As has been said before, real security comes from when your access to something comes from two of the three:
1. Something you know 2. Something you have 3. Something you are
For example, passwords can be brute forced relatively easy, but if your password has to be accompanied by a retina scan, then your password protected data is significantly more secure.
By the same token, if you have a password, but your PGP key is on your HDD, then your data is only as secure as your password to someone who has your PC. If, however, you keep your PGP on an external disk of some kind, then you go quite a bit further towards making your data secure to someone who has stolen or confiscated your PC. A floppy is pretty good for this purpose for the following reasons:
It's fairly portable. You can reasonably carry a floppy disk in your wallet and pull it out when you need it without fear of destroying it.
It's small enough and durable enough to manipulate. You can hide a floppy in a safe deposit box or ship it overseas if need be.
Despite it's relative durability, it's also easily destroyed. CD's need to be dissolved in acid to be truly unrecoverable and Zip disks are relatively difficult to break into. Floppies, on the other hand, can be broken into and once you've eaten the plastic disk, you're data is forever encrypted.
...Since ICANN is getting rid of his position in November. He's got to cause a stink with what he finds and cause it fast, or it's going to be too little, too late.
I was not aware that Alias had done this. If they have, bully for them. They've already done a good job of making Maya a defacto standard. By putting out 'anti-piracy' copies of their software like this, they're helping to reduce the numbers of people who download regular versions as well as making sure that more people know how to use their software in a business setting.
Company A is a relatively new, but wealthy graphical effects company that does effects for commercials, promotional vidoes, and traning multimedia. They need graphic artists capable of using a new modelling and animation tool we'll call Tool B.
Tool B costs 1500 dollars and has a complex registration system that involves connecting to a registration server. (Yes, high-end tools do this.) University graphical art programs would rather use Tool C which costs $150 and a 'normal' registration system so that they can install it on more than one workstation. (1st instance of 'piracy)
Artist D knows 3d animation and modelling concepts. He's even spent a few hundred dollars on software. He is capable of doing the job for Company A, but doesn't know the tool. There is no way he can possibly afford to buy Tool B, but he *can* download it and the crack for its registration system of alt.binaries.3dtools.yadda.yadda... (2nd Instance of Piracy)
After Artist D demonstrates his mad graphic skilzz in his interview, Company A hires Artist D, justifying licensing of a new copy of Tool B at $1500 a pop. Despite 2 instances of piracy, the makers of Tool B have gotten their money and have a user who is using their tools in the industry.
The bottom line here is that because Tool B was used in an educational sense, it makes more money than it would if it weren't being used.
There are many high-end graphical tools that you can very safely plug into the 'Tool B' slot, like 3DSMax, Maya, Lightwave, and Even Photoshop/Illustrator. Despite the fact that these high-dollar tools are the most pirated pieces of software out there with the exception of games, the companies that make them are still raking in the dough. They scream and cry about 'lost sales', but they know as well as we do that if there wasn't at least some piracy of their products, they wouldn't have nearly so many business users.
The insights on AI, particularly, the digression into the functions of AIML for A.L.I.C.E were wonderful in this interview.
HOWEVER, the interview's subject frequently digressed and in a couple cases didn't answer the questions posed, particularly the question
'Do you think that real artificial intelligence will come from this process, starting with a running dummy and stub methods, or from careful design and planning, so that in the end we can flip the switch and have a working prototype? Is A.L.I.C.E. a reflection of your beliefs or just an experiment
After reading through the length and breadth of that reply, looking for an answer, I began to skim through the rest of his answers.
I should have separated this into two issues. No, there is no danger of global warming from wilderness drilling, but the same two groups, the Bush administration and the oil industry, would also have you beleive that burning fossil fuels is harmless to the environment, thus perpetuating global warming.
It is time for everyone to start faxing their Congressmen.
Here is the simul email/fax I sent today:
Dear Representative Combest,
Recently, your colleague, Representative Howard Berman from California, introduced a bill that would allow copyright holders such as movie studios, publishers, or record labels to take 'technological measures' against computer networks they suspect of violating their copyrights.
These 'technological measures' are computer 'Denial of Service' or 'DOS' attacks, computer cracking, and other actions that are otherwise considered computer crimes. Right now, if an individual did the same thing that these content industries are asking to do via Berman's bill, he would be investigated by the FBI and put in prison for harming a computer network or a computer. These 'technological measures' are no different. Besides harming an individual's computer, who may or may not be guilty of copyright violation, they also harm Internet Service Providers, Universities, or any other business that is connected to the Internet. The bandwidth lost to 'Denial of Service'-type attacks doesn't affect just people the content industry suspects being guilty of copyright infringement, but everyone connected to the Internet by reducing the amount of bandwidth available for legitimate data.
Worse, if these industries are allowed to start perpetrating these kind of attacks on individuals or companies, it will become impossible for computer administrators, police forces, or federal investigators to differentiate illegal attacks from sanctioned attacks. Computer 'hacking' and cracking will rise in frequency and volume simply because malicious criminals will be able to take advantage of the 'noise' generated by legal attacks.
There is no difference between malicious computer attacks and the 'technological measures' proposed by Representative Berman. I urge you to oppose his bill in the strongest possible terms.
MPAA - 'Can we have immunity from laws designed to protect the computer infrastructure and commit damaging acts against networks and computers that don't belong to us?' - Pending
John Ashcroft and Federal LEO's - 'Can we have immunity from the fourth ammendment and commit invasion of privacy against americans?' - Denied up until 9-11, then granted, despite the fact that they already had information about the WTC attacks. Permanent acception is pending the Patriot act's expiration date.
George Bush and Oil Industry CEOs - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting the environment and virgin wilderness in order to increase our profits and control of the energy industry by drilling in Alaskan wilderness and completely ignoring global warming and any other environmental concerns that are too expensive for us to worry about?' - Pending.
What's next?
Preists - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting children from molestation and rape so we can get our jollies with 9 year olds?'
Corporate Executives - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting our investors and the general public so that we can pad our pocketbooks and live lives of luxury?'
Police - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting citezens from police brutality so that we can beat, maim or kill with impunity?'
The Rich - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting people from slavery and oppression so that we can further entrench our selves in oligarchy and profit from the abuse of our fellow humans'?
I understood that the point of the clockwork was to keep a flywheel turning. My understanding is that a flywheel is very hard to start, but also very hard to stop. Its high intertia makes for very good, very efficient storage of mechanical energy, and therefore less wasted energy in the charging process.
IANAP and IANAEE! Physics majors or EE's please correct me!
Software decoders in Winamp, Real, and hopefully Quicktime is only the first step. Ogg will be in the pink when hardware decoders start showing up in the form of CD MP3 players with Vorbis Support and DVD players that will decode Ogg's as well as MP3's and other formats.
According to the article, there is no clockwork involved in the charger. The handle turns the generator directly. The box is already larger than a cellphone, so why not include clockwork? Instead of using hand power to turn a generator, why not use handpower to compress a spring (at a significant mechanical advantage, of course) that turns a flywheel that turns the generator.
Of course it would be much harder to turn the crank, but you wouldn't have to keep up an exhausting pace of over 100rpm. At least in my mind, I'd rather turn a very hard-to-turn crank 10 times than an easy to turn crank 1000 times.
Does this model work? I've seen it work in some of the various other 'squeeze and go' utilities out there. I had a flashlight/FM radio combo a little while back that used something similar (handle, spring, and flywheel arrangement). It was relatively hard to crank, but one or two cranks got you 30 seconds of flashlight or 5 minutes of radio at top volume.
As the article stated, in the very earliest days of internet adoption in the early 90's this was true.
If you ready geek literature and oldies but goldies such as the Jargon file, you'll find note of the the 'Fall that Never Ended' or the 'New Semester that never Ended'. Of course before about 1990, the only new internet users were new students at internet-connected universities. Thus, every fall saw a spurt of growth, and every summer saw a dramatic decline.
In 1993 and 1994, when the first versions of Netscape (and later, Internet Explorer) first came out and the web really became accessible to people who weren't geeks, it spawned that 100% every 100 days boom. That leveled off real quick. The internet is still developing... just not in the United States.
better image quality? you just finished saying png is lossless, and jpg is lossy. how can it be better image quality? its WORSE image quality. but at a much better file size.
Get yourself a reasonably noisy, graidient toned image. Any given photograph will do. Resize it in the editor of your choice, Photoshop, PSP, the GIMP, or any of a dozen others. Then, set yourself a reasonable filesize, like about 90k for a full-screen image.
Save it as a jpg, reducing the quality enough so that it fits within your target filesize. Now save it as a png, reducing the color depth enough to get as close to 90k as you possibly can.
You probably *won't* be able to compress a full screen image with PNG to 90k without only using 2 colors, but get as close as you can. Now examine the two images, each of which should have *some* distortion, regardless of the fact that PNG is lossless at 24 and 32 bit color depth. This is because PNG is *NOT* lossless at lower bit-depths and has to dither color information just like GIF.
Despite the fact that the two files will be approximately the same file size, the jpeg will look much better and clearer even if it is much smaller than the jpeg.
If you don't beleive me, please see the following two files I've created for demonstration purposes:
Since Adobe's PNG library is not as efficient at compression as some out there, I've given the PNG image 20 extra K or so on the jpeg. As you can see, the jpeg is flawless unless you start looking at it in depth on a pixel-by-pixel basis while the PNG image is visibly flawed.
JPG is a lossy encoding mechanism. It disacrds a significant amount of information in any given image to create smaller file size.
PNG is a lossless encoding mechanism. It uses several very intelligently designed formulas and structures to very efficiently encode an image to reduce its file-size without losing any image data.
Because of this difference, PNG files of all but the simplest images will *always* be larger than corresponding JPG files.
For simple graphics like logos, stylized text, and flat-shaded cartoons, PNG can be made to produce better looking images at lower filesize than JPG or even GIF. For this reason, PNG is idea for making simple graphics for websites such as blocks of color, logos, etc. For photographic or shaded images of any kind, JPG is simply better at producing better image quality at smaller filesizes.
Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second. On modem connections, moving to all PNG would make the internet completely void of all but the simplest graphics.
IMHO, it's time to build a lossy format for storing graphics similar to Ogg Vorbis. Perhaps the video codec Ogg just released can be used to make reasonable single-framed movies? Anyone familiar with the format care to comment?
The guy is looking for programs that make standalone games, not something like Lego... sheesh.
Ah, but when you're done, you can print out instructions for your creation so that you or others can build them. True, you're not making a standalone computer game, but you are making something very similar.
It was a real joy to see I could build with all the lego pieces my mother always threw away when I was a child because they weren't recognizable as legos.
From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.
Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.
I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.
While Perl is certainly a much more powerful and flexible language, most website management functions can be carried out much more simply and in less time in PHP since it was designed with website management and database connectivity in mind.
PHP is roughly Perl-based, and is probably a more appropriate language for beginning coders than Perl, IMHO. Having written website management tools in both languages, if I had to do it again, I'd do it in PHP.
Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are one of the nation's largest redistributors of magazines and other periodicals... so large, in fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a magazine for a month, it can break a publication financially.
Combine that with the fact that Walmart has always upheld a rather fraudulent reputation that it is interested in the concerns of senior citezens, religious organizations, and 'family-oriented' concerns, and you end up with something pretty scary. Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of content deemed innapropriate. Quite a few of the magazines in the U.S. have to run their covers and editorial content past Walmart for approval before they can go to press.
There is a long standing theory that due to the way certain atoms decay that there may be an island of stability as atomic number or mass increases that will allow these elements to exist much longer than just an instant.
One goal of the research is to eventually find or produce high-mass radio isotopes that will provide more energy and have less residue than exisiting nuclear fuels. At the moment, we're putting a heal of a lot more energy into the creation of these isotopes than we're getting out of them, but if we learn more we might learn how to get a break-even or a profitable reaction.
It's entirely possible that element 119, which will theoretically be an alkali metal with properties similar to cesium, will have a half life long enough to allow it to take place in non-nuclear chemical reactions.
Also of interest is the confirmation of the shape of electron orbitals at higher atomic masses. You've noticed the stair step pattern of the periodic table no doubt? If you insert the lanthanides and actinides between columns 3 and 4 of the period table, where they belong, the effect becomes even more noticable. This is a reflection of the way that electrons bind to nucleii in atoms. Each 'stair step' represents a new electron orbital which can contain a specific number of electrons. These get larger and more complex as the number of electrons in an atom rise.
1. Fear Reduction. If customers can *see* it working, and see a few neat demos (one of the few linux games, Open Office, etc...) then they will be much more likely to buy it.
2. Employee Knowledge. The majority of Walmart employees are not really encouraged to be knowledgeable about their products or their store. If electronics department managers took the dive and installed a Linux PC for their departments, employees who worked there could play with it and learn about it. They'd be in a lot better position to deal with it.
3. Zealots. Go to any Bestbuy or Circuit city that happens to have a Mac section, and you'll find one or two Mac Zealots there to 'encourage' people toward buying a Mac. If you put Linux PC's in stores, you'll probably get Linux Zealots there too to show people how wonderful Linux can be.
Reasons AGAINST setting up a Linux Demo PC at Walmart
1. su -; password; rm -rf *.*
2. When Linux breaks, (or is broken) you've got to be knowledgable to fix it. If you installed it, you've got no problem, but can you really count on someone who works at Walmart to know how to edit files? In my experience, non techies who sell computers would rather *not* fix a broken software demo by reinstalling. If they can't make it 'right' again with a few mouse clicks, they'll turn it off.
3. 133t k1dd135
4. Customer: "So, which of this software can I run on this Linux PC?"
Walmart CSM: "Uhmm... None of it, I think. I dunno. Are these things compatible with normal PC's?"
Walmart carries a few boxed Linux distros. I've seen Mandrake and Redhat shrinkwraps before, but that is the long and short of their in-store linux support. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to download Open Office. He wants to buy it off the shelf and have it work without thinking. Unless Walmart starts carrying some of the shrinkwrap Linux software packages, and maybe some 'collection' CD's, they're shooting themselves in the foot by displaying a Linux PC next to reams of Windows-only software.
Why would anyone that's looking to get high get thier high from an illegal source when a legal one is available?
This was an effect that was visibly observed during prohibition. It became very difficult to get 'weaker' alcohols like beer, wine, and liquers as compared to harder alcohols like whiskey, gin, and vodka. The rationale most people attribute to this is that the higher proof alcohols give you much more 'bang for the buck' in terms of the drunken euphoria and can be sold in smaller amounts. They are therefore easier to smuggle than softer alcohols. For comparison, imagine the difficulty you'd have trying to smuggle a six-pack of beer into a school dance as you would a small hip-flask full of whiskey or 151 rum.
After prohibition was over, weaker alcohols became more available again and were bought more and more than harder alcohols. Pilsner Beers like Coors, Budwieser, Michelob, etc..., came into being and they have some of the lowest alcohol contents of any liquor.
I think we could expect to see the same thing with drugs if drugs were just magically legalized. The 'harmless' and non-addictive drugs would become much more popular than the hard drugs. Heroin is only popular, for example, because it's inefficient to smuggle opium.
Also, once legalized, drugs would be subject to the same kind of FDA approvals and regulations that food and alcohols are. Marijuana would probably be a lot less likely to have foreign substances and LSD and Ecstacy would not be cut with strange chemicals (like Arsenic) that are responsible for most of the 'bad' effects we associate with those drugs.
So, just out of curiousity, why is prostitution"more serious vice" then recreational drug use
Personally, I don't think it is. Drug users, especially people who intravenously inject drugs, stand a much higher chance of doing worse things to themselves and others, especially when it comes to spreading certain diseases.
If you ask most religious types (At least the religious people I know), they consider prostitution and homosexuality to be far more dangeorus and damaging.
I've got an idea... lets make everything legal and then there wouldn't be any criminals!
On the surface, that seems idiotic, but there is a school of thought that says that it's a workable solution.
Let's use drugs as a test case. Right now, you can get in more trouble for drug posession than child molestation. You're more likely to be arrested and more likely to go to jail or prison for a longer time. Now, if you completely elminated all controlled subtances laws, you create several problems where drugs are more available and people who can't deal with them properly hurt themselves. However, in the same stroke, you release several dozen thousand of non-violent offenders from prison who are there for 'posession' crimes, open up and legitimize drug treatment like alcohol treatment, and help to create a society that is not only more tolerant of drugs, but also more tolerant to the people who need help. Right now, people who have problems with alcohol are encouraged on all sides to get help. There are many organizations that exist to help individuals who have addiction problems. Alcohol users know that they can get help without fear of being arrested. Drug addicts do not currently have this luxury. If they seek treatment, there is a high possibility that someone they go to for help will turn them. If drugs were legal, a lot more of them could seek treatment.
Other, more serious vices, have both plusses and minuses to legalization. Prostitutes who work in areas where it's legal (certain parts of Nevada), for example, have better protection from violence, rape, abuse, STD's and other 'sex-worker' problems than they do in other parts of the country. They also have a better chance of 'getting out' than their peers in other parts of the world. If you legalized prositution nation-wide, there are many problems that would arise because of that. There are also many problems that would simply go away... perhaps more than would be created by such a situation.
Remember that a great deal of our 'vice' legislation at both the state and federal level was created not by the 'Forefathers', but by conservative moral special interests. This was the case with prohibition and is the case with current vice laws like 'The war on Drugs', etc... While it's not true for every problem, in the United States, the cure is often worse than the disease.
Slashdot Mirror
As has been said before, real security comes from when your access to something comes from two of the three:
1. Something you know
2. Something you have
3. Something you are
For example, passwords can be brute forced relatively easy, but if your password has to be accompanied by a retina scan, then your password protected data is significantly more secure.
By the same token, if you have a password, but your PGP key is on your HDD, then your data is only as secure as your password to someone who has your PC. If, however, you keep your PGP on an external disk of some kind, then you go quite a bit further towards making your data secure to someone who has stolen or confiscated your PC. A floppy is pretty good for this purpose for the following reasons:
It's fairly portable. You can reasonably carry a floppy disk in your wallet and pull it out when you need it without fear of destroying it.
It's small enough and durable enough to manipulate. You can hide a floppy in a safe deposit box or ship it overseas if need be.
Despite it's relative durability, it's also easily destroyed. CD's need to be dissolved in acid to be truly unrecoverable and Zip disks are relatively difficult to break into. Floppies, on the other hand, can be broken into and once you've eaten the plastic disk, you're data is forever encrypted.
...Since ICANN is getting rid of his position in November. He's got to cause a stink with what he finds and cause it fast, or it's going to be too little, too late.
I was not aware that Alias had done this. If they have, bully for them. They've already done a good job of making Maya a defacto standard. By putting out 'anti-piracy' copies of their software like this, they're helping to reduce the numbers of people who download regular versions as well as making sure that more people know how to use their software in a business setting.
Company A is a relatively new, but wealthy graphical effects company that does effects for commercials, promotional vidoes, and traning multimedia. They need graphic artists capable of using a new modelling and animation tool we'll call Tool B.
Tool B costs 1500 dollars and has a complex registration system that involves connecting to a registration server. (Yes, high-end tools do this.) University graphical art programs would rather use Tool C which costs $150 and a 'normal' registration system so that they can install it on more than one workstation. (1st instance of 'piracy)
Artist D knows 3d animation and modelling concepts. He's even spent a few hundred dollars on software. He is capable of doing the job for Company A, but doesn't know the tool. There is no way he can possibly afford to buy Tool B, but he *can* download it and the crack for its registration system of alt.binaries.3dtools.yadda.yadda... (2nd Instance of Piracy)
After Artist D demonstrates his mad graphic skilzz in his interview, Company A hires Artist D, justifying licensing of a new copy of Tool B at $1500 a pop. Despite 2 instances of piracy, the makers of Tool B have gotten their money and have a user who is using their tools in the industry.
The bottom line here is that because Tool B was used in an educational sense, it makes more money than it would if it weren't being used.
There are many high-end graphical tools that you can very safely plug into the 'Tool B' slot, like 3DSMax, Maya, Lightwave, and Even Photoshop/Illustrator. Despite the fact that these high-dollar tools are the most pirated pieces of software out there with the exception of games, the companies that make them are still raking in the dough. They scream and cry about 'lost sales', but they know as well as we do that if there wasn't at least some piracy of their products, they wouldn't have nearly so many business users.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-7- 12&res=l
The insights on AI, particularly, the digression into the functions of AIML for A.L.I.C.E were wonderful in this interview.
HOWEVER, the interview's subject frequently digressed and in a couple cases didn't answer the questions posed, particularly the question
'Do you think that real artificial intelligence will come from this process, starting with a running dummy and stub methods, or from careful design and planning, so that in the end we can flip the switch and have a working prototype? Is A.L.I.C.E. a reflection of your beliefs or just an experiment
After reading through the length and breadth of that reply, looking for an answer, I began to skim through the rest of his answers.
I should have separated this into two issues. No, there is no danger of global warming from wilderness drilling, but the same two groups, the Bush administration and the oil industry, would also have you beleive that burning fossil fuels is harmless to the environment, thus perpetuating global warming.
It is time for everyone to start faxing their Congressmen.
Here is the simul email/fax I sent today:
Dear Representative Combest,
Recently, your colleague, Representative Howard Berman from California, introduced a bill that would allow copyright holders such as movie studios, publishers, or record labels to take 'technological measures' against computer networks they suspect of violating their copyrights.
These 'technological measures' are computer 'Denial of Service' or 'DOS' attacks, computer cracking, and other actions that are otherwise considered computer crimes. Right now, if an individual did the same thing that these content industries are asking to do via Berman's bill, he would be investigated by the FBI and put in prison for harming a computer network or a computer. These 'technological measures' are no different. Besides harming an individual's computer, who may or may not be guilty of copyright violation, they also harm Internet Service Providers, Universities, or any other business that is connected to the Internet. The bandwidth lost to 'Denial of Service'-type attacks doesn't affect just people the content industry suspects being guilty of copyright infringement, but everyone connected to the Internet by reducing the amount of bandwidth available for legitimate data.
Worse, if these industries are allowed to start perpetrating these kind of attacks on individuals or companies, it will become impossible for computer administrators, police forces, or federal investigators to differentiate illegal attacks from sanctioned attacks. Computer 'hacking' and cracking will rise in frequency and volume simply because malicious criminals will be able to take advantage of the 'noise' generated by legal attacks.
There is no difference between malicious computer attacks and the 'technological measures' proposed by Representative Berman. I urge you to oppose his bill in the strongest possible terms.
MPAA - 'Can we have immunity from laws designed to protect the computer infrastructure and commit damaging acts against networks and computers that don't belong to us?' - Pending
John Ashcroft and Federal LEO's - 'Can we have immunity from the fourth ammendment and commit invasion of privacy against americans?' - Denied up until 9-11, then granted, despite the fact that they already had information about the WTC attacks. Permanent acception is pending the Patriot act's expiration date.
George Bush and Oil Industry CEOs - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting the environment and virgin wilderness in order to increase our profits and control of the energy industry by drilling in Alaskan wilderness and completely ignoring global warming and any other environmental concerns that are too expensive for us to worry about?' - Pending.
What's next?
Preists - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting children from molestation and rape so we can get our jollies with 9 year olds?'
Corporate Executives - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting our investors and the general public so that we can pad our pocketbooks and live lives of luxury?'
Police - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting citezens from police brutality so that we can beat, maim or kill with impunity?'
The Rich - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting people from slavery and oppression so that we can further entrench our selves in oligarchy and profit from the abuse of our fellow humans'?
I understood that the point of the clockwork was to keep a flywheel turning. My understanding is that a flywheel is very hard to start, but also very hard to stop. Its high intertia makes for very good, very efficient storage of mechanical energy, and therefore less wasted energy in the charging process.
IANAP and IANAEE! Physics majors or EE's please correct me!
Software decoders in Winamp, Real, and hopefully Quicktime is only the first step. Ogg will be in the pink when hardware decoders start showing up in the form of CD MP3 players with Vorbis Support and DVD players that will decode Ogg's as well as MP3's and other formats.
According to the article, there is no clockwork involved in the charger. The handle turns the generator directly. The box is already larger than a cellphone, so why not include clockwork? Instead of using hand power to turn a generator, why not use handpower to compress a spring (at a significant mechanical advantage, of course) that turns a flywheel that turns the generator.
Of course it would be much harder to turn the crank, but you wouldn't have to keep up an exhausting pace of over 100rpm. At least in my mind, I'd rather turn a very hard-to-turn crank 10 times than an easy to turn crank 1000 times.
Does this model work? I've seen it work in some of the various other 'squeeze and go' utilities out there. I had a flashlight/FM radio combo a little while back that used something similar (handle, spring, and flywheel arrangement). It was relatively hard to crank, but one or two cranks got you 30 seconds of flashlight or 5 minutes of radio at top volume.
As the article stated, in the very earliest days of internet adoption in the early 90's this was true.
If you ready geek literature and oldies but goldies such as the Jargon file, you'll find note of the the 'Fall that Never Ended' or the 'New Semester that never Ended'. Of course before about 1990, the only new internet users were new students at internet-connected universities. Thus, every fall saw a spurt of growth, and every summer saw a dramatic decline.
In 1993 and 1994, when the first versions of Netscape (and later, Internet Explorer) first came out and the web really became accessible to people who weren't geeks, it spawned that 100% every 100 days boom. That leveled off real quick. The internet is still developing... just not in the United States.
better image quality? you just finished saying png is lossless, and jpg is lossy. how can it be better image quality? its WORSE image quality. but at a much better file size.
Get yourself a reasonably noisy, graidient toned image. Any given photograph will do. Resize it in the editor of your choice, Photoshop, PSP, the GIMP, or any of a dozen others. Then, set yourself a reasonable filesize, like about 90k for a full-screen image.
Save it as a jpg, reducing the quality enough so that it fits within your target filesize. Now save it as a png, reducing the color depth enough to get as close to 90k as you possibly can.
You probably *won't* be able to compress a full screen image with PNG to 90k without only using 2 colors, but get as close as you can. Now examine the two images, each of which should have *some* distortion, regardless of the fact that PNG is lossless at 24 and 32 bit color depth. This is because PNG is *NOT* lossless at lower bit-depths and has to dither color information just like GIF.
Despite the fact that the two files will be approximately the same file size, the jpeg will look much better and clearer even if it is much smaller than the jpeg.
If you don't beleive me, please see the following two files I've created for demonstration purposes:
http://www.furinkan.net/amethyst.png
http://www.furinkan.net/amethyst.jpg
Since Adobe's PNG library is not as efficient at compression as some out there, I've given the PNG image 20 extra K or so on the jpeg. As you can see, the jpeg is flawless unless you start looking at it in depth on a pixel-by-pixel basis while the PNG image is visibly flawed.
Unfortuneately, PNG is not a replacement for JPG.
Why?
JPG is a lossy encoding mechanism. It disacrds a significant amount of information in any given image to create smaller file size.
PNG is a lossless encoding mechanism. It uses several very intelligently designed formulas and structures to very efficiently encode an image to reduce its file-size without losing any image data.
Because of this difference, PNG files of all but the simplest images will *always* be larger than corresponding JPG files.
For simple graphics like logos, stylized text, and flat-shaded cartoons, PNG can be made to produce better looking images at lower filesize than JPG or even GIF. For this reason, PNG is idea for making simple graphics for websites such as blocks of color, logos, etc. For photographic or shaded images of any kind, JPG is simply better at producing better image quality at smaller filesizes.
Now, if you're on any kind of broadband connection, that point becomes pretty moot since the difference between downloading a 10k jpeg and a 100k PNG is less than a second. On modem connections, moving to all PNG would make the internet completely void of all but the simplest graphics.
IMHO, it's time to build a lossy format for storing graphics similar to Ogg Vorbis. Perhaps the video codec Ogg just released can be used to make reasonable single-framed movies? Anyone familiar with the format care to comment?
The guy is looking for programs that make standalone games, not something like Lego... sheesh.
Ah, but when you're done, you can print out instructions for your creation so that you or others can build them. True, you're not making a standalone computer game, but you are making something very similar.
http://leocad.org/
It was a real joy to see I could build with all the lego pieces my mother always threw away when I was a child because they weren't recognizable as legos.
Babelfish's rather loose translation:
From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.
Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.
I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.
While Perl is certainly a much more powerful and flexible language, most website management functions can be carried out much more simply and in less time in PHP since it was designed with website management and database connectivity in mind.
PHP is roughly Perl-based, and is probably a more appropriate language for beginning coders than Perl, IMHO. Having written website management tools in both languages, if I had to do it again, I'd do it in PHP.
Scarily enough, it goes on in the U.S. too. Take a good, long hard look at Walmart Corp. They are one of the nation's largest redistributors of magazines and other periodicals... so large, in fact, that if Walmart refuses to carry a magazine for a month, it can break a publication financially.
Combine that with the fact that Walmart has always upheld a rather fraudulent reputation that it is interested in the concerns of senior citezens, religious organizations, and 'family-oriented' concerns, and you end up with something pretty scary. Walmart has been known to refuse to sell books, games, CD's and magazines that had any kind of content deemed innapropriate. Quite a few of the magazines in the U.S. have to run their covers and editorial content past Walmart for approval before they can go to press.
There is a long standing theory that due to the way certain atoms decay that there may be an island of stability as atomic number or mass increases that will allow these elements to exist much longer than just an instant.
One goal of the research is to eventually find or produce high-mass radio isotopes that will provide more energy and have less residue than exisiting nuclear fuels. At the moment, we're putting a heal of a lot more energy into the creation of these isotopes than we're getting out of them, but if we learn more we might learn how to get a break-even or a profitable reaction.
It's entirely possible that element 119, which will theoretically be an alkali metal with properties similar to cesium, will have a half life long enough to allow it to take place in non-nuclear chemical reactions.
Also of interest is the confirmation of the shape of electron orbitals at higher atomic masses. You've noticed the stair step pattern of the periodic table no doubt? If you insert the lanthanides and actinides between columns 3 and 4 of the period table, where they belong, the effect becomes even more noticable. This is a reflection of the way that electrons bind to nucleii in atoms. Each 'stair step' represents a new electron orbital which can contain a specific number of electrons. These get larger and more complex as the number of electrons in an atom rise.
Reasons for setting up a Linux Demo PC at Walmart
1. Fear Reduction. If customers can *see* it working, and see a few neat demos (one of the few linux games, Open Office, etc...) then they will be much more likely to buy it.
2. Employee Knowledge. The majority of Walmart employees are not really encouraged to be knowledgeable about their products or their store. If electronics department managers took the dive and installed a Linux PC for their departments, employees who worked there could play with it and learn about it. They'd be in a lot better position to deal with it.
3. Zealots. Go to any Bestbuy or Circuit city that happens to have a Mac section, and you'll find one or two Mac Zealots there to 'encourage' people toward buying a Mac. If you put Linux PC's in stores, you'll probably get Linux Zealots there too to show people how wonderful Linux can be.
Reasons AGAINST setting up a Linux Demo PC at Walmart
1. su -; password; rm -rf *.*
2. When Linux breaks, (or is broken) you've got to be knowledgable to fix it. If you installed it, you've got no problem, but can you really count on someone who works at Walmart to know how to edit files? In my experience, non techies who sell computers would rather *not* fix a broken software demo by reinstalling. If they can't make it 'right' again with a few mouse clicks, they'll turn it off.
3. 133t k1dd135
4. Customer: "So, which of this software can I run on this Linux PC?"
Walmart CSM: "Uhmm... None of it, I think. I dunno. Are these things compatible with normal PC's?"
Walmart carries a few boxed Linux distros. I've seen Mandrake and Redhat shrinkwraps before, but that is the long and short of their in-store linux support. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to download Open Office. He wants to buy it off the shelf and have it work without thinking. Unless Walmart starts carrying some of the shrinkwrap Linux software packages, and maybe some 'collection' CD's, they're shooting themselves in the foot by displaying a Linux PC next to reams of Windows-only software.
Why would anyone that's looking to get high get thier high from an illegal source when a legal one is available?
This was an effect that was visibly observed during prohibition. It became very difficult to get 'weaker' alcohols like beer, wine, and liquers as compared to harder alcohols like whiskey, gin, and vodka. The rationale most people attribute to this is that the higher proof alcohols give you much more 'bang for the buck' in terms of the drunken euphoria and can be sold in smaller amounts. They are therefore easier to smuggle than softer alcohols. For comparison, imagine the difficulty you'd have trying to smuggle a six-pack of beer into a school dance as you would a small hip-flask full of whiskey or 151 rum.
After prohibition was over, weaker alcohols became more available again and were bought more and more than harder alcohols. Pilsner Beers like Coors, Budwieser, Michelob, etc..., came into being and they have some of the lowest alcohol contents of any liquor.
I think we could expect to see the same thing with drugs if drugs were just magically legalized. The 'harmless' and non-addictive drugs would become much more popular than the hard drugs. Heroin is only popular, for example, because it's inefficient to smuggle opium.
Also, once legalized, drugs would be subject to the same kind of FDA approvals and regulations that food and alcohols are. Marijuana would probably be a lot less likely to have foreign substances and LSD and Ecstacy would not be cut with strange chemicals (like Arsenic) that are responsible for most of the 'bad' effects we associate with those drugs.
So, just out of curiousity, why is prostitution"more serious vice" then recreational drug use
Personally, I don't think it is. Drug users, especially people who intravenously inject drugs, stand a much higher chance of doing worse things to themselves and others, especially when it comes to spreading certain diseases.
If you ask most religious types (At least the religious people I know), they consider prostitution and homosexuality to be far more dangeorus and damaging.
I've got an idea... lets make everything legal and then there wouldn't be any criminals!
On the surface, that seems idiotic, but there is a school of thought that says that it's a workable solution.
Let's use drugs as a test case. Right now, you can get in more trouble for drug posession than child molestation. You're more likely to be arrested and more likely to go to jail or prison for a longer time. Now, if you completely elminated all controlled subtances laws, you create several problems where drugs are more available and people who can't deal with them properly hurt themselves. However, in the same stroke, you release several dozen thousand of non-violent offenders from prison who are there for 'posession' crimes, open up and legitimize drug treatment like alcohol treatment, and help to create a society that is not only more tolerant of drugs, but also more tolerant to the people who need help. Right now, people who have problems with alcohol are encouraged on all sides to get help. There are many organizations that exist to help individuals who have addiction problems. Alcohol users know that they can get help without fear of being arrested. Drug addicts do not currently have this luxury. If they seek treatment, there is a high possibility that someone they go to for help will turn them. If drugs were legal, a lot more of them could seek treatment.
Other, more serious vices, have both plusses and minuses to legalization. Prostitutes who work in areas where it's legal (certain parts of Nevada), for example, have better protection from violence, rape, abuse, STD's and other 'sex-worker' problems than they do in other parts of the country. They also have a better chance of 'getting out' than their peers in other parts of the world. If you legalized prositution nation-wide, there are many problems that would arise because of that. There are also many problems that would simply go away... perhaps more than would be created by such a situation.
Remember that a great deal of our 'vice' legislation at both the state and federal level was created not by the 'Forefathers', but by conservative moral special interests. This was the case with prohibition and is the case with current vice laws like 'The war on Drugs', etc... While it's not true for every problem, in the United States, the cure is often worse than the disease.