What we don't see here is the standards are changing on the next Windows upgrade to be totally incompatible with it. Think LoadLin and WIN ME. Think Kerbos and WIN 2000. Think SMB and... See a pattern. Of course they would like an early copy of developing competition.. So they can be incompatible with it...
I know how it feels owning great but dead formats. I have a 12 inch reel to reel and a 12 inch laser videodisk. I have bought no new media for either machine in the last decade. Videodisks came out with the promise of being cheaper than videotape because they could be stamped. I'm still waiting... In the meantime my videotape collection keeps growing. It's affordable. I see the advantage of skipping CD's and getting mp3's They are downloadable and unencumbered by price or copy protection. In other words useful and affordable. Anything that takes either of these features away will see limited distribution. We will get high priced hard to use stuff only if we pay for it. Leave the junk on the shelf!
Somehow I think "on loan" as listed in the new EULA and PICK UP YOUR FREE as listed in Radio Shack advertisements needs clarified. If it is free, I'll treat it as such regardless of any EULA. Also nobody has tried to read and post the contents of the microprocessor. All postings I have seen are regarding external use of the signal output from the device. Nothing internal has been copied. I could see a copywright issue if someone copied the code from the cat and used the core barcode driver and wrapped it into a new driver sans the hashing of the output. The main auto symbology detecting software in the cat is very nice and would be good code to use in another reader. But that project would be in violation of the firmware authors copywright.
In 20/20 hindsite, I think they should have built the thing only supporting their slanted code. Then it would only have been useful only for it's intended purpose. Then only those who want to get into the user tracking game are free to participate and the rest of us that would really like to index the cd's etc. would get a real scanner. Only book and CD sellers paying DC would then print a slanted bar code on their products. Nobody would have an interest in hijacking it.
Anybody have a address book containing only the Microsoft developement team they want to post? If everyone got a copy and notified the entire developement team a few times, they might get the hint. Please someone post a list of Microsoft software engineers. I would love to tell each and every one I changed address on one E-mail account!
Already happened. I found two very nice windows drivers online last night. One has a nice user interface called catkit32 (big 3 meg file and was sold on e-bay) and the other one is a very compact device driver called catnip. (dll and EXE file about 30K in size packaged in a 26K Zip). Catnip is very nice. It resides on the tool bar next to the speaker icon. With it you can choose to provide any of the 3 components (ser,type, & data) and provide a tab, return or other string after the scan. Very nice. It is a true driver, small and effecient. Hats off to the author!
Re:Cheap GPS units in the UK
on
Geocaching
·
· Score: 1
Do a search on the web. Here in the States, GI Joe stores (an outdoor stoor) carried the magellen units for about 80 USD this summer. Good luck.
My Symbol Laser scanner cost $75 with keyboard wedge output. (rugged model, made to withstand 5 ft drops to concrete) It lists for $1200.00.
My older Intermec portable data acquisition unit with laser scanner cost $40 at a swap meet. Various wand scanners cost from $5 to $10.
Be sure you know what you are getting. Some stuff is not decoded. (video out of the stripe pattern) and some are decoded to RS232. These guys output plain ASCII! If you hunt for it, some undecoded stuff can be used by driving the DTR line in a serial port with the video and using a software decoder. I have seen several of these soft decoders on the net. None of my real scanners decode the RS catalog, so they are useful for everything except cue cat uses;-). Not a great loss. Mine are usefull without any decription or serial number removal needed. Surplus hardware is out there and it works with Linux as is. Laser scanners almost always read better than a wand and are easier to use. They are also much faster.
Been a while since you've seen the movie. Power is measured in Watts, Not Hertz. However the deep freezer built into it may take some juice. I wonder how long it takes to get down to tempature so it can boot?
The point is; the stuff they are giving out is restricted! If the catalog was printed with a barcode my laser scanner would read, and the software could use the output of it, and they offered a scanner for a low price that didn't garble the output and read standard code, then more people could use the hardware and software. Think about it. How many specialty items do you have hooked up to your PC that can only be used for one thing? Don't count your MP3 player. It can play more than songs from mp3.com;-) I don't have a printer that only can print labels or stamps. I don't have a keyboard that only can be used for (insert single app here) and a monitor that can only display web pages. I don't want a ton of junk hanging off my PC. I do have a quality industry standard laser barcode reader. No I don't have a clue cat. I have no use for one that only works in violation of their ELUA or with Digital Convergence stuff. They decided to be incompatible with my hardware and software when they could easly used B3of9 symbology and been an enhacement to many peoples systems.
If you visit the Pacific Northwest sometime, look me up. You can have my IBM PS/2 model 70 free.
It's too hard for me to find microchannel cards for it to make it usefull. Non Microsoft operating system included with books. (PC DOS)
The stuff on the glass is the aquadag coating. It is only a carbon based conductive coating. It is on the inside and has the high voltage connected to it. It is also on the outside to make the tube a capacitor to filter the high voltage from the flyback transformer. The glass itself contains lead (especially the front face) to absorb the X-rays created when the electron beam accelerated by the high voltage strikes the target phospher on the faceplate. Monitors have more lead than TV's because they are designed to be viewed at closer distances. The X-rays from a TV exposure is limited because like light, doubling the distance from the source squares the area and therefore reduces the exposure by the square root of the distance viewed.
Just in case you are worndering, Don't figure the price you pay for electricity as the price you will get from the utilities. Having researched this for a small hydro install I have learned the utilitie puts in 2 meters. One for the juice you use at retail plus all applicible taxes and tarrifs and another on your generator at wholesale cost. This equates to you buying power at say.13 per HWH and selling at.023 per KWH. Part of the justification is the utilitie provides voltage and frequency regulation and surge capacity. They can provide the temporary heavy load a freezer starting draws or keep up with making a typical breakfast. Water heater recovering from morning shower, washer and dryer doing the towels, coffee in the drip maker, toast in the toaster, ironing the fresh shirt etc. Home generation does not provide this surge capacity, or the system is oversized and runs ineffeciently.
I wonder if Microsoft is not allowed to show any version of Windows because the browser (remember it IS part of Windows) and the Media player play MP3's;-)
Sounds great. I have a $1000.00 laser disk player. I can not rent movies for it. Most titles are at least 5X the cost of a VHS. Think all the new stuff will be released on VHS? Think again. VHS releases are being phased out as DVD's are taking the space on shelves. Soon VHS will be as common as my 12 inch video disks. New formats (HDTV & DVD) are always more restrictive.
AS soon as the market mass hits the HDTV wide screen standard, with encription all the way to the display, (non letterbox of course) then films will only be on fully locked down media. Don't expect HDTV to have any kind of recorder that is usable. They will only have retail, Digital Cable and rental play only media releases. My VHS will be stuck only with reruns of the Brady Bunch and I love Lucy. The movie industry will just wait for all the tapes to decay and turn to dust. The idea is of course is you can only play by their rulls. If you want anything new, you have to follow like sheep to get it. They know they don't have to release to what most people have, because there is no real competition. They own the distribution channel.
Re:Irish Music Rights Organisation gets Legal too
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 1
Anybody want to start a truly free music site? Index and offer only public domain music and accept new contributions? Betcha it get sued for any resemblence to anything however remote that is already a commercial work. It would be fun to see a grassroots rebellion take off along this track. I don't have the time, resources or legal defence fund to stick this out. Any takers?
A study shows the more laywers a country has the lower the GNP. Threats of lawsuits have killed more industry than has saved industry. Wow, Golden eggs, lets cut the goose open to get more!
Would you like to cut the red tape to encroach on established broadcasters? I may have a sucessful business model except the cost of the legal defense fund. MP3, Napster, DeCSS, Betamax, Compact Cassette, Minidisk, Audio CDR, all have been attacked or made expensive concessions. Price minidisks or audio CDR's if you can find them to see what I mean. They are high priced, restricted and hence very slow sellers so shops generally don't stock them. I only support formats already rulled by the courts as legal (already has some risk removed) and afordable. I have VHS, Cassettes, Reel to reel, Laserdisks, records, and CD's, but I do not have DVD's, minidisks, Dats, Audio CDR's or other heavely encumbered formats. Too bad the promise the laserdisk had of being cheaper than VHS never came about. I have a $1000.00 laserdisk player and less than 20 movies for it. At $35 - $125 a pop, that unencumbered format is only encumbered by a very prohibitive price and lack of titles. I liked the search feature and I wasn't forced to watch anything I didn't want to. I am getting a Rio soon that will not play any encumbered format. They think I'll buy a higher priced player to buy a more restrictive format. Get a clue, I didn't buy a DIVX player. After the MP3 rulling,I am not buying any more CD's. I do use a comupter as it has been declared not a recording device. The industry is going to have to find a format they can sell to me. I vote with my pocketbook.
I think I have already purchaced my last CD. How many people think the same? How much damage has the judge caused. Can it be as much as the MP3 award or more? If the companies don't want the CD format supported, don't support it. Remember the minidisk, GIF's, DVIX movies and other entangled formats? Let them die! CD's and DVD's are next.
Hmm. I wonder if this can be killed like the single play video disk. Sir your programming is incompatabile with my hardware. I am not going to upgrade to a restrictive system. Get a clue. Why don't you think SONY Minidisks are rare and MP3 players are plentiful. Could it be the built in encumberments? Thats why I do not own a minidisk. Do you think I am going to upgrade a RIO just so I can play a Liquid Audio file? I don't think so. I wanted a minidisk but the additional required and unwanted anticopy stuff added to the cost so much they are not cost effective or useful. CDR, CDRW and MP3 players all have come from behind and taken the market. MP3 players have fit the small portable player market the minidisk was supposed to have. No players/recorders, No viewers, no revenue, no problem. You get what you pay for. If you pay for restrictions you will get them. Make them follow the target audience, not the other way around. Support free TV.
I think they blew it when they actualy made a special format for barcodes which requires special hardware to use. I have a laser barcode reader on my machine and it can't read the codes in the magazines. It can read everything else. Too bad they didn't just use 3 of 9 and sold the scanner unencumbered so it could be usefull. They want me to use a general use computer with a general use operating system to use their propritary hardware.. I think they missed the boat. I already have an industry standard scanner.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't need to litigate it, just outrun it.
I know how it feels owning great but dead formats. I have a 12 inch reel to reel and a 12 inch laser videodisk. I have bought no new media for either machine in the last decade. Videodisks came out with the promise of being cheaper than videotape because they could be stamped. I'm still waiting... In the meantime my videotape collection keeps growing. It's affordable. I see the advantage of skipping CD's and getting mp3's They are downloadable and unencumbered by price or copy protection. In other words useful and affordable. Anything that takes either of these features away will see limited distribution. We will get high priced hard to use stuff only if we pay for it. Leave the junk on the shelf!
In 20/20 hindsite, I think they should have built the thing only supporting their slanted code. Then it would only have been useful only for it's intended purpose. Then only those who want to get into the user tracking game are free to participate and the rest of us that would really like to index the cd's etc. would get a real scanner. Only book and CD sellers paying DC would then print a slanted bar code on their products. Nobody would have an interest in hijacking it.
I didn't use the link. I knew better. I logged in and then went to user profiles. Thanks for the warning tho.
Anybody have a address book containing only the Microsoft developement team they want to post? If everyone got a copy and notified the entire developement team a few times, they might get the hint. Please someone post a list of Microsoft software engineers. I would love to tell each and every one I changed address on one E-mail account!
http://blort.org/cuecat/ for many links.
Already happened. I found two very nice windows drivers online last night. One has a nice user interface called catkit32 (big 3 meg file and was sold on e-bay) and the other one is a very compact device driver called catnip. (dll and EXE file about 30K in size packaged in a 26K Zip). Catnip is very nice. It resides on the tool bar next to the speaker icon. With it you can choose to provide any of the 3 components (ser,type, & data) and provide a tab, return or other string after the scan. Very nice. It is a true driver, small and effecient. Hats off to the author!
Do a search on the web. Here in the States, GI Joe stores (an outdoor stoor) carried the magellen units for about 80 USD this summer. Good luck.
My Symbol Laser scanner cost $75 with keyboard wedge output. (rugged model, made to withstand 5 ft drops to concrete) It lists for $1200.00. My older Intermec portable data acquisition unit with laser scanner cost $40 at a swap meet. Various wand scanners cost from $5 to $10.
Be sure you know what you are getting. Some stuff is not decoded. (video out of the stripe pattern) and some are decoded to RS232. These guys output plain ASCII! If you hunt for it, some undecoded stuff can be used by driving the DTR line in a serial port with the video and using a software decoder. I have seen several of these soft decoders on the net. None of my real scanners decode the RS catalog, so they are useful for everything except cue cat uses ;-). Not a great loss. Mine are usefull without any decription or serial number removal needed. Surplus hardware is out there and it works with Linux as is. Laser scanners almost always read better than a wand and are easier to use. They are also much faster.
Be sure to lock your computer with a key when you leave. This is just as safe as leaving your credit card on the counter.
Been a while since you've seen the movie. Power is measured in Watts, Not Hertz. However the deep freezer built into it may take some juice. I wonder how long it takes to get down to tempature so it can boot?
The point is; the stuff they are giving out is restricted! If the catalog was printed with a barcode my laser scanner would read, and the software could use the output of it, and they offered a scanner for a low price that didn't garble the output and read standard code, then more people could use the hardware and software. Think about it. How many specialty items do you have hooked up to your PC that can only be used for one thing? Don't count your MP3 player. It can play more than songs from mp3.com ;-) I don't have a printer that only can print labels or stamps. I don't have a keyboard that only can be used for (insert single app here) and a monitor that can only display web pages. I don't want a ton of junk hanging off my PC. I do have a quality industry standard laser barcode reader. No I don't have a clue cat. I have no use for one that only works in violation of their ELUA or with Digital Convergence stuff. They decided to be incompatible with my hardware and software when they could easly used B3of9 symbology and been an enhacement to many peoples systems.
If you visit the Pacific Northwest sometime, look me up. You can have my IBM PS/2 model 70 free. It's too hard for me to find microchannel cards for it to make it usefull. Non Microsoft operating system included with books. (PC DOS)
The stuff on the glass is the aquadag coating. It is only a carbon based conductive coating. It is on the inside and has the high voltage connected to it. It is also on the outside to make the tube a capacitor to filter the high voltage from the flyback transformer. The glass itself contains lead (especially the front face) to absorb the X-rays created when the electron beam accelerated by the high voltage strikes the target phospher on the faceplate. Monitors have more lead than TV's because they are designed to be viewed at closer distances. The X-rays from a TV exposure is limited because like light, doubling the distance from the source squares the area and therefore reduces the exposure by the square root of the distance viewed.
Just in case you are worndering, Don't figure the price you pay for electricity as the price you will get from the utilities. Having researched this for a small hydro install I have learned the utilitie puts in 2 meters. One for the juice you use at retail plus all applicible taxes and tarrifs and another on your generator at wholesale cost. This equates to you buying power at say .13 per HWH and selling at .023 per KWH. Part of the justification is the utilitie provides voltage and frequency regulation and surge capacity. They can provide the temporary heavy load a freezer starting draws or keep up with making a typical breakfast. Water heater recovering from morning shower, washer and dryer doing the towels, coffee in the drip maker, toast in the toaster, ironing the fresh shirt etc. Home generation does not provide this surge capacity, or the system is oversized and runs ineffeciently.
Doh, Cookies dude. MS look, here is that guy back looking for... Advertiser Hmm I know where to buy more ad space.
Hmmm, Would blocking the MS ip kill the browser at the firewall? You could kill the dual booters browser on your little LAN with that trick. ;-)
I wonder if Microsoft is not allowed to show any version of Windows because the browser (remember it IS part of Windows) and the Media player play MP3's ;-)
Good Job! I don't care how much it costs, My next sound card will be from creative. Support true innovation!
Sounds great. I have a $1000.00 laser disk player. I can not rent movies for it. Most titles are at least 5X the cost of a VHS. Think all the new stuff will be released on VHS? Think again. VHS releases are being phased out as DVD's are taking the space on shelves. Soon VHS will be as common as my 12 inch video disks. New formats (HDTV & DVD) are always more restrictive. AS soon as the market mass hits the HDTV wide screen standard, with encription all the way to the display, (non letterbox of course) then films will only be on fully locked down media. Don't expect HDTV to have any kind of recorder that is usable. They will only have retail, Digital Cable and rental play only media releases. My VHS will be stuck only with reruns of the Brady Bunch and I love Lucy. The movie industry will just wait for all the tapes to decay and turn to dust. The idea is of course is you can only play by their rulls. If you want anything new, you have to follow like sheep to get it. They know they don't have to release to what most people have, because there is no real competition. They own the distribution channel.
Anybody want to start a truly free music site? Index and offer only public domain music and accept new contributions? Betcha it get sued for any resemblence to anything however remote that is already a commercial work. It would be fun to see a grassroots rebellion take off along this track. I don't have the time, resources or legal defence fund to stick this out. Any takers?
A study shows the more laywers a country has the lower the GNP. Threats of lawsuits have killed more industry than has saved industry. Wow, Golden eggs, lets cut the goose open to get more! Would you like to cut the red tape to encroach on established broadcasters? I may have a sucessful business model except the cost of the legal defense fund. MP3, Napster, DeCSS, Betamax, Compact Cassette, Minidisk, Audio CDR, all have been attacked or made expensive concessions. Price minidisks or audio CDR's if you can find them to see what I mean. They are high priced, restricted and hence very slow sellers so shops generally don't stock them. I only support formats already rulled by the courts as legal (already has some risk removed) and afordable. I have VHS, Cassettes, Reel to reel, Laserdisks, records, and CD's, but I do not have DVD's, minidisks, Dats, Audio CDR's or other heavely encumbered formats. Too bad the promise the laserdisk had of being cheaper than VHS never came about. I have a $1000.00 laserdisk player and less than 20 movies for it. At $35 - $125 a pop, that unencumbered format is only encumbered by a very prohibitive price and lack of titles. I liked the search feature and I wasn't forced to watch anything I didn't want to. I am getting a Rio soon that will not play any encumbered format. They think I'll buy a higher priced player to buy a more restrictive format. Get a clue, I didn't buy a DIVX player. After the MP3 rulling,I am not buying any more CD's. I do use a comupter as it has been declared not a recording device. The industry is going to have to find a format they can sell to me. I vote with my pocketbook.
I think I have already purchaced my last CD. How many people think the same? How much damage has the judge caused. Can it be as much as the MP3 award or more? If the companies don't want the CD format supported, don't support it. Remember the minidisk, GIF's, DVIX movies and other entangled formats? Let them die! CD's and DVD's are next.
Hmm. I wonder if this can be killed like the single play video disk. Sir your programming is incompatabile with my hardware. I am not going to upgrade to a restrictive system. Get a clue. Why don't you think SONY Minidisks are rare and MP3 players are plentiful. Could it be the built in encumberments? Thats why I do not own a minidisk. Do you think I am going to upgrade a RIO just so I can play a Liquid Audio file? I don't think so. I wanted a minidisk but the additional required and unwanted anticopy stuff added to the cost so much they are not cost effective or useful. CDR, CDRW and MP3 players all have come from behind and taken the market. MP3 players have fit the small portable player market the minidisk was supposed to have. No players/recorders, No viewers, no revenue, no problem. You get what you pay for. If you pay for restrictions you will get them. Make them follow the target audience, not the other way around. Support free TV.
I think they blew it when they actualy made a special format for barcodes which requires special hardware to use. I have a laser barcode reader on my machine and it can't read the codes in the magazines. It can read everything else. Too bad they didn't just use 3 of 9 and sold the scanner unencumbered so it could be usefull. They want me to use a general use computer with a general use operating system to use their propritary hardware.. I think they missed the boat. I already have an industry standard scanner.