For the same reason that governments can regulate that all new vehicles must have seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. These force car manufactureres to design cars a certain way.
These car building regulations do nothing to protect anyone's rights or property. The only life they protect is my own, and I should be allowed to choose if I want airbags and seatbelts.
Besides, the government in the situation reported isn't making cookies illegal. They are making the non-consenting use of cookies illegal. And while I'm sure that privacy is partially the cause, security is also partially the cause. If these cookies are going to store your bank account number, and your on a public or multiple user computer, you really should be told what info is being stored.
And before you say "well if you use a public terminal you should know these things", remember that many people who use public terminals are not computer savvy.
This has been going on for years, and it's only getting worse.
It is the apparent goal of the United State to have our laws apply to every person on the planet. In a few more decades, we'll start issuing traffic tickets to every driver in Europe that drives on the left side of the road in direct violation of U.S. law.
Plus the RFID data will very likely only include the SKU, sure you CAN store more information, but that costs money. What would a pocket full of: 9232-2325, 3983-7343,0023-7373 do for you?
The inference I drew from your first comment was that you expected the ability to sit in the mall and "listen" to the RFIDs emitting from the bags of people walking by (or something like this).
The "just listening" scenereo I outlined involves covertly planting, and possibly later recovering a reciever, near an existing legitimate RFID transiever . This is more like eves dropping than just listening in my view. Sort of like the difference between listening to people chat at the fountain during lumch vs using a parabolic microphone and a high gain amp. Even in the example I gave, recieving the RFID code would require the clandestine device to be placed probably within inches of the transmitter. Just think how close together cash registers are to each other. You have to guarantee that register #1 can not "hear" register #2's RFID transmissions. To do that the transmission range out of the RFID tags would need to be about one or two feet max.
In any event, simply collecting and possibly retransmitting the RFID codes will not likely wreak the chaos you desire. The clerk will simply have to manually enter the SKU or perhaps fall back to a scannable barcode label. You could cause more chaos and confusion if you spend time in a store randomly moving merhandise from where they store places it to some random location. Moving two tubes of toothpaste to hide them behind the stereo display, putting small socks inside pants pockets on the racks. It's fun for the whole family.
Of course, you can't just "listen" for RFID codes to be broadcast. You have to actively transmit energy at them in order for the tags to emit the code. Once you do that you'll have to be within about 3 feet of the tag to recieve the code. The chips contain no power source themselves.
The only place in a store you could routinely recieve tag codes without your own transmitter would be near the checkout registers or perhaps the exit scanners.
I guess a small reciever run by 9V battery could be double-stick taped to a shelf near the register and retieved later so you could look over the data.
But even if the airlines decide that cell phones don't interfere with aircraft operation under (b)(5), the operation of a cell phone aboard any aircraft would still be prohibited by FCC rules.
Neither an air carrier nor the FAA have the ability to override the FCC's rules on the matter.
The restriction against using cell phones aboard aircraft is not an FAA rule, it's an FCC rule. When a cell phone was used at ground level or in a building there was no problem, but using a phone at 6 miles up was causing problems with the tremendous range of transmission.
From that altitude the phones were bypassing the protocols that keep the phone talking to only one tower at a time and was causing connection problems for both the user of the phone on the plane, and others on remote cell phones on the ground.
Perhaps the cell phone industry has solved these issues with the conversion to digital, I don't know for sure. But unless these problems have been solved the FCC is unlikely to allow cell phone use from aircraft, baloons or any other "high altitude" craft.
What resources involved? This was done apparenty with only one or two people diddling around on the internet and probably a database. Mapping systems, GIS systems, routing/interlinking systems etc are all available as freeware, commercial software or there are enough books that you could write your own programs in a short period.
The problem with your idea of denying information to the enemy in this case would require classifying every telephone pole, phone book, and building permit in existence now and in the past for the entire USA.
The only reasonable way to defeat the "terrorist enemy" is for the US to learn to live in harmony with the other 95% of the world's population, thus not giving them a reason to hate us with such fervor.
"Anti-American sentiment" in the rest of the world will (like so many other blights on the landscape) breed itself to critical mass. On its current political course the US will topple just like every other "dominant" country has done throughout history. If you truely believe that majoprity rules, then we're screwed.
1. More lasting than what? The AAC files you get can be burned to CD(s), put on multiple hard disks, removable storage, put on a remote file server, printed out on paper, copied out to open-reel tape, etc. How much more "lasting" can you get? 2 & 3. when you purchase a CD you don't get to choose the encoding format. You have no choice. Why should this be any different?
You forgot to add:
What if I prefer to build my own hall suited to my ear, and select and conduct my own musicians to suit my taste in instumentation and style? They've taken that away from me with these CDs.
Statically linked means that the required QT calls are built in to the application instead of dynamically loading Qt from the system installation (it there was one).
It's like saying "filled baloon, no blowing required", the blowing is included already so you don't need to do it.
Good, the hype machine cna stop now
on
SARS Contained
·
· Score: 1
Look: SARS is less contaigous that influenza. It was contracted by fewer people and had killed a lot fewer people than the flu does every year.
WHY has sars been the lead story for so many months when Influenza has a much more damaging impact on the world health every year than this infection called SARS?
No, the indispensible tool you are wanting there is gaffer's tape. Gaffer's tape tends to be black or at least matt finish so it doesn't reflect light, it's rough so you don't slip on it when it's on the floor; the glue is much less likely to leave a residue when you remove the tape, gaffer's tape tends to be easier to tear from the roll without a cutting impliment, and gaffer's tape is more tolerant of high temperatures (such as under hot stage lights).
While sold in the same width as standard duct tape and it also has strings in it, gaffer's tape is a different beast from duct tape.
I don't recall that I've ever owned or used a roll of duct tape. The stuff is a cludge, and there's almost always a better way to do something: glue, rope, wire, nails, rivets. I just don't go for the cludgy/temporary fix; I'd rather take a few extra minutes and do it right. Duct tape is sticky, leaves a resudue, fails in high heat, deteriorates quickly and smells funky.
I still don't understand why it's called "duct tape" when ducting is the one thing you DON'T want to use it for.
1 License of Mac OS X: $129, 5 licenses of Mac OSX: $199, or $40 per seat!
Compare $200 for 5 systems to the price of 5 XP Home edition licenses ($1,000)
Granted the $200 price is only valid for home use, but there still is no equivilant from MS. Note, these are not CALs for file sharing, Apple is authorizing you to use OSX on 5 discreet computers for that price.
It's becoming more and more common for a family to have two or more computers in the home, and Apple's pricing is far friendlier to them that Microsoft's
Cat 6 is more expensive than Cat5 initially. Installing Cat6 now is cheaper than installing Cat5 now and re-pulling Cat6 later if you need it. It's a matter of looking at the "big picture".
By using Cat6 you are gambling that it will not be bypassed, and that Cat7 will not be required for the next big Ethernet speedup.
One reason is that with Direct Connect, you can talk to a large group of people at once. You could have a group for all your "good friends", another group for the other people on your football team. I think with the newer phones you can create these group lists on the phone, so you could have a "friends in the mall" group. One touch of the "PTT" button and you're talking to them all.
I've been using Direct Connect on my i1000+ for I think 5 years now, it's cheap, easy and flexible.
...they can do 640x480 but most connections have a hard time uploading tha...t
When you quadruple the number of pixels in an image you don't quadruple the compressed file size when you use the same image and compression scheme. There is not a linear relationship from input size to output size.
The 640x480 image will capture more detail in the image, but will only show a nominal increasae in compressed size. IF you have a scanner you can try this yourself. Scan a photo at 800dpi and 200dpi then compress them with the same JPEG settings. You might be surprised how close the resulting file sizes are to each other, despite the tremendous differences between the source file sizes.
No it won't. If iChat doesn't detect at least a 600mHz CPU it will simply not allow you to use video. It says "Video chat is not supported" or something like that. I'm running a 375MmHz G3 and can't find any way to get even crappy video.
So if I'm arrested at night and the police officer actively rediate energy at me with a flashlight, and interpet the reflected energy, then that's illegal search? This doesn't seem far removed.
Not to belittle this project at all, I think it's an interesting experiment, but the comment " Its main goal is now to see how far it's possible to go with today's technologies on such a limited system from the early 80's" struck me as a little uneducated. Wasn't it the Tandy CoCo (released in the early 80s) that allowed you to run OS-9 in 16KB of RAM on a.6mHz (that's just 600kHz) 8bit 6809 CPI? OS-9 was a fully modular, multi-tasking, multi-user, real-time OS. There was a curses type windowing system for text terminals that allowed virtual consoles of sorts, and multiple "windows" on the same screen. With a little more RAM, there was a graphical shell for OS-9 (vidram was system RAM in those days). Given that OS-9 could be made to run in a 4KB footprint, I'm not too shocked that similar features could be provided on a game console from the same time.
I think what most of today's new geeks/coders foreget is just how much code density you can pack in to a given amount of space when you code things in assembly language. No overhead or bloat from compilers and event handlers and object loaders. If you re-wrote any of the modern OSes in native assembly I think you'd be simply astonished with the speed and responsiveness.
I don't recall Steve or anyone else of concequence stating that these G5 systems are the first desktop 64bit machines. They HAVE stated that they are the first 64bit personal computers. Desktop != Personal.
Desktop is a size/form factor description Persona is a usability/functionality description
Most people would not want to take home a Sun or HP 64bit Unix worksation and use it for email and light web browsing. They'd look at CDE and stare blankly. The machine would become a nice space heater and perhaps nightlight. The G5 is a 64bit Unix workstation class desktop that is configured hardware and software wise to fit in to your personal life.
The author claims the test is biased mostly because: 1. On x86 hyperthreading was disabled 2. on x86 SSE was disabled 3. on PPC a custom malloc was used 4. on PPC a different set of optimizations were used
1. I admit is seems odd that this was disabled. I think it's effect would be little, but it should be turned on 2. So was the PPC's AltiVec. I recall that SPEC wants FP and INT performance from the ALU sections, not SIMD 3. And I'm sure that there are many "tweaks" for x86 that are transparent within the GCC 3.3 code generators 4. Again, each CPU has different optimizations, either allow them all or disable them all - on both platforms, command line switched or embedded
What I think would be interesting for Apple to do to help settle all this (You know, spread around some of that $4B+ they have lying around): Purchase two of the fastest model of 1st tier systems they can get that run on x86. Using four different testing labs, send one machine to each lab (2 x86, 2 G5). Instruct each lab to perform any software/configuration optimizations they feel necessary to get the most performance out of the machine. Then they run a standardized set of benchmarks. They each fully document the changes they've made and the results. Apple (or perhaps a 5th lab) colates the data and produces a final result.
Or some open source minded person with some extra bandwidth(ha) could create a web site where PCers and Macers could post their own results from the benchmarks. With sufficient results posted, the "noise" would get filtered out and the results would become statistically useful.
Slashdot Mirror
For the same reason that governments can regulate that all new vehicles must have seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. These force car manufactureres to design cars a certain way.
These car building regulations do nothing to protect anyone's rights or property. The only life they protect is my own, and I should be allowed to choose if I want airbags and seatbelts.
Besides, the government in the situation reported isn't making cookies illegal. They are making the non-consenting use of cookies illegal. And while I'm sure that privacy is partially the cause, security is also partially the cause. If these cookies are going to store your bank account number, and your on a public or multiple user computer, you really should be told what info is being stored.
And before you say "well if you use a public terminal you should know these things", remember that many people who use public terminals are not computer savvy.
This has been going on for years, and it's only getting worse.
It is the apparent goal of the United State to have our laws apply to every person on the planet. In a few more decades, we'll start issuing traffic tickets to every driver in Europe that drives on the left side of the road in direct violation of U.S. law.
No, it most likely wouldn't.
Plus the RFID data will very likely only include the SKU, sure you CAN store more information, but that costs money.
What would a pocket full of: 9232-2325, 3983-7343,0023-7373 do for you?
The inference I drew from your first comment was that you expected the ability to sit in the mall and "listen" to the RFIDs emitting from the bags of people walking by (or something like this).
The "just listening" scenereo I outlined involves covertly planting, and possibly later recovering a reciever, near an existing legitimate RFID transiever . This is more like eves dropping than just listening in my view. Sort of like the difference between listening to people chat at the fountain during lumch vs using a parabolic microphone and a high gain amp. Even in the example I gave, recieving the RFID code would require the clandestine device to be placed probably within inches of the transmitter. Just think how close together cash registers are to each other. You have to guarantee that register #1 can not "hear" register #2's RFID transmissions. To do that the transmission range out of the RFID tags would need to be about one or two feet max.
In any event, simply collecting and possibly retransmitting the RFID codes will not likely wreak the chaos you desire. The clerk will simply have to manually enter the SKU or perhaps fall back to a scannable barcode label.
You could cause more chaos and confusion if you spend time in a store randomly moving merhandise from where they store places it to some random location. Moving two tubes of toothpaste to hide them behind the stereo display, putting small socks inside pants pockets on the racks. It's fun for the whole family.
Of course, you can't just "listen" for RFID codes to be broadcast. You have to actively transmit energy at them in order for the tags to emit the code. Once you do that you'll have to be within about 3 feet of the tag to recieve the code. The chips contain no power source themselves.
The only place in a store you could routinely recieve tag codes without your own transmitter would be near the checkout registers or perhaps the exit scanners.
I guess a small reciever run by 9V battery could be double-stick taped to a shelf near the register and retieved later so you could look over the data.
But even if the airlines decide that cell phones don't interfere with aircraft operation under (b)(5), the operation of a cell phone aboard any aircraft would still be prohibited by FCC rules.
Neither an air carrier nor the FAA have the ability to override the FCC's rules on the matter.
The restriction against using cell phones aboard aircraft is not an FAA rule, it's an FCC rule. When a cell phone was used at ground level or in a building there was no problem, but using a phone at 6 miles up was causing problems with the tremendous range of transmission.
From that altitude the phones were bypassing the protocols that keep the phone talking to only one tower at a time and was causing connection problems for both the user of the phone on the plane, and others on remote cell phones on the ground.
Perhaps the cell phone industry has solved these issues with the conversion to digital, I don't know for sure. But unless these problems have been solved the FCC is unlikely to allow cell phone use from aircraft, baloons or any other "high altitude" craft.
What resources involved? This was done apparenty with only one or two people diddling around on the internet and probably a database.
Mapping systems, GIS systems, routing/interlinking systems etc are all available as freeware, commercial software or there are enough books that you could write your own programs in a short period.
The problem with your idea of denying information to the enemy in this case would require classifying every telephone pole, phone book, and building permit in existence now and in the past for the entire USA.
The only reasonable way to defeat the "terrorist enemy" is for the US to learn to live in harmony with the other 95% of the world's population, thus not giving them a reason to hate us with such fervor.
"Anti-American sentiment" in the rest of the world will (like so many other blights on the landscape) breed itself to critical mass. On its current political course the US will topple just like every other "dominant" country has done throughout history. If you truely believe that majoprity rules, then we're screwed.
1. More lasting than what? The AAC files you get can be burned to CD(s), put on multiple hard disks, removable storage, put on a remote file server, printed out on paper, copied out to open-reel tape, etc. How much more "lasting" can you get?
2 & 3. when you purchase a CD you don't get to choose the encoding format. You have no choice. Why should this be any different?
You forgot to add:
What if I prefer to build my own hall suited to my ear, and select and conduct my own musicians to suit my taste in instumentation and style? They've taken that away from me with these CDs.
It really seems you're whining just to whine.
Statically linked means that the required QT calls are built in to the application instead of dynamically loading Qt from the system installation (it there was one).
It's like saying "filled baloon, no blowing required", the blowing is included already so you don't need to do it.
Look: SARS is less contaigous that influenza. It was contracted by fewer people and had killed a lot fewer people than the flu does every year.
WHY has sars been the lead story for so many months when Influenza has a much more damaging impact on the world health every year than this infection called SARS?
No, the indispensible tool you are wanting there is gaffer's tape.
Gaffer's tape tends to be black or at least matt finish so it doesn't reflect light, it's rough so you don't slip on it when it's on the floor; the glue is much less likely to leave a residue when you remove the tape, gaffer's tape tends to be easier to tear from the roll without a cutting impliment, and gaffer's tape is more tolerant of high temperatures (such as under hot stage lights).
While sold in the same width as standard duct tape and it also has strings in it, gaffer's tape is a different beast from duct tape.
I don't recall that I've ever owned or used a roll of duct tape. The stuff is a cludge, and there's almost always a better way to do something: glue, rope, wire, nails, rivets.
I just don't go for the cludgy/temporary fix; I'd rather take a few extra minutes and do it right. Duct tape is sticky, leaves a resudue, fails in high heat, deteriorates quickly and smells funky.
I still don't understand why it's called "duct tape" when ducting is the one thing you DON'T want to use it for.
just for the record, it's not "whala", it's "voila". It's French and means loosely "there it is" or "all done".
"whala" means to whip somebody with lashes.
Pet peeve #27
You neglect to mention one thing:
1 License of Mac OS X: $129, 5 licenses of Mac OSX: $199, or $40 per seat!
Compare $200 for 5 systems to the price of 5 XP Home edition licenses ($1,000)
Granted the $200 price is only valid for home use, but there still is no equivilant from MS. Note, these are not CALs for file sharing, Apple is authorizing you to use OSX on 5 discreet computers for that price.
It's becoming more and more common for a family to have two or more computers in the home, and Apple's pricing is far friendlier to them that Microsoft's
Cat 6 is more expensive than Cat5 initially. Installing Cat6 now is cheaper than installing Cat5 now and re-pulling Cat6 later if you need it. It's a matter of looking at the "big picture".
By using Cat6 you are gambling that it will not be bypassed, and that Cat7 will not be required for the next big Ethernet speedup.
One reason is that with Direct Connect, you can talk to a large group of people at once. You could have a group for all your "good friends", another group for the other people on your football team.
I think with the newer phones you can create these group lists on the phone, so you could have a "friends in the mall" group.
One touch of the "PTT" button and you're talking to them all.
I've been using Direct Connect on my i1000+ for I think 5 years now, it's cheap, easy and flexible.
When you quadruple the number of pixels in an image you don't quadruple the compressed file size when you use the same image and compression scheme. There is not a linear relationship from input size to output size.
The 640x480 image will capture more detail in the image, but will only show a nominal increasae in compressed size. IF you have a scanner you can try this yourself. Scan a photo at 800dpi and 200dpi then compress them with the same JPEG settings. You might be surprised how close the resulting file sizes are to each other, despite the tremendous differences between the source file sizes.
No it won't. If iChat doesn't detect at least a 600mHz CPU it will simply not allow you to use video. It says "Video chat is not supported" or something like that.
I'm running a 375MmHz G3 and can't find any way to get even crappy video.
So if I'm arrested at night and the police officer actively rediate energy at me with a flashlight, and interpet the reflected energy, then that's illegal search?
This doesn't seem far removed.
Okay... But then you get in to the whole sexual orientation thing.
Are the gay men going to scan the men of the women? Are the gay women going to scan the men or the women?
Not to belittle this project at all, I think it's an interesting experiment, but the comment " Its main goal is now to see how far it's possible to go with today's technologies on such a limited system from the early 80's" struck me as a little uneducated. .6mHz (that's just 600kHz) 8bit 6809 CPI? OS-9 was a fully modular, multi-tasking, multi-user, real-time OS. There was a curses type windowing system for text terminals that allowed virtual consoles of sorts, and multiple "windows" on the same screen.
Wasn't it the Tandy CoCo (released in the early 80s) that allowed you to run OS-9 in 16KB of RAM on a
With a little more RAM, there was a graphical shell for OS-9 (vidram was system RAM in those days). Given that OS-9 could be made to run in a 4KB footprint, I'm not too shocked that similar features could be provided on a game console from the same time.
I think what most of today's new geeks/coders foreget is just how much code density you can pack in to a given amount of space when you code things in assembly language. No overhead or bloat from compilers and event handlers and object loaders. If you re-wrote any of the modern OSes in native assembly I think you'd be simply astonished with the speed and responsiveness.
Apple did.
Apple 2x2 G5: $3000
Dell (2x3.06 Xenon): $4000
Mac speed in "real world" application tests, about 2x as fast as the Dell.
Dell = $4000/work unit
Mac G5 = $1500/work unit
The Mac G5 is a much better value on cost on a price/performance basis.
Or were you thinking of something else?
I don't recall Steve or anyone else of concequence stating that these G5 systems are the first desktop 64bit machines. They HAVE stated that they are the first 64bit personal computers. Desktop != Personal.
Desktop is a size/form factor description
Persona is a usability/functionality description
Most people would not want to take home a Sun or HP 64bit Unix worksation and use it for email and light web browsing. They'd look at CDE and stare blankly. The machine would become a nice space heater and perhaps nightlight. The G5 is a 64bit Unix workstation class desktop that is configured hardware and software wise to fit in to your personal life.
The author claims the test is biased mostly because:
1. On x86 hyperthreading was disabled
2. on x86 SSE was disabled
3. on PPC a custom malloc was used
4. on PPC a different set of optimizations were used
1. I admit is seems odd that this was disabled. I think it's effect would be little, but it should be turned on
2. So was the PPC's AltiVec. I recall that SPEC wants FP and INT performance from the ALU sections, not SIMD
3. And I'm sure that there are many "tweaks" for x86 that are transparent within the GCC 3.3 code generators
4. Again, each CPU has different optimizations, either allow them all or disable them all - on both platforms, command line switched or embedded
What I think would be interesting for Apple to do to help settle all this (You know, spread around some of that $4B+ they have lying around):
Purchase two of the fastest model of 1st tier systems they can get that run on x86.
Using four different testing labs, send one machine to each lab (2 x86, 2 G5). Instruct each lab to perform any software/configuration optimizations they feel necessary to get the most performance out of the machine. Then they run a standardized set of benchmarks. They each fully document the changes they've made and the results.
Apple (or perhaps a 5th lab) colates the data and produces a final result.
Or some open source minded person with some extra bandwidth(ha) could create a web site where PCers and Macers could post their own results from the benchmarks. With sufficient results posted, the "noise" would get filtered out and the results would become statistically useful.