The FightAIDSatHome project seems like a good candidate, inasmuch as there are millions of lives at stake. Yes, it is one of the Entropia projects, but I think it deserves its own recognition.
These pins can be used to double the amount of data sent through your RS-232 cable, which would be useful if you decided to (say) switch from 8-bit characters to 16-bit characters.
It's not an RS-232 cable unless it has all 20 wires!!! (-: (-:
I don't use Excel because I write my own programs to balance my books and anything else I'd use a spreadsheet for.
I don't use Access or any other database because I write my own (perl usually makes it real easy).
I don't use Word because plain ASCII and HTML are the only interplatform text formats and I wrote my own HTML formatters to make embedded tagging easier.
all of these are a lot more productive for me than those "productivity applications" would be, even if they had no bugs or undesired features.
I was going to provide links to Excel, Word and Access but Microsoft's pages all come up totally blank with a JavaScript error. Could it be because I use Netscape 4.7 and Linux? Naaahhhh...
I have my own browser which makes it very easy to debug things like this. Not only does it never follow redirects and naver take cookies, but it makes it easy to examine the raw data returned by every HTTP transaction. I also use Linux Netscape 4.72, and have cookies enabled there all the time.
I discovered that expedia
and msnbc
have common GUIDs in my Netscape cookies file, and furthermore the expedia site uses the same triple-redirection technique shown on the
pc-help.org article. It routes through expedia.msnbc.com and then back to expedia.com after attaching the GUID to the URL.
Perhaps you didn't notice that among the 12 "discreet" inputs of the PV290 DSK are three standard RGB inputs. No special drivers necessary, just plug the 3 screens into three video cards and go.
More importantly though, you shouldn't give up on the idea just because Panoram Technologies costs too much. Buy three flat screens and a sports car.
Multiple monitors are supported in XFree86. Check
this message (you'll have to manually delete a space because of a bug in SlashDot's posting CGI's) from a user who got it working.
Also check the current XF86Config man page at www.xfree86.org.
The jargon they use for this is "multi-head configuration". I'll just quote one small part of the manpage:
Here is an example of a ServerLayout section for a dual headed configuration with two mice:
It's probably too late, but in case anyone's still reading this thread (-:
The scanner definitely contains firmware (software in ROM) because it has to be able to perform a fair amount of processing to actually recognize the string of pulses as a barcode and correct for things like the variable rate of your hand's motion as you scan it. Then it has to identify which of the roughly 12 or 15 formats the barcode is in, and then actually extract the bits, a process that differs based on which format it's in. Doing all this in hardware (with a bunch of gates and registers, etc.) would be silly; they used a microcontroller with ROM.
So the copyright law prohibits copying this ROM and selling the copy, and precedents such as the Betamax case might help defend copying the ROM for personal use. Such copying would also be difficult and practically useless without copying the hardware too, which is probably protected by patent. Note: the scanner's
serial EEPROM is an entirely unrelated thing, it just contains a small amount of data (apparently a serial number).
DC seems to have realized the potential liability you just implied, and has sent email to every registered luser offering them a
$10 RadioShack gift certificate to make it up to them. Probably, most of their normal users will take the offer.
What's their cost per user now? How many clickthroughs (scanthroughs?) do they need before it starts to pay back? Their financial statement for FY 2000 is looking redder and redder. Digital Convergence, meet
fuckedcompany.com!
In my experience, the biggest problem with merging diffs happens when two or more developers have substantially different indentation formatting settings. For example, one developer using K&R style and another using the GNU style. Sometimes (particularly if the tab settings are different) I have to reindent the whole file before I can even read the code (C programmers understand why).
The reason this is a problem with CVS is because CVS does not make it easy to make reindenting an automatic part of the checkin/merge process. If CVS could reindent each file before diffing it against the repository, there would be a whole lot fewer diffs to actually merge. As it is, reindenting essentially kills CVS's ability to merge a branch back into the trunk.
So, what made us think we needed rich recording artists? I look at the radio-dominated years, when quality music had to be paid for, and think of how much I missed. Your great-grandparents got their music for free, and most of them knew the musicians personally. Read here for a description of how much we lost when industrialized music dsitribution came into being. To summarize:
- Music was distributed from one person to the next (by word of mouth), completely uncontrolled and decentralized. - Everyone heard LIVE performances several times a month for free. - Rich performing artists were virtually nonexistent.
Sounds like the MP3-future, right? But that was THEN.
We all know what the recording industry brought us -- popular classical supplanted folk, and then many other even more technically elaborate musical styles ensued (ragtime, jazz, etc. right up to today's techno and conscious hip hop). Most people today believe that more and better music was available to Americans in the 1970's than in the 1870's. But they lost their folk art too, and live performance became a very rare treat. Music became something you had to pay for, or endure the voiceover chatter and advertisements of the radio.
So what? Well, think about it -- if things keep going the way they are, we'll return to an economy in which massively rich artists are very rare or nonexistent. Music will once again be passed along from one person to the next. It's really closer to our roots as a human race, if you think about it. The best creative musicians will be those who, like Mozart and Beethoven, live and die for their art and nothing else. And of course, we'll retain the technological convenience of not having to perform music ourselves. Beyond that -- imagine a personal DJ that takes your requests and automatically figures out what you'd most like to hear next.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like this? http://goo.gl/8D3LH
The FightAIDSatHome project seems like a good candidate, inasmuch as there are millions of lives at stake. Yes, it is one of the Entropia projects, but I think it deserves its own recognition.
What would happen if someone said "Let's add 2 new data pins to RS232"?
They already did:
pin 14 STD Secondary transmit data
pin 16 SRD Secondary receive data
(also pin 19 SRTS Secondary RTS, pin 13 SCTS Secondary CTS, etc.)
These pins can be used to double the amount of data sent through your RS-232 cable, which would be useful if you decided to (say) switch from 8-bit characters to 16-bit characters.
It's not an RS-232 cable unless it has all 20 wires!!! (-: (-:
... there's an oxymoron.
I don't use Excel because I write my own programs to balance my books and anything else I'd use a spreadsheet for.
I don't use Access or any other database because I write my own (perl usually makes it real easy).
I don't use Word because plain ASCII and HTML are the only interplatform text formats and I wrote my own HTML formatters to make embedded tagging easier.
all of these are a lot more productive for me than those "productivity applications" would be, even if they had no bugs or undesired features.
I was going to provide links to Excel, Word and Access but Microsoft's pages all come up totally blank with a JavaScript error. Could it be because I use Netscape 4.7 and Linux? Naaahhhh...
- Robert
I have my own browser which makes it very easy to debug things like this. Not only does it never follow redirects and naver take cookies, but it makes it easy to examine the raw data returned by every HTTP transaction. I also use Linux Netscape 4.72, and have cookies enabled there all the time.
I discovered that expedia and msnbc have common GUIDs in my Netscape cookies file, and furthermore the expedia site uses the same triple-redirection technique shown on the pc-help.org article. It routes through expedia.msnbc.com and then back to expedia.com after attaching the GUID to the URL.
- Robert Munafo
Perhaps you didn't notice that among the 12 "discreet" inputs of the PV290 DSK are three standard RGB inputs. No special drivers necessary, just plug the 3 screens into three video cards and go.
More importantly though, you shouldn't give up on the idea just because Panoram Technologies costs too much. Buy three flat screens and a sports car.
The jargon they use for this is "multi-head configuration". I'll just quote one small part of the manpage:
Here is an example of a ServerLayout section for a dual headed configuration with two mice:
- Robert
It's probably too late, but in case anyone's still reading this thread (-:
The scanner definitely contains firmware (software in ROM) because it has to be able to perform a fair amount of processing to actually recognize the string of pulses as a barcode and correct for things like the variable rate of your hand's motion as you scan it. Then it has to identify which of the roughly 12 or 15 formats the barcode is in, and then actually extract the bits, a process that differs based on which format it's in. Doing all this in hardware (with a bunch of gates and registers, etc.) would be silly; they used a microcontroller with ROM.
So the copyright law prohibits copying this ROM and selling the copy, and precedents such as the Betamax case might help defend copying the ROM for personal use. Such copying would also be difficult and practically useless without copying the hardware too, which is probably protected by patent. Note: the scanner's serial EEPROM is an entirely unrelated thing, it just contains a small amount of data (apparently a serial number).
DC seems to have realized the potential liability you just implied, and has sent email to every registered luser offering them a $10 RadioShack gift certificate to make it up to them. Probably, most of their normal users will take the offer.
What's their cost per user now? How many clickthroughs (scanthroughs?) do they need before it starts to pay back? Their financial statement for FY 2000 is looking redder and redder. Digital Convergence, meet fuckedcompany.com!
In my experience, the biggest problem with merging diffs happens when two or more developers have substantially different indentation formatting settings. For example, one developer using K&R style and another using the GNU style. Sometimes (particularly if the tab settings are different) I have to reindent the whole file before I can even read the code (C programmers understand why).
The reason this is a problem with CVS is because CVS does not make it easy to make reindenting an automatic part of the checkin/merge process. If CVS could reindent each file before diffing it against the repository, there would be a whole lot fewer diffs to actually merge. As it is, reindenting essentially kills CVS's ability to merge a branch back into the trunk.
- Robert Munafo
So, what made us think we needed rich recording artists? I look at the radio-dominated years, when quality music had to be paid for, and think of how much I missed. Your great-grandparents got their music for free, and most of them knew the musicians personally. Read here for a description of how much we lost when industrialized music dsitribution came into being. To summarize:
- Music was distributed from one person to the next (by word of mouth), completely uncontrolled and decentralized.
- Everyone heard LIVE performances several times a month for free.
- Rich performing artists were virtually nonexistent.
Sounds like the MP3-future, right? But that was THEN.
We all know what the recording industry brought us -- popular classical supplanted folk, and then many other even more technically elaborate musical styles ensued (ragtime, jazz, etc. right up to today's techno and conscious hip hop). Most people today believe that more and better music was available to Americans in the 1970's than in the 1870's. But they lost their folk art too, and live performance became a very rare treat. Music became something you had to pay for, or endure the voiceover chatter and advertisements of the radio.
So what? Well, think about it -- if things keep going the way they are, we'll return to an economy in which massively rich artists are very rare or nonexistent. Music will once again be passed along from one person to the next. It's really closer to our roots as a human race, if you think about it. The best creative musicians will be those who, like Mozart and Beethoven, live and die for their art and nothing else. And of course, we'll retain the technological convenience of not having to perform music ourselves. Beyond that -- imagine a personal DJ that takes your requests and automatically figures out what you'd most like to hear next.
Sounds pretty good to me.