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  1. Re:ban politicians from talking to anyone. on Missouri Hedges On 'Teachers Can't Friend Students' Law · · Score: 1

    Why not? The whole "friending" thing on FB has nothing to do with real friendships. Its only meaning is to allow someone to see more of your profile. WTF has that got to do with friendship I'd never know.

    Never mind that the U.S. culture has obscenely devalued the word "friend". Real friendships are rare, you can call yourself lucky if you have a dozen friends. Those would be people that you can share lots of your life with, and who truly help each other -- emotionally (lean on my shoulder) and physically (yeah, I will take care of your kids).

  2. Re:Which illustrates what we already knew on Linux 3D Games Run Faster On PC-BSD · · Score: 2

    Haha. So, you've obviously tried it, with repeated, positive results? The kernel ABI is pretty much irrelevant. Good luck getting an app from 1998 to run without setting everything else up (essentially a chroot environment for it).

  3. Re:Which illustrates what we already knew on Linux 3D Games Run Faster On PC-BSD · · Score: 1

    Compatibility with older hardware requires someone who has the hardware and free time to actually maintain the drivers. There's no magic to linux. If there's no one interested in maintaining a driver, then the driver eventually gets dropped. You're free to step in if you have the hardware, instead of just, you know, whining.

  4. Re:What's the point? on Wicked Lasers Introduces Handheld One-Watt Green Laser · · Score: 1

    See, for example, this eBay listing (I've got nothing to do with the seller) -- cheap at $700. I think that it does require some TLC to get running, but not much. One guy had retrofitted this machine with motor driver board from a Roland DXY plotter. His quality experience was poor, but it's unclear whether he got it from the same seller or not. It certainly is the same machine. A friend got this machine off the eBay listing above and it came, at least, with all screws still in their right places and nothing loose. He also used his own driver board.

    For $700 + some TLC + $300 in parts you can have a beautiful engraver, even if you were to design your own driver board and order it in qty 1. You can of course use the included driver board (it works), but it's not documented and I don't think it's trivial to get your own software to talk to it. It may well be, but I just don't know anyone who got it done.

  5. Re:Send/recieve well over 100 per day on Why the Fax Machine Refuses To Die · · Score: 2

    I run an open telephony server server and all the faxes are processed in software until they hit the paper. They are stored and available for viewing as PDFs from a simple webpage, too. The modem is a software modem running on the Intel serve. The modem "talks" over an ISDN PRI channel. Usually when talking to corporate fax systems that are similarly set up, the connection is 100% digital end-to-end and there's only a bunch of software modem stuff going on at both ends. -- still digital, though. The connections succeed at 33.6kbit/s and typically proceed with zero errors, to a point where the underlying protocols don't do any retransmits at all. Of course that's an ideal situation, but a small business in a large city should be able to have an all-digital connection to the PSTN.

  6. Re:What's the point? on Wicked Lasers Introduces Handheld One-Watt Green Laser · · Score: 1

    New CNC engraver units (made in China) with a 30-40W CO2 laser go for less than the price of this 1W green laser. And that's all-inclusive: you get the enclosure, laser, rudimentary water pump, X-Y table with actuators, cover, electronics board to drive motors and control laser.

  7. Re:PGP-based system? on Rogue SSL Certs Issued For CIA, MI6, Mossad · · Score: 1

    We need to educate the adults, too. I think that ultimately the problem is that people don't care, they want things to be easy -- at least that's how the American society wants things. They don't want to care nor understand where that blasted pop-up came from, if it's official they just want it to go away, even if it means paying for a fake antivirus. The same caliber of people are ripe for indoctrination of various sorts: they don't want to understand, they just want to be told what to do... Perhaps we can indoctrinate them about encryption and trust.

  8. Re:PGP-based system? on Rogue SSL Certs Issued For CIA, MI6, Mossad · · Score: 1

    Haha. Yes, people would need to actually verify fingerprints, that's what the heck they are for. Just as you would verify the ID of someone you're doing significant amount of business with. It needs to become a part of culture, something that everyone learns about in grade school, and only then will it be taken for granted.

  9. Re:PGP-based system? on Rogue SSL Certs Issued For CIA, MI6, Mossad · · Score: 1

    I'm afraid the solution to this problem will be only reached when we enter a true information age. That must mean that kids in grade school will learn what the web of trust is and how to apply it, just as they learn how to fill out a check, calculate a tip, or write a formal letter. Our system of education has pretended the last two decades didn't happen. As an experiment, I've explained the basic concepts of encryption and how it relates with trust and MITM attacks to my 7 year old, and she understood it all. So yes, it can be explained, and explained early, and if you miss that at a certain age, you pretty much remain computer illiterate and vulnerable...

  10. Re:Amazing! How...? on Newly Digitized Film Shows Ed Catmull's 3D Graphics From 1972 · · Score: 1

    Digital-to-film transfer services are offered by various vendors these days.

  11. Re:Amazing! How...? on Newly Digitized Film Shows Ed Catmull's 3D Graphics From 1972 · · Score: 1

    An oscilloscope display is electrostatically deflected. You cannot get any decent size out of the image that way without making it huge (long) or it being very slow, pick your poison. You need the image to be large since the spot is nowhere near "tiny". Modern oscilloscope tubes use mesh expanders and those diffuse the spot.

    I think they'd have used an electromagnetically deflected monochrome CRT with a phosphor that gives enough light in red, green and blue. They would have tweaked the geometry (in the CRT and in the amps/geometry circuits) to get a reasonably linear and rectangular representation of things as seen by the camera. This would correct for both the camera's and CRT's distortions.

    The modern recorders are also flying spot, but neither electron beam nor phosphor are involved anymore. The flying spot is a well-focused laser beam, scanned in raster directly on the film. The image can be of very good quality since distortion of the optics only affects the geometry of the spot, not of the entire image. The scanning will normally be done using a rotating polygon mirror across the film, and by moving the film to scan along the film.

  12. Re:Bahahahahhahaaaaaa on Bezos Discloses Failure of Blue Origin Rocket Test Flight · · Score: 1

    Obviously we should abandon everything, because almost everything has been done before. I mean, who the heck needs new, faster PCs. We should just optimize the heck out of old software to make it faster, right?

  13. Re:Infringing material... on Atari C&Ds Emulators, Site About Asteroids · · Score: 2

    Using a trademark for identification purposes is kosher IIRC.

  14. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    I doubt that. In a few years -- sure. I've been to a bunch of thrift stores in the U.S. and all I see is stuff with VGA inputs. Even LCD monitors aren't all that often to be seen, mostly those are surviving higher-end CRT units. Haven't seen a single device with any sort of a digital video input in a thrift store yet, with exception of a TV with a digital tuner (no HDMI input though).

  15. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    It cripples it, if that connector is all that you got to use. That's the long and the short of it.

  16. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    And what has this got to do with a HDMI-to-VGA output? NOTHING. You're horribly misinformed/confused and have no clue what you're talking about.

    That composite video connector gives you, effectively, a 320x200 resolution, so good luck with that on a general purpose machine. Good for playing some video games (got small text? forget it) and low-density text, but good luck viewing most websites with that. Typical second-hand computer monitors do not have composite video inputs anyway, you'd need a TV for that, and probably a flat-panel TV at that, since really old analog TVs don't have composite inputs either unless you hack one in.

    The most readily available, at the moment, second hand display device is a color monitor with VGA input. To attach that to the RPi, you need about $25 for an HDMI-to-VGA converter. No, it won't be a simple cable.

  17. Re:The new Arduino on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 3, Informative

    Kudos for saying a correct spelling instead of oft heard the correct spelling.

  18. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    Nope. To use those displays with Raspberry PI you need a $25 HDMI to VGA converter. If you want any USB devices (memory sticks etc) to plug in, you will need a hub since it only has two USB type A connectors (a double decker), and those would be fully occupied by the USB mouse and keyboard. Of course you may find a USB keyboard with built-in hub, but I don't think a lot of those end in second hand stores. Haven't seen one yet.

  19. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    Those recon CRT monitors do not have HDMI inputs nor do they have composite video inputs. They only have RGB VGA inputs. That means you need to spend another $25 for an HDMI-to-VGA converter box. Said converter will have a DAC chip inside.

  20. Re:OLPC was a readily-usable laptop on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 2

    GRRR! Stop it. You're scamming people. Do you sell it? Please. Look at the reviews, idiot.

    Those "cables" don't work. HDMI is a digital signal. You need at least an integrated HDMI-to-RGB single-chip to convert it to a VGA signal. Those cables only work if there already are RGB analog signals on the HDMI connector. They are present only on very few devices. XBOX comes to mind. This $25 computer does not have a DAC anywhere that would produce analog RGB signals, they are not present on the HDMI connector, and you need a converter for that.

    Stand-alone HDMI to VGA converters will double the cost of the system -- they sell for about $25. Adding a DAC and a VGA connector to the board would probably raise its cost by $7 in ~1k quantitites.

  21. Re:Price of a textbook. on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    For most uses all you need is a spiral-bound A4 or Letter size two-sided printout. Maybe they should be visiting Kinko's more.

    I'm not quite sure if you're not a paid troll for the publishing industry :(

  22. Re:Price of a textbook. on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    Show some sensitivity -- your country is not the only one in the world, you know. As a 12 year old, I had to buy my own textbooks. Yes, the money came from the parents, but the school owned no textbooks, not even in the library IIRC.

  23. Re:Price of a textbook. on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    Linux is just a kernel. There's nothing wrong with having the kernel there. You get the benefit of having reasonably well debugged drivers and network stacks, while still being able to write your own. If you want to test your own networking stack, you're free to open a raw socket and do whatever you want, just like you could in DOS. If you want to write to a partition and play with your own filesystem, you're free to do that as well.

    What I dislike is the X windowing system. It's seems like such an over-the-top thing for what little functionality it provides these days. Almost all GUI frameworks do their own rendering of everything anyway, they only use X for window management and to push events around. It's sad that it takes an X server to run most unix graphical applications...

  24. Re:Price of a textbook. on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    Not only that, but it wouldn't be beyond 10-12 year olds to master the innards of this thing. All it takes is a well written book and libraries for say python. I think that there should be an operation mode where it boots directly into python running on a graphical console (fbdev on linux). Of course you'd need to do some development to set python to run that way, but hey -- that'd be fun.

  25. Re:Price of a textbook. on Details About Raspberry Pi Foundation's $25 PC · · Score: 1

    I think that, at least in the U.S., textbook authors should be collectively sued for racketeering. They let the publishers extort money from students, and they are willing participants. If you're bright enough to write a textbook, you may well self-publish -- it's not hard. You'll get way more money into your pocket, and it will be way cheaper to the students.