720x480 screen and larger than the competition, but only a 20 gig harddrive. Still, if I were to hack a larger drive into a PMP I'd do it with this one. Reviews seem generally positive but I haven't taken the time to sink $500 into one to tell for myself.
I don't own one, but I've travelled with a couple people who do. They presumably last longer than a laptop, you don't have to carry around a load of DVDs - but you do have to encode them ahead of time. Granted that isn't a terribly large target audience but there is a call for them.
And actually what they used it for wasn't for watching DVDs but for watching recorded TV shows (the whole DVR thing) which does give it an edge over the laptop and DVD player.
There are two alternatives then, you can double your expenditure and diff 8 files instead of 4 and lower the data space to 8 bits. now that can't be argued to be a large enough key space. That's an expensive proposition though so the other option is to, rather than zero out the other bits, fill them with random noise. Since this is an audio signature we're talking about it's already assumed this data is in an insignificant portion of the file with regards to sound quality. So now we have a bunch of noise rather than zeros. Since the kind of backwards mapping to discover who had which file requires that the particular bits of data that aren't trashed be different between any coupling of files it is no longer possible to tell which those two files are.
What your parent (and the great grand parent) are saying though is that I have two songs, diff them, and zero out the results then I've destroyed the chance of them uniquely identifying me - not necessarily removed every trace of the watermark. Even if there are 512 bits left that aren't techincally music data you can no longer uniquely identify the source of the music since - by definition of the action - those 512 bits were common between the two files (different sources). The best you could hope for is to then be able to identify two potential sources. Do this with three or four copies of the file and you're down to 128 bits - which is highly unlikely to be a usable amount of data given the number of potential sources they'd have to cover
I think the issue most people have with "tax cuts for the wealthy" isn't who gets more absolute dollars back or who gets more percentage of income back, but that any loss of income to a low income family impacts them disproportionatly more than to a "wealthy" family. That didn't come out quite as clear as I intended but the general idea being that for a family that earns - say - 40k a year, spending 7 of that on taxes means that they are unlikely to be able to afford health care or proper nutrition (just to bias the argument against the wealthy). However if we double the amount and deduct it from the wealth, earning 300k a year, that extra 14 thousand they're now paying to cover the tax burden of the low income families means the difference between a lexus and an audi.
In response to the last blurb (which I thought was your sig) I wouldn't abide by handing out tons more benefits, however I can easily see that teachers (have several teacher friends, each earn less than 30,000 a year in public schools) should not be burdened by a relatively heavy tax load.
Basically since DLP displays can't be made to have a physical resolution high enough for HDTV but they can change pixels awfully fast they have each DLP element alternate display of two different colors very fast which tricks the eye into thinking it sees 4 pixels worth of information. The article does a much better job explaining it.
First off, I'm a freaking Citizen not a consumer. I realize this isn't a piece of legislation, but it's a precursor to one and I'd rather my legislators were conserned with the rights of citizens rather than consumers.
Oh yeah and:
Furthermore, P2P file-sharing technology can allow its users to access the files of other
users, even when the computer is "off" if the computer itself is connected to the Internet via
broadband.
That's some spiffy new technology that will let you read from a powered down drive - I guess it's time to upgrade my edonkey client:)
Man that first link is comprehensive. and at 103W for the high end P4s, I think I'll be aiming more midrange. thanks for the links.
I also came across endpcnoise.com, they were one of the few places I could find the nexus silentx power supplies - just in case anyone else is looking.
On a tangent - mod offtopic if you wish - I've been specing out a nice quiet system to replace my athelon and one of my concerns has been processor power consumption (it takes a big fan and or heat sink to dissipate 65 watts). Where did you get your stats on processor power consumption? Better yet, any place that lists something similar for video cards and/or harddrives (the other two biggest heat sources)?
The only general data I've found has been fairly out of date and anecdotal.
The article mentions briefly one of the contending theories involving discrete time (as opposed to a continuous uniterupted timeline). Odd timing (ha) since I'd just been discussing this with a friend of mine a few days ago.
In this case Google isn't my friend and I can't turn up anything (or at least I don't know what to search for) - does anyone have any good links or summations of what that theory involves?
Just curious, because if it holds sound then man did I lose that argument:)
Bob's system - knowing he's sent you an email - trusts email coming from you automatically so does not send a challenge back.
Bob sees your challenge, responds and everything is kosher.
So if bob's a spammer he'd have to reply to your challenge - something he's unlikely to do millions of times over.
Re:One weakness of both articles: free always wins
on
Economics of File-Sharing
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It doesn't offer a solution but it does address the issue. About halfway through the article mentions that the file sharing systems in place have created a double moral hazard - since now some of the music "principals" (us) are shirking their responsibility to compensate the agent (the record labels) by paying for the music.
The ideal situation is, of course, sample music, find what you like, buy it. It's just that in this case it's step 3 that gets the "???".
Out (up?) here in Redmond Washington you can visit both Nintendo and, if you're so inclined, Xbox. If you let them know you're coming in advance and from a fairly far away place they're more than likely to set you up a little tour.
While you're in the pacific northwest there's also boeing and fluke as well as a software company or two:)
Oh, and of course things like the olympic national rainforest - should you desire a little non geek in that itinerary.
Re:UnixWare is GPL now???
on
My Visit to SCO
·
· Score: 4, Informative
That's not what the original poster was saying. S/he was saying that if SCO's claim is upheld - their claim that having had access to their source and then working on linux made linux a derivative work - then by that same token since they had access to linux source code anything they developed (unixware) would be a derivative of unix. It would be insane to uphold their first claim because it actually weakens them overall.
The original poster wasn't spreading FUD, they were laughing at the catch 22 they've gotten themselves into.
Unfortunately, you've just argued that for $15 more I can get the same setup in a tiny form factor case with less noise, better TV out (potential HDTV support) and isn't a freaking beige box sitting in my living room. It's the same reason people still buy Tivos even though MythTV exists.
Oh, and you don't have to mangle an xbox controller to get a keyboard and mouse working, you just have to mangle a controler extension cord (or try and form your own xbox/usb style plug).
In my particular neighborhood there was only one selection for cable lineup and all of the channels were correctly selected. Or at least I think they were, I didn't bother checking all 125 potential chanels.
So I stand corrected, a little harder than 3 cables, but cumbersome brought to mind images of physical difficulty more than software setup which was pretty damn easy regardless.
My favorite bit from the article is where the "unbiased" reporter calls a Tivo "Cumbersome to install". Unless Mystro talks back up the cable line it's going to be just as "cumbersome" as a Tivo:
I'm a subscriber. The tracks you download are 128k, but for whatever reason sound a heck of alot better than the "hi-fi" sample tracks. Don't ask me why, perhaps it's just psychological. But if you're one of the people who can't stand listening to anything less than 192k I'd avoid the service. I've got weak ears so it's all good for me:)
But companies aren't going to care about proportions of populations, they're going to care about the raw numbers. If I produce a game that will guarantee me 100% of the 3 memeber 5 - 6 year old janitor population as opposed to one that will give me about 10% of the 100 million member "young adult" catagory, I wouldn't conclude that the 100% is better. These companies want to move as many titles as possible, so in terms of number of potential buyers it's better to target the 18+ crowd.
It really does sound like it's your particular setup that isn't kosher as opposed to XP in general. I recently switched from wired to wireless in XP - using netgear cards and aLinksys access point - and haven't had any if the issues your describing. Ran my network for a while with no WEP encryption to make sure everything was set up. Switched it to running with traffic encrypted on my main computer but the network still running in Open mode, and then finally locked it down to an authenticated network just the other day. During all of the testing/configuration I occasionally used Netgear's WLAN manager, and every time it ran without a hitch.
Now gripe about their built in network bridging and I'm all with you.
This color scheme is used on a certain tropical fish (though I forget it's name/species/location). It's shaded dark/black on the top and light on the bottom. Predators looking up will have a hard time locating it on the relatively bright background of the sky and predators from above won't be able to see it in the mirk below. I thought it was pretty cool when I first heard about it.
Along the lines of the whole "only works from one direction" problem for this camo. If you're not going for total image replication but rather a general brightness and hue, it seems like you could have one basically strips of mixed photo sensors and emitters paired up to similar strips on exactly oposite sides of the object. It would be a much worse match from any given direction than the technique described, but it would match at least partially from all directions.
Yep... (warning, will robinson, Electronics 12 and far too long since then being brought into play) probably a capacitor on the line to require a minimum connection time, and a locking transistor-based gate (or even a relay, if you're into things that go click) to hold it on after it's been held for the minimum amount
Exactly. Minimal distance between the contacts for a lower amperage power supply (I don't think a standard battery will connect through 4-5 inches of human skin, but 1/2 cm obviously works). a cap in parallel with whatever you want to go off (alarm or relay) after the contacts will give you a small delay as the cap charges to keep quick brushes from setting it off.
I'd love to do an ascii circuit diagram but the lameness filter will have none of that:)
Similar theme is used in an incredibly annoying singing reindeer in my house. Battery powered the device has two small metal contacts about 1/2 a cm apart on the bottom of the device. when it's held in the palm the skin creates a path for just enough electricity to flow through to start the annoying jingle. It's got no moving parts so there is no physical resistance and so long as she can make contact with both nodes at the same time with the same finger/palm/whatever it will sound.
you could work in some extra circuitry to make certian very quick brushes don't trigger the sound, but that's optional.
Slashdot Mirror
720x480 screen and larger than the competition, but only a 20 gig harddrive. Still, if I were to hack a larger drive into a PMP I'd do it with this one. Reviews seem generally positive but I haven't taken the time to sink $500 into one to tell for myself.
I don't own one, but I've travelled with a couple people who do. They presumably last longer than a laptop, you don't have to carry around a load of DVDs - but you do have to encode them ahead of time. Granted that isn't a terribly large target audience but there is a call for them.
And actually what they used it for wasn't for watching DVDs but for watching recorded TV shows (the whole DVR thing) which does give it an edge over the laptop and DVD player.
There are two alternatives then, you can double your expenditure and diff 8 files instead of 4 and lower the data space to 8 bits. now that can't be argued to be a large enough key space. That's an expensive proposition though so the other option is to, rather than zero out the other bits, fill them with random noise. Since this is an audio signature we're talking about it's already assumed this data is in an insignificant portion of the file with regards to sound quality. So now we have a bunch of noise rather than zeros. Since the kind of backwards mapping to discover who had which file requires that the particular bits of data that aren't trashed be different between any coupling of files it is no longer possible to tell which those two files are.
What your parent (and the great grand parent) are saying though is that I have two songs, diff them, and zero out the results then I've destroyed the chance of them uniquely identifying me - not necessarily removed every trace of the watermark. Even if there are 512 bits left that aren't techincally music data you can no longer uniquely identify the source of the music since - by definition of the action - those 512 bits were common between the two files (different sources). The best you could hope for is to then be able to identify two potential sources. Do this with three or four copies of the file and you're down to 128 bits - which is highly unlikely to be a usable amount of data given the number of potential sources they'd have to cover
I think the issue most people have with "tax cuts for the wealthy" isn't who gets more absolute dollars back or who gets more percentage of income back, but that any loss of income to a low income family impacts them disproportionatly more than to a "wealthy" family. That didn't come out quite as clear as I intended but the general idea being that for a family that earns - say - 40k a year, spending 7 of that on taxes means that they are unlikely to be able to afford health care or proper nutrition (just to bias the argument against the wealthy). However if we double the amount and deduct it from the wealth, earning 300k a year, that extra 14 thousand they're now paying to cover the tax burden of the low income families means the difference between a lexus and an audi. In response to the last blurb (which I thought was your sig) I wouldn't abide by handing out tons more benefits, however I can easily see that teachers (have several teacher friends, each earn less than 30,000 a year in public schools) should not be burdened by a relatively heavy tax load.
Pop Sci link on wobulation
Basically since DLP displays can't be made to have a physical resolution high enough for HDTV but they can change pixels awfully fast they have each DLP element alternate display of two different colors very fast which tricks the eye into thinking it sees 4 pixels worth of information. The article does a much better job explaining it.
But yeah, odds are just crappy journalism.
Oh yeah and:
That's some spiffy new technology that will let you read from a powered down drive - I guess it's time to upgrade my edonkey clientMan that first link is comprehensive. and at 103W for the high end P4s, I think I'll be aiming more midrange. thanks for the links.
I also came across endpcnoise.com, they were one of the few places I could find the nexus silentx power supplies - just in case anyone else is looking.
Cheers,
- Sawbones
On a tangent - mod offtopic if you wish - I've been specing out a nice quiet system to replace my athelon and one of my concerns has been processor power consumption (it takes a big fan and or heat sink to dissipate 65 watts). Where did you get your stats on processor power consumption? Better yet, any place that lists something similar for video cards and/or harddrives (the other two biggest heat sources)?
The only general data I've found has been fairly out of date and anecdotal.
Cheers,
- Sawbones
In this case Google isn't my friend and I can't turn up anything (or at least I don't know what to search for) - does anyone have any good links or summations of what that theory involves?
Just curious, because if it holds sound then man did I lose that argument :)
- Bob sends you an email.
- Your system sends a challenge message back.
- Bob's system - knowing he's sent you an email - trusts email coming from you automatically so does not send a challenge back.
- Bob sees your challenge, responds and everything is kosher.
So if bob's a spammer he'd have to reply to your challenge - something he's unlikely to do millions of times over.The ideal situation is, of course, sample music, find what you like, buy it. It's just that in this case it's step 3 that gets the "???".
While you're in the pacific northwest there's also boeing and fluke as well as a software company or two :)
Oh, and of course things like the olympic national rainforest - should you desire a little non geek in that itinerary.
The original poster wasn't spreading FUD, they were laughing at the catch 22 they've gotten themselves into.
Call Monkey: May I have the name of the store you purchased the DVD from?
Me: Best Buy
Call Monkey: Can you spell that please?
*shudder* - I just hope I get my envelopes.
Oh, and you don't have to mangle an xbox controller to get a keyboard and mouse working, you just have to mangle a controler extension cord (or try and form your own xbox/usb style plug).
So I stand corrected, a little harder than 3 cables, but cumbersome brought to mind images of physical difficulty more than software setup which was pretty damn easy regardless.
1) Connect Cable In.
2) Connect Cable out to TV.
3) Plug in phone line.
I'm a subscriber. The tracks you download are 128k, but for whatever reason sound a heck of alot better than the "hi-fi" sample tracks. Don't ask me why, perhaps it's just psychological. But if you're one of the people who can't stand listening to anything less than 192k I'd avoid the service. I've got weak ears so it's all good for me :)
But companies aren't going to care about proportions of populations, they're going to care about the raw numbers. If I produce a game that will guarantee me 100% of the 3 memeber 5 - 6 year old janitor population as opposed to one that will give me about 10% of the 100 million member "young adult" catagory, I wouldn't conclude that the 100% is better. These companies want to move as many titles as possible, so in terms of number of potential buyers it's better to target the 18+ crowd.
Now gripe about their built in network bridging and I'm all with you.
It was a typo on his part. ARHA should read AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act). Full text http://www.virtualrecordings.com/ahra.htm.
Along the lines of the whole "only works from one direction" problem for this camo. If you're not going for total image replication but rather a general brightness and hue, it seems like you could have one basically strips of mixed photo sensors and emitters paired up to similar strips on exactly oposite sides of the object. It would be a much worse match from any given direction than the technique described, but it would match at least partially from all directions.
Exactly. Minimal distance between the contacts for a lower amperage power supply (I don't think a standard battery will connect through 4-5 inches of human skin, but 1/2 cm obviously works). a cap in parallel with whatever you want to go off (alarm or relay) after the contacts will give you a small delay as the cap charges to keep quick brushes from setting it off.
I'd love to do an ascii circuit diagram but the lameness filter will have none of that :)
you could work in some extra circuitry to make certian very quick brushes don't trigger the sound, but that's optional.