While it seems a really wasteful thing to do, what's to stop somebody from just submitting their already written 50,000 word garbage opus to the contest? I'm sure a hack who's spent more time and effort doesn't produce quality, but wouldn't it give them a leg up?
will "homebrew" PVR users have to program it manually like a VCR?
For those who haven't looked more closely, MythTV uses a web listing service (I believe Zap2it) to get its listings. It really wouldn't be very useful if it had to be manually programmed, would it?
I find it interesting that you are unable to cite any case law supporting your claims.
OK, I'll bite, even though I'm not the parent poster.
Take this with a grain of salt, because it's only an engineer's understanding of law from the professional practise exam.
If you contractually agree to something that is legal and within your rights to agree to, and does not restrict "commerce", the courts are likely to interpret the wording of the contract in a strict sense - i.e. accept that you intended to waive your "fair use" and abide by the terms of the contract (maybe the Hedley Byrne case applies, if i remember right). This is similar to companies entering into an agreement for services, and the customer agreeing to the use of the product provided - terms that could include non-disclosure agreements and restrictions of the use of designs and such.
It may be arguable that the terms of service are not a contract and as such are not enforcable under contract law, but that is an issue for the courts to decide, and in general, the courts are averse to trying to re-interpret agreements between two parties when the wording is clear, except in cases of "fundamental breach" (see Harbutt's Plasticine) where the service provided was so flawed as to render the contract invalid on the whole.
Again, IANAL, but I did have to take a (limited) contract law exam for my engineering professional practise exam. This is Canadian common law - precedents can sometimes be applied to US cases. Is there a lawyer out there who can add anything, or correct me where my memory fails?
This looks a lot like IEC function block diagrams. These can be very useful in PLC programming - the Modicon Quantum processor can use any of the 5 standard IEC languages, including function block, with the Concept programming package.
Concept is a bit long in the tooth, but their new Unity package is coming, which should be a killer control app. Check out the modicon website for more information.
MS Word is better than it used to be, but I'll tell you, when it's doing something wonky, I really miss being able to reveal the formatting codes so I could see why the entire previous paragraph was stuck as heading 3.
Formatting is really just markup (like HTML) - why can't Word show us where it starts and ends when we want to see what's wrong?
hat's the tech market like in Canada for hard-core engineer level *Nix geeks?
In Sault Ste. Marie, about zero. All 4 of those jobs are taken. The Sault is a steel town, and it's economy has been in the dumps for some time - unemployment is in 17% range, last I saw.
It's a shame, isn't it? Maybe it could be the next hot tech area - but how do you draw people to a town that gets 400cm of snow a season?
For years (long before the Ontario power privatization fiasco) Sault Ste. Marie has been serviced by it's Public Utilities commission, which used to get the majority of its power from the privately run Great Lakes Power.
Since Ontario privatized, rates in the Sault have gone up along with the rest of the province. They had been really low - it's nice having a company with at least 7 hydroelectric dams headquartered right in town. I've toured the Clergue station in downtown - neat facility. Completely run remotely.
Now the Sault pays the same rates as the rest of the province. Make whatever argument you want for or against privatization - you can't argue that it wasn't botched in Ontario.
Try a coke processing plant ( the black coal stuff, not the drink ) or a casting plant that uses graphite as a release agent.. Both will cause black lung, among other things...
I have to second that one... having done controls work in a foundary and in iron making (blast furnace) areas, I've seen nasty conditions. I've visited cokemaking as well - truly a bad environment.
My personal worst is either the foundary, with the black foundary sand / dust getting all over (and in) everything - nothing like having to wash your hands after typing anything on your laptop, or a slag granulator at a blast furnace - there was a fire that burned up half the plant, there was a flood of 12 feet of water, and there were the conditions in the casthouse - nothing like a stream of molten slag being quenched by 10,000 gpm of water, generating a ton of steam and a nice strong H2SO4 steam.
It's not a challenging working environment until you add the requirement of hard hat, safety boots, ear plugs, a sulphur removing respirator, and fireproof clothing. And this is controls work!
OK, before everybody gets carried away with what SCADA systems are based on, let me point out - SCADA stands for "Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition". No single company makes SCADA any more than any single company makes any other type of application software.
SCADA systems exist that will run on QNX, Linux (See VSystem), Windows NT/2000, DOS (Yes, DOS - i.e. FactoryLink with DesqView) as well as other older platforms like VAX/VMS and PDP-11.
So, SCADA systems do not necessarily rely on OPC or DCOM - some do, some don't. Some still use DDE (trust me, not the most reliable means of communication).
Industry uses all sorts of SCADA systems, from several vendors - Rockwell Software makes RSView, Wonderware makes InTouch, Siemens makes WinCC, you get the picture. The GE package involved in the systems at First Energy is only one example of SCADA, in the same way that EMACS is only one example of a text editor.
Sorry for the rant, but IAAAE (I am an automation engineer).
The pictures they show are pretty entertaining, but it's not real danger until you toss in some higher voltages (480vAC anyone?)
One of my favourites was actually sitting inside a motor control center, with all sorts of high voltage DC motor starters right behind the main computer terminal. Don't lean back.
I'm not sure what to make of it, but Tim Horton's in Canada has coffee sizes Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large, while in the U.S., the same sizes are Extra Small, Small, Medium and Large. Note that the lids on the cup still have the S, M, L, XL labels molded in.
I really found it strange, being a very regular drinker of Tim Horton's coffees to get what I thought was a large when I ordered a medium.
Before we get into the whole morass of issues about file sharing and fair use, we have to consider this - newspapers promoting local artists with MP3 dowloads is absolutely brilliant.
Think about it - nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates (like Canwest/Global here in Canada) that could put forth, gasp, an original viewpoint, a cutting edge playlist, and even just good recommendations for new music, unlike any radio station (college stations excepted) or any major venue.
Now, will we have to worry about ClearChannel buying up North American newspapers if this catches on?
Probably the only expensive sensor on any car is the O2 sensor, which has some kind of funky coating on it. I'm not karma whoring right now -- I'm on vacation -- so I'm not going to go look it up, but it's expensive.
O2 sensors cost a fortune (~ $150 CAD each) and I'm lucky enough to have a set of 4 on my 96 Chev. Had to replace two of them. The thing is (according to the mechanic) that it isn't the sensor itself that went bad, but the heating element surrounding the sensor, since it's the part that usually fails.
I'm convinced that if somebody put up an alternative Video Music channel to MTV that just played music, all the time, that it would be successful. In fact, MTV was under anti-trust investigation awhile back because they bought up a smaller rival that did just that.
In Canada, Much Music (and its children Much More Music, Much Loud, etc.) stick much closer (no pun intended) to playing music videos only. If I recall correctly, I read something that said that the Much Music model was actually attractive to MTV, but I'm not sure if anything has been done by MTV (I only see it when I travel to the US).
It's interesting that MTV may be getting into Canada - we'll see how it competes with Much when it does. The Much stations seem to fit their audiences better - for example, Much Loud plays metal and alternative, Much Vibe plays R&B, etc. I have to say that MTV and VH-1 are disappointing in comparison.
Not to put down the usefulness of their document, but none of the vulnerabilities are particularly new. It is interesting that many of the windows vulnerabilities are tied to IIS, though.
As far as the *nix vulnerabilities, I think that a large majority of Slashdot readers could name off NFS, Bind, Sendmail, rlogin/rsh as critical (and many have already disabled / blocked those services).
I was wondering when that would come up. Acutally, things are a bit strained when it comes to the Canada/US relationship right now. There are those possible links to terrorists coming through Canada, and there is concern about Canadian immigration laws. There is also a buzz today about President Bush's speech last night, where he thanked countries for their support of the US in this crisis, but didn't mention Canada. The comment on the radio today was that they (the radio folks) were going back to Ottawa one week after 100,000 people turned out for the memorial and talking to them to see what they thought of Bush's comments.
Run a pirated copy of FrontPage to create an MS-Bashing page to be served on a pirated copy of IIS running on a pirated copy of Win2K, just to violate as many licenses as possible!
Well, I'd be looking at six months straight spent in either Indianapolis, Chicago, or Kansas City (at least that is what I've been told) when I'm based out of a city near Toronto, Ontario. I'd be flying out Monday mornings and back Friday.
I am used to some travel (about one week in 4) but I have done two months straight before, and it does get hard. I do have to think that it would really depend on the city and life in that city - I'm sure I could handle six months in a place like Montreal or Chicago, but I've never been to Indianapolis (and, I don't mean to offend, but I spent a lot of time in Fort Wayne, and didn't enjoy that) or KC.
I know that I would get a bit of a premium for the disruption in my life (I'm really getting nicely settled into my new house) and that I wouldn't have to pay for food / accomodation at the customer site. I do have to wonder how much longer I can handle consulting, though.
As far as the efficiency of several small fans vs. one large fan, there are several factors that would come into play. However, there are a couple key factors that I see:
1. Fluid Losses - these are the same as pressure loss in a pipe or through an orifice, like a showerhead. Losses occur mainly near the boundary of the channel (i.e. the rim of the pipe / vent), and several small fans would have far more rim area than one single large fan. This would reduce the total air flow passing throught the generator, as well as the energy obtained (losses = friction = heat transferred to the vents, rather than kinetic energy transferred to the vanes of the turbines).
2. Mechanical friction in several small fans vs. a single large fan. I would suspect that it would be easier and more effective to maintain good running order of a large-scale lubrication system for a single fan than for several small fans. Over time, and a large number of fans, the losses from friction would rob energy and the cost of maintenance could be prohibitive.
Now, this is really only hand-waving - it's been about 5 years since I took fluid mechanics, and about the same since various other physics, but these strike me as significant when looking at large-scale power generation.
Ed Barsalou
Disclaimer: I've forgotten most of my real engineering education.
My next-door neighbor and I used to play Monopoly in the middle of a Lego wonderland, using Lego vehicles to move around the board, Lego stands to hold our property cards and a powered Lego conveyor belt to pass money across the wide table to each other. Top that!
I don't know if it tops that, but a good friend and I used to build vehicles (push-propelled, mind you) for a head on crash competetion that reminds me a lot of BattleBots...
We spent a lot of time with the Lego sets, building and destroying - we also tended to get motors involved - the best was a ski-lift style loop set up with an old cassette deck motor - it managed to get up a flight of stairs at a good speed.
People keep asking what the point is of running Linux or NetBSD on a Dreamcast or PS2 - I can only say that it goes a long way towards having a real living room computing solution.
Now, I don't mean a nice big PC monitor with a TV tuner (no, that's the home office / bedroom TV solution), rather, an easy way to run an MP3 jukebox and web browser from the couch in the living room, with a minimum of hardware, and an unobtrusive computing device (i.e. a small console like the DC or PS2).
Regarding the time and usage locks - I get the impression that they are saying that the SAFEAUDIO software will be subjected to this, using their SAFECAST technology, ensuring "that CD replication facilities will always be using the latest release of SAFEAUDIO".
The other interpretation (time and usage locks on music CD's) would lead to the conclusion that Macrovision is way off the mark in the viability of their technology, IMHO.
Since there are no actual technical details provided, I can only guess that their copy protection scheme will rely on having control over the method used to actually read digital data from the CD.
It would seem to me that the best in raw CD reading and writing (I'm mostly unfamiliar here, but DiskJuggler and CDRWin come to mind for Windows, and CDParanoia for *nix) could still digitally reproduce these CD's, or evolve to do so if they don't already.
More interesting will be getting a CD burning utility to remove the copy protection, instead of burning a bit-for-bit copy of the original and supposedly protected media.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyhow, enter "Smithville, TX" and switch to satellite view. I wonder if the letters were still in progress at the time the picture was taken.
Do you mean the word "LUECKE" that seems to be on the ground? According to the babelfish, that is the German word for "Gap".
I have no if that has any significance - can anybody else add information? Is it a gap in the imagery?
While it seems a really wasteful thing to do, what's to stop somebody from just submitting their already written 50,000 word garbage opus to the contest? I'm sure a hack who's spent more time and effort doesn't produce quality, but wouldn't it give them a leg up?
will "homebrew" PVR users have to program it manually like a VCR?
For those who haven't looked more closely, MythTV uses a web listing service (I believe Zap2it) to get its listings. It really wouldn't be very useful if it had to be manually programmed, would it?
I find it interesting that you are unable to cite any case law supporting your claims.
OK, I'll bite, even though I'm not the parent poster.
Take this with a grain of salt, because it's only an engineer's understanding of law from the professional practise exam.
If you contractually agree to something that is legal and within your rights to agree to, and does not restrict "commerce", the courts are likely to interpret the wording of the contract in a strict sense - i.e. accept that you intended to waive your "fair use" and abide by the terms of the contract (maybe the Hedley Byrne case applies, if i remember right). This is similar to companies entering into an agreement for services, and the customer agreeing to the use of the product provided - terms that could include non-disclosure agreements and restrictions of the use of designs and such.
It may be arguable that the terms of service are not a contract and as such are not enforcable under contract law, but that is an issue for the courts to decide, and in general, the courts are averse to trying to re-interpret agreements between two parties when the wording is clear, except in cases of "fundamental breach" (see Harbutt's Plasticine) where the service provided was so flawed as to render the contract invalid on the whole.
Again, IANAL, but I did have to take a (limited) contract law exam for my engineering professional practise exam. This is Canadian common law - precedents can sometimes be applied to US cases. Is there a lawyer out there who can add anything, or correct me where my memory fails?
ed
This looks a lot like IEC function block diagrams. These can be very useful in PLC programming - the Modicon Quantum processor can use any of the 5 standard IEC languages, including function block, with the Concept programming package.
Concept is a bit long in the tooth, but their new Unity package is coming, which should be a killer control app. Check out the modicon website for more information.
Reveal codes
MS Word is better than it used to be, but I'll tell you, when it's doing something wonky, I really miss being able to reveal the formatting codes so I could see why the entire previous paragraph was stuck as heading 3.
Formatting is really just markup (like HTML) - why can't Word show us where it starts and ends when we want to see what's wrong?
hat's the tech market like in Canada for hard-core engineer level *Nix geeks?
In Sault Ste. Marie, about zero. All 4 of those jobs are taken. The Sault is a steel town, and it's economy has been in the dumps for some time - unemployment is in 17% range, last I saw.
It's a shame, isn't it? Maybe it could be the next hot tech area - but how do you draw people to a town that gets 400cm of snow a season?
For years (long before the Ontario power privatization fiasco) Sault Ste. Marie has been serviced by it's Public Utilities commission, which used to get the majority of its power from the privately run Great Lakes Power.
Since Ontario privatized, rates in the Sault have gone up along with the rest of the province. They had been really low - it's nice having a company with at least 7 hydroelectric dams headquartered right in town. I've toured the Clergue station in downtown - neat facility. Completely run remotely.
Now the Sault pays the same rates as the rest of the province. Make whatever argument you want for or against privatization - you can't argue that it wasn't botched in Ontario.
Try a coke processing plant ( the black coal stuff, not the drink ) or a casting plant that uses graphite as a release agent.. Both will cause black lung, among other things...
I have to second that one... having done controls work in a foundary and in iron making (blast furnace) areas, I've seen nasty conditions. I've visited cokemaking as well - truly a bad environment.
My personal worst is either the foundary, with the black foundary sand / dust getting all over (and in) everything - nothing like having to wash your hands after typing anything on your laptop, or a slag granulator at a blast furnace - there was a fire that burned up half the plant, there was a flood of 12 feet of water, and there were the conditions in the casthouse - nothing like a stream of molten slag being quenched by 10,000 gpm of water, generating a ton of steam and a nice strong H2SO4 steam.
It's not a challenging working environment until you add the requirement of hard hat, safety boots, ear plugs, a sulphur removing respirator, and fireproof clothing. And this is controls work!
OK, before everybody gets carried away with what SCADA systems are based on, let me point out - SCADA stands for "Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition". No single company makes SCADA any more than any single company makes any other type of application software.
SCADA systems exist that will run on QNX, Linux (See VSystem), Windows NT/2000, DOS (Yes, DOS - i.e. FactoryLink with DesqView) as well as other older platforms like VAX/VMS and PDP-11.
So, SCADA systems do not necessarily rely on OPC or DCOM - some do, some don't. Some still use DDE (trust me, not the most reliable means of communication).
Industry uses all sorts of SCADA systems, from several vendors - Rockwell Software makes RSView, Wonderware makes InTouch, Siemens makes WinCC, you get the picture. The GE package involved in the systems at First Energy is only one example of SCADA, in the same way that EMACS is only one example of a text editor.
Sorry for the rant, but IAAAE (I am an automation engineer).
One of my favourites was actually sitting inside a motor control center, with all sorts of high voltage DC motor starters right behind the main computer terminal. Don't lean back.
ed
I'm not sure what to make of it, but Tim Horton's in Canada has coffee sizes Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large, while in the U.S., the same sizes are Extra Small, Small, Medium and Large. Note that the lids on the cup still have the S, M, L, XL labels molded in.
I really found it strange, being a very regular drinker of Tim Horton's coffees to get what I thought was a large when I ordered a medium.
No idea what this means trend wise, though.
Ed
Think about it - nearly every major market has at least one "free" newspaper, and most markets do have some smaller newspaper, not owned by conglomerates (like Canwest/Global here in Canada) that could put forth, gasp, an original viewpoint, a cutting edge playlist, and even just good recommendations for new music, unlike any radio station (college stations excepted) or any major venue.
Now, will we have to worry about ClearChannel buying up North American newspapers if this catches on?
ed
Probably the only expensive sensor on any car is the O2 sensor, which has some kind of funky coating on it. I'm not karma whoring right now -- I'm on vacation -- so I'm not going to go look it up, but it's expensive.
O2 sensors cost a fortune (~ $150 CAD each) and I'm lucky enough to have a set of 4 on my 96 Chev. Had to replace two of them. The thing is (according to the mechanic) that it isn't the sensor itself that went bad, but the heating element surrounding the sensor, since it's the part that usually fails.
In Canada, Much Music (and its children Much More Music, Much Loud, etc.) stick much closer (no pun intended) to playing music videos only. If I recall correctly, I read something that said that the Much Music model was actually attractive to MTV, but I'm not sure if anything has been done by MTV (I only see it when I travel to the US).
It's interesting that MTV may be getting into Canada - we'll see how it competes with Much when it does. The Much stations seem to fit their audiences better - for example, Much Loud plays metal and alternative, Much Vibe plays R&B, etc. I have to say that MTV and VH-1 are disappointing in comparison.
manufacturing machinery."
I know that there are PDP-8 machines still operating in nuclear facilities as well. Fun, isn't it?
ed
As far as the *nix vulnerabilities, I think that a large majority of Slashdot readers could name off NFS, Bind, Sendmail, rlogin/rsh as critical (and many have already disabled / blocked those services).
Just my $0.02
Ed
I was wondering when that would come up. Acutally, things are a bit strained when it comes to the Canada/US relationship right now. There are those possible links to terrorists coming through Canada, and there is concern about Canadian immigration laws. There is also a buzz today about President Bush's speech last night, where he thanked countries for their support of the US in this crisis, but didn't mention Canada. The comment on the radio today was that they (the radio folks) were going back to Ottawa one week after 100,000 people turned out for the memorial and talking to them to see what they thought of Bush's comments.
Ed
ed
I am used to some travel (about one week in 4) but I have done two months straight before, and it does get hard. I do have to think that it would really depend on the city and life in that city - I'm sure I could handle six months in a place like Montreal or Chicago, but I've never been to Indianapolis (and, I don't mean to offend, but I spent a lot of time in Fort Wayne, and didn't enjoy that) or KC.
I know that I would get a bit of a premium for the disruption in my life (I'm really getting nicely settled into my new house) and that I wouldn't have to pay for food / accomodation at the customer site. I do have to wonder how much longer I can handle consulting, though.
Thanks for your comments,
Ed
1. Fluid Losses - these are the same as pressure loss in a pipe or through an orifice, like a showerhead. Losses occur mainly near the boundary of the channel (i.e. the rim of the pipe / vent), and several small fans would have far more rim area than one single large fan. This would reduce the total air flow passing throught the generator, as well as the energy obtained (losses = friction = heat transferred to the vents, rather than kinetic energy transferred to the vanes of the turbines).
2. Mechanical friction in several small fans vs. a single large fan. I would suspect that it would be easier and more effective to maintain good running order of a large-scale lubrication system for a single fan than for several small fans. Over time, and a large number of fans, the losses from friction would rob energy and the cost of maintenance could be prohibitive.
Now, this is really only hand-waving - it's been about 5 years since I took fluid mechanics, and about the same since various other physics, but these strike me as significant when looking at large-scale power generation.
Ed Barsalou
Disclaimer: I've forgotten most of my real engineering education.
I don't know if it tops that, but a good friend and I used to build vehicles (push-propelled, mind you) for a head on crash competetion that reminds me a lot of BattleBots...
We spent a lot of time with the Lego sets, building and destroying - we also tended to get motors involved - the best was a ski-lift style loop set up with an old cassette deck motor - it managed to get up a flight of stairs at a good speed.
ed2
Now, I don't mean a nice big PC monitor with a TV tuner (no, that's the home office / bedroom TV solution), rather, an easy way to run an MP3 jukebox and web browser from the couch in the living room, with a minimum of hardware, and an unobtrusive computing device (i.e. a small console like the DC or PS2).
Ed
The other interpretation (time and usage locks on music CD's) would lead to the conclusion that Macrovision is way off the mark in the viability of their technology, IMHO.
Ed
It would seem to me that the best in raw CD reading and writing (I'm mostly unfamiliar here, but DiskJuggler and CDRWin come to mind for Windows, and CDParanoia for *nix) could still digitally reproduce these CD's, or evolve to do so if they don't already.
More interesting will be getting a CD burning utility to remove the copy protection, instead of burning a bit-for-bit copy of the original and supposedly protected media.
Ed