That government document was available in PDF and WordPerfect. For a government that's arguing that MS has a monopoly, you'd think they'd publish in the format that most of the industry is forced to use, Word, rather than implying there are other practical exchange formats (WP).:-) They should provide it in StarOffice SDC and AbiWord formats, too.
And yes, the projections they use are LCD or DLP, so the projections are digital.
I know most graphic designers will turf a sexy, pixel-perfect (alignment-wise) LCD display, for a clunky, blury (to me) CRT, because there's more depth to the colour, blacker blacks than LCD can provide, and so on. It seems well established that LCD can't provide the contrast and colour range that CRT's can.
Does this mean that LCD/DLP projectors would suffer from same of the colour and contrast problems as well? Or do the theatre-quality digital projectors blow away commercial LCD's when it comes to these issues???
He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX
I find the whole Mac OSX thing being based upon BSD, to be extremely exciting. And having office running on a BSD-based OS is a major event in our industry.
It would not have happened, if it were not for Microsoft having to follow up and provide Office for the latest mainstream Apple OS. It proves a lot of things: that there is no inherent reason for Microsoft's applications not to run on Unix-based platforms, which has implications for those looking at anti-trust remedies, and such.
And note that even though Linux has wider acceptance than FreeBSD, and far more application support, device support, and so on, this did not happen for Linux first, and it might never happen. This is solely because of the commercializability allowed by the BSD license. GPL'd OS's are far less likely to be embraced by a major player like Apple.
There's a lot of interesting debate between GPL and BSD licensing. I'm a much bigger fan of BSD/X-Windows, etc., licensing, as commercial outcroppings of these are often more interesting, solid and, well, commercial-grade than purely non-commercial products.
And I think this is one of the great examples of where such truly free, and not the forced-freedom of the GPL, achieves a measurable positive result for the industry.
(I think a better overall solution for the industry would be for monopolistic entities to be required to fully open, publish, and standardize the data, interchange, and communication formats and protocols. We have limit choices on what roads to use, but because the specifications are standardized and open, we have a choice of cars to use. I think the government should force proven monopolistic entities to open *all* their interfaces.)
But, in the world of Enron and MS Campaign contributions, and a populace that in general doesn't care (current company, largely excluded:-), I don't much have faith in the government to clean this up. So good commercial pressures like this from Apple are a welcome alternative for positive effects.
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
Hey, that's the best (or at least most effective) kind of headline, one that grabs your attention and makes you read the article, even if it isn't as good as what you thought.
Nonetheless, the image of a prehistoric water scorpion over eight feet long is not too much of a disappointment to me.
It would be nice to have a three or four word description of what ALSA was in the article. (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, for those who don't know.)
It would not only save people a bit of time, but avoid everyone who doesn't know, having to click through to the page, increasing chances of an unnecessary slashdot effect...
-me
Re:I honestly can't figure out
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
They seem to be touting portability, but what kind of portability? Certainly not inter-OS portability, that's for sure.
It cdertainly *is* portable across operating systems; I can count at least *six* operating systems I'm sure it supports:
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows XP
And I'm sure they will support several more operation systems (of their own creation, of course) in the future.
They *could* do an infinite variety of things which would piss everyone off, yes. This is true of them, and about every other business or web site out there. Most of them wouldn't be illegal, either.
But it wouldn't make business sense for them to do it, so they won't.
Seeing this change in terms of service as a big conspiracy for prelude to some awful turn of events is just silly. There's enough real concerns in this industry to spend or time on, than a non-issue like this.
I am not a lawyer, but I get touchy when people mention the DMCA. Maybe someone would like to clarify what this means.
Ummmm, I think that parties, including SourceForge, have to follow the DCMA (it is law, after wall), and they're just letting you know, in their terms of service, that they will comply, as required.
I think it's appropriate they give you the head's up on the fact. This is a good thing, and doesn't warrant panic just because you saw those four letters.
(Well, those four letters do warrant panic in general:-), but not because somebody is simply claiming they will follow the law, as required, but because it's not a great law to start with.)
So they changed their terms of service saying they can change their terms of service in the future (whooopie), and that they can delete user's accounts without needing cause.
I think this is perfectly reasonable; they're running the show, and a lot of the time in communities, there are members you need to deal with. I think the changes listed are more of an administrative streamlining than a major conspiracy.
Now, if they start abusing things, folks will be all over them, and they'll be sorry they did. So that ain't gonna happen.
Right. But I write applications today, not "someday." Someday, when things are 100x faster, Swing's speed indeed won't be an issue. For me, today, it is, and affects my choice of language.
The settlement, unfortunately, isn't exactly stern stuff: the seven spammers "agreed to refrain from participating in deceptive schemes in the future, or lying about the legality or potential earnings from any such schemes."
Well, if a lame-ass non-punishment like that ("hey, you're guilty; just don't do that any more, okay?") is good enough for Microsoft, it's good enough for spammers, I guess.
Hey, it was only a few years ago that I looked geeky with one of the early Palm pilots. People used to stare and point and comment all the time. Now whipping out a Palm doesn't draw any attention at all.
But before wearables become commonplace enough not to be freaky, they really have to become more useful, less obtrusive, better UI's, longer battery life, and far lower cost. We're a little ways away from conquering all of those, but it will happen in the next decade, I would imagine.
Ummm, this isn't eye-scanning in the traditional sense (looking at your iris/retina for security/identification purposes), but as a display.
"Retinal scanning" is a confusing term for this article to use; they mean the transmitted image is scanned across your retina as the mirror moves, so you can see the image, not so it can see your eye.
Hmmmm. If they can project it on to your eye bright enough, I wonder if with a bit of modification they could project it onto the airplane seat in front of you. A tiny projector for travel would be very cool:-)
Major usability issue here, if you have to hold the thing right in front of your eye to view it. Cell phones are dangerous enough with people holding them to their ears, can you imagine the pileups if folks started holding them in front of one eye while driving.
Seems to me this would be more applicable to VR goggles, or head's up displays.
-me
Not a flaw in the protocol, but implementations
on
Security Hole In SNMP
·
· Score: 2
From what I can glean from a quick read of the advisories, is that it's not a flaw in the *protocol*, but a flaw in the many *implementations*. Big difference (but still quite annoying to fix up, especially for vendors whose hardware isn't flashable).
I haven't seen any Swing apps that I would consider "peppy" by any means, even on reasonably fast hardware. LimeWire, for example, is what I would consider one of the premiere deployments of a Swing-based application. It looks great, works well. But when you click on a tab or something, you have to expect a noticable delay before the screen updates.
I haven't explored Python personally myself, but at last a couple of strong tecchie's that I know and respect, are big Python fans, which means a lot to me.
I don't doubt that Python is more elegant and consistent than Perl. (It wouldn't be hard:-)
But the *huge* libraries of supported API's on CPAN, and the fact that the differences between versions is *well* documented (with source available, even), and the fact that the source can easily detect what version it is running under, and make appropriate adjustments, makes it still preferrable to me. Predictability and API support can outweigh Elegance, in my book.
Yes, in theory, and in my heart, the more elegant solution is the best. (At heart, I prefer AWK to Perl. But in practice, I can't do as much with it, as easily.) So, in practice, I will still choose what lets me accomplish the goal, which today, is still Perl. I'll check out Python, but without the same CPAN support, I doubt I'll switch today, or any time soon.
I'd love to come back in two years with a future slashdot post, where I talk about how Perl came to let me down, and I've now moved on to the far superior, far more elegant, far more support, Xyzzz language. Let's hope. Maybe it'll run on the newly open sourced QNX:-), running on the open source Risc hardware, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think we'll get there eventually, but we've got a few hurdles to clear before we get there. A fun time to be alive.:-)
It's only going to get better folks, as long as we keep the monopolies (okay, monopoly) from completely eliminating our choices of platforms and OS's.
Wow. Obviously a hot topic. I read slashdot religiously, and it's seldom I get to a post before a hundred or so posts have been made. But 600 got in ahead of me this time. (No FP! for me!)
And a good sign of it being an emotional topic is that almost all of the posts are below my viewing threshold. Far more than normal.
Here's my take: I used to be one of the biggest Java advocates around. (In fact, I was one of the winner's of Sun's Java Cup programming contest.) I fought off learning Perl for years, but today, my language of preference is now Perl. Here's why:
Portability - Where Sun brags about "write one, run everywhere", Perl actually delivers. Java's available on a few platforms (and even fewer, supported by Sun). But Perl has *much* wider availability. As one example of many, FreeBSD didn't have a reliable, supported Java implementation until very recently (if even now), whereas Perl has been there for ages. And somewhat disturbing is that the most reliable Java implmentation is on Sparc Solaris. Even I386 Solaris has serious issues. I guess making sure you fix problems on your own platform is a natural tendency, but it does go against the reliable portability that Java promised. (As compared to MS's anti-competitive behaviour, this is small stuff, but an issue nonetheless.)
Reliability - I've had JVM's cransh on me, run out of memory inappropriately, and have other ugly problems. I haven't seen this with perl, yet. I've looked to IBM, Sun, Symantec, TowerJ, and others, for a solid, fast JVM, and they all seem to have fatal weaknesses.
Consistency - I've found far greater consistentcy in the behaviour, performance, and reliability of Perl across platforms, than Java. I've seen Java seriously choke under pressure, and run out of memory. It might be fine for lightweight, run-once applications. But for heavy-duty stuff, it's repeatedly disappointed me.
String Manipulation - In the majority of applications I've come across, *especially* web application, most of the work you end up doing is string parsing and manipulation. Perl's regular expression functions far outshine Java in this aspect. A one liner replaces a fifty-liner. Yes, the person maintaining the code has to know Perl regular expressions inside out, but I don't have a problem with that requirement.
API's - CPAN seems to have far more exhaustive support for standard API's, well in advance of Sun's. They are usually more fragmented initially, and I would prefer the centralized approach of Sun, if it could just keep up. But it can't (or at least doesn't).
Open Source - While Sun talks a lot about being open source advocates, Java's source is far more restrictive and harder to get or legally use, than Perl's. (Although I am against the non-commercial restriction of GPL. Hmmm, Perl is GPL, isn't it? Have to check that, as I'm not 100% sure, but it's a good guess.)
GUI - AWT was efficient, but hard to use. Swing is very cool looking, with great features, but *slow*. Perl/TK is fast, efficient, portable, easy to use. It's by far my preferred rapid GUI environment. (A bit of foreshadowing perhaps: On my winning JavaOne entry, I used PackerLayout [I think], which was a port of the Tk layout mechanism to Java. Okay, okay, packer actually originated with Tk, not Perl, but since Perl/Tk is more or less the defacto Perl GUI, it's not complete out of context:-)
Multithreading - This is actually one point where Java shines over Perl. Perl has no standard multithreading, which truly, truly, sucks.
Elegance - This is another area where Perl fails, but another area where it doesn't matter:-) Perl is ugly, Java is elegant and beautiful to look at. But I can do more with perl, more quickly. And super-efficient hashes as a core part of the langauge allow passing arguments as key-value types, as is encouraged in their object programming model. This, I find more elegant. So at the surface, Java is prettier. But one layer down, where it really counts, Pelr is more elegant.
So in short, I've "been there, done that" with Java. Perl is liberating me from a lot of the problems I had with Java.
(And on a rather irrelevant, but rather appropriate bit of symbolism: I happened to be wearing a JavaOne Long Sleeved T-Shirt tonight as I wrote this. The wrists were a bit tight, shrunk from washing, I guess, so I tugged on them to loosen them a bit. The whole sleeve ripped. Kind of symbolizes my experiences with java. Shoddy merchandise, all around:-)
They were at least planning to try it in Nova Scotia, too.
Supposedly Nova Scotia Power had a division set up to get bandwidth rolling over the power lines. But the division was bought by MT&T (the phone company, and biggest province-wide ISP) and shut down. Somewhat anti-competitive, really.
So what if I don't like the license agreement? By the time I've seen it, I've already paid for the damn product.
There should be a law requiring the EULA to be printed or summarized on the box, or published on the web site, so people can know before-hand. Once you've bought the product, what are you gonna do, try and return it because you didn't like the EULA, or put it on the shelf?
Once again, consumers need to spread the word about such EULA's, and kick up a stink about them, and let it be known what's going on. Simply clicking "disagree" isn't going to save the next poor bugger, nor yourself.:-)
Why bother. A vertical split-screen image for left and right eye is all you need. Theres nothing stopping conventional television from broadcasting stereoscopic images. Get two camcorders, tape em together at the sides and videotape stuff in your house. Edit the video so that the left camera's image displays on the right-hand side of the screen, and vice versa. Bingo, 3D video.
But this isn't just about presenting the 3d effect of video (in fact, they don't talk about that at all, from what I can see. It's more useful for clipping your live video images in real time to different depths (only keep the people up close, ignore the background).
In *theory* you could do this with two cameras, and some amazing processing that compares the two images, extracting the depth information for each pixel. But if such software even exists (and I think it might, for leading edge 3D scanning techniques), there's no way it could be done in real time, like the ZCAM does.
-me
The new reaches of minaturization
on
Video with Depth
·
· Score: 2
Just amazing how DV cameras just keep getting smaller and smaller. I think I'll pick up that ZCAM, and get the optional belt case, so it's with me everywhere I go:-)
I guess this thing is targeted more for reporters and the media, than the consumer.
I assume "keying" is what we dumb consumers typically know as "blue screening" or "green screening", but this lets you do the same without a solid background, since it can separate out the people in the foreground using a depth cutoff instead.
Neat technology. I think there'll be more practical uses for this than you might think at first.
I wonder how accurately the z layer aligns with the pixels. Since it's a different infrared source, bounced off the subjects, I wonder if there's some fancy alignment that has to be done, or if the same pixels on the camera pick up the depth information. It'd be the difference between perfect alignment, and having sloppy edges around objects, which is pretty significant for a lot of uses.
-me
Re:I hate to rain on Mr Cringely's parade, but...
on
Cringely's Bank Shot
·
· Score: 2
Ummmm, see my earlier post. I think he *is* obeying all laws, rules, regulations. If you're only emitting 1 watt in the 2.4ghz band, you're allowed to directionally focus it, etc..
If he were amplifying it beyond limits, and publishing an article about it, it would be the height of stupidity, and he'd likely be charged. He's not that stupid.
At first, when I first read him, I was worried cringely was a Chaos Manor Wannabe (and why anybody would want to be another Chaos Manor, would escape me), but this guy actually has pretty good insight and cool articles.
Why not just avoid starting all services, and verify with "netstat" that there's no processes listening.
If there's not a single process listening on sockets (shown by netstat), then only the kernel is around doing it's masquerading, routing, etc., just as per runlevel 0.
While it's a cute trick, why limit *all* your potential functionality (flipping on ftp for 15 minutes, to let a buddy upload a file).
Slashdot Mirror
That government document was available in PDF and WordPerfect. For a government that's arguing that MS has a monopoly, you'd think they'd publish in the format that most of the industry is forced to use, Word, rather than implying there are other practical exchange formats (WP). :-) They should provide it in StarOffice SDC and AbiWord formats, too.
-me
Does this mean that LCD/DLP projectors would suffer from same of the colour and contrast problems as well? Or do the theatre-quality digital projectors blow away commercial LCD's when it comes to these issues???
-me
It would not have happened, if it were not for Microsoft having to follow up and provide Office for the latest mainstream Apple OS. It proves a lot of things: that there is no inherent reason for Microsoft's applications not to run on Unix-based platforms, which has implications for those looking at anti-trust remedies, and such.
And note that even though Linux has wider acceptance than FreeBSD, and far more application support, device support, and so on, this did not happen for Linux first, and it might never happen. This is solely because of the commercializability allowed by the BSD license. GPL'd OS's are far less likely to be embraced by a major player like Apple.
There's a lot of interesting debate between GPL and BSD licensing. I'm a much bigger fan of BSD/X-Windows, etc., licensing, as commercial outcroppings of these are often more interesting, solid and, well, commercial-grade than purely non-commercial products.
And I think this is one of the great examples of where such truly free, and not the forced-freedom of the GPL, achieves a measurable positive result for the industry.
(I think a better overall solution for the industry would be for monopolistic entities to be required to fully open, publish, and standardize the data, interchange, and communication formats and protocols. We have limit choices on what roads to use, but because the specifications are standardized and open, we have a choice of cars to use. I think the government should force proven monopolistic entities to open *all* their interfaces.)
But, in the world of Enron and MS Campaign contributions, and a populace that in general doesn't care (current company, largely excluded
-me
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
Hey, that's the best (or at least most effective) kind of headline, one that grabs your attention and makes you read the article, even if it isn't as good as what you thought.
Nonetheless, the image of a prehistoric water scorpion over eight feet long is not too much of a disappointment to me.
-me
It would be nice to have a three or four word description of what ALSA was in the article. (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, for those who don't know.)
It would not only save people a bit of time, but avoid everyone who doesn't know, having to click through to the page, increasing chances of an unnecessary slashdot effect...
-me
- Windows 95
- Windows 98
- Windows ME
- Windows NT
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
And I'm sure they will support several more operation systems (of their own creation, of course) in the future.-me
They *could* do an infinite variety of things which would piss everyone off, yes. This is true of them, and about every other business or web site out there. Most of them wouldn't be illegal, either.
But it wouldn't make business sense for them to do it, so they won't.
Seeing this change in terms of service as a big conspiracy for prelude to some awful turn of events is just silly. There's enough real concerns in this industry to spend or time on, than a non-issue like this.
'Nuff said.
-me
I think it's appropriate they give you the head's up on the fact. This is a good thing, and doesn't warrant panic just because you saw those four letters.
(Well, those four letters do warrant panic in general
-me
So they changed their terms of service saying they can change their terms of service in the future (whooopie), and that they can delete user's accounts without needing cause.
I think this is perfectly reasonable; they're running the show, and a lot of the time in communities, there are members you need to deal with. I think the changes listed are more of an administrative streamlining than a major conspiracy.
Now, if they start abusing things, folks will be all over them, and they'll be sorry they did. So that ain't gonna happen.
Not a big deal.
-me
Right. But I write applications today, not "someday." Someday, when things are 100x faster, Swing's speed indeed won't be an issue. For me, today, it is, and affects my choice of language.
-me
Sigh.
-me
Hey, it was only a few years ago that I looked geeky with one of the early Palm pilots. People used to stare and point and comment all the time. Now whipping out a Palm doesn't draw any attention at all.
But before wearables become commonplace enough not to be freaky, they really have to become more useful, less obtrusive, better UI's, longer battery life, and far lower cost. We're a little ways away from conquering all of those, but it will happen in the next decade, I would imagine.
-me
Ummm, this isn't eye-scanning in the traditional sense (looking at your iris/retina for security/identification purposes), but as a display.
:-)
"Retinal scanning" is a confusing term for this article to use; they mean the transmitted image is scanned across your retina as the mirror moves, so you can see the image, not so it can see your eye.
Hmmmm. If they can project it on to your eye bright enough, I wonder if with a bit of modification they could project it onto the airplane seat in front of you. A tiny projector for travel would be very cool
-me
Major usability issue here, if you have to hold the thing right in front of your eye to view it. Cell phones are dangerous enough with people holding them to their ears, can you imagine the pileups if folks started holding them in front of one eye while driving.
Seems to me this would be more applicable to VR goggles, or head's up displays.
-me
From what I can glean from a quick read of the advisories, is that it's not a flaw in the *protocol*, but a flaw in the many *implementations*. Big difference (but still quite annoying to fix up, especially for vendors whose hardware isn't flashable).
-me
I haven't seen any Swing apps that I would consider "peppy" by any means, even on reasonably fast hardware. LimeWire, for example, is what I would consider one of the premiere deployments of a Swing-based application. It looks great, works well. But when you click on a tab or something, you have to expect a noticable delay before the screen updates.
Usable? Yes, most of the time. Fast, no...
-me
I haven't explored Python personally myself, but at last a couple of strong tecchie's that I know and respect, are big Python fans, which means a lot to me.
:-)
:-), running on the open source Risc hardware, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think we'll get there eventually, but we've got a few hurdles to clear before we get there. A fun time to be alive. :-)
I don't doubt that Python is more elegant and consistent than Perl. (It wouldn't be hard
But the *huge* libraries of supported API's on CPAN, and the fact that the differences between versions is *well* documented (with source available, even), and the fact that the source can easily detect what version it is running under, and make appropriate adjustments, makes it still preferrable to me. Predictability and API support can outweigh Elegance, in my book.
Yes, in theory, and in my heart, the more elegant solution is the best. (At heart, I prefer AWK to Perl. But in practice, I can't do as much with it, as easily.) So, in practice, I will still choose what lets me accomplish the goal, which today, is still Perl. I'll check out Python, but without the same CPAN support, I doubt I'll switch today, or any time soon.
I'd love to come back in two years with a future slashdot post, where I talk about how Perl came to let me down, and I've now moved on to the far superior, far more elegant, far more support, Xyzzz language. Let's hope. Maybe it'll run on the newly open sourced QNX
It's only going to get better folks, as long as we keep the monopolies (okay, monopoly) from completely eliminating our choices of platforms and OS's.
-me
And a good sign of it being an emotional topic is that almost all of the posts are below my viewing threshold. Far more than normal.
Here's my take: I used to be one of the biggest Java advocates around. (In fact, I was one of the winner's of Sun's Java Cup programming contest.) I fought off learning Perl for years, but today, my language of preference is now Perl. Here's why:
- Portability - Where Sun brags about "write one, run everywhere", Perl actually delivers. Java's available on a few platforms (and even fewer, supported by Sun). But Perl has *much* wider availability. As one example of many, FreeBSD didn't have a reliable, supported Java implementation until very recently (if even now), whereas Perl has been there for ages. And somewhat disturbing is that the most reliable Java implmentation is on Sparc Solaris. Even I386 Solaris has serious issues. I guess making sure you fix problems on your own platform is a natural tendency, but it does go against the reliable portability that Java promised. (As compared to MS's anti-competitive behaviour, this is small stuff, but an issue nonetheless.)
- Reliability - I've had JVM's cransh on me, run out of memory inappropriately, and have other ugly problems. I haven't seen this with perl, yet. I've looked to IBM, Sun, Symantec, TowerJ, and others, for a solid, fast JVM, and they all seem to have fatal weaknesses.
- Consistency - I've found far greater consistentcy in the behaviour, performance, and reliability of Perl across platforms, than Java. I've seen Java seriously choke under pressure, and run out of memory. It might be fine for lightweight, run-once applications. But for heavy-duty stuff, it's repeatedly disappointed me.
- String Manipulation - In the majority of applications I've come across, *especially* web application, most of the work you end up doing is string parsing and manipulation. Perl's regular expression functions far outshine Java in this aspect. A one liner replaces a fifty-liner. Yes, the person maintaining the code has to know Perl regular expressions inside out, but I don't have a problem with that requirement.
- API's - CPAN seems to have far more exhaustive support for standard API's, well in advance of Sun's. They are usually more fragmented initially, and I would prefer the centralized approach of Sun, if it could just keep up. But it can't (or at least doesn't).
- Open Source - While Sun talks a lot about being open source advocates, Java's source is far more restrictive and harder to get or legally use, than Perl's. (Although I am against the non-commercial restriction of GPL. Hmmm, Perl is GPL, isn't it? Have to check that, as I'm not 100% sure, but it's a good guess.)
- GUI - AWT was efficient, but hard to use. Swing is very cool looking, with great features, but *slow*. Perl/TK is fast, efficient, portable, easy to use. It's by far my preferred rapid GUI environment. (A bit of foreshadowing perhaps: On my winning JavaOne entry, I used PackerLayout [I think], which was a port of the Tk layout mechanism to Java. Okay, okay, packer actually originated with Tk, not Perl, but since Perl/Tk is more or less the defacto Perl GUI, it's not complete out of context
:-)
- Multithreading - This is actually one point where Java shines over Perl. Perl has no standard multithreading, which truly, truly, sucks.
- Elegance - This is another area where Perl fails, but another area where it doesn't matter
:-) Perl is ugly, Java is elegant and beautiful to look at. But I can do more with perl, more quickly. And super-efficient hashes as a core part of the langauge allow passing arguments as key-value types, as is encouraged in their object programming model. This, I find more elegant. So at the surface, Java is prettier. But one layer down, where it really counts, Pelr is more elegant.
So in short, I've "been there, done that" with Java. Perl is liberating me from a lot of the problems I had with Java.(And on a rather irrelevant, but rather appropriate bit of symbolism: I happened to be wearing a JavaOne Long Sleeved T-Shirt tonight as I wrote this. The wrists were a bit tight, shrunk from washing, I guess, so I tugged on them to loosen them a bit. The whole sleeve ripped. Kind of symbolizes my experiences with java. Shoddy merchandise, all around
-me
They were at least planning to try it in Nova Scotia, too.
Supposedly Nova Scotia Power had a division set up to get bandwidth rolling over the power lines. But the division was bought by MT&T (the phone company, and biggest province-wide ISP) and shut down. Somewhat anti-competitive, really.
-me
So what if I don't like the license agreement? By the time I've seen it, I've already paid for the damn product.
:-)
There should be a law requiring the EULA to be printed or summarized on the box, or published on the web site, so people can know before-hand. Once you've bought the product, what are you gonna do, try and return it because you didn't like the EULA, or put it on the shelf?
Once again, consumers need to spread the word about such EULA's, and kick up a stink about them, and let it be known what's going on. Simply clicking "disagree" isn't going to save the next poor bugger, nor yourself.
-me
In *theory* you could do this with two cameras, and some amazing processing that compares the two images, extracting the depth information for each pixel. But if such software even exists (and I think it might, for leading edge 3D scanning techniques), there's no way it could be done in real time, like the ZCAM does.
-me
Just amazing how DV cameras just keep getting smaller and smaller. I think I'll pick up that ZCAM, and get the optional belt case, so it's with me everywhere I go :-)
I guess this thing is targeted more for reporters and the media, than the consumer.
I assume "keying" is what we dumb consumers typically know as "blue screening" or "green screening", but this lets you do the same without a solid background, since it can separate out the people in the foreground using a depth cutoff instead.
Neat technology. I think there'll be more practical uses for this than you might think at first.
I wonder how accurately the z layer aligns with the pixels. Since it's a different infrared source, bounced off the subjects, I wonder if there's some fancy alignment that has to be done, or if the same pixels on the camera pick up the depth information. It'd be the difference between perfect alignment, and having sloppy edges around objects, which is pretty significant for a lot of uses.
-me
Ummmm, see my earlier post. I think he *is* obeying all laws, rules, regulations. If you're only emitting 1 watt in the 2.4ghz band, you're allowed to directionally focus it, etc..
If he were amplifying it beyond limits, and publishing an article about it, it would be the height of stupidity, and he'd likely be charged. He's not that stupid.
At first, when I first read him, I was worried cringely was a Chaos Manor Wannabe (and why anybody would want to be another Chaos Manor, would escape me), but this guy actually has pretty good insight and cool articles.
-me
Why not just avoid starting all services, and verify with "netstat" that there's no processes listening.
If there's not a single process listening on sockets (shown by netstat), then only the kernel is around doing it's masquerading, routing, etc., just as per runlevel 0.
While it's a cute trick, why limit *all* your potential functionality (flipping on ftp for 15 minutes, to let a buddy upload a file).
-me