like keeping your passport in a lead bag (used for carrying film)
Don't take false security in miss-applying technology.
Some lead bags to make them flexible, use lead paint. The lead particles are suspended in the paint and are not connected to their neigbors. This will block the very short wavelength of X-rays, but allow longer wave radio to pass right on through as the lead particles are not very much of a wavelength at UHF frequecies and below. You are looking for someting that is fully conductive to kill the E field component of a radio wave to make a Farady Cage.
A cage made from particles not connected to it's neighbors may not work well at frequencies it's not designed to shunt.
Here is an experiment you can do right in your own kitchen.. Follow the directions carefully to avoid equipment dammage..
If you have a good strong cell signal in your house (like I do), call your cell phone.
Now place it in your microwave oven.
***** Do not turn on the oven! ******
Close the door.
****** Do not turn on the oven *****
Did the signal get lost?
Is the phone still connected?
Do you have any signal strength on the display?
Here is the explination of why the phone may remain connected.
The cavity of the oven is a metal box.. It should fully block RF.. It does.. The door is metal. It should block RF.. It does. The joint between the door and the cavity should have an RF seal..
Well it kinda does. The door seal on a microwave oven consists of a row of 1/4 wave stubbs that reflect energy from the magnetron back into the cavity preventing their escape. It reflects an RF short from the open end of the stub back to the gap between the door and the cavity. This reflected short connectes the door to the cavity making a continious connection to that frequency. If the door seal gets dirty or has anything caught in it, it no longer works properly. That is why the oven owners manual is worded strongly on keeping the door seal clean, in good shape, and having nothing caught in it. This stub does not work at frequencies it's not designed for. It blocks 802.11b just fine. Your 2.4 GHZ phone might not work in the microwave as that's the frequency it's designed to block. Other frequencies get past with some attenuation.
This applies to the lead film bags. They are OK at X-rays, but may fall short in UHF and VHF.
Do the microwave/phone experiment with your cell phone and the film bag. Did it loose connection when placed in the bag and the bag closed?
If the phone did not loose the signal, then you may want to try another solution.
I think I'd rather lose my passport, cash and credit cards than have that, though.
Farady Cage for the paranoid...
It works on RF. Block the RF and the tag can't respond. We are geeks. If we can put a PC in a case designed to reduce RFI, we should be able to add a RF gasket to a lunch box or someting. Even the metal job ticket box that techs use on service calls may work.
I can even do a few smarts and identify a "better" target (wealthier, public figure etc).
A simple to make but durable effective RF shield pouch for your passportcan be made from an old aluminized mylar balloon. Make a simple pouch with a fold-over top to place the passport inside. The balloons are welded with heat and mass stamped from sheets of mylar. An iron and some paper to prevent sticking is all that is needed to press your new pouch. Airport security is no problem as you would pass it to the officer with your billfold and loose change. The pouch would look like the silver packet sports trading cards come in.
Anytime you don't need the passport, leave it in the pouch. This would prevent drive by ID theft. I think the film X-Ray pouches could also do the job, but I haven't tested them for RF shielding. I don't know if the film X-Ray shield is particles to block just X-rays or a continious film that will also shunt EM fields.. Next time I have one, I'll have to test it.
To test you shield, put a pager in it and send a page. It's working if the pager gets no messages.
I'm not even going to go into closed system water recycling...:-)
I will....
If given a choice of water that just passed through some filter to remove most of the gross chunks and bacteria and water that was distilled by nature (rainwater), I would take the water that has a better chance of having been seperated from trace metals such as zinc, mecury, lead, arsnic, and other contaminates such as bacteria and viruses. Let the vapor go aloft and be exposed to the sun's UV rays for a while.
In some areas of the world, the air is so bad, that filtered waste water may be the cleaner choice, but in areas near an ocean with the predomimate breeze from the ocean, rain water gets my vote. This water is usualy collected at higher elevations to take advantage of gravity feed and puts the collection source above most of the populations drain systems.
As examples of this look up where Portand Oregon gets it's water. Only recently are they overgrowing the Bull Run watershed and are considering using more well water or river water.
The US Navy didn't want to connect to the Portaland City water supply when they visited. They thought there was a problem with the water because it doesn't have enough chlorene in the water. The assumption was made the system wasn't working properly.
Little Chlorene in the water indicates either the purification system isn't doing it's job properly, or very little is needed to purify the water.
From a quick Google search on Bull Run Watershed pulls up this quick tidbit.
The Bull Run watershed is the primary source of water for Portland, Oregon. It is located in the Mount Hood National Forest, separated from the mountain itself by a ridge. The watershed is about 102 square miles in area, and typically receives 80-170 inches of rainfall per year. It includes reservoirs, which store water for use during the city's dry summer months.
The watershed is reserved solely for producing drinking water. The quality of its water is so high that the city does not treat or filter the water.
I would drink recycled water, but if possible, I prefer mother nature to do the recycling. Too bad most of the world does not have a pure source of drinking water.
I have traveled to other parts of the world. Most places have awful tasting water.
of my youthful use of a pocket transistor radio tuned to the AM band
I almost forgot what that sounded like until I found some MP3's of very early Amos and Andy shows. Any of them before they went to the half hour show should work. Either the 6 minute or 12 minute shows are good examples of how great the early AM was.
Not all free downloads are illegal, thank you very much!
Since you didn't provide examples, I thought I would mention Public Domain such as old time radio. Examples are; Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, Abbott and Costello, The Great Gildersleve, The Lone Ranger, etc. Public Domain is a growing part of my MP3 collection.
And the ones that remain get archived on CDR or DVD. The other stuff is a little harder to back-up and restore after a re-format or OS change. That's why they remain in place for so long. Someone paid for them and don't want to loose them.
But when you've got an integer overflow, it's not going to matter, because if the software runs on the machine you're going to have the problem regardless.
There seems to be a lack of protection from simple failures that happen all too often in Windows.
At least on my car, if the power brakes fail, the handbrake still works. Prior to an engine failure, I get warnings for low oil, low gas, overheating etc. This allows me in most cases to save my life and the car. On windows, it just crashes wihout warning and no chance to save anything. People tolerate Windows only because it can be restarted right away in most cases.
Actually, what will happen is your car will shut down on the freeway at the 45,000 mile mark.
Not mine.. It isn't running MS software. There is a taxi that got over 250,000 miles. Toyota was so impressed, they bought the car to find it's potential wear points.
If MS did that, then the problem of Win95 locking up after a month of just not being re-booted would never have been an issue.
that's why i like online music stores where you can get singles for $1
If they would provide songs to me on a red book CD for a Buck, then the result would be useful. Unfortunately the resulting file from Apple and MusicMatch and most other online music sites is simply incompatible with everyting but the PC and it's junk speakers. It is not compatible (Unplayable) with my living room stereo (DVD that plays CD's and MP3's), or my car (same thing), my MP3 CD portable, or boombox.
Instead of having one PC that can play the multi-formats out there, I would rather have music that will play where I am.
Getting a song online in most cases is not the same as getting a playable CD. Big deal you can burn a CD from your online track. With time and materials, now it's no longer a buck... Don't compare the price of apples and lima beans. They are both edible but both don't make a great pie.
Are thieves that steal car stereos and resell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
Wrong question..
Try this one when comparing to piracy.
Take your question
Are thieves that steal car stereos and resell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
And reword it so the original owner of a car stereo still has it.. and the "thief" simply makes exact knock off's of the original. The question should be more like;
Are Pirates that copy car stereos and sell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
Great - now I can crash my car even after I've already crashed it.
I was thinging along the lines of wow a cheaper version of the new Prius. It already has a start button on the dash.;-)
I said cheaper, because WinCE would be a downgrade from the OS already in the car. I've got 43,000 miles over 2 years and it hasn't crashed once. I've learned not to expect the same from MS Windows.
I'm not personally experienced with WebTV, but it seems like a similar approach.
You are lucky. I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast who's idea of free internet was a WebTV. If you are lucky, you will never have to deal with it. If you want to try something like it, dig out your old Hayes 1200 baud modem and use it to connect to a dial up ISP.
Small text based e-mail hardly makes it. Anything with content times-out. It's sorta like slashdoting yourself by trying to load any web page.
Look at what netzero and juno was turned into; spyware ridden advertising spewing processor hogging hellholes of buggy shitty software.
NetZero and Juno are no longer major ISP's either. Finding a balance between getting users and selling advertising space is a delicate balance.
Quick poll. How many avoid GeoCities web pages?... How many use NetZero as their ISP?... How many use Google regularly?..
Guess who between GeoCities, NetZero and Google actualy make a bunch of money selling advertising space? Case closed. Market forces will provide limits on the advertising glut. So will competition.
make me want things I don't want, and it's there all the time, banging on the doors.
It's one of the reasons to buy older cheaper software. Read the reviews. Check out the demo's. You do have a choice. I don't remember any adverts in Lemmings, Nerf, PacMan, and a few others.
Be cautious of some demo's. I bought Nerf Arena because I liked the demo. It ran wihout a CD in the drive, and could be loaded on several computers for LAN play. The full version lacks both of these features. (unless you look up no CD in Google.) For a long time the LAN parties simply stuck to using the demo. It was better than the full version and kept us from openly breaking the software license. It even worked with many of the free downloadable maps and textures.
Some LAN games permit spawning so you can LAN play with just one copy. (One of the truck racing games comes to mind that can spawn up to 8 clients) Others do not and require a copy for each player. Most either won't tell you on the box or it's buried in the fine print. Too bad more games don't spawn LAN players.
I have a LAN. The cost of a LAN game varies a lot depending if spawning players is permitted or not. I'm not spending over $100 on a game so the kids can race each other. Getting a game touted for LAN play and find it "broken" because nobody can join the game is not fun. (Spawning is making a client from the CD. The client will play over the LAN to the server. The client will not run as a stand alone game. The server then can support many players over a LAN without needing to buy extra copies of the game)
If I am not bored by the time I make it to the end of the demo (if I even make it to the end), then I consider buying it.
To buy it, the price has to be right. This is more important if several copies are needed for legal LAN play. Setting up a race on a LAN souldn't break the bank.
With Nerf, it's chaep enough to pick up the extra copies and stay within budget or the demo works fine for LAN parties. This is not the case with Need for Speed. Great LAN features, but nobody to race due to a single copy.:-( Needless to say, Need for Speed (got the boxed set) doesn't get dusted off much. Nerf gets a workout. Someday, I'll find more copies of Need for Speed in Goodwill so we can actualy race each other without violating copyright.
Not sure if this is the same as a dedicated pair, as I didn't hear it called that.
If it rings, it's not a dedicated pair. The Telco does not provide local loop current or ring signals on a dedicated pair. It can be treated like a long cat3 cable. Due to the length, modems designed to work without local loop voltage are used for data.
Here is some data on a leased line modem. Of important note are.
unattended operation. unit reconnects without operator intervention after a power interuption or data interuption. In a nutshell, these modems simply extend an RS232 signal over a twisted pair. There is no dialing or configuring used. If it has power and sees the other modem on the other end of the wire, it just connects. They won't answer a ringing line. They never hang up.
So has anyone made sure that only A can talk to B?
Since the system is closed source, I don't know what they are using to communicate. Getting a point to point connection is easy. See your local phone company representive. Dedicated pairs are used all the time. Some examples are; alarm systems and for connecting downtown radio station studios to their transmitters up on the hill. Niether system is vunerable to a dial in attack.
Contact the phone company. Ask for a dedicated pair. There is no dialing in or out on a dedicated pair. The two ends can be connected to encrypted modems designed for a dedicated phone line. That's realy a simple chore.
Or can C dial A's number just as A "picks up the phone to dial" B, and result in A talking to C but thinking it is talking to B.
Dialing in is not really possible on a dedicated pair.
I would hope the election officials used some common sense to be sure the system has isolation from untrusted connections.
Just for nastalga sake, I still have my grandfathers "Walkman" It's from the 50's when plastics were the big thing. It's bright red, pre-transistor AM radio about the size of a gradeschool lunchbox. It uses 3 sets of batteries. It used a 1.5 volt filimant battery, a 22.5 volt battery (about the size of a nine-volt) and the big high voltage B battery of 67 volts. It does not use an AC cord.
Going transistor improved battery life and permitted smaller size. Due to the smaller size and early speaker technology, the early transistor radios were known for their tin sound. They mostly sounded like a set of headphones on a desk. Earphones (mono in the ear) were common as was simply holding the radio up to the ear like a cell phone.
Being an early geek in those days meant taking apart some of the early transistor radios. (grade shool age) Deceptive marketing was common. Just like the standards for car audio watts (RMS, Peak, per channel, all channels together, un distorted, 10% distortion, max power at any distortion etc..).
Transistor count was the big seller.. The more the better. I remember taking apart a 9 transistor radio only to discover that only 3 of the transistors were used. 3 of them had all three leads stuck in the same hole. 3 of them were used as diodes with two leads in one hole and the other lead in another hole. It was a simple regenerative reciever, not a superhetrodyne with some semblance of fideliety.
In marketing, not much has changed in the years.
My old printer claims X number of pages ink yeild for it's color cartrige at 15% page coverage. The new printer claims it does more pages with it's high yeild cartrige. In the fine print it does 1.5X more pages but at 5% coverage. In my book, that's less yeild. The new cartrige is over twice the price. Carts refrenced are the HP 23 and the HP 78. I can get two of the former for about $45 or one of the latter for $52. Needless to say, my old printer is the primary color printer, not the new one. Thanks to the truth in advertising, they do specify how the page yeild was calculated, but they have gone a long way to imply comparing page count of these two cartridges is accurate, when it is deceptive. Do you want the 600 page count cartrige or the 900 page count one? Come on guys. point out the 600 count is with 15% coverage and the 900 count is with 5% coverage. (page counts rounded off for example. See HP's website for stated page yeild claims.
LCD for reference guides/schematics/etc. Big boost to productivity and less mousing!
I agree. A dual PC setup is much more useful than a dual monitor setup. This is most certanly true in the Windows world. I find it difficult to read the how-to to eradicate some piece of malware while going through the reboot into safe mode process.
Instead of printing all the instructions out, then trying to follow them, it's much easier to have the procedure open on a laptop nearby. The laptop can also be downloading the files to make the emergency boot disk you are going to need for the recovery.
i got lucky and bought mine about 2 months before xm stopped selling them. $49.95 is what i paid
Well lucky sort of... Just because you can doesn't mean you have permission. Read the TOS. Using 3rd party software to extend the abilities beyond the terms of service may be a legal risk.
In terms of service, you wouldn't be doing any of the following forbidden activies would you?
You may not otherwise reproduce, perform, distribute, display or create derivative works from the Content
I know it sucks. That is why I'm not a subscriber. Someday, (hopefully) they will provide a service I would like to subscribe to. In the meantime, I'm keeping my money.
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like keeping your passport in a lead bag (used for carrying film)
Don't take false security in miss-applying technology.
Some lead bags to make them flexible, use lead paint. The lead particles are suspended in the paint and are not connected to their neigbors. This will block the very short wavelength of X-rays, but allow longer wave radio to pass right on through as the lead particles are not very much of a wavelength at UHF frequecies and below. You are looking for someting that is fully conductive to kill the E field component of a radio wave to make a Farady Cage.
A cage made from particles not connected to it's neighbors may not work well at frequencies it's not designed to shunt.
Here is an experiment you can do right in your own kitchen.. Follow the directions carefully to avoid equipment dammage..
If you have a good strong cell signal in your house (like I do), call your cell phone.
Now place it in your microwave oven.
***** Do not turn on the oven! ******
Close the door.
****** Do not turn on the oven *****
Did the signal get lost?
Is the phone still connected?
Do you have any signal strength on the display?
Here is the explination of why the phone may remain connected.
The cavity of the oven is a metal box.. It should fully block RF.. It does.. The door is metal. It should block RF.. It does. The joint between the door and the cavity should have an RF seal..
Well it kinda does. The door seal on a microwave oven consists of a row of 1/4 wave stubbs that reflect energy from the magnetron back into the cavity preventing their escape. It reflects an RF short from the open end of the stub back to the gap between the door and the cavity. This reflected short connectes the door to the cavity making a continious connection to that frequency. If the door seal gets dirty or has anything caught in it, it no longer works properly. That is why the oven owners manual is worded strongly on keeping the door seal clean, in good shape, and having nothing caught in it. This stub does not work at frequencies it's not designed for. It blocks 802.11b just fine. Your 2.4 GHZ phone might not work in the microwave as that's the frequency it's designed to block. Other frequencies get past with some attenuation.
This applies to the lead film bags. They are OK at X-rays, but may fall short in UHF and VHF.
Do the microwave/phone experiment with your cell phone and the film bag. Did it loose connection when placed in the bag and the bag closed?
If the phone did not loose the signal, then you may want to try another solution.
I think I'd rather lose my passport, cash and credit cards than have that, though.
Farady Cage for the paranoid...
It works on RF. Block the RF and the tag can't respond. We are geeks. If we can put a PC in a case designed to reduce RFI, we should be able to add a RF gasket to a lunch box or someting. Even the metal job ticket box that techs use on service calls may work.
I can even do a few smarts and identify a "better" target (wealthier, public figure etc).
A simple to make but durable effective RF shield pouch for your passportcan be made from an old aluminized mylar balloon. Make a simple pouch with a fold-over top to place the passport inside. The balloons are welded with heat and mass stamped from sheets of mylar. An iron and some paper to prevent sticking is all that is needed to press your new pouch. Airport security is no problem as you would pass it to the officer with your billfold and loose change. The pouch would look like the silver packet sports trading cards come in.
Anytime you don't need the passport, leave it in the pouch. This would prevent drive by ID theft. I think the film X-Ray pouches could also do the job, but I haven't tested them for RF shielding. I don't know if the film X-Ray shield is particles to block just X-rays or a continious film that will also shunt EM fields.. Next time I have one, I'll have to test it.
To test you shield, put a pager in it and send a page. It's working if the pager gets no messages.
(I certainly have no idea where my tap water comes from, other than the faucet).
. ht ml ;-)
Maybe here...
http://www.outhousesprings.com/itsnumber1poster
I'm not even going to go into closed system water recycling... :-)
I will....
If given a choice of water that just passed through some filter to remove most of the gross chunks and bacteria and water that was distilled by nature (rainwater), I would take the water that has a better chance of having been seperated from trace metals such as zinc, mecury, lead, arsnic, and other contaminates such as bacteria and viruses. Let the vapor go aloft and be exposed to the sun's UV rays for a while.
In some areas of the world, the air is so bad, that filtered waste water may be the cleaner choice, but in areas near an ocean with the predomimate breeze from the ocean, rain water gets my vote. This water is usualy collected at higher elevations to take advantage of gravity feed and puts the collection source above most of the populations drain systems.
As examples of this look up where Portand Oregon gets it's water. Only recently are they overgrowing the Bull Run watershed and are considering using more well water or river water.
The US Navy didn't want to connect to the Portaland City water supply when they visited. They thought there was a problem with the water because it doesn't have enough chlorene in the water. The assumption was made the system wasn't working properly.
Little Chlorene in the water indicates either the purification system isn't doing it's job properly, or very little is needed to purify the water.
From a quick Google search on Bull Run Watershed pulls up this quick tidbit.
The Bull Run watershed is the primary source of water for Portland, Oregon. It is located in the Mount Hood National Forest, separated from the mountain itself by a ridge. The watershed is about 102 square miles in area, and typically receives 80-170 inches of rainfall per year. It includes reservoirs, which store water for use during the city's dry summer months.
The watershed is reserved solely for producing drinking water. The quality of its water is so high that the city does not treat or filter the water.
I would drink recycled water, but if possible, I prefer mother nature to do the recycling. Too bad most of the world does not have a pure source of drinking water.
I have traveled to other parts of the world. Most places have awful tasting water.
I burn hydrogen to get my water.
Wow. My new fuel cell car won't even have a tailpipe. Just a water storage jug.
So, most of what we download is crap. What's new here?
The RIAA is finaly sue happy because we are not buying the stuff on shiny disks.
of my youthful use of a pocket transistor radio tuned to the AM band
I almost forgot what that sounded like until I found some MP3's of very early Amos and Andy shows. Any of them before they went to the half hour show should work. Either the 6 minute or 12 minute shows are good examples of how great the early AM was.
Not all free downloads are illegal, thank you very much!
Since you didn't provide examples, I thought I would mention Public Domain such as old time radio. Examples are; Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, Abbott and Costello, The Great Gildersleve, The Lone Ranger, etc. Public Domain is a growing part of my MP3 collection.
I delete MP3s when they are riddled with ... beeps
And the ones that remain get archived on CDR or DVD. The other stuff is a little harder to back-up and restore after a re-format or OS change. That's why they remain in place for so long. Someone paid for them and don't want to loose them.
But when you've got an integer overflow, it's not going to matter, because if the software runs on the machine you're going to have the problem regardless.
There seems to be a lack of protection from simple failures that happen all too often in Windows.
At least on my car, if the power brakes fail, the handbrake still works. Prior to an engine failure, I get warnings for low oil, low gas, overheating etc. This allows me in most cases to save my life and the car. On windows, it just crashes wihout warning and no chance to save anything. People tolerate Windows only because it can be restarted right away in most cases.
Actually, what will happen is your car will shut down on the freeway at the 45,000 mile mark.
Not mine.. It isn't running MS software. There is a taxi that got over 250,000 miles. Toyota was so impressed, they bought the car to find it's potential wear points.
If MS did that, then the problem of Win95 locking up after a month of just not being re-booted would never have been an issue.
that's why i like online music stores where you can get singles for $1
If they would provide songs to me on a red book CD for a Buck, then the result would be useful. Unfortunately the resulting file from Apple and MusicMatch and most other online music sites is simply incompatible with everyting but the PC and it's junk speakers. It is not compatible (Unplayable) with my living room stereo (DVD that plays CD's and MP3's), or my car (same thing), my MP3 CD portable, or boombox.
Instead of having one PC that can play the multi-formats out there, I would rather have music that will play where I am.
Getting a song online in most cases is not the same as getting a playable CD. Big deal you can burn a CD from your online track. With time and materials, now it's no longer a buck... Don't compare the price of apples and lima beans. They are both edible but both don't make a great pie.
Are thieves that steal car stereos and resell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
Wrong question..
Try this one when comparing to piracy.
Take your question
Are thieves that steal car stereos and resell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
And reword it so the original owner of a car stereo still has it.. and the "thief" simply makes exact knock off's of the original. The question should be more like;
Are Pirates that copy car stereos and sell them on the black market "competition" for stereo manufacturers?
Other than a bad example, good point.
Great - now I can crash my car even after I've already crashed it.
;-)
I was thinging along the lines of wow a cheaper version of the new Prius. It already has a start button on the dash.
I said cheaper, because WinCE would be a downgrade from the OS already in the car. I've got 43,000 miles over 2 years and it hasn't crashed once. I've learned not to expect the same from MS Windows.
I'm not personally experienced with WebTV, but it seems like a similar approach.
You are lucky. I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast who's idea of free internet was a WebTV. If you are lucky, you will never have to deal with it. If you want to try something like it, dig out your old Hayes 1200 baud modem and use it to connect to a dial up ISP.
Small text based e-mail hardly makes it. Anything with content times-out. It's sorta like slashdoting yourself by trying to load any web page.
Look at what netzero and juno was turned into; spyware ridden advertising spewing processor hogging hellholes of buggy shitty software.
NetZero and Juno are no longer major ISP's either. Finding a balance between getting users and selling advertising space is a delicate balance.
Quick poll. How many avoid GeoCities web pages?... How many use NetZero as their ISP?... How many use Google regularly?..
Guess who between GeoCities, NetZero and Google actualy make a bunch of money selling advertising space? Case closed. Market forces will provide limits on the advertising glut. So will competition.
make me want things I don't want, and it's there all the time, banging on the doors.
It's one of the reasons to buy older cheaper software. Read the reviews. Check out the demo's. You do have a choice. I don't remember any adverts in Lemmings, Nerf, PacMan, and a few others.
Any game worth buying provides a demo.
:-(
Be cautious of some demo's. I bought Nerf Arena because I liked the demo. It ran wihout a CD in the drive, and could be loaded on several computers for LAN play. The full version lacks both of these features. (unless you look up no CD in Google.) For a long time the LAN parties simply stuck to using the demo. It was better than the full version and kept us from openly breaking the software license. It even worked with many of the free downloadable maps and textures.
Some LAN games permit spawning so you can LAN play with just one copy. (One of the truck racing games comes to mind that can spawn up to 8 clients) Others do not and require a copy for each player. Most either won't tell you on the box or it's buried in the fine print. Too bad more games don't spawn LAN players.
I have a LAN. The cost of a LAN game varies a lot depending if spawning players is permitted or not. I'm not spending over $100 on a game so the kids can race each other. Getting a game touted for LAN play and find it "broken" because nobody can join the game is not fun. (Spawning is making a client from the CD. The client will play over the LAN to the server. The client will not run as a stand alone game. The server then can support many players over a LAN without needing to buy extra copies of the game)
If I am not bored by the time I make it to the end of the demo (if I even make it to the end), then I consider buying it.
To buy it, the price has to be right. This is more important if several copies are needed for legal LAN play. Setting up a race on a LAN souldn't break the bank.
With Nerf, it's chaep enough to pick up the extra copies and stay within budget or the demo works fine for LAN parties. This is not the case with Need for Speed. Great LAN features, but nobody to race due to a single copy.
Needless to say, Need for Speed (got the boxed set) doesn't get dusted off much. Nerf gets a workout. Someday, I'll find more copies of Need for Speed in Goodwill so we can actualy race each other without violating copyright.
Not sure if this is the same as a dedicated pair, as I didn't hear it called that.
If it rings, it's not a dedicated pair. The Telco does not provide local loop current or ring signals on a dedicated pair. It can be treated like a long cat3 cable. Due to the length, modems designed to work without local loop voltage are used for data.
Here is some data on a leased line modem. Of important note are.
unattended operation. unit reconnects without operator intervention after a power interuption or data interuption. In a nutshell, these modems simply extend an RS232 signal over a twisted pair. There is no dialing or configuring used. If it has power and sees the other modem on the other end of the wire, it just connects. They won't answer a ringing line. They never hang up.
Link here
http://www.data-linc.com/engspecs/dlm4000l.htm
So has anyone made sure that only A can talk to B?
Since the system is closed source, I don't know what they are using to communicate. Getting a point to point connection is easy. See your local phone company representive. Dedicated pairs are used all the time. Some examples are; alarm systems and for connecting downtown radio station studios to their transmitters up on the hill. Niether system is vunerable to a dial in attack.
Contact the phone company. Ask for a dedicated pair. There is no dialing in or out on a dedicated pair. The two ends can be connected to encrypted modems designed for a dedicated phone line. That's realy a simple chore.
Or can C dial A's number just as A "picks up the phone to dial" B, and result in A talking to C but thinking it is talking to B.
Dialing in is not really possible on a dedicated pair.
I would hope the election officials used some common sense to be sure the system has isolation from untrusted connections.
A campaign built mostly on lies and deception will not get you elected.
If that statement were true, then we would have next to no elected officials.
Just for nastalga sake, I still have my grandfathers "Walkman" It's from the 50's when plastics were the big thing. It's bright red, pre-transistor AM radio about the size of a gradeschool lunchbox. It uses 3 sets of batteries. It used a 1.5 volt filimant battery, a 22.5 volt battery (about the size of a nine-volt) and the big high voltage B battery of 67 volts. It does not use an AC cord.
Going transistor improved battery life and permitted smaller size. Due to the smaller size and early speaker technology, the early transistor radios were known for their tin sound. They mostly sounded like a set of headphones on a desk. Earphones (mono in the ear) were common as was simply holding the radio up to the ear like a cell phone.
Being an early geek in those days meant taking apart some of the early transistor radios. (grade shool age) Deceptive marketing was common. Just like the standards for car audio watts (RMS, Peak, per channel, all channels together, un distorted, 10% distortion, max power at any distortion etc..).
Transistor count was the big seller.. The more the better. I remember taking apart a 9 transistor radio only to discover that only 3 of the transistors were used. 3 of them had all three leads stuck in the same hole. 3 of them were used as diodes with two leads in one hole and the other lead in another hole. It was a simple regenerative reciever, not a superhetrodyne with some semblance of fideliety.
In marketing, not much has changed in the years.
My old printer claims X number of pages ink yeild for it's color cartrige at 15% page coverage. The new printer claims it does more pages with it's high yeild cartrige. In the fine print it does 1.5X more pages but at 5% coverage. In my book, that's less yeild. The new cartrige is over twice the price. Carts refrenced are the HP 23 and the HP 78. I can get two of the former for about $45 or one of the latter for $52. Needless to say, my old printer is the primary color printer, not the new one. Thanks to the truth in advertising, they do specify how the page yeild was calculated, but they have gone a long way to imply comparing page count of these two cartridges is accurate, when it is deceptive. Do you want the 600 page count cartrige or the 900 page count one? Come on guys. point out the 600 count is with 15% coverage and the 900 count is with 5% coverage. (page counts rounded off for example. See HP's website for stated page yeild claims.
LCD for reference guides/schematics/etc. Big boost to productivity and less mousing!
I agree. A dual PC setup is much more useful than a dual monitor setup. This is most certanly true in the Windows world. I find it difficult to read the how-to to eradicate some piece of malware while going through the reboot into safe mode process.
Instead of printing all the instructions out, then trying to follow them, it's much easier to have the procedure open on a laptop nearby. The laptop can also be downloading the files to make the emergency boot disk you are going to need for the recovery.
It never really achieved any of that.
It got a good start, but never got past pre-school. My grandkids learned lots from Count Dracula and Big Bird.
i got lucky and bought mine about 2 months before xm stopped selling them. $49.95 is what i paid
Well lucky sort of... Just because you can doesn't mean you have permission. Read the TOS. Using 3rd party software to extend the abilities beyond the terms of service may be a legal risk.
In terms of service, you wouldn't be doing any of the following forbidden activies would you?
You may not otherwise reproduce, perform, distribute, display or create derivative works from the Content
I know it sucks. That is why I'm not a subscriber. Someday, (hopefully) they will provide a service I would like to subscribe to. In the meantime, I'm keeping my money.