs instead, I'm sure they would have had enough in-house resources to handle it -- or they would do like any other company does when a product is end-of-lifed, and depreciate it along with providing an upgrade path. Commercial companies do this all the time, such as Oracle buying out PeopleSoft then going with a strategy to get all the customers using it off of it and onto other Oracle products.
What I've done when upgrading boxes is to query the package manager for all config files, and what their md5 hashs were when installed. Compare that to the current config files, and generate a list of configs that have a differing md5. That is the list of files that define my system's "personality" (it includes things like network configs,/etc/passwd,...).
Second part is to list all files on the root volume group (or system directories --/usr,/etc,/var... ) that aren't part of a package (querying the package manager for all installed packages and their files, and comparing to what is out there).
Third, take a list of all packages that didn't come with the OS distribution.
Tar up the files in the first two lists, and track down the packages that are part of the third list. Also don't forget about app directories that wouldn't be included in the second part. Now you can install a new system, and apply these files, and your new system will be back to the personality of your old system. Of course, you will want to go through the config files from the first list by hand in case the config formats have changed.
Baytech makes serial and ethernet controlled RPC modules. A cheaper approach for home use would be X10 power modules (if you don't want to buy the ones from X10 corporation, there are a a couple of third-party ones that Home Depot sells).
Only works if you have a ps/2 keyboard. If your system only has a usb keyboard, then the usb drivers won't get loaded, and no keyboard input (but you still have a nice shell prompt to look at).
Not all contracing / consulting houses have you as a contractor. In my case, it was part of an outsourcing deal my previous employeer did, and we were all transfered to the outsourcer. But we were salaried employees of the outsourcing house, and primarily dedicated to the one customer (although there was some occassional odds and ends for other clients).
Go work for a contracting house, or an outsourcer. Esp. one that has workers in multiple locations. Only problem is that everyone is used to being connected with the company 24x7, therefore you will be expected to do the same.
I recently switched from an outsourced gig, to a regular position. This one doesn't have any telecommuting, but when I leave at 4:30 I'm off work until the next morning.
If you are only going for the live "sound", but aren't actually broadcasting it live, then you've got a simpler solution. Use whatever quality link you can put up with when talking to your co-host, but don't use that link's output in the final production. Instead, have your co-host also record his session from his end at a higher quality (with only his audio, not yours), and stitch the results together afterwards.
Even SF's compile farm wasn't all that great -- they mostly provided various x86 environments, or Linux on non-x86 hosts. The main thing I want to see in a compile farm is systems that I can't easily get ahold of -- a couple of Sun Sparc boxes, a couple flavors of IBM powerpc AIX systems, hpux (on both pa-risc and itanium), etc. Along with a good job control environment -- you supply the build and validation scripts, then the build gets run, tested and packaged on all the architectures.
From what I recal, the purpose of an op amp is to perform math operations on the input voltages (i.e., if one of the inputs is 2 volts, the other is 1.5, the output will be 3.5 volts). They can also be wired up to do substraction, and other operations.
Now, what good is this? One example is to decode an FM stereo signal. When stereo capabilities was added to FM radio, it had to remain compatible with mono radios. So the idea of broadcasting the left channel on one frequency and the right channel on another flys out the window. So, the solution was to broadcast the left + right (L + R) on the main channel, then send the difference (L - R) on a sub channel. So you end up with two channels, M (main) and S (sub channel), with M = (L + R) and S = (L - R). Using a bit of algebra, we can get L = (M + S) / 2, and R = (M - S) / 2. Op amps are therefore a good fit to do the addition and subtraction on the two channels (the "/2" can be dropped -- without it, you only end up with double the volume, which ain't a problem with audio).
Of course, it's been a while since I studied any of this, and I know that it isn't a complete acurate description of stereo broadcasting, but it should suffice for a discussion on op amp usage.
You always have the option of CDW up in Libertyville. Their prices are fairly good, and once you get an account established you can get some good discounts (I just grab one of the sales people and have them quote me a price). Also, they have discounts for employees of various area businesses, you might want to inquire about that.
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Then how much space does a 1.44 MB floppy disk hold? Hint, the stated capacity combines both binary and si units.
The actual capacity is 1440 KiB (1024 * 1440). Using binary units (1 MiB = 1048576 bytes), it works out to 1.40 MiB, using SI units (1MB = 1000000 bytes) it is 1.47 MB.
You can also get an unlock code within the first 3 (or is it 6?) months of the contract. Just tell them you are planning a trip over seas, and you need to be able to use a local sim card. At least that used to be their policy, don't know if it has changed recently.
Install cygwin & sshd, then you can ssh into the windows box. Also configure VNC to only accept local connections and ssh port forward. Instant secure remote admin.
But I thought you only had one year from publication to patent something. So the trick of patenting parts of a system years after it was first put into use shouldn't work. Unless the patent office doesn't actually count the publishing of a program as the same as publishing the description of the object being patented.
I'm in the exact same position. I released a simple interpreted language on Sourceforge and get a few downloads a week, and only a couple support / feature requests, and no traffic on the mailing list.
Whenever I have an update I post to freshmeat.net, then I get a surge of downloads but thats about it. However I was getting some feedback from a particular user -- I didn't really grasp what he was asking for at first (and didn't see the need for those requests), but once I started looking into it I ended up adding those features which endedup making for a better product. So it was worth it in my case.
What about hacking the legal system in order to establish precedence? Let's say I want to establish a precedence in a particular type of issue. I higher someone to let me sue them, and have them present a very week defense (so week that the judge would have to rule in my favor). Then go through the same fake process during appeal. Since I'm controlling the lawyers on both sides, I can almost guarantee a victory for the side I want to win, and with an actuall judgement we have a precedence.
Of course if the legal system found out that this was a "fixed" case I'm sure there would be contempt of court charges filed. But if someone does this and doesn't get caught, will the precedence stand up even if it is evident that the loosing side had "bad" representation?
Well, your best bet if you are putting together your own cell phone design would be to grab one of those GM862 GSM modules they have at sparkfun.com. You address them via a standard rs232 interface (I think some of them have usb also), and issue standard GSM AT commands for communications; ie. open a serial connection, issue "ATDphone-number" and the cellular connection is then made, routing the audio in/out to seperate audio pins on the module. These audio pins you then connect to the line in / line out on your sound card/chip. Combine this with a pxa270-based Gumstix module, add case/LCD/battery/speaker/mic, and you have about as open of a cell phone as your likely to get (unless you want to fab the processors yourself).
I kind of like what Donnald Knuth had proposed, which is using a typesetting system to display code. So you'd use regular ascii symbols that are close to what you want when typing it out, but they get converted to a more graphical symbol in your editor automatically.
Sure, no problem. In return, I'm looking for a proper symbol to represent a "continue" and "break". I'm thinking of !: for break, and !? for continue, but asthetically that doesn't look right (too hard for the eye to catch in the code). The way break and continue would work, is they will be implimented as unary operators (most like unary postfix), where the operand of a "continue" operator will be the return result of the expression if the condition is false on the next evaluation, and the operand of the "break" ends up being the final result of the iterative conditional expression if it is used.
Also note that in both the conditional and iterative conditional, if a lower precedence operator is encountered before the ":" (else) operator appears (or and unmatched closing parenthese), it automatically assumes a ": 0" sequence (else zero). So that you don't have to always specify an "else" if you are using this control structure outside of a larger expression. This is explained further in the documentation on the project page.
BTW, I've set up the interpreter to be useful as a teaching tool to go along with a paper I'm writting up as a tutorial on putting together an interpreter. I've got another round of cleanup work to do on it before it becomes useful for that purpose, but feel free to grab any ideas from there you need.
I followed his link in that bullet point to his page describing his concepts for avoiding "algorithmic programming" (what I think he means is imperative or sequential programming). What is described there (as circuit programming?) kind of looks like pipeline programming, where you have modules that take input and deliver output just like a Unix pipe, but instead of only one input and one output you get multiple inputs/outputs. This is actually looks like a Hartman Pipeline, combined with a standardized (structured?) message passing framework.
Or, maybe I completely missed what he was saying, and that's the best interpretation I can come up with. My brain still hasn't kicked in yet.
I've put some thought into this particular topic a while ago. I wondered what it would be like to have a computer language that didn't use english (or any human language) tags for it's keywords. The thinking was, what is easier to read or write: 1 + 2, or 1 plus 2? To me, the symbol form seems more natural.
An example of using symbols where you would normally have a keyword is in C's conditional expression, " x y ? z : n ", which is read as "(if) x y (then) z (else) n". What if this syntax was used wherever an if/else pair is used, would it be more readable? And, can it be extended to loops, so that you had an iterative inline conditional, such as "x y ?? z : n", which is read as "(while) x y (do) z (else) n", where the "else" clause is executed only if the initial condition started off false. So the entire expression returns eiter the final result of z, or n in the case that z never gets evaluated.
So to try this out, I started putting together an interpreter that used this syntax (it's on lang2e.sourceforge.net if any one is interested). So far it seems to be working out ok, but the one area that I couldn't get away from using english keywords is in the standard function library. But technically that isn't part of the core language definition, but it is included with the base interpreter.
Won't work. The "Post Office Patent", as it's called, is not valid in any court case, because nothing stops you from mailing an unsealed envelope to yourself and later filling it with material.
Not only that, but you can also run the 32-bit versions of your programs on a 64-bit OS install. In the case of Flash, just install the 32-bit version of Firefox, then all your 32-bit plugins will work fine. The only problem that will be encountered when running a 64-bit install is if you have a binary-only driver (kernel module) that is only available for 32-bit.
First question -- yes they do have a working dialer application.
Second -- Yep, you can use all the services you are subscribed too on your regular t-mobile phone. T-mobile is fairly good about not locking you into their own phones (with the exception of the my-faves application, you either have to make your selections on a supported phone or online).
Third -- As long as you have a data plan of some sort, you can do any type of network app you want. The 5.99 t-zones plan limits which ports you can connect through, but you can always set up a proxy server on your home dsl/cable connect server if you want. The 29.99 plan has most of the ports open (except certain streaming media ports I think).
There really needs to be a wiki page for using it on each carrier, that would help a lot. Your questions get asked all the time on the mailing lists, and the answers vary a bit.
Because the GPL V3 is incompatible with GPLv2-only code, such as the Linux Kernel. Sun want's to get most of the advantages of open source, however they DON'T want any unique Solaris code ending up in the Linux kernel. If the Linux kernel was GPLv2-or-later, then Sun woudn't be touching any gpl license within a 100 yards of their Solaris kernel.
That is the exact reason that businesses pay bucks to companies like Red Hat. And that is also part of why Red Hat standardized on ext3 instead of reiserfs -- much more robustness in the backend development. If they would have used reiserfs instead, I'm sure they would have had enough in-house resources to handle it -- or they would do like any other company does when a product is end-of-lifed, and depreciate it along with providing an upgrade path. Commercial companies do this all the time, such as Oracle buying out PeopleSoft then going with a strategy to get all the customers using it off of it and onto other Oracle products.
What I've done when upgrading boxes is to query the package manager for all config files, and what their md5 hashs were when installed. Compare that to the current config files, and generate a list of configs that have a differing md5. That is the list of files that define my system's "personality" (it includes things like network configs, /etc/passwd, ...).
/usr, /etc, /var ... ) that aren't part of a package (querying the package manager for all installed packages and their files, and comparing to what is out there).
Second part is to list all files on the root volume group (or system directories --
Third, take a list of all packages that didn't come with the OS distribution.
Tar up the files in the first two lists, and track down the packages that are part of the third list. Also don't forget about app directories that wouldn't be included in the second part. Now you can install a new system, and apply these files, and your new system will be back to the personality of your old system. Of course, you will want to go through the config files from the first list by hand in case the config formats have changed.
Baytech makes serial and ethernet controlled RPC modules. A cheaper approach for home use would be X10 power modules (if you don't want to buy the ones from X10 corporation, there are a a couple of third-party ones that Home Depot sells).
Only works if you have a ps/2 keyboard. If your system only has a usb keyboard, then the usb drivers won't get loaded, and no keyboard input (but you still have a nice shell prompt to look at).
Not all contracing / consulting houses have you as a contractor. In my case, it was part of an outsourcing deal my previous employeer did, and we were all transfered to the outsourcer. But we were salaried employees of the outsourcing house, and primarily dedicated to the one customer (although there was some occassional odds and ends for other clients).
Go work for a contracting house, or an outsourcer. Esp. one that has workers in multiple locations. Only problem is that everyone is used to being connected with the company 24x7, therefore you will be expected to do the same.
I recently switched from an outsourced gig, to a regular position. This one doesn't have any telecommuting, but when I leave at 4:30 I'm off work until the next morning.
If you are only going for the live "sound", but aren't actually broadcasting it live, then you've got a simpler solution. Use whatever quality link you can put up with when talking to your co-host, but don't use that link's output in the final production. Instead, have your co-host also record his session from his end at a higher quality (with only his audio, not yours), and stitch the results together afterwards.
Even SF's compile farm wasn't all that great -- they mostly provided various x86 environments, or Linux on non-x86 hosts. The main thing I want to see in a compile farm is systems that I can't easily get ahold of -- a couple of Sun Sparc boxes, a couple flavors of IBM powerpc AIX systems, hpux (on both pa-risc and itanium), etc. Along with a good job control environment -- you supply the build and validation scripts, then the build gets run, tested and packaged on all the architectures.
From what I recal, the purpose of an op amp is to perform math operations on the input voltages (i.e., if one of the inputs is 2 volts, the other is 1.5, the output will be 3.5 volts). They can also be wired up to do substraction, and other operations.
Now, what good is this? One example is to decode an FM stereo signal. When stereo capabilities was added to FM radio, it had to remain compatible with mono radios. So the idea of broadcasting the left channel on one frequency and the right channel on another flys out the window. So, the solution was to broadcast the left + right (L + R) on the main channel, then send the difference (L - R) on a sub channel. So you end up with two channels, M (main) and S (sub channel), with M = (L + R) and S = (L - R). Using a bit of algebra, we can get L = (M + S) / 2, and R = (M - S) / 2. Op amps are therefore a good fit to do the addition and subtraction on the two channels (the "/2" can be dropped -- without it, you only end up with double the volume, which ain't a problem with audio).
Of course, it's been a while since I studied any of this, and I know that it isn't a complete acurate description of stereo broadcasting, but it should suffice for a discussion on op amp usage.
You always have the option of CDW up in Libertyville. Their prices are fairly good, and once you get an account established you can get some good discounts (I just grab one of the sales people and have them quote me a price). Also, they have discounts for employees of various area businesses, you might want to inquire about that.