First off, I write for a living, mostly non-fiction for magazines and the odd book now and then. I started as a reviewer in 1984. I started off as an embedded-systems programmer, and still write benchmarks and other programs for reviewing purposes...and to have fun.
The golden rule of journalism: Keep business out of editorial--there should be a high wall between your reporters and your advertising salesmen.
According to the Dallas Observer, CueCat partner Dallas TV station WFAA didn't observe that rule when extolling the virtues of the CueCat during an advertising spree during the editorial portion of three nightly newscasts. The Dallas Morning News, another CueCat partner, reportedly did a story that wasn't as balanced as it should be, either. And now Wired has weighed in editorially with a story that was missing more than it said -- another CueCat partner speaking editorially.
Now I don't see WFAA-TV, and I don't read any Dallas newspaper if I can help it.
I expect better of Wired, which is one reason I have offered to write a rebuttal article for that magazine, one that covers the story from the view of the hackers that Digital Convergence seems to so love now. Just because it would be a rebuttal article doesn't mean that I can dispense with fairness and balance -- but the story will cover all aspects, not just those aspects that puts Digital Convergence in the best light.
If you want to see that story written, let Wired know about it. My credentials: hardware reviewer since 1984 for the likes of InfoWorld, Byte, Federal Computer Week, The Net, and other publications. Perhaps my best qualification can be found on this page that describes how I tried to let Digital Convergence provide input to an article I did for Planet IT.
More importantly, I have no ties to Digital Convergence, Inc. other than an interest in their product. After all, like many other people who have commented, I have heard nothing from them when I requested licensing materials a month ago, when the CEO ran the last letter on Slash-dot.
Most tasks we are familiar are require positional accuracy, not force accuracy.
In absolute terms, true. When you start thinking about negative-feedback applications such as a "power-assist" to an arm or leg, though, this stuff would make a great sensor material. Current negative-feedback systems use a series of switches; this stuff would allow much finer control of the motion because it could tell between a slight adjustment (very small force) and a sweep of the arm (very large force). Further, as the force of the feedback falls, you can slow down the motion actuator in anticipation of a stop or reversal, which reduces the oscillation that could happen between operator and extension.
Just out of curiosity, when are you asserting that these evil media types started this "misdefinition"?
As best as I can determine, the mis-use of the term "hacker" was a-borning in the early 1980s, when the "414 gang" was busted. A Detroit paper's headline writer was alledged to have found that the word "hackers" was short enough to fit the headline measure called for by the editors while allow a "punchy" headline for the local-interest story. The wire services picked up the story and kept the headline. That was the beginning of the road to ruin.
The use of the term "hack" wends back to the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club usage of the word, sometime in the early 1970s.
As a side note, the phone phreaking started in the 1960s, but weren't referred to as "hacks" until much later. As I recall, the usual technical term was "workaround" or "trick". Practicitioners were referred to as "phone phreaks," and that activity quickly became known as "phreaking."
Just as there is a large intersection between "hackers" and "science fiction fans", there was a large intersection between phreakers and "hackers". Further causing problems was the fact that many college programmers down on pocket money (we can't all be Bill Gates) resorted to B&E to get sufficient computer time to learn the craft. The next generation behind the first wave of hackers misunderstood the purpose of the B&E action and thought that the means to the end of learning was the end itself. This spawned a large cadre of "black-hat hackers" who "sign" their work with some form of damage, to prove they could do the crack.
There is a third side to the story, but no one is willing to talk about it. You have the 2600 group and you have the starch-shirt types. People forget the "white-hat hackers."
I checked your user information page and didn't find an e-mail address, nor do you provide an e-mail address with your message. If you are really looking, why not provide some contact info?
Then people like me who are fed up with the existing broker/headhunter system and HR departments would be able to network with you and who knows?
Like so many other statistics, you have to learn how to read them in order to extract the truth. The truth in this case is that most potential IT workers gave up on getting those salaried jobs because the pay was low, hours long, and future uncertain. The unemployment statistics only indicate who is still looking for work, not the ones who have decided that going self-employed is a more-secure way to go, or ended up in another sector of the employment pool ditto.
How many taxi drivers are in the pool of IT employees, but aren't counted because they are otherwise employed? I remember when the job market was so poor that PhDs were driving cabs to feed their families until the job market straightened out. I guess I'm just showing my age...
I'd like to put forth another view, one that has been synthesized from a number of legal web sites and magazine articles published at the time Da Judge petitioned the Supreme Court to take the M$ case.
The one statement that was made by virtually every single source, both pro and con, was that the Supreme Court was not equipped to deal with all the issues that the Microsoft appeal would raise. When it was compared to the AT&T breakup, every single writer said that the major difference between AT&T and Microsoft was that there were no disputes in fact or procedure in the AT&T case versus many disputes in fact and procedure in the Microsoft case. Anyone who had read the briefs from DoJ and Microsoft will agree that the two sides are far, far apart on many issues.
One interesting prediction I recall was that if the Supreme Court were to take up the action, the Higest Court would "hire" the DC Court of Appeals to do much of the legwork. The pundit then speculated that the difference between that procedural model and the more formal appeal-superappeal process would be minimal. What I recall of the article said "It might save a month or two of time."
I disagree with other posters in this thread. The Supreme Court hasn't refused to hear any appeal at all. The action taken by the Supreme Court was specific to taking the case now instead of later, when the Appeals court could take care of the viewpoint differences of the two sides.
Also, the DC Court of Appeals would be able to rule on such things as the lack of a remedies phase of the trial.
Where on your site is a discussion of copyright and "fair use"? Under what circumstances can a citizen make use of any portion of a copyrighted entity: book, magazine article, recording, artwork? How does "parody" and "criticism" enter into the "fair use doctrine"?
I beg to differ. The current ILS systems need sub-meter accuracy so that the planes can properly measure how well they are holding to the glide slope. (You know the rule: your tools should be ten times better than your real need.) By using the DGPS there, and using regular GPS away from airports, you get the best of both worlds.
Ever since the cease-and-desist letters
came out, I've been working on aspects of the
CueCat. That effort spawned a section of my
Web site that worked to expose
all aspects of the red-nosed pussy. On my pages,
you will find the anatomy of the proprietary
cue, a complete description of the output of the
CueCat and how one would discover the base-64+XOR
algorithm without disassembling or decompiling
a single instruction of executable code. I've
also put together a capabilities list of what the
'Cat can do (and that list is expanding as people
report additional capabilities). I even publish
a rationale for why I did all that work.
The only reason I'm slowing down is that I've
done about all I can do. That included publishing
source code to an interpreter that runs as a console app in both Linux and Windows.
Now, where do I draw the line? I draw the line
at providing code without license that would
infringe patents 5,933,829, 5,978,773, and
6,108,656...held by NeoMedia Technologies Inc.
I stop at interpreting the barcode on stdout in
order to bring the CueCat to the same level of functionality as other barcode readers.
When I printed the text portion of patent 6,098,106 from the USPTO.GOV site, I found this interesting tidbit:
This application is related to copending US patent application Ser. No. 09/151,471, entitled "Method for Interfacing Scanned Product Information With a Source for the Product Over a Global Network" filed of even date herewith.
Interesting, but not exactly a patent on the CueCat itself, based on the title.
Syndy, Australia, 2018 -- In a surprising discovery, Dr. Jill Tarter announced through her thumb-sucking male boss, who likes to hog the credit, that "they are out there." Interlaced with the bursts of RF energy that become the first 10 prime numbers when "interpreted properly", the ETs show they are watching us by inserting a subcarrier that carries a rebroadcat of the Nixon "I Am Not A Crook" speech.
Further embedded in those signals (you'd be amazed what can be packed into those 150-ms pulses when you try!) is the construction plans for the ship Heart of Gold with its Infinite Improbability Drive, designed by the aliens when they received the BBC Radio broadcasts of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and mistook the radio play for a news broadcast.
The United Nations has retained Scott Adams to oversee the entire "Contact For Real" project because of his clearly superior grasp of management techniques and practices. Douglas Adams has been added to the project team for his ability to brew really hot cups of tea, as well has his clearly superior ability to deal with the side effects of the Heart of Gold's drive.
Co-operation has been rampent in this project. Recluse trillionare Bill Gates, from his private space station, pointed out that the space-borne construction diagrams make sense when wrapped around a model of the United States Pentegon building. Arch-rivel Steve Jobs, from his offices at Pixar/Disney, demonstrated using computer graphics generated by 4,000 Apple G6 computers connected via kite string and Dixie cups, that the diagrams made even more sense when stretched across a model of the Pentagon expanded into a three-dimensional model. Tom Clancy observed that a portion of the drawing is in error, in that it looks like some prankster grafted a giant hypodermic needle that would be used to kill The Galactic Overlord's giant space amoeba as described in the Hazel Stone space-opera series The Scourge of the Spaceways.
The Convergence stuff uses audio in such a way that the radio transmission spectrum isn't altered, so the FCC doesn't care. If DigitalConvergence had tried to use out-of-band audio cues, then the FCC would take notice. I suspect that they are using tones under 150Hz, because damn few people would notice low-level signals in the bass, even if they had super home theatre systems. This would be especially true if they phase-modulated a really low tone, like 55 Hz. Dunno, but a spectrum analyzer would pick this up. Anyone know of any audio signal that carried the Convergence signal?
As part of my contribution, I'm pointing out that the law has a schizophrenic view of software. In the encryption-as-speech cases, the Courts decided that source code was "speech" for the purposes of the First Amendment. In the DeCSS case, though, the judge said that software was not expressive, but functional...even in source code. In other words, the Courts can't make up their minds.
How doe that apply to the warranty question? Warranties can be applied only to functional things. This is part of the question "should software be a 'consumer product'? 'tangible personal property'? 'sale'?" (Q13) In order to have a need for a warranty, you have to recognize the functional nature of the thing you are warranting. Software publishers don't want to do that in order to reduce the exposure to litigation. Hence the current problem.
My answer: it's both. Source code is expressive, while binary executables are functional. (We cover the problem of piracy separately from the problem of product liability.) Until Congress comes to grips with the duality of software, all the problems will continue.
(Consider that a magazine is really two separate businesses under one roof: an editorial department that sells regular delivery of ideas to readers, and an advertising department that sells readers to advertisers. One creative, one functional. It works as long as you recognize the situation.)
When Bell Labs was looked at, many disadvanatages were evident. Bell Labs is corporate-owned; it survives by putting profit first, and AT&T had a reputation for doing Bad Things with the consumer.
I laughed so hard I was afraid I was just going to lose it, right at that line. BWAHAHAHAHA.
First off, Bell Labs was one of a handful of facilities in the United States totally set up for pure research. Like XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, Bell Labs did research that went somewhere. For years, Bell Labs scientists generated an average of a patent a day. It was Bell Labs that brought high-fidelity playback into being, with its research into people preferences by using a pipe-organ swell box to go from full-frequency response to the tin-box sound popular with radios at the time. Indeed, like that sound study, much of the Bell Labs research didn't relate directly to telephones, although it was amazing how "unrelated research" did come back to help the telecommunications giant to provide better phone service.
Bell Labs didn't have a CLUE how to turn a profit through the post-divestiture 80s, and into the 90s as well. I couldn't be hired as an employee because I didn't have a PhD, but that didn't stop them from hiring me as a consultant to get some sanity into projects.
Look, the FCC had more to do with the Unix troubles than anything else. Or perhaps you haven't done your homework? Reading some of the Orders regarding Unix were, well, interesting. Here was the FCC, long before Computer I, talking about an operating system that was developed by a regulated monopoly working outside its boundery, and what was a Commission to do?
As for taking the hint, you have never seen RMS at his worst, have you? It's one reason I'm happy he doesn't come to a certain convention any more.
In a column released September 1, Bob Metcalfe announced that he is ending his column "after 51 columns for each of eight years." I'm sure he will find ample pulpits to do his chicken-little act regarding the Internet, but at least he is making room for someone at the rag I used to work at.
For about a year now, there has been an explosion in south Reno of new building, including some huge warehouses right along the US 395 artery. The airport has been gearing up to handle more freight flights, especially as passenger traffic through Reno/Tahoe Airport is trending downward during the last year of the millenium.
Physical plant isn't the only thing growing. There has been a number of technology committees that have sprung up in Reno and Carson City to address infrastructure issues for business, including attracting more bandwidth into the Reno/Carson City nexus.
Bottom line: new work may be coming here. Good news for me...
My opinion is that the 2.4 TCP/IP stack will be around for a long time, and with the improvements over 2.2, deserves a treatment in book form similar to the Stevens efforts. I would applaud the authors if they feel this way too.
W. Richard Stevens wrote one of the definitive books on TCP/IP, and it was one of my primary reference materials when writing IP Stacks Commentary...it's one of the reasons that that Heather and I dedicated the book to his memory, and to the memory of Jon Postel, the first document guy. If I had the resources that Stevens had, I might try to aspire to write a book to that level of quality.
I won't apologize for the limits we worked under. They were the parameters, and we lived with them. That's one reason we are thinking about dumping paper completely--the format just doesn't work in the Open Source environment.
Can we do better? Yes. Will we do better? Only time will tell. You will be the judge, dear reader.
[Anonymous Coward, Score:0] Who are these people? I proudly maintain documents regarding computational statistical data analysis. Together, they form some 5000 pages. I've never been paid for my work and there are many others who are just like me. Why should others be paid? Sorry, I'm finding it difficult to express myself at this time of the day but I hope you understand my feelings.
I believe this to be a fair question, and one deserving of an answer.
Stephen Satchell (that's me) started with ARPAnet back in 1972 at UIUC, did embedded programming for products in the banking and publishing field up until 1987, a part-time product reviewer starting in 1984 and thrust into full-time professional writing in 1988, first as a freelancer and then as staff at InfoWorld magazine. Even as magazine staff I wrote programs, including benchmarks. I've worked with the SPEC series, porting it to a couple of environments. Since that time I've moved between industry and journalism, writing in both places. Today, I'm working with a number of magazines to illustrate the Carnivore problem, network security issues, and (today) got a letter inviting back onto a product review board. What goes around...
Oh, yes, you will find me contributing to a number of the Linux mailing lists from time to time. I sell Linux-hosted products. I use Linux extensively in my test consulting practice.
Ms. Clifford's writing background includes a number of books, both non-fiction and fiction, editorships at magazines such as VLSI Design and InfoWorld, regularly wrote features on science, computers, technology, and medicine, and even ran a science fiction fan magazine with her ex-husband...complete with Varityper CompSet typesetter and film developer in their Santa Clara living room. I met Ms. Clifford at InfoWorld, and from that initial meeting (and that tape-drive product comparison) began a working relationship that continues to this day. About 1.2 million words has come out of the collaboration.
Today, the two of us live in a duplex building, her on one side of the firewall and I on the other side. Fiber optics isolate our two networks. A love for writing binds the two sides of the house together. The cats (on both sides) and the aforementioned firewall keep us sane.
Bring on more writers. I'm sure there is no lack of people in the Linux comunity willing to donate some docs they've put together themselves in exchange for
credit in the book. You're trying to solve a "time to market problem" and the only way to solve that is working in parelell with other linux
power users.
Perhaps you haven't seen any of the CoriolisOpen Commentary series? The structure of the book is that the source code for the subsystem being described is published, with line numbers. Within the meat of the book, there are constant references to those line numbers. Furthermore, in the source code there are little markers showing where in the commentary the function or segment is discussed.
These design elements are unique to the series.
What Heather and I are considering is a completely different method of tying text to source lines, and using on-line presentation instead of using dead trees -- at least in the begining. The development process requires that text be coded in a certain way so that software can handle code and text separately.
Could volunteers work within the framework that we are creating? Of course. Indeed, Heather and I see some possibilities that we don't dare dream about until we see how this project works out -- if it does, we may well be paying authors to generate content for us in areas outside of the TCP/IP environment.
Crediting authors is not a problem. The way we plan to organize the book, having an author credit for each piece is simple, easy, and elegant. The credit would be there, with a link to a bio.
For the moment, we would need to do the first few contributions, to work out the bugs and to react quickly to feedback from the readers. There may be flaws in our basic design that may require time back on the drawing board to fix. When we get a presentation style that readers approve, then we can look at farming out some of the stuff.
Indeed, I'll say this right now, and loudly: I'll accept any offer from any victim, er, volunteer to write the sections on Routing. I'm not happy with my attempt at it.
How about making all material freely available to non-subscribers 10 or 12 months later, so that this useful resource can be accessed by those who are interested, but are never going to subscribe to everything.
Hmmm...in the book trade, that's called "remaindering." This process is the source of those books that appear on the sale table, the books that sell for $1, $3, $5, or for those really large coffee-table clay-coat books, the ubiquitious $9.98 price.:)
Perhaps an example closer to the mark is the one used in the stock business. You pay one hell of a large price for real-time stock-ticker feeds, but for those people who don't need up-to-the-second information the 20-minute-delayed feeds are considerably cheaper. Perhaps this is the model to keep in mind as we explore your question.
Part of the process of publishing the book on-line will be to go back to previously published information and release updates -- a living book in every sense of the word. Moving older, slightly outdated information to a publicly-accessible reading area would be a reasonable way to "recycle" those words that would help the cash-strapped student, while keeping the real value of up-to-date information for those readers with both money and interest.
I'm not ready at this time to commit to doing what you have asked, but I am bringing this up with my co-author and we'll make a decision. We will publish an answer to your question on the Web page.
It may be difficult
to arrange collection of monies from people in other countries with no credit card - have you thought about the practicalities of this[?]
This turned out to be a fairly simple problem to solve -- indeed, I found several solutions.
For those people who send cash, all we would need to do is sort by currency and collect it until we have enough of a particular currency to go to the Reno currency exchange service. We discovered these people when I bought a book on eBay from a guy in the UK. (Then there are other uses: as my co-author suggests, a single subscription in small-denomination ruples might provide enough high-quality banknote paper to wallpaper the bathroom.) We would lose a little in the exchange, but that's a small price to pay to permit our content to be used world-wide.
For those people who send checks et al in non-US currency, our bank is willing to accept batches for a nominal fee.
Now, I have to admit that it's been almost 25 years since I stepped into a college classroom as a student, but I do recall that every semester I would buy a whole fresh set of hi-lighters so that I could mark the things I found tough to crack. Study time was spent concentrating on the highlighted phrases until I understood or were forced to find help.
Now, unless the "CD-ROM" you were referring to was in reality a CD-RW and you have a suitable recorder, you end up with a net loss.
Every single text book I owned had notes in the margin from the lectures, from the Q&A with the prof and the TA, and from peer-to-peer bull sessions. Indeed, some of the older computer texts I use regularly all these years later are most useful because of the margin notes I wrote while listening to others.
Sometimes newer is not better. CDs in school are a case in point.
(But then again, you have a similar problem with web sites unless you get a copy at the end of the course, and that copy has all your "margin notes" that you of course added during the sessions.)
I read with interest a number of articles on the Blair Initiative in taking DNA samples, yet there two classes of criminal that is getting away scot free: the politicians and the civil servents. No mention at all about taking DNA samples from those that partake of the public teat.
Another thing:they should take DNA samples from every member of law enforcement. The rationale is that the labs would then have DNA samples "for exclusionary purposes" when investigators have taken DNA samples from a less-than-perfect crime scene.
...who just love this sort of stuff. I also have a feeler from a few editors.
I'm also preparing pitches to a number of editors, some computer journals, some business magazines, some national newspapers. The story needs to come out.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, I write for a living, mostly non-fiction for magazines and the odd book now and then. I started as a reviewer in 1984. I started off as an embedded-systems programmer, and still write benchmarks and other programs for reviewing purposes...and to have fun.
The golden rule of journalism: Keep business out of editorial--there should be a high wall between your reporters and your advertising salesmen.
According to the Dallas Observer, CueCat partner Dallas TV station WFAA didn't observe that rule when extolling the virtues of the CueCat during an advertising spree during the editorial portion of three nightly newscasts. The Dallas Morning News, another CueCat partner, reportedly did a story that wasn't as balanced as it should be, either. And now Wired has weighed in editorially with a story that was missing more than it said -- another CueCat partner speaking editorially.
Now I don't see WFAA-TV, and I don't read any Dallas newspaper if I can help it.
I expect better of Wired, which is one reason I have offered to write a rebuttal article for that magazine, one that covers the story from the view of the hackers that Digital Convergence seems to so love now. Just because it would be a rebuttal article doesn't mean that I can dispense with fairness and balance -- but the story will cover all aspects, not just those aspects that puts Digital Convergence in the best light.
If you want to see that story written, let Wired know about it. My credentials: hardware reviewer since 1984 for the likes of InfoWorld, Byte, Federal Computer Week, The Net, and other publications. Perhaps my best qualification can be found on this page that describes how I tried to let Digital Convergence provide input to an article I did for Planet IT.
More importantly, I have no ties to Digital Convergence, Inc. other than an interest in their product. After all, like many other people who have commented, I have heard nothing from them when I requested licensing materials a month ago, when the CEO ran the last letter on Slash-dot.
In absolute terms, true. When you start thinking about negative-feedback applications such as a "power-assist" to an arm or leg, though, this stuff would make a great sensor material. Current negative-feedback systems use a series of switches; this stuff would allow much finer control of the motion because it could tell between a slight adjustment (very small force) and a sweep of the arm (very large force). Further, as the force of the feedback falls, you can slow down the motion actuator in anticipation of a stop or reversal, which reduces the oscillation that could happen between operator and extension.
As best as I can determine, the mis-use of the term "hacker" was a-borning in the early 1980s, when the "414 gang" was busted. A Detroit paper's headline writer was alledged to have found that the word "hackers" was short enough to fit the headline measure called for by the editors while allow a "punchy" headline for the local-interest story. The wire services picked up the story and kept the headline. That was the beginning of the road to ruin.
The use of the term "hack" wends back to the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club usage of the word, sometime in the early 1970s.
As a side note, the phone phreaking started in the 1960s, but weren't referred to as "hacks" until much later. As I recall, the usual technical term was "workaround" or "trick". Practicitioners were referred to as "phone phreaks," and that activity quickly became known as "phreaking."
Just as there is a large intersection between "hackers" and "science fiction fans", there was a large intersection between phreakers and "hackers". Further causing problems was the fact that many college programmers down on pocket money (we can't all be Bill Gates) resorted to B&E to get sufficient computer time to learn the craft. The next generation behind the first wave of hackers misunderstood the purpose of the B&E action and thought that the means to the end of learning was the end itself. This spawned a large cadre of "black-hat hackers" who "sign" their work with some form of damage, to prove they could do the crack.
There is a third side to the story, but no one is willing to talk about it. You have the 2600 group and you have the starch-shirt types. People forget the "white-hat hackers."
I checked your user information page and didn't find an e-mail address, nor do you provide an e-mail address with your message. If you are really looking, why not provide some contact info?
Then people like me who are fed up with the existing broker/headhunter system and HR departments would be able to network with you and who knows?
Feel free to mail me at my address...
Like so many other statistics, you have to learn how to read them in order to extract the truth. The truth in this case is that most potential IT workers gave up on getting those salaried jobs because the pay was low, hours long, and future uncertain. The unemployment statistics only indicate who is still looking for work, not the ones who have decided that going self-employed is a more-secure way to go, or ended up in another sector of the employment pool ditto.
How many taxi drivers are in the pool of IT employees, but aren't counted because they are otherwise employed? I remember when the job market was so poor that PhDs were driving cabs to feed their families until the job market straightened out. I guess I'm just showing my age...
I'd like to put forth another view, one that has been synthesized from a number of legal web sites and magazine articles published at the time Da Judge petitioned the Supreme Court to take the M$ case.
The one statement that was made by virtually every single source, both pro and con, was that the Supreme Court was not equipped to deal with all the issues that the Microsoft appeal would raise. When it was compared to the AT&T breakup, every single writer said that the major difference between AT&T and Microsoft was that there were no disputes in fact or procedure in the AT&T case versus many disputes in fact and procedure in the Microsoft case. Anyone who had read the briefs from DoJ and Microsoft will agree that the two sides are far, far apart on many issues.
One interesting prediction I recall was that if the Supreme Court were to take up the action, the Higest Court would "hire" the DC Court of Appeals to do much of the legwork. The pundit then speculated that the difference between that procedural model and the more formal appeal-superappeal process would be minimal. What I recall of the article said "It might save a month or two of time."
I disagree with other posters in this thread. The Supreme Court hasn't refused to hear any appeal at all. The action taken by the Supreme Court was specific to taking the case now instead of later, when the Appeals court could take care of the viewpoint differences of the two sides.
Also, the DC Court of Appeals would be able to rule on such things as the lack of a remedies phase of the trial.
Me, I think it's a good thing.
So I asked one:
I wonder if I'll ever get an answer?
I beg to differ. The current ILS systems need sub-meter accuracy so that the planes can properly measure how well they are holding to the glide slope. (You know the rule: your tools should be ten times better than your real need.) By using the DGPS there, and using regular GPS away from airports, you get the best of both worlds.
Ever since the cease-and-desist letters came out, I've been working on aspects of the CueCat. That effort spawned a section of my Web site that worked to expose all aspects of the red-nosed pussy. On my pages, you will find the anatomy of the proprietary cue, a complete description of the output of the CueCat and how one would discover the base-64+XOR algorithm without disassembling or decompiling a single instruction of executable code. I've also put together a capabilities list of what the 'Cat can do (and that list is expanding as people report additional capabilities). I even publish a rationale for why I did all that work.
The only reason I'm slowing down is that I've done about all I can do. That included publishing source code to an interpreter that runs as a console app in both Linux and Windows.
Now, where do I draw the line? I draw the line at providing code without license that would infringe patents 5,933,829, 5,978,773, and 6,108,656...held by NeoMedia Technologies Inc. I stop at interpreting the barcode on stdout in order to bring the CueCat to the same level of functionality as other barcode readers.
Now, I'm looking at PaperClick...
You may want to update your Perl script to take into account some recent discoveries about modifications to the 'Cat.
Specifically, you may want to insert the minor tweak that lets the code handle those 'Cats that return command and slash.
When I printed the text portion of patent 6,098,106 from the USPTO.GOV site, I found this interesting tidbit:
This application is related to copending US patent application Ser. No. 09/151,471, entitled "Method for Interfacing Scanned Product Information With a Source for the Product Over a Global Network" filed of even date herewith.
Interesting, but not exactly a patent on the CueCat itself, based on the title.
Syndy, Australia, 2018 -- In a surprising discovery, Dr. Jill Tarter announced through her thumb-sucking male boss, who likes to hog the credit, that "they are out there." Interlaced with the bursts of RF energy that become the first 10 prime numbers when "interpreted properly", the ETs show they are watching us by inserting a subcarrier that carries a rebroadcat of the Nixon "I Am Not A Crook" speech.
Further embedded in those signals (you'd be amazed what can be packed into those 150-ms pulses when you try!) is the construction plans for the ship Heart of Gold with its Infinite Improbability Drive, designed by the aliens when they received the BBC Radio broadcasts of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and mistook the radio play for a news broadcast.
The United Nations has retained Scott Adams to oversee the entire "Contact For Real" project because of his clearly superior grasp of management techniques and practices. Douglas Adams has been added to the project team for his ability to brew really hot cups of tea, as well has his clearly superior ability to deal with the side effects of the Heart of Gold's drive.
Co-operation has been rampent in this project. Recluse trillionare Bill Gates, from his private space station, pointed out that the space-borne construction diagrams make sense when wrapped around a model of the United States Pentegon building. Arch-rivel Steve Jobs, from his offices at Pixar/Disney, demonstrated using computer graphics generated by 4,000 Apple G6 computers connected via kite string and Dixie cups, that the diagrams made even more sense when stretched across a model of the Pentagon expanded into a three-dimensional model. Tom Clancy observed that a portion of the drawing is in error, in that it looks like some prankster grafted a giant hypodermic needle that would be used to kill The Galactic Overlord's giant space amoeba as described in the Hazel Stone space-opera series The Scourge of the Spaceways.
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The Convergence stuff uses audio in such a way that the radio transmission spectrum isn't altered, so the FCC doesn't care. If DigitalConvergence had tried to use out-of-band audio cues, then the FCC would take notice. I suspect that they are using tones under 150Hz, because damn few people would notice low-level signals in the bass, even if they had super home theatre systems. This would be especially true if they phase-modulated a really low tone, like 55 Hz. Dunno, but a spectrum analyzer would pick this up. Anyone know of any audio signal that carried the Convergence signal?
As part of my contribution, I'm pointing out that the law has a schizophrenic view of software. In the encryption-as-speech cases, the Courts decided that source code was "speech" for the purposes of the First Amendment. In the DeCSS case, though, the judge said that software was not expressive, but functional...even in source code. In other words, the Courts can't make up their minds.
How doe that apply to the warranty question? Warranties can be applied only to functional things. This is part of the question "should software be a 'consumer product'? 'tangible personal property'? 'sale'?" (Q13) In order to have a need for a warranty, you have to recognize the functional nature of the thing you are warranting. Software publishers don't want to do that in order to reduce the exposure to litigation. Hence the current problem.
My answer: it's both. Source code is expressive, while binary executables are functional. (We cover the problem of piracy separately from the problem of product liability.) Until Congress comes to grips with the duality of software, all the problems will continue.
(Consider that a magazine is really two separate businesses under one roof: an editorial department that sells regular delivery of ideas to readers, and an advertising department that sells readers to advertisers. One creative, one functional. It works as long as you recognize the situation.)
I laughed so hard I was afraid I was just going to lose it, right at that line. BWAHAHAHAHA.
First off, Bell Labs was one of a handful of facilities in the United States totally set up for pure research. Like XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, Bell Labs did research that went somewhere. For years, Bell Labs scientists generated an average of a patent a day. It was Bell Labs that brought high-fidelity playback into being, with its research into people preferences by using a pipe-organ swell box to go from full-frequency response to the tin-box sound popular with radios at the time. Indeed, like that sound study, much of the Bell Labs research didn't relate directly to telephones, although it was amazing how "unrelated research" did come back to help the telecommunications giant to provide better phone service.
Bell Labs didn't have a CLUE how to turn a profit through the post-divestiture 80s, and into the 90s as well. I couldn't be hired as an employee because I didn't have a PhD, but that didn't stop them from hiring me as a consultant to get some sanity into projects.
Look, the FCC had more to do with the Unix troubles than anything else. Or perhaps you haven't done your homework? Reading some of the Orders regarding Unix were, well, interesting. Here was the FCC, long before Computer I, talking about an operating system that was developed by a regulated monopoly working outside its boundery, and what was a Commission to do?
As for taking the hint, you have never seen RMS at his worst, have you? It's one reason I'm happy he doesn't come to a certain convention any more.
In a column released September 1, Bob Metcalfe announced that he is ending his column "after 51 columns for each of eight years." I'm sure he will find ample pulpits to do his chicken-little act regarding the Internet, but at least he is making room for someone at the rag I used to work at.
For about a year now, there has been an explosion in south Reno of new building, including some huge warehouses right along the US 395 artery. The airport has been gearing up to handle more freight flights, especially as passenger traffic through Reno/Tahoe Airport is trending downward during the last year of the millenium.
Physical plant isn't the only thing growing. There has been a number of technology committees that have sprung up in Reno and Carson City to address infrastructure issues for business, including attracting more bandwidth into the Reno/Carson City nexus.
Bottom line: new work may be coming here. Good news for me...
W. Richard Stevens wrote one of the definitive books on TCP/IP, and it was one of my primary reference materials when writing IP Stacks Commentary...it's one of the reasons that that Heather and I dedicated the book to his memory, and to the memory of Jon Postel, the first document guy. If I had the resources that Stevens had, I might try to aspire to write a book to that level of quality.
I won't apologize for the limits we worked under. They were the parameters, and we lived with them. That's one reason we are thinking about dumping paper completely--the format just doesn't work in the Open Source environment.
Can we do better? Yes. Will we do better? Only time will tell. You will be the judge, dear reader.
I believe this to be a fair question, and one deserving of an answer.
Stephen Satchell (that's me) started with ARPAnet back in 1972 at UIUC, did embedded programming for products in the banking and publishing field up until 1987, a part-time product reviewer starting in 1984 and thrust into full-time professional writing in 1988, first as a freelancer and then as staff at InfoWorld magazine. Even as magazine staff I wrote programs, including benchmarks. I've worked with the SPEC series, porting it to a couple of environments. Since that time I've moved between industry and journalism, writing in both places. Today, I'm working with a number of magazines to illustrate the Carnivore problem, network security issues, and (today) got a letter inviting back onto a product review board. What goes around...
Oh, yes, you will find me contributing to a number of the Linux mailing lists from time to time. I sell Linux-hosted products. I use Linux extensively in my test consulting practice.
Ms. Clifford's writing background includes a number of books, both non-fiction and fiction, editorships at magazines such as VLSI Design and InfoWorld, regularly wrote features on science, computers, technology, and medicine, and even ran a science fiction fan magazine with her ex-husband...complete with Varityper CompSet typesetter and film developer in their Santa Clara living room. I met Ms. Clifford at InfoWorld, and from that initial meeting (and that tape-drive product comparison) began a working relationship that continues to this day. About 1.2 million words has come out of the collaboration.
Today, the two of us live in a duplex building, her on one side of the firewall and I on the other side. Fiber optics isolate our two networks. A love for writing binds the two sides of the house together. The cats (on both sides) and the aforementioned firewall keep us sane.
Perhaps you haven't seen any of the CoriolisOpen Commentary series? The structure of the book is that the source code for the subsystem being described is published, with line numbers. Within the meat of the book, there are constant references to those line numbers. Furthermore, in the source code there are little markers showing where in the commentary the function or segment is discussed.
These design elements are unique to the series.
What Heather and I are considering is a completely different method of tying text to source lines, and using on-line presentation instead of using dead trees -- at least in the begining. The development process requires that text be coded in a certain way so that software can handle code and text separately.
Could volunteers work within the framework that we are creating? Of course. Indeed, Heather and I see some possibilities that we don't dare dream about until we see how this project works out -- if it does, we may well be paying authors to generate content for us in areas outside of the TCP/IP environment.
Crediting authors is not a problem. The way we plan to organize the book, having an author credit for each piece is simple, easy, and elegant. The credit would be there, with a link to a bio.
For the moment, we would need to do the first few contributions, to work out the bugs and to react quickly to feedback from the readers. There may be flaws in our basic design that may require time back on the drawing board to fix. When we get a presentation style that readers approve, then we can look at farming out some of the stuff.
Indeed, I'll say this right now, and loudly: I'll accept any offer from any victim, er, volunteer to write the sections on Routing. I'm not happy with my attempt at it.
Hmmm...in the book trade, that's called "remaindering." This process is the source of those books that appear on the sale table, the books that sell for $1, $3, $5, or for those really large coffee-table clay-coat books, the ubiquitious $9.98 price. :)
Perhaps an example closer to the mark is the one used in the stock business. You pay one hell of a large price for real-time stock-ticker feeds, but for those people who don't need up-to-the-second information the 20-minute-delayed feeds are considerably cheaper. Perhaps this is the model to keep in mind as we explore your question.
Part of the process of publishing the book on-line will be to go back to previously published information and release updates -- a living book in every sense of the word. Moving older, slightly outdated information to a publicly-accessible reading area would be a reasonable way to "recycle" those words that would help the cash-strapped student, while keeping the real value of up-to-date information for those readers with both money and interest.
I'm not ready at this time to commit to doing what you have asked, but I am bringing this up with my co-author and we'll make a decision. We will publish an answer to your question on the Web page.
This turned out to be a fairly simple problem to solve -- indeed, I found several solutions.
For those people who send cash, all we would need to do is sort by currency and collect it until we have enough of a particular currency to go to the Reno currency exchange service. We discovered these people when I bought a book on eBay from a guy in the UK. (Then there are other uses: as my co-author suggests, a single subscription in small-denomination ruples might provide enough high-quality banknote paper to wallpaper the bathroom.) We would lose a little in the exchange, but that's a small price to pay to permit our content to be used world-wide.
For those people who send checks et al in non-US currency, our bank is willing to accept batches for a nominal fee.
In short, no problem!
Now, I have to admit that it's been almost 25 years since I stepped into a college classroom as a student, but I do recall that every semester I would buy a whole fresh set of hi-lighters so that I could mark the things I found tough to crack. Study time was spent concentrating on the highlighted phrases until I understood or were forced to find help.
Now, unless the "CD-ROM" you were referring to was in reality a CD-RW and you have a suitable recorder, you end up with a net loss.
Every single text book I owned had notes in the margin from the lectures, from the Q&A with the prof and the TA, and from peer-to-peer bull sessions. Indeed, some of the older computer texts I use regularly all these years later are most useful because of the margin notes I wrote while listening to others.
Sometimes newer is not better. CDs in school are a case in point.
(But then again, you have a similar problem with web sites unless you get a copy at the end of the course, and that copy has all your "margin notes" that you of course added during the sessions.)
I read with interest a number of articles on the Blair Initiative in taking DNA samples, yet there two classes of criminal that is getting away scot free: the politicians and the civil servents. No mention at all about taking DNA samples from those that partake of the public teat.
Another thing:they should take DNA samples from every member of law enforcement. The rationale is that the labs would then have DNA samples "for exclusionary purposes" when investigators have taken DNA samples from a less-than-perfect crime scene.
...who just love this sort of stuff. I also have a feeler from a few editors.
I'm also preparing pitches to a number of editors, some computer journals, some business magazines, some national newspapers. The story needs to come out.