I think you'd have to do the placement in a clean room - just as you would with chip dies today. The article is so short on details, it's hard to tell whether they have no solution yet for all the interesting problems, or whether they just don't want to give it away.
Well assuming they put the chip's transmitters as close to each other as they used to with the pads for the pins - then the accuracy of the placement
must be as high as the size of a pad + the distance between 2 pads.
If that wasn't the case, the transmitter would align to another receiver.
If you've ever seen a chip bonded to the carrier you'll know that the distance between pads is very very small - aligning these chips by hand would be impossible. (Also moving an actual chip die manually is difficult - it's easy to do damage, it's a lot easier handling them in plastic packages.)
It's an interesting thought - however if all these "pins" are transmitting in parallel, how do you tell one bit apart from the other?
Imagine you have a 32bit data bus - in every single clock cycle, each of the 32 pins can change their state. If you receive a 0 from one pin, and a 1 from the other, how do you tell them apart?
You can solve the problem by putting the data into a frame, building a checksum and discarding the frame - but that only helps if frame collisions are rare, if every single frame has collisions (which would be frequent in the data bus example) that won't work.
So you can switch to less frames at the same time - but then you can just put the transmitters a bit further apart, and you don't need the protocol overhead.
Also if you add a protocol layer to the communication, you need some sort of bit sequence, just to transfer a single piece of data (e.g. id1, id2, id3, data). You can use bursts (first the id, then a number of data bits) but you must add some overhead.
An alternative approach might be to use different frequencies for the transmitters. E.g. if you have 4 different frequencies you'd assign these alternatingly to neighbouring pins: pin1 = f1, pin2 = f2, pin3 = f3, pin4 = f4 and then pin5 = f1, pin6 = f2 etc.
What is it with SUN and keyboards? I've gotten used to every SUN I'm working with having yet another keyboard layout, but the SunRays really push that inconvenience to the limit: someone decided it would be cool to switch the control and the Caps Lock keys.
Perhaps it's possible to reconfigure that (any pointers appreciated) or to use another keyboard - but really: why doesn't SUN switch to PC keyboards already and stops punishing their users?
all it would allow is you to claim someone else did it if you get caught. but if you have the RFID writer on you that won't work.
So you have an accomplice do the remarking, he walks out after purchasing a chocolate bar, then it's your turn with the expensive stuff. Or you just go into the store twice, once with the RFID writer, and once to collect the stuff.
Why should playing in a chess tournament be a crime?
Well, I can see that one: it's propaganda support for a country his own country was at war with. (Not that the US had actually declared that war.)
Still whatever he says, and no matter how offensive that is: he hasn't actually hurt anyone. I think even to bother looking for him for 12 years is way over the top.
That's why I voted for the Greens in the last EU election (my first vote for the Greens). Since the powers of the EU parliament are not great, it came down to that single issue. I'm not really a Green supporter, but at least they oppose patents, and when they say they oppose them they actually vote that way, too.
Also, MRAM could be especially for devices like memory sticks and MP3 players because it is much faster to program than Flash. No page-erase, no programming sequence needed - just write the values you need and you are done.
I guess you could tackle this by doing a memory initilization sequence when shutting down. If you use the MRAM to suspend-to-MRAM (like you would do suspend-to-disk now) you could just require a password when waking up.
In any case once you have physical access to the machine you can get at almost anything which is on the harddrive - there is cache on that one, too.
No, it's just RAM. All you have to do is tell your computer that you want to reboot. RAM does not have to be initialized to all 0s before booting. You just set the program counter to the boot sequence and off you go - your OS will be loaded into RAM (no matter what sort of RAM, and no matter what the contents are which are overwritten).
There is not even a need to initialize memory at bootup. You just load what you need, no matter what the previous contents are.
In case some people are confused: MRAM behaves just like SRAM with the only difference that the contents are not lost on power-down. Programming MRAM is not a special process (like for Flash) but a simple write to a memory location.
I've already used it in the lab but at the time it was very slow (not surprising in a prototype). Still this technology could become very interesting.
There are some NVM-related bugs though. Programming Flash can be tricky, especially when you want to do advanced things like implementing a file system using Flash. Not what the submitter was thinking of, I believe - but MRAM could still help making programmers' lifes easier.
Hmmm - I think the low number of shark-related incidents means that sharks attacks are not a problem. On it's own however it says relatively little about whether encountering sharks is risky or not, you'd also have to analyze how often people get into situations where they *could* be attacked by sharks.
If you don't consider that, then eating highly radioactive material will seem like a safe activity - just because nobody does that. In reality of course, doing that would be quite risky.
Looking at the US, very large numbers of people are involved with cars on a daily basis, only a small percentage go swimming in the ocean every day.
How useful is it really to know that there were no shark-related incidents in Minnesota this year?
One option would be to give your friends individual sneakemail addresses.
It works like this: sneakemail allows you to generate lots of addresses which all get forwarded to your main email address. So once an address has been captured by spammers you can just delete that address, tell your offending friend to be more careful in the future, and create a new address for them. That's a good opportunity to tell them about bcc, too.
People should take responsibility for what they do. However that doesn't mean that complaining about something is wrong. Of course there shouldn't be legislation telling people what to eat, however there is nothing wrong with a society discussing their unhealthy eating habits. Actually it's exactly that which enables people to make informed, responsible decisions. And why not suggest to a company to promote their more healthy options? Most companies listen to their customers at least some of the time. Sure they primarily want to make money, but often the best way to achieve that is by doing what the customer wants.
This "pessimism" is completely unrealistic. Politicians need votes to stay in power - no matter how corrupt they may be, they can't get around that. If you get a good number of voters taking an interest in an issue the politicians will take note.
Proof of that can be seen in Munich - very heavy lobbying by MS, and lots of pro-Linux activities by the voters. Now Munich is switching to Linux - with an attitude like yours that would likely not have happened.
Well Open-Source doesn't necessarily mean giving all the rights to the software away. If they publish it e.g. under GPL, they'd still be the only company which owns the code - other companies could not make use of it to develop proprietary apps. As an example: Trolltech seems to have had no problems with this model.
Still it might be possible that giving away the code would teach competitors how to implement players, so that would have to be carefully evaluated. I suspect the really valuable IP is in the media creation tools, however.
The situation for Apple is somewhat different, since they profit from the fact that these tools don't run on all platforms. This doesn't really apply for Macromedia - for them the opposite is beneficial.
Why, what's so wrong about exercising in a way these kids enjoy? Why does it have to be a "standard" activity? And what's the "lazy" claim about - basketball is considered to be work now? I thought it was just a recreational activity.
If this could have stopped those planes from killing thousands of civilians, people would be screaming in outrage about how we didn't use it when we should have.
Maybe, but you could use the same argument on any system, regardless whether it would work or not. Presumably you agree that we can't just implement any system which claims that it works?
At the very least we should establish some criteria to verify that the system is functional, then decide whether the benefits are actually worth the loss in freedom.
Sure we could hand over all our freedom to the government - but how likely is it that this would actually increase safety? Democratic control is not just important for freedom - it also helps to keep the level of incompetence and corruption low. Not as low as we would like, for sure - but some dictatorships fare much much worse.
Also consider that even totalitarian systems have been successfully spied upon (e.g. Soviet Russia, Nazi-Germany). So just because the citizens have no freedom does not guarantee safety from terrorist attacks - if you can get a spy in you can get a terrorist in.
Free speech is an enumerated right in the U.S. and may not be abridged (in theory, McCarthyism not-with-standing).
But it is abridged, and it has always been. There are libel and slander laws (which predate the US constitution anyways) as well as obscenity laws, trade mark and copyright laws. Describing a right as a general right without specifying the restrictions because they are "obvious" is not without danger - someone might decide other restrictions could be "obvious" too. I think it's better to be upfront about it and state exactly which rights you actually have.
Slashdot Mirror
He'll now tell his other customers about this, too - he feels many will be interested. (BTW: he's actually a distributor, not a SUN employee.)
I think you'd have to do the placement in a clean room - just as you would with chip dies today. The article is so short on details, it's hard to tell whether they have no solution yet for all the interesting problems, or whether they just don't want to give it away.
If you've ever seen a chip bonded to the carrier you'll know that the distance between pads is very very small - aligning these chips by hand would be impossible. (Also moving an actual chip die manually is difficult - it's easy to do damage, it's a lot easier handling them in plastic packages.)
Imagine you have a 32bit data bus - in every single clock cycle, each of the 32 pins can change their state. If you receive a 0 from one pin, and a 1 from the other, how do you tell them apart?
You can solve the problem by putting the data into a frame, building a checksum and discarding the frame - but that only helps if frame collisions are rare, if every single frame has collisions (which would be frequent in the data bus example) that won't work.
So you can switch to less frames at the same time - but then you can just put the transmitters a bit further apart, and you don't need the protocol overhead.
Also if you add a protocol layer to the communication, you need some sort of bit sequence, just to transfer a single piece of data (e.g. id1, id2, id3, data). You can use bursts (first the id, then a number of data bits) but you must add some overhead.
An alternative approach might be to use different frequencies for the transmitters. E.g. if you have 4 different frequencies you'd assign these alternatingly to neighbouring pins: pin1 = f1, pin2 = f2, pin3 = f3, pin4 = f4 and then pin5 = f1, pin6 = f2 etc.
Thanks, this will help us a lot. Our Sun rep didn't even mention these options. :-(
Perhaps it's possible to reconfigure that (any pointers appreciated) or to use another keyboard - but really: why doesn't SUN switch to PC keyboards already and stops punishing their users?
Just curious. :-)
So you have an accomplice do the remarking, he walks out after purchasing a chocolate bar, then it's your turn with the expensive stuff. Or you just go into the store twice, once with the RFID writer, and once to collect the stuff.
Well, I can see that one: it's propaganda support for a country his own country was at war with. (Not that the US had actually declared that war.)
Still whatever he says, and no matter how offensive that is: he hasn't actually hurt anyone. I think even to bother looking for him for 12 years is way over the top.
That's why I voted for the Greens in the last EU election (my first vote for the Greens). Since the powers of the EU parliament are not great, it came down to that single issue. I'm not really a Green supporter, but at least they oppose patents, and when they say they oppose them they actually vote that way, too.
(Honest, I'm not bitter, just ... puzzled.)
Also, MRAM could be especially for devices like memory sticks and MP3 players because it is much faster to program than Flash. No page-erase, no programming sequence needed - just write the values you need and you are done.
In any case once you have physical access to the machine you can get at almost anything which is on the harddrive - there is cache on that one, too.
No, it's just RAM. All you have to do is tell your computer that you want to reboot. RAM does not have to be initialized to all 0s before booting. You just set the program counter to the boot sequence and off you go - your OS will be loaded into RAM (no matter what sort of RAM, and no matter what the contents are which are overwritten).
In case some people are confused: MRAM behaves just like SRAM with the only difference that the contents are not lost on power-down. Programming MRAM is not a special process (like for Flash) but a simple write to a memory location. I've already used it in the lab but at the time it was very slow (not surprising in a prototype). Still this technology could become very interesting.
There are some NVM-related bugs though. Programming Flash can be tricky, especially when you want to do advanced things like implementing a file system using Flash. Not what the submitter was thinking of, I believe - but MRAM could still help making programmers' lifes easier.
If you don't consider that, then eating highly radioactive material will seem like a safe activity - just because nobody does that. In reality of course, doing that would be quite risky.
Looking at the US, very large numbers of people are involved with cars on a daily basis, only a small percentage go swimming in the ocean every day. How useful is it really to know that there were no shark-related incidents in Minnesota this year?
It works like this: sneakemail allows you to generate lots of addresses which all get forwarded to your main email address. So once an address has been captured by spammers you can just delete that address, tell your offending friend to be more careful in the future, and create a new address for them. That's a good opportunity to tell them about bcc, too.
Info about sneakemail.
People should take responsibility for what they do. However that doesn't mean that complaining about something is wrong. Of course there shouldn't be legislation telling people what to eat, however there is nothing wrong with a society discussing their unhealthy eating habits. Actually it's exactly that which enables people to make informed, responsible decisions. And why not suggest to a company to promote their more healthy options? Most companies listen to their customers at least some of the time. Sure they primarily want to make money, but often the best way to achieve that is by doing what the customer wants.
Glossary
Proof of that can be seen in Munich - very heavy lobbying by MS, and lots of pro-Linux activities by the voters. Now Munich is switching to Linux - with an attitude like yours that would likely not have happened.
Still it might be possible that giving away the code would teach competitors how to implement players, so that would have to be carefully evaluated. I suspect the really valuable IP is in the media creation tools, however.
The situation for Apple is somewhat different, since they profit from the fact that these tools don't run on all platforms. This doesn't really apply for Macromedia - for them the opposite is beneficial.
Why, what's so wrong about exercising in a way these kids enjoy? Why does it have to be a "standard" activity? And what's the "lazy" claim about - basketball is considered to be work now? I thought it was just a recreational activity.
If it's a good idea it will likely survive the criticism.
Even with the 9/11 commisions, we are so focused on "intelligence" - who had it, who didn't, who ignored it, etc.
That's how it should be - when something goes wrong you should find out why, this gives you a chance to do better in the future.
Why is it that no one ever offers better solutions?
How about spending the money to do proper security checks on US domestic flights?
Maybe, but you could use the same argument on any system, regardless whether it would work or not. Presumably you agree that we can't just implement any system which claims that it works?
At the very least we should establish some criteria to verify that the system is functional, then decide whether the benefits are actually worth the loss in freedom.
Sure we could hand over all our freedom to the government - but how likely is it that this would actually increase safety? Democratic control is not just important for freedom - it also helps to keep the level of incompetence and corruption low. Not as low as we would like, for sure - but some dictatorships fare much much worse.
Also consider that even totalitarian systems have been successfully spied upon (e.g. Soviet Russia, Nazi-Germany). So just because the citizens have no freedom does not guarantee safety from terrorist attacks - if you can get a spy in you can get a terrorist in.
But it is abridged, and it has always been. There are libel and slander laws (which predate the US constitution anyways) as well as obscenity laws, trade mark and copyright laws. Describing a right as a general right without specifying the restrictions because they are "obvious" is not without danger - someone might decide other restrictions could be "obvious" too. I think it's better to be upfront about it and state exactly which rights you actually have.