MPAA Lawyer downloads enough of the movie off of one of these file sharing utilities and uses an application to 1) extract the watermark, 2) correlate the watermark with the store the disc was sold at and 3) identify the individual to whom the disc was sold. MPAA lawyer dispatches law enforcement to Joe Nobody's place of residence.).
Wonderful. So I suppose you'll be required to pay credit for the DVD, not cash, so you can be tracked later? Might as well force you to present valid picture ID to purchase the disc. And if you choose to sell the disc later, what happens if the purchaser decides to use it illegally? So will you have to register with the government as a DVD Distributor? After all, the anti-gun lobby in the USA tries to do the same things for transactions involving guns. So are DVDs as dangerous as firearms? It sure sounds like it.
This kind of Orwellian nonsense rarely happens, at least in the USA. Gun laws are one exception. I suspect it's simply because there's a line (public safety, or waste of tax dollars, etc.) that hasn't been crossed for most consumer purchases, even when they cost some corporation some money. The average American citizenry, taken as a whole, doesn't vote with their dollars and ballots for this kind of nonsense, even when corporations do, and in the end, it's the government, NOT the corporations, that do the arresting. Enough stories of this sort of nonsense get around, the government HAS to pull back, despite what some MPAA lawyers want.
>Yea they wont be able to use your connection and suck up all your bandwith but NEITHER WILL YOU JACK A==
You obviously didn't read the article. This thing comes WITH a land-based DSL connection, and only piggybacks on it. Covering up your antenna won't affect your landline in the slightest, and in fact might speed it up somewhat if you're not sharing your bandwidth.
As Ben Franklin said, a fool opens his mouth and removes all doubt. Good job, and thanks for saving me the trouble.
.
If you're really concerned about sharing your new DSL line's bandwidth with a roof-top antenna, or you worry about security, but you don't want to (or cannot) cut the power cord, a coffee can over the antenna, or some tinfoil, would probably block enough of the signal to prevent any useful connections to YOUR rooftop, and divert those connections to a neighbor.
>Self-destruct mechanisms as a design feature for all sattelites...
As afidel wrote above (I'd mod him up if I had any points now), you don't want to do this to a defunct satellite.
As you point out, it would have to pose no danger to other spacecraft. Well, the only practical way to do that is to ditch it in a controlled fashion. Any explosion involves a release of energy in pretty much all directions. Although some shaping of the charge can control the blast, you still blast some pieces in every direction. Each piece that does not hit the atmosphere enters its own orbit - risking collision with some other satellite.
The proper solution, employed by almost all responsible satellite designers, is to allow enough extra fuel to deorbit the satellite. Of course, this depends on having CONTROL of the satellite. To guarantee this requires more redundancy - and more weight and fuel and complexity, etc. At the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a pound for launch costs, the designers usually opt for mission-suitable redundancy, and hope (and pray) that all the systems don't fail before they DO deorbit. And if they do start failing unusually fast, they'll deorbit early to avoid this kind of fiasco.
Kind of ironic - I've seen some griping on/. in the past over deorbiting a still operational satellite. Well, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY DO IT? Purely to avoid this situation.
My wife convinced me to buy a UTV last year. In my experience it was the best home appliance we bought in recent memory, despite my concerns about its Microsoft leanings.
Allow me to throw out some personal observations.
- It's NEVER crashed. Ever. It's a bit slow to respond to some keys, as if it's waiting for some bitstreamed data off the satellite for the next guide page, but it's rock-stable. This is no surprise - after all, if you never install anything except Windows9x, your computer will never need rebooting. It's when you install all the other cruft that things get flaky. And you can't do that to a UTV.
- It's almost perfectly integrated with DirecTV. That's something that Tivo lacks, and most Tivo owners don't know they're missing. For example, it's a bitstream-pure capture from the satellite. The picture is perfect every time. All the guide information is captured with the program - click Info when you watch a recording, and you get all the title and description, no matter how much later you watch it. The expanded guide is terrific - title, actors, and plot summary for every movie and most serial shows. The complete integration also extends to the record features, so as you browse or search the guide, you just click the record button to capture the selected show - no matter when it is. No programming, just one click recording (hmmm... patent material there?)
- Dual stream capability means I can record or watch two shows at the same time (yes, watch two - see the next topic about picture-in-picture). In fact I can record two and watch a third off the hard drive.
- It has a built-in PIP tuner. For those of us who didn't spend the extra bucks for a PIP-capable TV years ago, it works around that by providing a minimal picture in picture. And both the main and mini shows get captured for instant rewind - up to half an hour - not just the main screen.
- It's completely changed our paradigm of TV watching. No commercials, ever - we watch slightly delayed and simply skip them. Instant replay on any sports play. By delaying a football game an hour, I can watch an entire quarter in 8 or 9 minutes - each play is about 35-40 seconds apart, so one "Skip" forward and I'm watching the next play instantly. Want to watch a program at the same time as something else? Just record it and watch it afterwards. In fact, record TWO things and watch a third off the hard disk. How about easy recording - see something you like in the guide, click the record button and it gets recorded for you, start to finish, no overlaps, no fuss. You can even click a second time to record every instance ad nauseum. It is so convenient and perfectly suited to how I would have preferred to watch TV in the first place that anything less is pure frustration. My wife and I find ourselves hunting for the "Rewind" button on the radio now, since we're so used to backing up 7 seconds if we miss something. In fact we've even turned to each other and laughed after both wishing we could rewind something the baby did, to watch it again.
- Integration with my VCR. The UTV includes an infrared LED on a wire that you position on the front of your VCR, and the UTV can command your VCR to power up, start recording, stop recording, and power down. So you can set the system up to tape directly to the VCR if you don't want to dump something to the hard disk.
Sorry if I sound like a UTV commercial, but this is no joking the first consumer appliance I've ever bought that not only lived up to its hype, it far exceeded it. So from where I sit, who cares if it has MS on the label.
Now, as to the "others": Sure it has some shortcomings. But those are essentially in features I don't use. Okay, it's not fast, but I can live with the slow remote response in some features. I logged on to WebTV exactly once. It's a pain in the neck typing in a URL using four cursor buttons on a remote. The download speed for a page is okay, but nothing to write home about. And the resolution on a TV screen is awful. So I could care less if WebTV goes away. It's also got email capability. Again, typing an email would be a royal pain, and reading on the screen would be frustrating. So who cares about TV email. Anyone who buys this thing for a web browser or email appliance will be disappointed. But I doubt that's why it's selling. It's because of the awesome DTV integration. So if WebTV rolls over and croaks, good riddance, as long as the UTV features live on.
Finally, it's not $499 anymore. I think the shelf price at WalMart is $199.
Finally, one question: Why is MS (or is it DTV) still pumping so many bucks into UTV advertising? Just yesterday during the NFL playoffs, I saw a couple UTV ads.
My advice: if you can have DTV and can afford an extra $10 per month (for the guide and record features), GET ONE while you can. And my take on this: MS is wisely losing the WebTV and email features, and focusing on the really cool digital video features. (I hope!)
It's called the Kutta condition
on
Black Holes Disputed
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm an aerodynamic engineer.
>Anyone see the problem with that? The first
>problem is that no reason is given for the
>airstream over the top to have to meet up
>with the airstreem under the bottom. Why
>can't it just flow straight back?
See here for one of many explanations of the Kutta condition, one of the foundational principles of aerodynamics. This has nothing to do with an explanation for the layman. Basically, it states that the air MUST meet smoothly at the back of the wing.
Logically, if you spend some time thinking about the flow, you cannot possibly construct a situation where the air above the wing somehow slips past the air below. Remember that a jet moves so fast that its wing is only passing through a portion of the air for fractions of a second - it's simply not possible to make the air move fast enough to slip like this.
This principle has been demonstrated NUMEROUS times. You can demonstrate it very easily with a line of smoke through which a wing passes, among a zillion other simple experiments.
I'm surprised I've seen no discussion here of the very basic problem of file slack space - that unallocated space at the end of the last sector of every data file, except those that exactly fill a disk sector. Most of the methods described here for easy ways to wipe empty hard drive space do not overwrite all the file slack space. You need a program that does that explicitly. Otherwise every sector with the tail end of a file contains easily recoverable data, although disassociated from any filename. Given that the slack space on a hard drive averages out to $sectorsize*$numfiles/2 (on average, 1/2 of a sector, times the number of files), the average 40Gb hard drive with 10,000 files might have 50Mb or more of recoverable data, even if the "empty" space were completely and unrecoverably wiped.
I learned about this while preparing to publish a program commercially, and discovered that (at least at the time) files I copied to the distribution media master sometimes contained sensitive data, such as the source code, from my own hard drive. Basically, DOS wasn't very picky about copying a few extra bytes along with the actual file length, as long as the extra bytes didn't go past the end of the destination sector. The answer? I used a slack wiping program on the master disk before sending it for duplication.
... that much spam could be identified and stopped more easily by careful tracking of the routing information. The article (actually you have to follow the PDF link to get the real information, not just the executive summary) points out that much of the spam identified came from sites that were established and routed, then sent out the spam, and then shut down again immediately.
Seems to me that you could make some progress against the spam by simply refusing any email from a domain that hadn't been recognized on the net for at least several days or maybe weeks.
If you haven't followed the PDF link, there are some interesting time history graphs of various routing parameters. Worth checking out.
... as this year is not expected to be any more spectacular for the Geminids than any other year, and compared to last month this will be positively underwhelming.
Seems to me that the only real draw is that we just had a very exciting shower so everyone is more aware of the meteor phenom. But as SpaceWeather points out, the expected maximum is only going to be around "100 or more" per hour.
In short, don't get your knickers in a knot. But if the Leonids woke you up to meteor showers, this will be a good intro to what you'll see in a typical shower.
I have worked on these flight sims for a living, testing them and helping develop them. I've logged around a hundred hours of flight time in A-4J, T-45, AV-8B, and S-3B sims, as well as F-18, F-14, S-3, T-45 and other development or test sims. I can state with absolute certainty that getting paid to play these video games was the coolest part of my job.
Because I have this experience, I'd like to throw in a few considerations to this discussion.
The military pays LOTS of money to get these simulators as close to reality as possible. I know - my job was to verify that they fly just like the airplane. We would spend a week or more flying a sim in every conceivable situation, and comparing the results to real airplane data. But in the end, there were usually several significant areas where the sims just don't stack up. You cannot ever get a sim as good as the airplane, for a number of fundamental reasons, not the least of which is the lack of true G-forces.
In the end, the utility of ANY sim is determined mostly by understanding exactly where it is "mission representative" - where the model is representative of the actual mission the sim must model. Then, you carefully develop a syllabus, or training regime, that sidesteps those areas where the sim is not accurate. In some cases, this means not training certain tasks at all. In other cases, it means not using a sim in certain parts of the operating "envelope" while performing certain tasks.
Why is this important? Because it points out a key fact of simulation, not just flight simulation. Every simulation has its weaknesses. This does NOT mean the simulation is not useful - it simply means that you MUST understand those areas, and account for them while training. It is possible - and in fact done by the military - to take an individual with no actual experience in a certain type of airplane, spend two weeks training them in the simulator, then give them exactly two flights in the REAL airplane, before certifying them to solo in that airplane, and in fact start performing missions (not combat, of course, but that doesn't take long either).
Sims are tremendously useful. You can do things you'd never risk in real life, and do them over and over again until the reaction is automatic. You can do boring stuff, and do it many times. You can do things much faster - because you don't have to march, or drive, or fly to the operating area. And best of all, you can do it cheaply.
Sims are here to stay in the military. The most significant change in military procurement policy we're likely to see, worldwide, is the emphasis on interconnected simulations of all kinds for military-wide war gaming. We'll have better trained troops at all levels, at a lower cost than ever before.
The common complaint against the "big bad music industry" is that they squelch small-time musicians. Yet you advocate the free, unfettered exchange of copyrighted music ("information") as "ethical".
I disagree.
I write some music (this isn't hypothetical, it's true). I will probably never get a big-time music contract. So I'll never make any serious money. So what do I do? Unfortunately, I can't do anything about it, except offer it for a moderate price on my web site, and maybe MP3.com. But I can practically guarantee that if I did have a great song, someone on a Napster-like system will quickly make it available for everyone else to use for free.
I know the common arguments that hearing it for free will make people buy my products. Nice argument, but that choice should be up to me, just like complying with the GPL, or choosing to develop away from the GPL, is a choice for the programmer to make. IT'S NOT THE CHOICE OF THE CONSUMER. It's the choice of the programmer to determine how his/her software is marketed. Do you also advocate a Napster-ish exchange of copyrighted, non-GPL software?
In this case, just the same as with software, it's the choice of the composer to determine how they want to release their music. If they're smart, they'll make low-fi cuts available for free, or give away a few gems in hope that consumers will buy their CD. It's kinda like shareware.
But the choice is NOT up to the Napster-ish user. It is flatly UNETHICAL for anyone to presume that they're smarter, or better positioned to decide FOR THE ARTIST (or programmer) how his product should be marketed. It's simply theft.
The RIGHT thing to do is to choose to comply with whatever rules have been set by the owner of the intellectual property. THAT is ethical.
And although in SOME cases illegal isn't unethical, for the most part the law has tried hard to establish a fair, consistent match between legal and ethical. Our legal system was founded upon the principle that the Right thing to do *should* be the Legal thing to do. No amount of moral relativism can change that.
Seems like a great reason to use ZoneAlarm
on
RIAA Wants Right To Hack
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· Score: 2, Informative
... or any other program which can deny web access to selected programs. While THIS program launches the browser, at least that can be interrupted. Who knows what other tomfoolery can happen under the table?
Because if you want a refund, you gotta give them a return address - even if you paid anonymously up front (with a money order).
Of course, anyone who REALLY wants to remain anonymous will just give up on any refund for unused time... This may be a good way to spot possible illicit activity, after which the FBI may request their records. Seems like a good ploy to me. But then IANAFBISpy.
You have to wonder about the technical insight of the company, when their own press release (this IS a press release, not a news story, after all) when they report "1.5 volts of electricity with 10 micron amps". Is that a "microamp"? Next time, folks, let's get the spelling and grammar straight before you talk to the world.
The navy base where I work (an hour from DC) has been shut down - all non-essential personnel ordered to leave. Gates are closed to incoming traffic and police are everywhere. The military appears to be treating this as a war.
I've seen the same thing at very much subsonic speeds looking out the window of an airliner on final approach on a humid day. All it takes is for the air pressure to drop low enough to cause instant condensation. This happens as the air flows around the wing and accelerates (lowering the pressure, according to Bernoulli's equation).
Condensation is what causes the cloud. Condensation is usually caused by a DROP in pressure, which causes cooling, which lowers the temperature below the dew point. But a sonic boom is a shock wave - which is physically defined as a sudden (step) increase in pressure - which also results in a sudden INCREASE in temperature. This cannot lead to a condensation. What you are seeing is the air thinning back out and cooling down well BEHIND the shock wave, if anything.
Also, please note that a true sonic boom begins at the nose of the airplane, not the middle. As the air first touches the nose a wave forms and propgates away and back at some angle (defined by the speed). It forms a cone around the airplane. That shock wave stays attached to the very nose of the airplane, PERIOD. Secondary shocks also form on different parts of the airplane, depending on speed. As they move away from the airplane, they tend to coalesce into a single shock. This is because the air AFTER the shock is denser, so the rear shock moves faster (sound moves faster thru denser air) and the rear shock catches up to the first one. So at some distance from the airplane there is basically one leading shock. You can also find a second "reverse" shock as the rear of the airplane passes, basically attached to the back of the airplane. You can find a great photo (using the "Schlieren" photography method) here.
This is a common trend in our society, at least in the US. There is often a good reason for a party to take proactive measures to prevent further crimes from occurring, but that must be balanced against the requirements of liberty. Our entire judicial and legislative system is founded on the premise of "no prior restraint" - in other words, you can't attempt stop someone from doing something illegal, because that would presume that they WILL do so. The only time this premise is routinely broken is when significant physical harm might result.
(FLAMESUIT)
On the OTHER hand, it's worth pointing out that cutting off access to a service temporarily is not a "conviction". In this case there is no judicial involvement. The person was not convicted of any crime, will not be punished, and will not have any criminal record. I agree, it's an awful thing, but we ought to be careful not to overhype this issue. Until the MPAA gets the ability to send someone to jail or to fine them WITHOUT TRIAL, this proactive approach to copyright enforcement is simply a business issue.
(/FLAMESUIT)
That said, the US needs to pay careful attention to this trend of "guilty until proven innocent" OUTSIDE the judicial arena, so that this kind of excess does not grow further. Although I hate suggesting increasing the reach of government, I believe copyright law could stand to see some carefully written laws limiting or preventing this "prior restraint" practice.
This link from July 24th on the same site is actually a good description of some further applications of nanoscale crystals, ranging from lasing to solar cells to bone implants.
As the family geek, I've developed a few rules for responding to the frequent hoaxes I get from family and friends.
I never reply until I've researched the hoax and/or truth and proven to myself, at least two different ways.
The best way to ruin my credibility is to send out ONE wrong email.
I sign everything I send, including my phone number. If I'm not willing to have my full contact information forwarded to someone else along with my conclusions, it needs more research.
When I don't know the answer, I tell them so. And I recommend they just ignore it.
When I find it's a hoax, I ask them NOT to forward this conclusion until they've done the same research, and are willing to append their own conclusions. The propagation method of all hoaxes is thoughtless, research-free forwarded email.
If it turns out to be true, I make a point of including links to whatever authority I can find.
If it turns out to be false, I include links to at least two web sites that debunk the hoax/myth.
Finally, I almost always recommend that they take a minute to browse the Kumite Virus Hoaxes and Myths web site (seems to be down at the moment but it's a good review of quite a few common hoaxes).
The President made the only pragmatic decision possible.
The Senate, in particular Sen. Daschle and the other Democrats, has already made it clear this morning that they will attempt to overturn what is from their point of view a ban. This article in the Washington Post is a fairly liberal take on the decision, and includes some comments by Daschle.
On the other hand, outright permission from the President would have resulted in an equally vicious attack from the Republican-led House of Representatives and conservatives. This article in the Washington Times is a good example of the typical mix of conservative responses.
At least the limited approach the President chose has a chance of standing up against the legislature. Regardless of your personal feelings about the politics or morality of the situation, I believe the President's decision was a fairly balanced approach to an extremely difficult issue.
It's about time someone pointed out that this is exactly the kind of useless fact-spouting without true understanding that the/. crowd likes to complain about - but only when it's coming from someone writing about hackers.
Take a while to research the system, and think about the technologies involved and the operational capabilities of each, and you'll quickly realize this story is pure propaganda.
The useful update rate on GPS technology is rather low. It's impossible to use it to do final homing on a target moving thousands of feet per second. Sure, it MIGHT help you spot it a few miles away at best, but the real test of this system was the ability to HIT the target.
Second, the interceptor system does not use anything remotely LIKE a GPS system to home in - it's using radar and infrared. Radar systems only listen to a preselected frequency - for bistatic systems (where the rx and tx are in two locations) the rx may be frequency-agile. But a monostatic system listens only to its own frequency. To get the resolution required to pick out and hit a several-foot-diameter target, the frequency in use is nowhere near the GPS frequency.
Don't be foolish enough to assume that the decision makers are not aware of these issues. As a civil servant in a procurement-related position, who evaluates contractor systems for suitability for the tasks for which they are designed, I can tell you with some authority that the government pays particular attention to the conditions of the test. If Salon knows about this transmitter, the test PLANNERS knew about it years ago, and payed particular attention to whether or not that transmitter might have ANY effect on the real data being collected.
Finally, bear in mind that logically, if anybody had anything to hide, the test and results would NOT be anywhere near so public. It doesn't matter how high-level the test is. Many many very important tests have been quite secret over the years, and no report had a clue the government was even thinking about such a test. The fact that this test is being conducted "in the clear" should calm the fears of the most ardent conspiracy theorist.
The article claims that it prevents ripping by introducing "wildly erroneous" data and also munging the ECCs. So what; if you leave ECC off (an option in MusicMatch) or rip in Analog mode (also an option in MusicMatch), I would assume these things would not really be a big deal. The quality would still be good enough for most people. Then if you need a copy you can use on another computer, you simply burn one from THAT rip, not the original. What's the big deal?
(Aside from the completely ODIOUS idea of deliberately introducing distortion, of course...)
--Brandon
White LEDs and keychain lights
on
LED Flashlights
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· Score: 1
At most hardware stores you can purchase a small keychain light that uses two watch cell batteries and an LED in a flexible rubber shell. They come with a red LED in most cases; go to Radio Shack and get a white LED to replace the red. I use it all the time, and the batteries last for months. You get a wide bright circle of crisp white illumination. The white is much easier than pure red - I suppose the human vision system relies on color differentiation.
There's no switch - the LED leads are spread so you have to press the flexible sides together to make them contact the battery.
(The interesting thing is that you can buy the keychain for one dollar. If you want to replace the batteries you would have to pay about four dollars at the same store. I guess the manufacturers found a way to ditch substandard batteries and still make a buck.)
Total cost: about five dollars, one time; about a dollar to replace the batteries (by buying a new keychain). And it fits on your keychain for easy instant access.
--Brandon
The story reads "About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive."
Huh?
Hate to tell the authors, but I can fit a LOT more than 10 to 12 albums in 3Gb of disk space; right now I have 80 complete albums (sampled at 128Kbs) in 5.86 Gb of disk space.
I have to wonder how many/. posters are actually parents.
I can state with some authority, as the parent of three children, that whatever you think you know about children before you have children is WRONG. Deal with it.
On the flip side, my experience thus far teaches me that the BEST solution is not any specific response above, but to provide the child with a close, personal, loving relationship. Then discipline revolves around the relationship, not the issue.
With that in mind, the child learns to trust YOUR viewpoint on things and soon internalizes your morals - and filtering becomes internal, not externally imposed. Sure it takes years, but you don't raise a kid quickly. It's a process.
And one last thing - no matter WHAT decision you make about taking the kid in to Hannibal, you can bet about half the other parents will look at you like you're nuts. Some think you're a prude, others think you're too liberal. The important thing is self-assurance that you're right.
--Brandon
Slashdot Mirror
Wonderful. So I suppose you'll be required to pay credit for the DVD, not cash, so you can be tracked later? Might as well force you to present valid picture ID to purchase the disc. And if you choose to sell the disc later, what happens if the purchaser decides to use it illegally? So will you have to register with the government as a DVD Distributor? After all, the anti-gun lobby in the USA tries to do the same things for transactions involving guns. So are DVDs as dangerous as firearms? It sure sounds like it.
This kind of Orwellian nonsense rarely happens, at least in the USA. Gun laws are one exception. I suspect it's simply because there's a line (public safety, or waste of tax dollars, etc.) that hasn't been crossed for most consumer purchases, even when they cost some corporation some money. The average American citizenry, taken as a whole, doesn't vote with their dollars and ballots for this kind of nonsense, even when corporations do, and in the end, it's the government, NOT the corporations, that do the arresting. Enough stories of this sort of nonsense get around, the government HAS to pull back, despite what some MPAA lawyers want.
>Yea they wont be able to use your connection and suck up all your bandwith but NEITHER WILL YOU JACK A==
You obviously didn't read the article. This thing comes WITH a land-based DSL connection, and only piggybacks on it. Covering up your antenna won't affect your landline in the slightest, and in fact might speed it up somewhat if you're not sharing your bandwidth.
As Ben Franklin said, a fool opens his mouth and removes all doubt. Good job, and thanks for saving me the trouble.
.
If you're really concerned about sharing your new DSL line's bandwidth with a roof-top antenna, or you worry about security, but you don't want to (or cannot) cut the power cord, a coffee can over the antenna, or some tinfoil, would probably block enough of the signal to prevent any useful connections to YOUR rooftop, and divert those connections to a neighbor.
>Self-destruct mechanisms as a design feature for all sattelites...
/. in the past over deorbiting a still operational satellite. Well, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY DO IT? Purely to avoid this situation.
As afidel wrote above (I'd mod him up if I had any points now), you don't want to do this to a defunct satellite.
As you point out, it would have to pose no danger to other spacecraft. Well, the only practical way to do that is to ditch it in a controlled fashion. Any explosion involves a release of energy in pretty much all directions. Although some shaping of the charge can control the blast, you still blast some pieces in every direction. Each piece that does not hit the atmosphere enters its own orbit - risking collision with some other satellite.
The proper solution, employed by almost all responsible satellite designers, is to allow enough extra fuel to deorbit the satellite. Of course, this depends on having CONTROL of the satellite. To guarantee this requires more redundancy - and more weight and fuel and complexity, etc. At the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a pound for launch costs, the designers usually opt for mission-suitable redundancy, and hope (and pray) that all the systems don't fail before they DO deorbit. And if they do start failing unusually fast, they'll deorbit early to avoid this kind of fiasco.
Kind of ironic - I've seen some griping on
You can't have it both ways, folks!
My wife convinced me to buy a UTV last year. In my experience it was the best home appliance we bought in recent memory, despite my concerns about its Microsoft leanings.
Allow me to throw out some personal observations.
- It's NEVER crashed. Ever. It's a bit slow to respond to some keys, as if it's waiting for some bitstreamed data off the satellite for the next guide page, but it's rock-stable. This is no surprise - after all, if you never install anything except Windows9x, your computer will never need rebooting. It's when you install all the other cruft that things get flaky. And you can't do that to a UTV.
- It's almost perfectly integrated with DirecTV. That's something that Tivo lacks, and most Tivo owners don't know they're missing. For example, it's a bitstream-pure capture from the satellite. The picture is perfect every time. All the guide information is captured with the program - click Info when you watch a recording, and you get all the title and description, no matter how much later you watch it. The expanded guide is terrific - title, actors, and plot summary for every movie and most serial shows. The complete integration also extends to the record features, so as you browse or search the guide, you just click the record button to capture the selected show - no matter when it is. No programming, just one click recording (hmmm... patent material there?)
- Dual stream capability means I can record or watch two shows at the same time (yes, watch two - see the next topic about picture-in-picture). In fact I can record two and watch a third off the hard drive.
- It has a built-in PIP tuner. For those of us who didn't spend the extra bucks for a PIP-capable TV years ago, it works around that by providing a minimal picture in picture. And both the main and mini shows get captured for instant rewind - up to half an hour - not just the main screen.
- It's completely changed our paradigm of TV watching. No commercials, ever - we watch slightly delayed and simply skip them. Instant replay on any sports play. By delaying a football game an hour, I can watch an entire quarter in 8 or 9 minutes - each play is about 35-40 seconds apart, so one "Skip" forward and I'm watching the next play instantly. Want to watch a program at the same time as something else? Just record it and watch it afterwards. In fact, record TWO things and watch a third off the hard disk. How about easy recording - see something you like in the guide, click the record button and it gets recorded for you, start to finish, no overlaps, no fuss. You can even click a second time to record every instance ad nauseum. It is so convenient and perfectly suited to how I would have preferred to watch TV in the first place that anything less is pure frustration. My wife and I find ourselves hunting for the "Rewind" button on the radio now, since we're so used to backing up 7 seconds if we miss something. In fact we've even turned to each other and laughed after both wishing we could rewind something the baby did, to watch it again.
- Integration with my VCR. The UTV includes an infrared LED on a wire that you position on the front of your VCR, and the UTV can command your VCR to power up, start recording, stop recording, and power down. So you can set the system up to tape directly to the VCR if you don't want to dump something to the hard disk.
Sorry if I sound like a UTV commercial, but this is no joking the first consumer appliance I've ever bought that not only lived up to its hype, it far exceeded it. So from where I sit, who cares if it has MS on the label.
Now, as to the "others": Sure it has some shortcomings. But those are essentially in features I don't use. Okay, it's not fast, but I can live with the slow remote response in some features. I logged on to WebTV exactly once. It's a pain in the neck typing in a URL using four cursor buttons on a remote. The download speed for a page is okay, but nothing to write home about. And the resolution on a TV screen is awful. So I could care less if WebTV goes away. It's also got email capability. Again, typing an email would be a royal pain, and reading on the screen would be frustrating. So who cares about TV email. Anyone who buys this thing for a web browser or email appliance will be disappointed. But I doubt that's why it's selling. It's because of the awesome DTV integration. So if WebTV rolls over and croaks, good riddance, as long as the UTV features live on.
Finally, it's not $499 anymore. I think the shelf price at WalMart is $199.
Finally, one question: Why is MS (or is it DTV) still pumping so many bucks into UTV advertising? Just yesterday during the NFL playoffs, I saw a couple UTV ads.
My advice: if you can have DTV and can afford an extra $10 per month (for the guide and record features), GET ONE while you can. And my take on this: MS is wisely losing the WebTV and email features, and focusing on the really cool digital video features. (I hope!)
>Anyone see the problem with that? The first
>problem is that no reason is given for the
>airstream over the top to have to meet up
>with the airstreem under the bottom. Why
>can't it just flow straight back?
See here for one of many explanations of the Kutta condition, one of the foundational principles of aerodynamics. This has nothing to do with an explanation for the layman. Basically, it states that the air MUST meet smoothly at the back of the wing.
Logically, if you spend some time thinking about the flow, you cannot possibly construct a situation where the air above the wing somehow slips past the air below. Remember that a jet moves so fast that its wing is only passing through a portion of the air for fractions of a second - it's simply not possible to make the air move fast enough to slip like this.
This principle has been demonstrated NUMEROUS times. You can demonstrate it very easily with a line of smoke through which a wing passes, among a zillion other simple experiments.
I'm surprised I've seen no discussion here of the very basic problem of file slack space - that unallocated space at the end of the last sector of every data file, except those that exactly fill a disk sector. Most of the methods described here for easy ways to wipe empty hard drive space do not overwrite all the file slack space. You need a program that does that explicitly. Otherwise every sector with the tail end of a file contains easily recoverable data, although disassociated from any filename. Given that the slack space on a hard drive averages out to $sectorsize*$numfiles/2 (on average, 1/2 of a sector, times the number of files), the average 40Gb hard drive with 10,000 files might have 50Mb or more of recoverable data, even if the "empty" space were completely and unrecoverably wiped.
I learned about this while preparing to publish a program commercially, and discovered that (at least at the time) files I copied to the distribution media master sometimes contained sensitive data, such as the source code, from my own hard drive. Basically, DOS wasn't very picky about copying a few extra bytes along with the actual file length, as long as the extra bytes didn't go past the end of the destination sector. The answer? I used a slack wiping program on the master disk before sending it for duplication.
... that much spam could be identified and stopped more easily by careful tracking of the routing information. The article (actually you have to follow the PDF link to get the real information, not just the executive summary) points out that much of the spam identified came from sites that were established and routed, then sent out the spam, and then shut down again immediately.
Seems to me that you could make some progress against the spam by simply refusing any email from a domain that hadn't been recognized on the net for at least several days or maybe weeks.
If you haven't followed the PDF link, there are some interesting time history graphs of various routing parameters. Worth checking out.
... as this year is not expected to be any more spectacular for the Geminids than any other year, and compared to last month this will be positively underwhelming.
Seems to me that the only real draw is that we just had a very exciting shower so everyone is more aware of the meteor phenom. But as SpaceWeather points out, the expected maximum is only going to be around "100 or more" per hour.
In short, don't get your knickers in a knot. But if the Leonids woke you up to meteor showers, this will be a good intro to what you'll see in a typical shower.
I have worked on these flight sims for a living, testing them and helping develop them. I've logged around a hundred hours of flight time in A-4J, T-45, AV-8B, and S-3B sims, as well as F-18, F-14, S-3, T-45 and other development or test sims. I can state with absolute certainty that getting paid to play these video games was the coolest part of my job.
Because I have this experience, I'd like to throw in a few considerations to this discussion.
The military pays LOTS of money to get these simulators as close to reality as possible. I know - my job was to verify that they fly just like the airplane. We would spend a week or more flying a sim in every conceivable situation, and comparing the results to real airplane data. But in the end, there were usually several significant areas where the sims just don't stack up. You cannot ever get a sim as good as the airplane, for a number of fundamental reasons, not the least of which is the lack of true G-forces.
In the end, the utility of ANY sim is determined mostly by understanding exactly where it is "mission representative" - where the model is representative of the actual mission the sim must model. Then, you carefully develop a syllabus, or training regime, that sidesteps those areas where the sim is not accurate. In some cases, this means not training certain tasks at all. In other cases, it means not using a sim in certain parts of the operating "envelope" while performing certain tasks.
Why is this important? Because it points out a key fact of simulation, not just flight simulation. Every simulation has its weaknesses. This does NOT mean the simulation is not useful - it simply means that you MUST understand those areas, and account for them while training. It is possible - and in fact done by the military - to take an individual with no actual experience in a certain type of airplane, spend two weeks training them in the simulator, then give them exactly two flights in the REAL airplane, before certifying them to solo in that airplane, and in fact start performing missions (not combat, of course, but that doesn't take long either).
Sims are tremendously useful. You can do things you'd never risk in real life, and do them over and over again until the reaction is automatic. You can do boring stuff, and do it many times. You can do things much faster - because you don't have to march, or drive, or fly to the operating area. And best of all, you can do it cheaply.
Sims are here to stay in the military. The most significant change in military procurement policy we're likely to see, worldwide, is the emphasis on interconnected simulations of all kinds for military-wide war gaming. We'll have better trained troops at all levels, at a lower cost than ever before.
The common complaint against the "big bad music industry" is that they squelch small-time musicians. Yet you advocate the free, unfettered exchange of copyrighted music ("information") as "ethical".
I disagree.
I write some music (this isn't hypothetical, it's true). I will probably never get a big-time music contract. So I'll never make any serious money. So what do I do? Unfortunately, I can't do anything about it, except offer it for a moderate price on my web site, and maybe MP3.com. But I can practically guarantee that if I did have a great song, someone on a Napster-like system will quickly make it available for everyone else to use for free.
I know the common arguments that hearing it for free will make people buy my products. Nice argument, but that choice should be up to me, just like complying with the GPL, or choosing to develop away from the GPL, is a choice for the programmer to make. IT'S NOT THE CHOICE OF THE CONSUMER. It's the choice of the programmer to determine how his/her software is marketed. Do you also advocate a Napster-ish exchange of copyrighted, non-GPL software?
In this case, just the same as with software, it's the choice of the composer to determine how they want to release their music. If they're smart, they'll make low-fi cuts available for free, or give away a few gems in hope that consumers will buy their CD. It's kinda like shareware.
But the choice is NOT up to the Napster-ish user. It is flatly UNETHICAL for anyone to presume that they're smarter, or better positioned to decide FOR THE ARTIST (or programmer) how his product should be marketed. It's simply theft.
The RIGHT thing to do is to choose to comply with whatever rules have been set by the owner of the intellectual property. THAT is ethical.
And although in SOME cases illegal isn't unethical, for the most part the law has tried hard to establish a fair, consistent match between legal and ethical. Our legal system was founded upon the principle that the Right thing to do *should* be the Legal thing to do. No amount of moral relativism can change that.
... or any other program which can deny web access to selected programs. While THIS program launches the browser, at least that can be interrupted. Who knows what other tomfoolery can happen under the table?
Because if you want a refund, you gotta give them a return address - even if you paid anonymously up front (with a money order).
Of course, anyone who REALLY wants to remain anonymous will just give up on any refund for unused time... This may be a good way to spot possible illicit activity, after which the FBI may request their records. Seems like a good ploy to me. But then IANAFBISpy.
You have to wonder about the technical insight of the company, when their own press release (this IS a press release, not a news story, after all) when they report "1.5 volts of electricity with 10 micron amps". Is that a "microamp"? Next time, folks, let's get the spelling and grammar straight before you talk to the world.
The navy base where I work (an hour from DC) has been shut down - all non-essential personnel ordered to leave. Gates are closed to incoming traffic and police are everywhere. The military appears to be treating this as a war.
I've seen the same thing at very much subsonic speeds looking out the window of an airliner on final approach on a humid day. All it takes is for the air pressure to drop low enough to cause instant condensation. This happens as the air flows around the wing and accelerates (lowering the pressure, according to Bernoulli's equation).
Condensation is what causes the cloud. Condensation is usually caused by a DROP in pressure, which causes cooling, which lowers the temperature below the dew point. But a sonic boom is a shock wave - which is physically defined as a sudden (step) increase in pressure - which also results in a sudden INCREASE in temperature. This cannot lead to a condensation. What you are seeing is the air thinning back out and cooling down well BEHIND the shock wave, if anything.
Also, please note that a true sonic boom begins at the nose of the airplane, not the middle. As the air first touches the nose a wave forms and propgates away and back at some angle (defined by the speed). It forms a cone around the airplane. That shock wave stays attached to the very nose of the airplane, PERIOD. Secondary shocks also form on different parts of the airplane, depending on speed. As they move away from the airplane, they tend to coalesce into a single shock. This is because the air AFTER the shock is denser, so the rear shock moves faster (sound moves faster thru denser air) and the rear shock catches up to the first one. So at some distance from the airplane there is basically one leading shock. You can also find a second "reverse" shock as the rear of the airplane passes, basically attached to the back of the airplane. You can find a great photo (using the "Schlieren" photography method) here.
This is a common trend in our society, at least in the US. There is often a good reason for a party to take proactive measures to prevent further crimes from occurring, but that must be balanced against the requirements of liberty. Our entire judicial and legislative system is founded on the premise of "no prior restraint" - in other words, you can't attempt stop someone from doing something illegal, because that would presume that they WILL do so. The only time this premise is routinely broken is when significant physical harm might result.
(FLAMESUIT)
On the OTHER hand, it's worth pointing out that cutting off access to a service temporarily is not a "conviction". In this case there is no judicial involvement. The person was not convicted of any crime, will not be punished, and will not have any criminal record. I agree, it's an awful thing, but we ought to be careful not to overhype this issue. Until the MPAA gets the ability to send someone to jail or to fine them WITHOUT TRIAL, this proactive approach to copyright enforcement is simply a business issue.
(/FLAMESUIT)
That said, the US needs to pay careful attention to this trend of "guilty until proven innocent" OUTSIDE the judicial arena, so that this kind of excess does not grow further. Although I hate suggesting increasing the reach of government, I believe copyright law could stand to see some carefully written laws limiting or preventing this "prior restraint" practice.
This link from July 24th on the same site is actually a good description of some further applications of nanoscale crystals, ranging from lasing to solar cells to bone implants.
I never reply until I've researched the hoax and/or truth and proven to myself, at least two different ways.
The best way to ruin my credibility is to send out ONE wrong email.
I sign everything I send, including my phone number. If I'm not willing to have my full contact information forwarded to someone else along with my conclusions, it needs more research.
When I don't know the answer, I tell them so. And I recommend they just ignore it.
When I find it's a hoax, I ask them NOT to forward this conclusion until they've done the same research, and are willing to append their own conclusions. The propagation method of all hoaxes is thoughtless, research-free forwarded email.
If it turns out to be true, I make a point of including links to whatever authority I can find.
If it turns out to be false, I include links to at least two web sites that debunk the hoax/myth.
Finally, I almost always recommend that they take a minute to browse the Kumite Virus Hoaxes and Myths web site (seems to be down at the moment but it's a good review of quite a few common hoaxes).
The Senate, in particular Sen. Daschle and the other Democrats, has already made it clear this morning that they will attempt to overturn what is from their point of view a ban. This article in the Washington Post is a fairly liberal take on the decision, and includes some comments by Daschle.
On the other hand, outright permission from the President would have resulted in an equally vicious attack from the Republican-led House of Representatives and conservatives. This article in the Washington Times is a good example of the typical mix of conservative responses.
At least the limited approach the President chose has a chance of standing up against the legislature. Regardless of your personal feelings about the politics or morality of the situation, I believe the President's decision was a fairly balanced approach to an extremely difficult issue.
It's about time someone pointed out that this is exactly the kind of useless fact-spouting without true understanding that the /. crowd likes to complain about - but only when it's coming from someone writing about hackers.
Take a while to research the system, and think about the technologies involved and the operational capabilities of each, and you'll quickly realize this story is pure propaganda.
The useful update rate on GPS technology is rather low. It's impossible to use it to do final homing on a target moving thousands of feet per second. Sure, it MIGHT help you spot it a few miles away at best, but the real test of this system was the ability to HIT the target.
Second, the interceptor system does not use anything remotely LIKE a GPS system to home in - it's using radar and infrared. Radar systems only listen to a preselected frequency - for bistatic systems (where the rx and tx are in two locations) the rx may be frequency-agile. But a monostatic system listens only to its own frequency. To get the resolution required to pick out and hit a several-foot-diameter target, the frequency in use is nowhere near the GPS frequency.
Don't be foolish enough to assume that the decision makers are not aware of these issues. As a civil servant in a procurement-related position, who evaluates contractor systems for suitability for the tasks for which they are designed, I can tell you with some authority that the government pays particular attention to the conditions of the test. If Salon knows about this transmitter, the test PLANNERS knew about it years ago, and payed particular attention to whether or not that transmitter might have ANY effect on the real data being collected.
Finally, bear in mind that logically, if anybody had anything to hide, the test and results would NOT be anywhere near so public. It doesn't matter how high-level the test is. Many many very important tests have been quite secret over the years, and no report had a clue the government was even thinking about such a test. The fact that this test is being conducted "in the clear" should calm the fears of the most ardent conspiracy theorist.
The article claims that it prevents ripping by introducing "wildly erroneous" data and also munging the ECCs. So what; if you leave ECC off (an option in MusicMatch) or rip in Analog mode (also an option in MusicMatch), I would assume these things would not really be a big deal. The quality would still be good enough for most people. Then if you need a copy you can use on another computer, you simply burn one from THAT rip, not the original. What's the big deal?
(Aside from the completely ODIOUS idea of deliberately introducing distortion, of course...)
--Brandon
At most hardware stores you can purchase a small keychain light that uses two watch cell batteries and an LED in a flexible rubber shell. They come with a red LED in most cases; go to Radio Shack and get a white LED to replace the red. I use it all the time, and the batteries last for months. You get a wide bright circle of crisp white illumination. The white is much easier than pure red - I suppose the human vision system relies on color differentiation.
There's no switch - the LED leads are spread so you have to press the flexible sides together to make them contact the battery.
(The interesting thing is that you can buy the keychain for one dollar. If you want to replace the batteries you would have to pay about four dollars at the same store. I guess the manufacturers found a way to ditch substandard batteries and still make a buck.)
Total cost: about five dollars, one time; about a dollar to replace the batteries (by buying a new keychain). And it fits on your keychain for easy instant access.
--Brandon
The story reads "About 10-12 CDs worth will completely use up the memory of a 3GB hard drive."
Huh?
Hate to tell the authors, but I can fit a LOT more than 10 to 12 albums in 3Gb of disk space; right now I have 80 complete albums (sampled at 128Kbs) in 5.86 Gb of disk space.
--Brandon
I have to wonder how many /. posters are actually parents.
I can state with some authority, as the parent of three children, that whatever you think you know about children before you have children is WRONG. Deal with it.
On the flip side, my experience thus far teaches me that the BEST solution is not any specific response above, but to provide the child with a close, personal, loving relationship. Then discipline revolves around the relationship, not the issue.
With that in mind, the child learns to trust YOUR viewpoint on things and soon internalizes your morals - and filtering becomes internal, not externally imposed. Sure it takes years, but you don't raise a kid quickly. It's a process.
And one last thing - no matter WHAT decision you make about taking the kid in to Hannibal, you can bet about half the other parents will look at you like you're nuts. Some think you're a prude, others think you're too liberal. The important thing is self-assurance that you're right.
--Brandon