There's MUCH MORE to automated testing that just recording and playing back keyboard/mouse input.
Here are some of the issues that need to be dealt with:
Timing. (It's hard to click a button, if it ain't there, yet.) Different versions of the Application Under Test (AUT) may run at different speeds (better/worse performance) on the same system, or you may try to run the same automated test on different (faster/slower) platforms. In either case, there's a need to wait until *something* has happened, and only then feed in the next input.
Location. Minor modifications of the AUT may cause fields and buttons to be relocated. Hard-coded locations in your test scripts are a PAIN to maintain!
Verification. How do you know if it did what you wanted it to?
Screen capture? Again, minor screen layout changes force major maintenance headaches.
Date/Time and other varying output. If your Application puts up a date or time on the window, you're gonna need a way to mask that out between prior and current runs so it doesn't give you a false negative.
Error Handling. The whole idea is to deal with an application that might not run the same every time. That means needed to determine all possible outcomes, and to be able to deal with them, too. (It's all too easy to get into deadlocks where the application is expecting input, and the test program is waiting for some other screen to display before it sends any keystrokes to it.)
I could go on and on, but this hopefully gives a hint to the complexity and difficulty in automated testing. (And, yes, I've stumbled upon ALL of these myself at one time or another.)
It has an optional
RF controller(Google Mirror)
that they claim permits multiple Descartes to communicate with each other.
If the powers of PBASIC are too limited, why not have the robot transmit its sensor readings to, and receive its commands from, another full-sized PC with an RF module attached to it.
Basically (no pun intended) move the computing power over to a platform that can readily support it. Then, you can program in whatever language you like, with however much computing power you desire.
Caveat: I don't know if this particular RF controller is supposed to be able to be connected to a PC. I'm more of a software dude, so I'd appreciate any input from someone who is more hardware-savy. (Hmmm, maybe even a wireless ethernet or bluetooth transceiver? Don't know about power consumption, size, weight.)
I've looked over the site, but don't recall seeing any mention of just how LOUD this thing would be. If I understand correctly, he's got 4 LARGE voice coils that are rapidly firing in order to get the objects on the surface to move.
This reminds me of the old vibrating surface football game my folks got me when I was a kid. It was pretty noisy then. Hey! Imagine putting appropriate markings on this new surface. With a little creative programming (and, say, bluetooth), we could set up football scrimmages where we nerds would always WIN!
IANAOC. Seems they had success when everything was uniformly cooled with the Flourinert and dry ice. Problems arose when they used the Liquid Nitrogen on JUST the processor. So, the CPU could go faster than the support chips which were not similarly cooled? Maybe the video card, though now running with the same bus speed as the LN-cooled CPU could not operate at those speeds without also being cooled to LN temps.
They mentioned:
So what happened? Did it boot? Yeah it did. Booted easily with the CPU at about -150C(block temp), but you cannot understand the language anymore. The screen suddenly turned alien into us. We cannot understand a damn thing! Checksum error was up. We could go into the BIOS but everything was different. The keyboard types different letters.
CPU could handle it okay, but the rest of the system was breaking down. Gotta cool the WHOLE thing, or else your system is only as fast as your slowest link.
So, for MISSION: SUBMERSIBLE 3, I'd like to see them try immersing the ENTIRE RIG in LN, with good-sized heat sinks on the CPU, video card... everywhere and THEN see how it worked. The major concern I'd have would be they migh be encountering a race condition between components that would never arise at conventional speeds.
Offtopic, but here's an idea of what they could have done with the LN when they were done with THAT experiment. (I attended a party in college where we actually DID this. IIRC, It was some time around 1979 or 1980.)
Use the excess LN to freeze some vodka in ice cube trays! The vodka will easily freeze at those temps... voila! VodCubes! Take a couple VodCubes, drop 'em in a cup of collins mixer, wait for the VodCubes to stop dancing around on the comparitively hot collins mixer, and enjoy your vodka collins! Looking back, I wish we had tried it with orange juice -- could have called it a frozen screwdriver!
One of the challenges encountered with increasingly smaller data storage media is the possible damage caused by stray radiation... at this scale, one alpha particle could ruin your whole database! (or maybe one x-ray, or static electric shock, etc.)
Although it is interesting to see just how much information could be encoded in a single electron, one would need some redundant electrons in other atoms to also encode the same information. (Think:RAQE a Redundant Array of Quantum Electrons.)
Further, if we can step away from the concept of trying to encode EVERYTHING in just ONE electron, and take a look at how much information can easily and reliably be encoded in one electron (pulls a number out of his hat) say 4 bits, and one has (pulling another number out of his hat), say 10 electrons for redundancy, that's still one heck of a dense recording medium! Several terabytes of data could be stored in a very small space!
How small a space? There's the unanswered question of just how close together these can be packed and uniquely targeted by the laser. (Or lasers, to speed reading/writing to the electrons.) I see issues with just trying to keep the atoms in a fixed location, how finely focused the laser beams can be adjusted, etc.
Still, this sure holds promise for one incredibly dense storage medium for all my MP3s!
I'm a former owner of an Ohio Scientific Inc. Challenger 4P. [1] Didn't see it in this article's history, so went looking for some links and found a treasure trove of computer history on a site in New Zealand. Check out this query on Google where you can try and reach the
original site
(I kept getting timeout errors) or access the cached pages on Google.
[1] When I first showed this computer to my girlfriend at the time, she saw the big letters "OSI" on the front of it, and her mouth just dropped open and her eyes got as big as they could be. I could tell she was VERY IMPRESSED. This was around 1982, and since very few people had personal computers, then, I understood her amazement. That is, until she explained that she thought I was involved with the ultra-secret government agency "Office of Scientific Intelligence" which was featured on the then-popular TV show "The Six-Million Dollar Man"!
Good point, but I think it's even worse than just that.
web bugs - web sites use these to track customers. It's difficult enough to ferret them out in the first place, in English, let alone when the 1X1.gif is located on some site whose name is indecipherable to an English-reading person.
Yes, maybe the DNS can resolve it, and the internet infrastructure will sort things out correctly, but it sure seems to me that the average user is going to be even more impeded in their efforts to protect their privacy.
And THAT's just in web sites and HTML e-mail, what about Microsoft Word Documents That "Phone Home", and as others pointed out in that thread, the same can be done with Excel, and other apps, too?
I'm not against the idea of this internationalizing (I18Ning?), but I sure do hope that a long, hard look is taken at these potential, non-technical pitfalls that pertain to people's perceptions and abilities, and what steps can reasonably be taken to protect users.
Maybe I'm missing something here, and I am NOT a nuclear physicist, but I don't see any way that this can be a sustainable source of energy. From the article:
"In order to get a decent yield, the energy of the muonic tritium must be kept very low, about 1 electronvolt (eV), as it approaches the deuterium nuclei."
"The researchers fired their beam of 1 eV muonic tritium at concentrated deuterium condensed onto gold foil, and chilled the whole set-up to 3 kelvin."
So you need an incredibly cold environment for this to work, right? But if the goal is to PRODUCE energy out of all this, as soon as it starts to really produce energy, the whole thing gets too warm to continue the fusion!?! If anything, wouldn't it take even more energy to power the equipment to keep things cool enough to sustain the fusion?
The only possibility I can imagine is that this fusion results in an increase in potential energy in the fused particles and that there may be a way to physically transport them someplace else where they can release the potential energy as kinetic energy. (Something along the lines of a heat pump?)
Could someone with a better understanding of nuclear physics please shed some light on this?
Adding ALT tags is one thing, but how do you support ALT tags for multiple languages? That would imply multiple character sets, too.
My guess is they have parallel pages using different character sets and languages? (I've not yet had a chance to look at the site, so please don't flame me if I've missed something obvious.)
Past experience with multinational sites, I've had to select a language before entering, and then I'd see appropriate text for that language on the site. I'd expect to see something similar here.
Thanks for the info! I'm relatively new to/. and am still learning (sometimes the hard way) what constitutes "helpful" information versus 'redundant" and the like. I expect I'll keep making mistakes, but I *do* try and learn from them!
Keep getting timeout errors, but pings show the server to still be there and responding. (Then again, it's about oh-dark-30 over there right now, so maybe that has something to do with it.)
I also tried
www.google.com but I could not find this article there, either.
Besides being able to demonstrate molasses flowing uphill:) what practical applications come to mind for this?
Off the top of my head, how about a new way to keep your car windshield clear from rain? Have a reservoir of highly-paramagnetic fluid which is continually fed through fine nozzles at the base of the windshield. Imbed microfine horizontal wires in the windshield. Pulse currents through the wires in a sweeping pattern up the windshield. Have a gutter at the top and recover the fluid. Filter out the water (osmotic filter?) and reuse the fluid.
Hmmm, on second thought, migh this result in non-uniform depths of fluid on the windshield causing a fun-house mirror effect? In that case, create this on a smaller scale with a high-powered light shining through it and a computer-controlled sequencer to vary the strength and timing of the fields -- voila! Feed your favorite audio stream into the sequencer and you've got the latest in high-tech lightshow equipment for your next party!;-)
Could it be that the powers that be at Timpanogas Research Group are looking for a possible buyout by IBM, too?
And following the link for this ("Open-Source Netware-Aware OS Under Consturction[sic]") article there is this:
Novell sued TRG in a Utah federal court three years ago in a bid to prevent the company from developing clustering software for tying groups of NetWare servers together.
IBM has considerable experience with lawyers and the cash to pay them. Could it be an attempt to find backing and protection at the same time?
First off, I've easily had well over 100 interviews in my career and have worked at over 15 different companies. In all that time I was never asked to sign a NDA BEFORE the interview. But, I HAVE been required to sign an NDA before starting any of these positions.
In several of the interviews, I could clearly see that information was being provided to me that was NOT common knowledge. I appreciated their candor, and as a professional, recognized and respected their intellectual property.
(Aside: I'm continually amazed at the information that is regularly revealed in help wanted ads. Plenty enough for a knowledegable person to discern changes in corporate direction.)
What could be their motivation for the pre-interview NDA?
Management can ASK the interviewers to not reveal proprietary information, but how many of us REALLY know what is generally known and what is not? It's all too easy for something to slip out. My experience has been that the worker-bees are much more free with proprietary info than are those in management (PHBs notwithstanding). I'm not saying this is so in all cases; just that this has been MY experience.
What I suspect may be a source of this, though, is paranoia about corporate espionage. Corporate fear.
Imagine this: Company A desires some REAL information on what its main competitor, Company B, is doing. So, it sends either one of its employees, or hires out some company to send someone, to an interview at Company B.
Picks their brains. Asks leading questions. Gains insider knowledge. And parrots it back to Company A, for a lucrative fee.
With venture capital funds investing vast sums in new companies, what's a, say, $50K payoff for some insider info, when they just kicked in $50 million?
I find such clandestine practices abhorent and would have nothing to do with such a scheme if I were approached. But, I am not so naive to think such things do not happen. This just gives the targetted company some legal recourse should they fall prey to such a maneuver. CYA and all that.
Sad. Whatever happened to professionalism, respect, and honesty?
The yahoo article has numerous references to information that was divulged in Transmeta's S-1 filing. If you want to look for yourself, you can find it here.
the problem with that is that a lot of these devices that use dialup aren't actually connecting to the internet
Agreed. Hence my caveat in the parent post:
Caveat: It might require some salesmanship to persuade the appliance vendors that there are cost-effective alternatives to purchasing and maintaining racks of modems for their clients to dial into; that these could be bypassed with a high-speed link to the ethernet direct to their routers.
They're trying to make a profit. The current perception is that they can afford to build up racks of modems, have the devices dial into them, and they can charge a fee large enough to recoup the expenses and still make a profit.
What I'm proposing is that they could omit the expense of the modem banks by taking a direct connection from the internet, STILL charge a monthly subscription (although possibly a smaller charge), and still make a profit that way while gaining mind-share in the process.
So, some salesmanship WOULD be required.
NOTE: Though I do have some telephony experience, it's on the software (application) side; these thoughts are admittedly back-of-the-envelope ideas and I certainly expect there to be some issues with this proposal.
In essence, this is an attempt to see if there is some way to develop an alternate path from the appliance to the vendor's servers, which CAN make use of an existing internet connection. I know that I, for one, would be willing to pay a small monthly fee to use this kind of a service. From the original poster's comments, I can see I am not alone. So my questions are these:
Is this feasible, technically?
How COULD this be done?
What accomodations, if any, would be required by the appliance vendor?
How can this be profitable to the appliance vendor?
A simple, 4-port 10-Base-T hub is really inexpensive; this simple replace the non-uplink-port with modem ports, so I would expect these could be very inexpensively maufactured.
Supply and demand. Catch-22. There is a huge potential market where phone lines exist. By comparison, the number of cable modem or DSL customers is but a tiny fraction of that, now.
So, from a business perspective, where do you put your money when designing and manufacturing a product? Where the biggest market exists. Sure, they COULD add the hardware for an ethernet connection, but that costs money, and the expense would have to be paid by the consumer. A modem-only device would be less expensive to manufacture than a dual-mode model. (An ethernet-only model would have too small a market, now, to even consider.)
Herein lies an opportunity. From the start, I'll grant you that the customer would lose out on the high-speed of a cable modem/DSL connection, but it would at least free up their phone line. (As these devices become increasingly popular, I could readily imagine a dozen or so devices each trying to grab a phone-line connection.)
How about a box that interfaces with the analog modem signal on the internet appliance side (e.g. RJ11), and interfaces with the ethernet LAN (RJ-45) on the other side?
You could at least be assured of getting a solid 56K connection.
It would free up your phone line, assuming you HAD a land line.
As the number of internet appliances grows and the number of high-speed internet connections grows, the number of potential sales would grow DRAMATICALLY.
Heck, I'd bet a single DSP could easily handle the task!
What would YOU be willing to pay for such a device?
Caveat: It might require some salesmanship to persuade the appliance vendors that there are cost-effective alternatives to purchasing and maintaining racks of modems for their clients to dial into; that these could be bypassed with a high-speed link to the ethernet direct to their routers.
Also, it is a market that would eventually disappear as high-speed access becomes pervasive and the vendors create products with the ethernet port built-in, but in the interim, I suspect a small fortune could be made.
Hmmm, anyone got $100 million to invest? (Paraphrasing an old saw: Question: How do you make a small fortune on the internet? Answer: Start with a large fortune? <grin>)
From the article: These trials will not involve lasers with sufficient power to affect the debris, as there are concerns that such high power devices might contravene the international weapons treaty banning laser weapons in space.
If a LASER is prohibited, is there some OTHER means to deflect the debris?
I mean, have you ever seen what happens to tinfoil in a microwave? <grin>
According to modeling by Eastlund on supercomputers at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, about 100 million watts of energy added to the descending air column could disrupt a downdraft that otherwise might spawn a tornado.
Notwithstanding the potentially beneficial aspect of preventing a tornado from spawning, I get the heebie geebies thinking of the potential loss of life when that 100 megawatts of microwaves is more tightly focused and used as a weapon to cook all the inhabitants of a city.
Same problems if they tried to use lasers, instead.
Seems to me that the desire to use such a device rises with the population of the region that the tornado approaches. What are the risks to people who are in the path of those microwaves? Cancer? Genetic mutation? Who is going to make the assessment of what amount of injury to people via microwaves is acceptable? I'd like to see much more work invested in the sociological implications of such a device before much more work goes towards its implications. Could it be that this is a solution whose price we cannot afford?
With the power to create comes the power to destroy.
Slashdot Mirror
I HIGHLY recommend checking out the FAQ for the usenet group: comp.software.testing . It can be found at: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/soft war e-eng/testing-faq/ or at: http://www.cigital.com/c.s.t.faq.html
There's MUCH MORE to automated testing that just recording and playing back keyboard/mouse input.
Here are some of the issues that need to be dealt with:
I could go on and on, but this hopefully gives a hint to the complexity and difficulty in automated testing. (And, yes, I've stumbled upon ALL of these myself at one time or another.)
It has an optional RF controller (Google Mirror) that they claim permits multiple Descartes to communicate with each other.
If the powers of PBASIC are too limited, why not have the robot transmit its sensor readings to, and receive its commands from, another full-sized PC with an RF module attached to it. Basically (no pun intended) move the computing power over to a platform that can readily support it. Then, you can program in whatever language you like, with however much computing power you desire.
Caveat: I don't know if this particular RF controller is supposed to be able to be connected to a PC. I'm more of a software dude, so I'd appreciate any input from someone who is more hardware-savy. (Hmmm, maybe even a wireless ethernet or bluetooth transceiver? Don't know about power consumption, size, weight.)
I've looked over the site, but don't recall seeing any mention of just how LOUD this thing would be. If I understand correctly, he's got 4 LARGE voice coils that are rapidly firing in order to get the objects on the surface to move.
This reminds me of the old vibrating surface football game my folks got me when I was a kid. It was pretty noisy then. Hey! Imagine putting appropriate markings on this new surface. With a little creative programming (and, say, bluetooth), we could set up football scrimmages where we nerds would always WIN!
Does this mean someone in any of the signatory countries can sue the NSA for hacking into communications? Ex-NSA Analyst Warns Of NSA Security Backdoors
IANAOC. Seems they had success when everything was uniformly cooled with the Flourinert and dry ice. Problems arose when they used the Liquid Nitrogen on JUST the processor. So, the CPU could go faster than the support chips which were not similarly cooled? Maybe the video card, though now running with the same bus speed as the LN-cooled CPU could not operate at those speeds without also being cooled to LN temps. They mentioned:
CPU could handle it okay, but the rest of the system was breaking down. Gotta cool the WHOLE thing, or else your system is only as fast as your slowest link.
So, for MISSION: SUBMERSIBLE 3, I'd like to see them try immersing the ENTIRE RIG in LN, with good-sized heat sinks on the CPU, video card... everywhere and THEN see how it worked. The major concern I'd have would be they migh be encountering a race condition between components that would never arise at conventional speeds.
Offtopic, but here's an idea of what they could have done with the LN when they were done with THAT experiment. (I attended a party in college where we actually DID this. IIRC, It was some time around 1979 or 1980.) Use the excess LN to freeze some vodka in ice cube trays! The vodka will easily freeze at those temps... voila! VodCubes! Take a couple VodCubes, drop 'em in a cup of collins mixer, wait for the VodCubes to stop dancing around on the comparitively hot collins mixer, and enjoy your vodka collins! Looking back, I wish we had tried it with orange juice -- could have called it a frozen screwdriver!
One of the challenges encountered with increasingly smaller data storage media is the possible damage caused by stray radiation... at this scale, one alpha particle could ruin your whole database! (or maybe one x-ray, or static electric shock, etc.)
Although it is interesting to see just how much information could be encoded in a single electron, one would need some redundant electrons in other atoms to also encode the same information. (Think:RAQE a Redundant Array of Quantum Electrons.)
Further, if we can step away from the concept of trying to encode EVERYTHING in just ONE electron, and take a look at how much information can easily and reliably be encoded in one electron (pulls a number out of his hat) say 4 bits, and one has (pulling another number out of his hat), say 10 electrons for redundancy, that's still one heck of a dense recording medium! Several terabytes of data could be stored in a very small space!
How small a space? There's the unanswered question of just how close together these can be packed and uniquely targeted by the laser. (Or lasers, to speed reading/writing to the electrons.) I see issues with just trying to keep the atoms in a fixed location, how finely focused the laser beams can be adjusted, etc.
Still, this sure holds promise for one incredibly dense storage medium for all my MP3s!
"The Norm" is that guy who drank lots of beer on "Cheers"!
Makes you kind of wonder about this recent /. article (He says with tongue in cheek):
Western Union Cracked, Credit Cards Stolen
(With sincere apologies to anyone who actually DID have their Credit Card info stolen -- my heart goes out to you.)
From the article:
The International Astronomical Union has a page providing information on this: here.
I'm a former owner of an Ohio Scientific Inc. Challenger 4P. [1] Didn't see it in this article's history, so went looking for some links and found a treasure trove of computer history on a site in New Zealand. Check out this query on Google where you can try and reach the original site (I kept getting timeout errors) or access the cached pages on Google.
[1] When I first showed this computer to my girlfriend at the time, she saw the big letters "OSI" on the front of it, and her mouth just dropped open and her eyes got as big as they could be. I could tell she was VERY IMPRESSED. This was around 1982, and since very few people had personal computers, then, I understood her amazement. That is, until she explained that she thought I was involved with the ultra-secret government agency "Office of Scientific Intelligence" which was featured on the then-popular TV show "The Six-Million Dollar Man"!
Good point, but I think it's even worse than just that.
web bugs - web sites use these to track customers. It's difficult enough to ferret them out in the first place, in English, let alone when the 1X1 .gif is located on some site whose name is indecipherable to an English-reading person.
Yes, maybe the DNS can resolve it, and the internet infrastructure will sort things out correctly, but it sure seems to me that the average user is going to be even more impeded in their efforts to protect their privacy.
And THAT's just in web sites and HTML e-mail, what about Microsoft Word Documents That "Phone Home" , and as others pointed out in that thread, the same can be done with Excel, and other apps, too?
I'm not against the idea of this internationalizing (I18Ning?), but I sure do hope that a long, hard look is taken at these potential, non-technical pitfalls that pertain to people's perceptions and abilities, and what steps can reasonably be taken to protect users.
Maybe I'm missing something here, and I am NOT a nuclear physicist, but I don't see any way that this can be a sustainable source of energy. From the article:
So you need an incredibly cold environment for this to work, right? But if the goal is to PRODUCE energy out of all this, as soon as it starts to really produce energy, the whole thing gets too warm to continue the fusion!?! If anything, wouldn't it take even more energy to power the equipment to keep things cool enough to sustain the fusion?
The only possibility I can imagine is that this fusion results in an increase in potential energy in the fused particles and that there may be a way to physically transport them someplace else where they can release the potential energy as kinetic energy. (Something along the lines of a heat pump?)
Could someone with a better understanding of nuclear physics please shed some light on this?
Adding ALT tags is one thing, but how do you support ALT tags for multiple languages? That would imply multiple character sets, too.
My guess is they have parallel pages using different character sets and languages? (I've not yet had a chance to look at the site, so please don't flame me if I've missed something obvious.)
Past experience with multinational sites, I've had to select a language before entering, and then I'd see appropriate text for that language on the site. I'd expect to see something similar here.
Thanks for the info! I'm relatively new to /. and am still learning (sometimes the hard way) what constitutes "helpful" information versus 'redundant" and the like. I expect I'll keep making mistakes, but I *do* try and learn from them!
Keep getting timeout errors, but pings show the server to still be there and responding. (Then again, it's about oh-dark-30 over there right now, so maybe that has something to do with it.)
I also tried www.google.com but I could not find this article there, either.
Besides being able to demonstrate molasses flowing uphill :) what practical applications come to mind for this?
Off the top of my head, how about a new way to keep your car windshield clear from rain? Have a reservoir of highly-paramagnetic fluid which is continually fed through fine nozzles at the base of the windshield. Imbed microfine horizontal wires in the windshield. Pulse currents through the wires in a sweeping pattern up the windshield. Have a gutter at the top and recover the fluid. Filter out the water (osmotic filter?) and reuse the fluid.
Hmmm, on second thought, migh this result in non-uniform depths of fluid on the windshield causing a fun-house mirror effect? In that case, create this on a smaller scale with a high-powered light shining through it and a computer-controlled sequencer to vary the strength and timing of the fields -- voila! Feed your favorite audio stream into the sequencer and you've got the latest in high-tech lightshow equipment for your next party! ;-)
I'm curious what other /.'ers can come up with.
(anyone know the URL?)
Give this URL a try: http://www.mindpixel.com
A recent article on /. discussed:
IBM Takeover Of Novell?
Could it be that the powers that be at Timpanogas Research Group are looking for a possible buyout by IBM, too?
And following the link for this ("Open-Source Netware-Aware OS Under Consturction[sic]") article there is this:
IBM has considerable experience with lawyers and the cash to pay them. Could it be an attempt to find backing and protection at the same time?
First off, I've easily had well over 100 interviews in my career and have worked at over 15 different companies. In all that time I was never asked to sign a NDA BEFORE the interview. But, I HAVE been required to sign an NDA before starting any of these positions.
In several of the interviews, I could clearly see that information was being provided to me that was NOT common knowledge. I appreciated their candor, and as a professional, recognized and respected their intellectual property.
(Aside: I'm continually amazed at the information that is regularly revealed in help wanted ads. Plenty enough for a knowledegable person to discern changes in corporate direction.)
What could be their motivation for the pre-interview NDA?
Management can ASK the interviewers to not reveal proprietary information, but how many of us REALLY know what is generally known and what is not? It's all too easy for something to slip out. My experience has been that the worker-bees are much more free with proprietary info than are those in management (PHBs notwithstanding). I'm not saying this is so in all cases; just that this has been MY experience.
What I suspect may be a source of this, though, is paranoia about corporate espionage. Corporate fear.
Imagine this: Company A desires some REAL information on what its main competitor, Company B, is doing. So, it sends either one of its employees, or hires out some company to send someone, to an interview at Company B. Picks their brains. Asks leading questions. Gains insider knowledge. And parrots it back to Company A, for a lucrative fee.
With venture capital funds investing vast sums in new companies, what's a, say, $50K payoff for some insider info, when they just kicked in $50 million?
I find such clandestine practices abhorent and would have nothing to do with such a scheme if I were approached. But, I am not so naive to think such things do not happen. This just gives the targetted company some legal recourse should they fall prey to such a maneuver. CYA and all that.
Sad. Whatever happened to professionalism, respect, and honesty?
The yahoo article has numerous references to information that was divulged in Transmeta's S-1 filing. If you want to look for yourself, you can find it here.
Agreed. Hence my caveat in the parent post:
They're trying to make a profit. The current perception is that they can afford to build up racks of modems, have the devices dial into them, and they can charge a fee large enough to recoup the expenses and still make a profit.
What I'm proposing is that they could omit the expense of the modem banks by taking a direct connection from the internet, STILL charge a monthly subscription (although possibly a smaller charge), and still make a profit that way while gaining mind-share in the process.
So, some salesmanship WOULD be required.
NOTE: Though I do have some telephony experience, it's on the software (application) side; these thoughts are admittedly back-of-the-envelope ideas and I certainly expect there to be some issues with this proposal.
In essence, this is an attempt to see if there is some way to develop an alternate path from the appliance to the vendor's servers, which CAN make use of an existing internet connection. I know that I, for one, would be willing to pay a small monthly fee to use this kind of a service. From the original poster's comments, I can see I am not alone. So my questions are these:
A simple, 4-port 10-Base-T hub is really inexpensive; this simple replace the non-uplink-port with modem ports, so I would expect these could be very inexpensively maufactured.
Supply and demand. Catch-22. There is a huge potential market where phone lines exist. By comparison, the number of cable modem or DSL customers is but a tiny fraction of that, now.
So, from a business perspective, where do you put your money when designing and manufacturing a product? Where the biggest market exists. Sure, they COULD add the hardware for an ethernet connection, but that costs money, and the expense would have to be paid by the consumer. A modem-only device would be less expensive to manufacture than a dual-mode model. (An ethernet-only model would have too small a market, now, to even consider.)
Herein lies an opportunity. From the start, I'll grant you that the customer would lose out on the high-speed of a cable modem/DSL connection, but it would at least free up their phone line. (As these devices become increasingly popular, I could readily imagine a dozen or so devices each trying to grab a phone-line connection.)
How about a box that interfaces with the analog modem signal on the internet appliance side (e.g. RJ11), and interfaces with the ethernet LAN (RJ-45) on the other side?
What would YOU be willing to pay for such a device?
Caveat: It might require some salesmanship to persuade the appliance vendors that there are cost-effective alternatives to purchasing and maintaining racks of modems for their clients to dial into; that these could be bypassed with a high-speed link to the ethernet direct to their routers.
Also, it is a market that would eventually disappear as high-speed access becomes pervasive and the vendors create products with the ethernet port built-in, but in the interim, I suspect a small fortune could be made.
Hmmm, anyone got $100 million to invest? (Paraphrasing an old saw: Question: How do you make a small fortune on the internet? Answer: Start with a large fortune? <grin>)
From the article: These trials will not involve lasers with sufficient power to affect the debris, as there are concerns that such high power devices might contravene the international weapons treaty banning laser weapons in space.
If a LASER is prohibited, is there some OTHER means to deflect the debris?
I mean, have you ever seen what happens to tinfoil in a microwave? <grin>
From the article:
According to modeling by Eastlund on supercomputers at the University of Oklahoma's Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms, about 100 million watts of energy added to the descending air column could disrupt a downdraft that otherwise might spawn a tornado.
Notwithstanding the potentially beneficial aspect of preventing a tornado from spawning, I get the heebie geebies thinking of the potential loss of life when that 100 megawatts of microwaves is more tightly focused and used as a weapon to cook all the inhabitants of a city. Same problems if they tried to use lasers, instead.
Seems to me that the desire to use such a device rises with the population of the region that the tornado approaches. What are the risks to people who are in the path of those microwaves? Cancer? Genetic mutation? Who is going to make the assessment of what amount of injury to people via microwaves is acceptable? I'd like to see much more work invested in the sociological implications of such a device before much more work goes towards its implications. Could it be that this is a solution whose price we cannot afford?
With the power to create comes the power to destroy.
I realize this is a change to *hardware*, but, to use programming terms, aren't they just going from:
int array[4095];
to:
malloc() / free()
The cache which is not currently malloc'ed can then be powered down.