a comprehensive regional trade agreement between all 34 democracies in the Western Hemisphere, including the US, and covering a population of over 800 million people
Given the US already has allowed the feared draconian legislation (DMCA, Patriot Act, etc) to take hold within its own borders, it's the 500-million citizens of other countries that should be scared.
The workplace is a dangerous environment. A lotta accidents can happen if you're not careful. Like maybe some drops a paperclip and it bends itself straight, flips up and becomes lodged in your eye. A trip to the hospital would be most unfortunate.
A big tall strapping dude, such as myself, can prevent things like this from happening to you. All it takes is the addition of "safety advisor bonus" to my paycheck. I'm confident you will find that it's worth it.
For information, yes there is the superhighway. But it seems to me knowledge is more; it requires intelligence. So far humans are apparently the only vessels with knowledge. However, cleverly-written software can persuade us to believe machines have knowledge, as the Darwin Awards infer that several humans don't.
The roadshow starts in Toronto then moves to Boston. One quick phone call to US Customs from Toronto concerning a new extremist splinter group calling themselves Secret-Comdrades-of-Osama (SCO) ought to end the whole fuss immediately.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a citizen of a NAFTA country may work in a professional occupation in another NAFTA country if the applicant meet certain requirements.
American professionals may easily work in Canada, for example, and vice versa.
Seems a little too swift and convenient. It's all settled nice and neat, RIAA looks tough but fair, kid probably gets a new bike, and no public court documents.
Plus, McBride is not a great name to have in prison.
"Looks like you dun dropped the soap agin, McBride..."
Re:Still not a little hard drive replacement
on
4Gb CF Card Announced
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
While a CF is not a good choice for a "tradition HD" application, I would suggest that under certain conditions, a CF *can* be a good HD. For example, with embedded Linux you might mount certain partitions (e.g./usr) as read-only which could either be on the CF, or if speed is needed part of an initrd. Certain writeable partitions (e.g./dev,/var,/tmp) normally on your system can be a ramdisk (RAM is cheap), avoiding the flash altogether. And if you want persistent storage for other paritions (e.g./home,/www), you may use a file system that is flash-friendly, as you suggest in your post.
Perhaps the biggest waste of a CF would be as a swap partition, it probably wouldn't last long.
'This is our stadium, and we run the communications for it,'
By 'communications' perhaps the spokesman does not mean WiFi at all. At first blush to a geek it sounds like he is objecting to the WiFi, but within the context of the whole article, the term seems consistent with disliking the publication of an unauthorized press release. Re-reading the article, it actually makes more sense that way.
Since you are a lawyer, perhaps you can elaborate on something I've wondered about...
As I understand things, if a company like Adobe sues another party under the DMCA is no worse than any other lawsuit for say "traditional" copyright infringement. In such a civil case, when the court finds for the plaintiff, the remedies are typically financial, perhaps injunctions, etc.
The thing that really infuriates me, and I suspect a lot of other Slashdotters, is that the DMCA makes it CRIMINAL to for example publish bugs concerning encryption.
So companies like Adobe whisper in the ear of the FBI, step back and throw up their arms pretending to be good guys while some poor programmer gets the federal rubber glove treatment.
Lawsuits can be annoying and expensive, but are mostly meaningless to young programmers without big money. I my mind the real scary thing is facing incarceration because some company wants to sick "justice" on folks for finding the trivial flaws in their products because it was "encryption" and therefore a crime under the DMCA
When moving around with your traditional cell phone, you move from one cell to another. The handset and network both switch "connections" simultaneously. One analogy is to think of the cell phone as having a really long imaginary phone cord (or ethernet cable for VoIP) connected to a wall jack. As you move around, the cord stretches out so far it can stretch no more - so the magic in the system silently connects you to a "closer" wall jack in the blink of an eye.
Incredible numbers of man-hours have gone in to designing and implementing the current cellular networks so they operate with this "live mobility" -- moving around without dropping your call. And it mostly works but still not perfectly (Can you hear me now? Good).
Handoff in general is a very thorny problem, and one of the advantages the cellular carriers have is they know exactly WHERE all their base stations are and what the radio wave patterns are in the area. This is hardly something a de-centralized collection of WiFi hotspots lends itself to.
I have yet to see anyone propose a solution to the handoff question on WiFi. For "normal" IP traffic, it is okay to drop your connection and re-connect on a new WiFi node in a reactive fashion. Maybe you lose the connection for a second or two - no big deal. But in the voice cellular world handoff occurs in the order of a millisecond. Can WiFi hotspots really support this?
If one cannot handoff between WiFi cells, then immediately this is a non-starter for current cellular users. The WiFi hotspots are by definition discontiguous, so if one cannot handoff between traditional cellular and WiFi, this is also a non-starter. And it boggles the mind to imagine the coordination of all the WiFi hotspots and the cellular carriers.
Just because you can get a VoIP call in a particular WiFi hot spot does not mean you can talk and walk. As others have said, if you want phone number portability, call forwarding has been around for decades. IMHO the cellular carriers have nothing to worry about.
One day, noone will care that 10% of the CPU is spent on software radio.
In general you're right, but I would point out that in order to be truly successful, SDR must be workable on a mobile, battery-powered device. We're a far cry away from that now. Battery time is not mentioned in the article and it's no wonder -- the demo IPAQ probably runs for less than 30 minutes on battery in radio mode (a pure guess, YMMV, etc).
Also, I would point out that although the XScale (at least the variant that I'm familiar with) has some DSP-like operations, it's a far cry from a real DSP, and the "signal processing" being done on the IPAQ is likely pretty lightweight. The CPU is more likely doing the messaging protocol - something well within its power. Any serious signal processing is probably done with hardware logic in the Altera FPGA (that big honkin' silver thing on the PCB in the photo). Of course that counts as SDR since the logic is still Software-Defined, and the FPGA device is reconfigurable.
In the end, the IPAQ is a nice form and all -- probably a good marketing strategy for these guys to demo their product -- but hardly a practical host computer for battery-powered SDR at this point.
I'm concerned that that Software Engineering as a Professional Engineering discpline is not really going to get very far very quickly. The public and our potential clients need too much education to see value in the profession. I believe the Professional Engineering associations have a huge challenge ahead.
The Professional Engineering associations do what they can under the legislation to support Professional Engineering. The ultimate premise behind the legislation and existence of these associations is that Professional Engineering is needed. Of course in traditional engineering fields, including the oft-exampled bridge building, a degree of competence is required and demanded by the client. Where public safety is at issue, the professional associations stand behind the "seal of approval" needed by the client, government, and the general public. Of course no one wants unqualified people responsible for works that pose an obvious potential danger.
However, the public trust is very difficult to causally connect to the practice of professional Software Engineering. I submit the following
reasons:
The lay person's perception of software development is that of a black art practiced in darkened basements or ultra-hip NERF-encrusted
neo-offices by Pepsi-swilling twentysomethings. Mad scientists and uber-hackers do not instill a professional impression. Traditional engineers are not seen this way - maybe a little nerdy, but
still professional.
The public expectation of the performance of computers and software is very low. Terms like "crash", "reboot", and "virus" are now commonplace. Problems seem expected, and are to a large degree tolerated. This is not the case for a major bridge or nuclear power station.
The perceived "talent pool" for software development ranges from inexperienced youngster hackers through to highly-experienced
professionals. The entrance barrier to claiming - and demonstrating - ability is very low, and it is difficult to raise the bar. Just about anyone can create and release software. Conversely, if you want to design for example a jet engine, you likely wouldn't hire a neighborhood kid.
Given the above, the initial costs of software projects can seem very low, and very attractive, when done in an unprofessional manner. It is
extremely difficult to convince an unsophisticated client otherwise
despite the evidence indicating software development done right is cheaper in the long run.
Professionalism is seen as an extra cost in software, but an absolute must for designing say a highway on-ramp or a multi-level parking structure.
There are many bodies "competing" with the Professional Engineering associations for setting the common view of the standard of professionalism. A person may be an MCSE, or his
organization may be CMM Level 4, etc. It's confusing to the public and difficult to justify and position yet another certification body.
While there might be enough evidence, both academic and anecdotal, to counter all of these points, it requires extraordinary public education.
I have heard comments from my local association members wishing for more proactive
public education in traditional Professional Engineering disciplines. While the association has had some lukewarm results in raising the Engineering profile, I find the challenge of doing so for CSED to be orders of magnitude more difficult.
P.S. I currently work primarily in Software Development, but hold my P.Eng as an EE.
September 11 killed about 3,000 Americans, out of a population of about 280 million.
We might be reminded that nationals of dozens of other countries were killed on 9/11. Look it up if you don't believe. Like a couple of hundred "non-Americans". It was the WORLD TRADE CENTER for Crissake. Sixteen bloody Jamaicans died! What the hell did they do to anyone? Do the math on the % harm to Jamaica. It was crime against humanity to be sure. The massacre in Rwanda doesn't make two lines in the newspaper, buried between half-page on OJ Simpson's gloves and a Super Size Big Mac coupon. But for some reason "this time it's personal" seems to ring louder than the bombs in Baghdad.
... Senator Strom Thurmond is backing a motion to ensure post-war Iraq is properly converted to US measurements.
Softening from his earlier hard line of pressing both the US and Iraq adopt to British measurements, the Senator is quoted as saying that there is "no way in hell we're gonna let the French get anything out of Iraq, and the metric system is as French as Napolean's testicles."
Thurmond's supporters went on to point out that nearly all of the countries unwilling to attack Iraq have adopted the metric system, and the 'coalition of the willing' have not. A senior aide said, "The brits use miles and gallons like us 'mericans. Coincidence they are with us in the war? I think not. Even though the miles and gallons they use are different than ours, I think I made my point."
An unnamed staffer summed the plan up this way: "It's gonna get reeeal hot in Baghdad this summer. Mostly because the thermometers will be in Fahrenheit instead of that pinko metric crap. I mean jeez, 45 degrees is nothing in 'American'. We'll set the bastards straight."
...if you want 2 Gbps. The 1xEV-DO carrier supports up to 2.4 Mbps total bandwidth (ie. you share it with all other users of the channel). Spin it any way you want, it's still better than 14.4k dialup, but a far cry from wireline broadband.
Slashdot Mirror
a comprehensive regional trade agreement between all 34 democracies in the Western Hemisphere, including the US, and covering a population of over 800 million people
Given the US already has allowed the feared draconian legislation (DMCA, Patriot Act, etc) to take hold within its own borders, it's the 500-million citizens of other countries that should be scared.
Dear Boss,
The workplace is a dangerous environment. A lotta accidents can happen if you're not careful. Like maybe some drops a paperclip and it bends itself straight, flips up and becomes lodged in your eye. A trip to the hospital would be most unfortunate.A big tall strapping dude, such as myself, can prevent things like this from happening to you. All it takes is the addition of "safety advisor bonus" to my paycheck. I'm confident you will find that it's worth it.
Signed,
Bruno
there is no shift key. apparently i can use caps lock up to three times. i'm saving that for when i really need it.
How's that? What did I miss?
SCOff
For information, yes there is the superhighway. But it seems to me knowledge is more; it requires intelligence. So far humans are apparently the only vessels with knowledge. However, cleverly-written software can persuade us to believe machines have knowledge, as the Darwin Awards infer that several humans don't.
The roadshow starts in Toronto then moves to Boston. One quick phone call to US Customs from Toronto concerning a new extremist splinter group calling themselves Secret-Comdrades-of-Osama (SCO) ought to end the whole fuss immediately.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a citizen of a NAFTA country may work in a professional occupation in another NAFTA country if the applicant meet certain requirements.
American professionals may easily work in Canada, for example, and vice versa.$2,000? Come on. She didn't pay one cent.
That's exactly what I thought.
Seems a little too swift and convenient. It's all settled nice and neat, RIAA looks tough but fair, kid probably gets a new bike, and no public court documents.
Now being cheap isn't the only reason to keep my MS-box frozen on Win98SE.
Plus, McBride is not a great name to have in prison.
"Looks like you dun dropped the soap agin, McBride..."
While a CF is not a good choice for a "tradition HD" application, I would suggest that under certain conditions, a CF *can* be a good HD. For example, with embedded Linux you might mount certain partitions (e.g. /usr) as read-only which could either be on the CF, or if speed is needed part of an initrd. Certain writeable partitions (e.g. /dev, /var, /tmp) normally on your system can be a ramdisk (RAM is cheap), avoiding the flash altogether. And if you want persistent storage for other paritions (e.g. /home, /www), you may use a file system that is flash-friendly, as you suggest in your post.
Perhaps the biggest waste of a CF would be as a swap partition, it probably wouldn't last long.
'This is our stadium, and we run the communications for it,'
By 'communications' perhaps the spokesman does not mean WiFi at all. At first blush to a geek it sounds like he is objecting to the WiFi, but within the context of the whole article, the term seems consistent with disliking the publication of an unauthorized press release. Re-reading the article, it actually makes more sense that way.
'This is our stadium, and we run the communications for it,'
Tell it to the FCC. They control the airwaves in your little stadium, not you.
It seems by the term 'communications', the spokesman was referring to the press release (the point of contention) and not the WiFi itself.
Since you are a lawyer, perhaps you can elaborate on something I've wondered about...
As I understand things, if a company like Adobe sues another party under the DMCA is no worse than any other lawsuit for say "traditional" copyright infringement. In such a civil case, when the court finds for the plaintiff, the remedies are typically financial, perhaps injunctions, etc.
The thing that really infuriates me, and I suspect a lot of other Slashdotters, is that the DMCA makes it CRIMINAL to for example publish bugs concerning encryption.
So companies like Adobe whisper in the ear of the FBI, step back and throw up their arms pretending to be good guys while some poor programmer gets the federal rubber glove treatment.
Lawsuits can be annoying and expensive, but are mostly meaningless to young programmers without big money. I my mind the real scary thing is facing incarceration because some company wants to sick "justice" on folks for finding the trivial flaws in their products because it was "encryption" and therefore a crime under the DMCA
He's got a frikkin' chair with a frikkin' joystick.
Actually if you look at the current icon at 45 degrees, the blue looks like the outline of one of Mickey Mouse's ears. Seems appropriate.
(raises pinky to pursed lips) On the hole (sic), I'd say this sounds pretty good...
When moving around with your traditional cell phone, you move from one cell to another. The handset and network both switch "connections" simultaneously. One analogy is to think of the cell phone as having a really long imaginary phone cord (or ethernet cable for VoIP) connected to a wall jack. As you move around, the cord stretches out so far it can stretch no more - so the magic in the system silently connects you to a "closer" wall jack in the blink of an eye.
Incredible numbers of man-hours have gone in to designing and implementing the current cellular networks so they operate with this "live mobility" -- moving around without dropping your call. And it mostly works but still not perfectly (Can you hear me now? Good).
Handoff in general is a very thorny problem, and one of the advantages the cellular carriers have is they know exactly WHERE all their base stations are and what the radio wave patterns are in the area. This is hardly something a de-centralized collection of WiFi hotspots lends itself to.
I have yet to see anyone propose a solution to the handoff question on WiFi. For "normal" IP traffic, it is okay to drop your connection and re-connect on a new WiFi node in a reactive fashion. Maybe you lose the connection for a second or two - no big deal. But in the voice cellular world handoff occurs in the order of a millisecond. Can WiFi hotspots really support this?
If one cannot handoff between WiFi cells, then immediately this is a non-starter for current cellular users. The WiFi hotspots are by definition discontiguous, so if one cannot handoff between traditional cellular and WiFi, this is also a non-starter. And it boggles the mind to imagine the coordination of all the WiFi hotspots and the cellular carriers.
Just because you can get a VoIP call in a particular WiFi hot spot does not mean you can talk and walk. As others have said, if you want phone number portability, call forwarding has been around for decades. IMHO the cellular carriers have nothing to worry about.
reduce the costs of making silicon -- and other elements, like zirconium
So you mean that crappy costume jewelry on the home shopping channel is getting even cheaper? Let the floodgates to the trailer park open.
One day, noone will care that 10% of the CPU is spent on software radio.
In general you're right, but I would point out that in order to be truly successful, SDR must be workable on a mobile, battery-powered device. We're a far cry away from that now. Battery time is not mentioned in the article and it's no wonder -- the demo IPAQ probably runs for less than 30 minutes on battery in radio mode (a pure guess, YMMV, etc).
Also, I would point out that although the XScale (at least the variant that I'm familiar with) has some DSP-like operations, it's a far cry from a real DSP, and the "signal processing" being done on the IPAQ is likely pretty lightweight. The CPU is more likely doing the messaging protocol - something well within its power. Any serious signal processing is probably done with hardware logic in the Altera FPGA (that big honkin' silver thing on the PCB in the photo). Of course that counts as SDR since the logic is still Software-Defined, and the FPGA device is reconfigurable.
In the end, the IPAQ is a nice form and all -- probably a good marketing strategy for these guys to demo their product -- but hardly a practical host computer for battery-powered SDR at this point.
Lets not forget to give credit to the elements under Intel .../Pb+Sn/Cu/Au/Al/Si+impurities/...
I'm concerned that that Software Engineering as a Professional Engineering discpline is not really going to get very far very quickly. The public and our potential clients need too much education to see value in the profession. I believe the Professional Engineering associations have a huge challenge ahead.
The Professional Engineering associations do what they can under the legislation to support Professional Engineering. The ultimate premise behind the legislation and existence of these associations is that Professional Engineering is needed. Of course in traditional engineering fields, including the oft-exampled bridge building, a degree of competence is required and demanded by the client. Where public safety is at issue, the professional associations stand behind the "seal of approval" needed by the client, government, and the general public. Of course no one wants unqualified people responsible for works that pose an obvious potential danger.
However, the public trust is very difficult to causally connect to the practice of professional Software Engineering. I submit the following reasons:
While there might be enough evidence, both academic and anecdotal, to counter all of these points, it requires extraordinary public education. I have heard comments from my local association members wishing for more proactive public education in traditional Professional Engineering disciplines. While the association has had some lukewarm results in raising the Engineering profile, I find the challenge of doing so for CSED to be orders of magnitude more difficult.
P.S. I currently work primarily in Software Development, but hold my P.Eng as an EE.
September 11 killed about 3,000 Americans, out of a population of about 280 million.
We might be reminded that nationals of dozens of other countries were killed on 9/11. Look it up if you don't believe. Like a couple of hundred "non-Americans". It was the WORLD TRADE CENTER for Crissake. Sixteen bloody Jamaicans died! What the hell did they do to anyone? Do the math on the % harm to Jamaica. It was crime against humanity to be sure. The massacre in Rwanda doesn't make two lines in the newspaper, buried between half-page on OJ Simpson's gloves and a Super Size Big Mac coupon. But for some reason "this time it's personal" seems to ring louder than the bombs in Baghdad.
... Senator Strom Thurmond is backing a motion to ensure post-war Iraq is properly converted to US measurements.
Softening from his earlier hard line of pressing both the US and Iraq adopt to British measurements, the Senator is quoted as saying that there is "no way in hell we're gonna let the French get anything out of Iraq, and the metric system is as French as Napolean's testicles."
Thurmond's supporters went on to point out that nearly all of the countries unwilling to attack Iraq have adopted the metric system, and the 'coalition of the willing' have not. A senior aide said, "The brits use miles and gallons like us 'mericans. Coincidence they are with us in the war? I think not. Even though the miles and gallons they use are different than ours, I think I made my point."
An unnamed staffer summed the plan up this way: "It's gonna get reeeal hot in Baghdad this summer. Mostly because the thermometers will be in Fahrenheit instead of that pinko metric crap. I mean jeez, 45 degrees is nothing in 'American'. We'll set the bastards straight."