I remember reading somewhere that this ruling expires in 2007, which is why this is the longest delay between Windows versions ever. Essentially Microsoft just isn't going to launch Vista until after their antitrust restrictions expire.
I've seen at least 6 or 7 different video glasses advertised since the late 90's (there's one currently in SkyMall too), but the real question for me is, are any of them halfway decent?
My primary application would be using my laptop on an airplane or at a Starbucks without having everyone around me seeing whats on my screen.
I think GOOD video glasses should: - give me at least 800x600 res in 16bit color - VGA, SVIDEO, and composite inputs - simulate a screen size of at least 30" - have option for opaque or translucent background - not look completely ridiculous - price point under $600
I've seen glasses that do some of the above, but I've never seen a pair that matches all of my criteria.
Has anyone had experience with devices like this? Any recommendations?
Hey it sounds like you really know what you're talking about. If you do freelance, please email me at jyaffe@jyaffeconsulting.com for some information on a XHTML compliance project. Normally I wouldn't post this as a comment, but you turned off e-mail in your slashdot user profile.
This is true for the most part, but it can't be relied upon for billing purposes. Every NPANXX is associated with an OCN, but the OCN no longer owns the number. The biggest problem here is not cellular, which as the parent said is usually all together in one area code. What is much merkier is trying to identify if you are calling a number attached to a RBOC or a CLEC. Its very common now to change your local service provider for your landline. LNP for cellular is a new development.
Back in the old days you could just do a lookup of the NPANXX in the LERG to determine who the final terminating carrier is. But now, even though a NPANXX is associated with an OCN, you can't rely on that.
However, thanks to SS7's national roll out in '92, you can now dip the NPAC database to determine which LEC you are sending the call to.
Reference Guide for non-telecom nerds:
NPANXX ~ The area code and exchange. i.e. from 617-333-3456, the NPANXX is 617/333.
OCN ~ Operating Company Number. This is a reference number that identifies a particular local service provider. For instance, Pacific Bell (I believe) is 9147. Cellular providers and CLECs have their own OCN numbers as well.
LERG ~ Local Exchange Routing Guide. This is a database published in monthly updates by Telcordia on a CD-ROM that shows (amoung other things) which OCN is associated with which NPANXX. It also shows the geographical coordinates of each NPANXX (for those who bill calls by mile), ratecenters (local calling areas), and about 2 dozen other things.
LEC ~ Local Exchange Carrier. This is the company who's switch is connected via copper wire to your handset. This can also be a cellular company. In the United States, a LEC originates and terminates every call, though there may be 1 or more Interexchange carriers (IXCs) in the middle.
CLEC ~ Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. This is a LEC that wasn't part of the Bell Breakup, but uses parts of the local bell company's network and systems to get to that last mile customer. For instance, your cable company is a CLEC if it offers local phone service.
RBOC ~ Regional Bell Operating Company. This is a company born out of the Bell Breakup. i.e. Verizon, Qwest, BellSouth, SBC, etc.
LNP ~ Local Number Portability. This is taking a local phone number (whether it originally belong to a cell phone or a landline is now irrelevant), and PORTING it to another local exchange carrier's network. This allows a customer to keep his phone number but change providers.
SS7 ~ A very reliable and complex out of band signaling system now used in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and other developed parts of the world. SS7 has redundancies all over the place, allows for dipping external databases (for instance to identify a ported local number or where to route an 800 number), and most importantly, provides a continuous stream of data between every switch along the call path. This means that the terminating switch at the end of the last call leg has the call setup information before it gets the call (faster call setup = connect to your party faster), and it also means that the first switch in route will know that the 6th switch in route is having problems before it sends the call there, so it can reroute the call somewhere else.
NPAC ~ World Zone 1's database of what number belongs to what LEC-- i.e. to identify ported numbers.
World Zone 1 ~ All the countries you dial 1+area code+number for. US, Canada, Guam, some carribean islands.
Yes. Cellular works a bit differently in the US. You are charged for both incoming and outcoming calls.
On the other hand, the calling party does -NOT- pay more for calling a cellular than a landline. In most other countries, cellular has a special city code that is billed at a higher rate. Here in the US you can port any number to cell or landline, so its not usually possible for the calling party to know he is calling a cell.
Spoofing ANI and CLI only requires that you have an oob signaling link to your upstream carrier. Every upstream carrier is going to populate whatever the one before them had in the message for ANI and CLI. You can probably do that with any old ISDN or T1 without much trouble.
If you just have a regular DS0 land line, its a bit different. ANI and CLI are transmitted out of band, so you can't reall effect that. The terminating switch will have the same ANI and CLI that your originating switch trasmitted in the SS7 message. However, the "caller id" information (taken from the CLI field) is transmitted in band from the terminating switch to the receiving party's handset... and this is very easy to spoof. Once you are connected, you can send your own in band "caller id" signal which will be picked up by the receiving part's handset. You can probably do it with sound card.
What you are experiencing is someone calling you through a carrier that does not properly populate the CLI and ANI fields in the SS7 (or ISDN) message to the terminating carrier.
This isn't anything scamy at all, and nothing for you to worry about. All this means is that someone is using some cheap ass long distance to call you... maybe from a prepaid phone card or a VoIP-to-POTS service. Its very easy to not set this up correctly if you are using some crap switching platform like NACT STX, and if the carrier is small enough to be under the radar, they probably aren't filing the PIU forms anyway so they don't give a shit about the tax penalities for not sending ANI.
Your cell phone provider will treat this call the same way it treats all incoming calls. Most likely that means it will just charge you at your normal airtime rate.
I thought the newer nVidia SLI cards have a cable running between the two boards inside the case? Its the older SLI cards from like 10 years ago that stole a video-out port...
Anyway the whole point of this isn't to have more video-out ports, its to increase your FPS rate when playing games:).
I'm guessing that by "pick lock" you mean a PIC freeze... A PIC freeze prevents you from being slammed, which is when another carrier signs you up for their long distance service without your authorization. When you change your long distance provider from one carrier to another, the new long distance carrier sends a TCSI request to your local carrier asking to change your Preferred Interexchange Carrier (PIC). Your preferred carrier is the carrier that your calls will default to when you dial 1+area code+number. You can actually call the operator and ask to use whatever carrier you want for your call.
A PIC freeze does not however prevent your PIC from changing which plan you are using. This can be especially dangerous with a larger long distance carrier such as MCI, Qwest, AT&T, etc, since you could be slammed into any of several hundred different long distance plans including those provided by resellers that don't even use the same carrier's name.
For instance, TMC is a Qwest reseller. If I am using Qwest long distance service, a TMC independant agent could slam me and my PIC would never be changed. Also, in the example you gave above, the agent could certainly change you from one MCI plan to another without any change to your PIC. The PIC freeze is useless in this case.
New technologies in communication and broadcasting have strongly effected companies like CNN, so people working there are going to be thinking a lot about how they had to invest $2 billion dollars in HDTV equipment, how they have to do better makeup jobs to cover up blemishes on Plasma TV, etc...
Given the way they have weighted broadcast/communication technology, I'm expecting #1 to either be the deployment of modern cable networks which have allowed for networks like CNN exist, high speed Internet for everyone, TV on Demand stuff... or possibly something to do with modern geostationary satalite deployment technology.
Re:Um, Bandwidth anyone...?
on
The Other VoIP
·
· Score: 1
In Korea, only old people complain about crappy broadband that not everyone had.
I know that was intended as a joke, but seriously, thats what I end up doing half the time:(.
If I am buying a $1 million dollar software package from some vendor, and they tell me it absolutely has to run on one of these 1 models of Sun servers (2 of them discontinued models and 1 of them $250k new), who am I to argue? If the software ever doesn't do something it was supposed to do they would always come back with "well its only tested on this particular machine so we can't support you."
There was a Dr. Sid in FF: TSW! He was voiced by Donald Sutherland of all people. Dr. Sid was the batty professor who came up with the idea that spirits from plants and dying children would defeat the alien monsters.
Actually as sucky as the last FF movie was, it's plot had every element of a FF game story...
. A small team of unlikely characters fighting impossible odds. . A government with factions out to kill that team. . The earth nearly destroyed or in its final days. . People with magical/spiritual powers. . Some kind of religeous overtones. . Scary monsters everywhere! . A top bad guy evil character, out to get our team!
I think what made it suck was that those good game elements that play out over 40 hours of interactive gameplay as you are descovering the world don't neccesarily make a good 2-hour non-interactive movie where there is a lot of exposition and all of these elements are crammed together.
The difference in the plots between FF: TSW and FF VII: Advent Children is that the FFVII Universe is already established (as the most popular FF of all time), and pretty much anyone wanting to see FFVII has already a good idea of the backstory. That allows for better storytelling.
Actually you can stuff anything you want in the ANI field, the calling party field, dialed number field, etc. This is not illegal, but it is expensive. A "non-jurisdictional" or invalid ANI results in the terminating call be charged at intra-lata rates, which are the most expensive.
This means a call that normally would cost something like 0.0004/minute + 0.0003 dip to NPAC now costs as much as 0.03500/minute + 0.0003. Some states allow for ridiculously high tarrifs on intrastate and intralata calling.
Did anyone else read this title and think that a DVD software device driver was being charged with murder? Am I that nerdy?...
I was imagining all sorts of super-litigious situations, like a third-party dvd-watching device driver written for those linux nuts was used to watch a region-protected movie which somehow killed someone. or something. eh... back to work.
I have one of these things and I love it, but yeah, you're right... Its too big to carry everywhere like my phone (because it wont fit in a pocket), and its no-attached-keyboardness makes it too difficult to do real work on it without using the dock or carrying around the tiny external usb japanese keyboard. It ends up being more like one of those tablet PCs that everyone was talking about a couple of years ago.
Mostly I use it for web surfing in Starbucks, AIM while I'm walking around my house (its lite enough to carry everywhere at 1.2lb-- just too bulky for carrying everywhere outside of the house), and watching ripped DVDs in airplanes, and thats fine.
Maybe I should just get a new tiny USB keyboard with english letters on it? What have handspring/treo/ipaq people come up with?
Ok this is just a minor nitpicky point... but MBTA = "Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority", not "Metro Boston Transit Authority". The MBTA is the public transportation system for half the state, not just Boston.
Slashdot Mirror
you use skype for dating? wow, you must be a real swinger :-p.
I remember reading somewhere that this ruling expires in 2007, which is why this is the longest delay between Windows versions ever. Essentially Microsoft just isn't going to launch Vista until after their antitrust restrictions expire.
Can anyone confirm?
I've seen at least 6 or 7 different video glasses advertised since the late 90's (there's one currently in SkyMall too), but the real question for me is, are any of them halfway decent?
My primary application would be using my laptop on an airplane or at a Starbucks without having everyone around me seeing whats on my screen.
I think GOOD video glasses should:
- give me at least 800x600 res in 16bit color
- VGA, SVIDEO, and composite inputs
- simulate a screen size of at least 30"
- have option for opaque or translucent background
- not look completely ridiculous
- price point under $600
I've seen glasses that do some of the above, but I've never seen a pair that matches all of my criteria.
Has anyone had experience with devices like this? Any recommendations?
Hey it sounds like you really know what you're talking about. If you do freelance, please email me at jyaffe@jyaffeconsulting.com for some information on a XHTML compliance project. Normally I wouldn't post this as a comment, but you turned off e-mail in your slashdot user profile.
Thanks, Jared
This is true for the most part, but it can't be relied upon for billing purposes. Every NPANXX is associated with an OCN, but the OCN no longer owns the number. The biggest problem here is not cellular, which as the parent said is usually all together in one area code. What is much merkier is trying to identify if you are calling a number attached to a RBOC or a CLEC. Its very common now to change your local service provider for your landline. LNP for cellular is a new development.
Back in the old days you could just do a lookup of the NPANXX in the LERG to determine who the final terminating carrier is. But now, even though a NPANXX is associated with an OCN, you can't rely on that.
However, thanks to SS7's national roll out in '92, you can now dip the NPAC database to determine which LEC you are sending the call to.
Reference Guide for non-telecom nerds:
NPANXX ~ The area code and exchange. i.e. from 617-333-3456, the NPANXX is 617/333.
OCN ~ Operating Company Number. This is a reference number that identifies a particular local service provider. For instance, Pacific Bell (I believe) is 9147. Cellular providers and CLECs have their own OCN numbers as well.
LERG ~ Local Exchange Routing Guide. This is a database published in monthly updates by Telcordia
on a CD-ROM that shows (amoung other things) which OCN is associated with which NPANXX. It also shows the geographical coordinates of each NPANXX (for those who bill calls by mile), ratecenters (local calling areas), and about 2 dozen other things.
LEC ~ Local Exchange Carrier. This is the company who's switch is connected via copper wire to your handset. This can also be a cellular company. In the United States, a LEC originates and terminates every call, though there may be 1 or more Interexchange carriers (IXCs) in the middle.
CLEC ~ Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. This is a LEC that wasn't part of the Bell Breakup, but uses parts of the local bell company's network and systems to get to that last mile customer. For instance, your cable company is a CLEC if it offers local phone service.
RBOC ~ Regional Bell Operating Company. This is a company born out of the Bell Breakup. i.e. Verizon, Qwest, BellSouth, SBC, etc.
LNP ~ Local Number Portability. This is taking a local phone number (whether it originally belong to a cell phone or a landline is now irrelevant), and PORTING it to another local exchange carrier's network. This allows a customer to keep his phone number but change providers.
SS7 ~ A very reliable and complex out of band signaling system now used in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and other developed parts of the world. SS7 has redundancies all over the place, allows for dipping external databases (for instance to identify a ported local number or where to route an 800 number), and most importantly, provides a continuous stream of data between every switch along the call path. This means that the terminating switch at the end of the last call leg has the call setup information before it gets the call (faster call setup = connect to your party faster), and it also means that the first switch in route will know that the 6th switch in route is having problems before it sends the call there, so it can reroute the call somewhere else.
NPAC ~ World Zone 1's database of what number belongs to what LEC-- i.e. to identify ported numbers.
World Zone 1 ~ All the countries you dial 1+area code+number for. US, Canada, Guam, some carribean islands.
Yes. Cellular works a bit differently in the US. You are charged for both incoming and outcoming calls.
On the other hand, the calling party does -NOT- pay more for calling a cellular than a landline. In most other countries, cellular has a special city code that is billed at a higher rate. Here in the US you can port any number to cell or landline, so its not usually possible for the calling party to know he is calling a cell.
Spoofing ANI and CLI only requires that you have an oob signaling link to your upstream carrier. Every upstream carrier is going to populate whatever the one before them had in the message for ANI and CLI. You can probably do that with any old ISDN or T1 without much trouble.
If you just have a regular DS0 land line, its a bit different. ANI and CLI are transmitted out of band, so you can't reall effect that. The terminating switch will have the same ANI and CLI that your originating switch trasmitted in the SS7 message. However, the "caller id" information (taken from the CLI field) is transmitted in band from the terminating switch to the receiving party's handset... and this is very easy to spoof. Once you are connected, you can send your own in band "caller id" signal which will be picked up by the receiving part's handset. You can probably do it with sound card.
What you are experiencing is someone calling you through a carrier that does not properly populate the CLI and ANI fields in the SS7 (or ISDN) message to the terminating carrier.
This isn't anything scamy at all, and nothing for you to worry about. All this means is that someone is using some cheap ass long distance to call you... maybe from a prepaid phone card or a VoIP-to-POTS service. Its very easy to not set this up correctly if you are using some crap switching platform like NACT STX, and if the carrier is small enough to be under the radar, they probably aren't filing the PIU forms anyway so they don't give a shit about the tax penalities for not sending ANI.
Your cell phone provider will treat this call the same way it treats all incoming calls. Most likely that means it will just charge you at your normal airtime rate.
I thought the newer nVidia SLI cards have a cable running between the two boards inside the case? Its the older SLI cards from like 10 years ago that stole a video-out port...
:).
Anyway the whole point of this isn't to have more video-out ports, its to increase your FPS rate when playing games
You can password-protect entire documents and sections of documents.
There is a crude user and group system that allows you to define permissions, or alternatively you can just turn protection on or off.
You can restrict non-privlidged users to either no read privlidge, no write/change privlidge, or the ability to only write/change to form fields.
I'm guessing that by "pick lock" you mean a PIC freeze... A PIC freeze prevents you from being slammed, which is when another carrier signs you up for their long distance service without your authorization. When you change your long distance provider from one carrier to another, the new long distance carrier sends a TCSI request to your local carrier asking to change your Preferred Interexchange Carrier (PIC). Your preferred carrier is the carrier that your calls will default to when you dial 1+area code+number. You can actually call the operator and ask to use whatever carrier you want for your call.
A PIC freeze does not however prevent your PIC from changing which plan you are using. This can be especially dangerous with a larger long distance carrier such as MCI, Qwest, AT&T, etc, since you could be slammed into any of several hundred different long distance plans including those provided by resellers that don't even use the same carrier's name.
For instance, TMC is a Qwest reseller. If I am using Qwest long distance service, a TMC independant agent could slam me and my PIC would never be changed. Also, in the example you gave above, the agent could certainly change you from one MCI plan to another without any change to your PIC. The PIC freeze is useless in this case.
Keep in mind that this is CNN making this list.
New technologies in communication and broadcasting have strongly effected companies like CNN, so people working there are going to be thinking a lot about how they had to invest $2 billion dollars in HDTV equipment, how they have to do better makeup jobs to cover up blemishes on Plasma TV, etc...
Given the way they have weighted broadcast/communication technology, I'm expecting #1 to either be the deployment of modern cable networks which have allowed for networks like CNN exist, high speed Internet for everyone, TV on Demand stuff... or possibly something to do with modern geostationary satalite deployment technology.
In Korea, only old people complain about crappy broadband that not everyone had.
huh?
omgwtfbbq = oh my god! What the fuck, barbeque?
I know that was intended as a joke, but seriously, thats what I end up doing half the time :(.
If I am buying a $1 million dollar software package from some vendor, and they tell me it absolutely has to run on one of these 1 models of Sun servers (2 of them discontinued models and 1 of them $250k new), who am I to argue? If the software ever doesn't do something it was supposed to do they would always come back with "well its only tested on this particular machine so we can't support you."
Very frustrating...
will someone post the first michael jackson joke already?
umm kill it with the keyboard? ALT-F4 anyone?...
Q-bert?...
There was a Dr. Sid in FF: TSW! He was voiced by Donald Sutherland of all people. Dr. Sid was the batty professor who came up with the idea that spirits from plants and dying children would defeat the alien monsters.
Actually as sucky as the last FF movie was, it's plot had every element of a FF game story...
. A small team of unlikely characters fighting impossible odds.
. A government with factions out to kill that team.
. The earth nearly destroyed or in its final days.
. People with magical/spiritual powers.
. Some kind of religeous overtones.
. Scary monsters everywhere!
. A top bad guy evil character, out to get our team!
I think what made it suck was that those good game elements that play out over 40 hours of interactive gameplay as you are descovering the world don't neccesarily make a good 2-hour non-interactive movie where there is a lot of exposition and all of these elements are crammed together.
The difference in the plots between FF: TSW and FF VII: Advent Children is that the FFVII Universe is already established (as the most popular FF of all time), and pretty much anyone wanting to see FFVII has already a good idea of the backstory. That allows for better storytelling.
Actually you can stuff anything you want in the ANI field, the calling party field, dialed number field, etc. This is not illegal, but it is expensive. A "non-jurisdictional" or invalid ANI results in the terminating call be charged at intra-lata rates, which are the most expensive.
This means a call that normally would cost something like 0.0004/minute + 0.0003 dip to NPAC now costs as much as 0.03500/minute + 0.0003. Some states allow for ridiculously high tarrifs on intrastate and intralata calling.
If it does, you can just disable the Windows XP internal firewall... Its not very hard to do.
I was imagining all sorts of super-litigious situations, like a third-party dvd-watching device driver written for those linux nuts was used to watch a region-protected movie which somehow killed someone. or something. eh... back to work.
I have one of these things and I love it, but yeah, you're right... Its too big to carry everywhere like my phone (because it wont fit in a pocket), and its no-attached-keyboardness makes it too difficult to do real work on it without using the dock or carrying around the tiny external usb japanese keyboard. It ends up being more like one of those tablet PCs that everyone was talking about a couple of years ago.
Mostly I use it for web surfing in Starbucks, AIM while I'm walking around my house (its lite enough to carry everywhere at 1.2lb-- just too bulky for carrying everywhere outside of the house), and watching ripped DVDs in airplanes, and thats fine.
Maybe I should just get a new tiny USB keyboard with english letters on it? What have handspring/treo/ipaq people come up with?
Ok this is just a minor nitpicky point... but MBTA = "Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority", not "Metro Boston Transit Authority". The MBTA is the public transportation system for half the state, not just Boston.