Some other potentially dangerous experiments with CD:s, light bulbs and other objects in microwave owens can be found here. Looks interesting, but I personally wouldn't do that in my own kitchen.
I found the Web page of project "Cheese" at MIT. They don't seem to be using their own mouse tracking technique yet. The publication that the researchers have produced doesn't provide much more information than the BBC article.
This is slightly off-topic, but there seems to be a few things that have to be clarified.
In the 1950s, Europe upgraded their TV system to color. The new PAL and SECAM color standards weren't compatible with their old 405/441-line black and white standards [ausys.se], leaving consumers with far too many confusing choices.
According to the link you provided (very interesting actually) the 405 and 441 line standards that you are talking about were only used in the UK and France. The reason to discontinue these standards was not the introduction of color. The PAL and SECAM color standards are compatible with the black and white standard introduced in most countries when TV broadcasts started in the 1940s and 50s. Black and white 625 line television sets bought then can still be used.
Color television was introduced in most places in the 1960s. OK, you have probably had both TV and color TV for a longer time in the US, but the price that you've to pay for that is a slightly lower quality picture with fewer lines and a color signal that is not always perfect.
Arguably, European TV never recovered.
I don't know what you mean by that. Most Western European households have at least one television set and there are lots of channels available through cable or satellite receivers.
Another game based on mobile positioning
on
Pirates!
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· Score: 4, Informative
There is another game based on mobile positioning called BotFighters in action since a couple of months in Sweden. Basically, a player may shoot at another player or attempt to take his/her weapons, but only if they are close enough to eachother.
Anyone with an ordinary mobile phone can play the game, as it uses the positioning information available form the cellular network. Using WAP or text messages may not really be as exciting as having a full-screen PDA in a wireless LAN, though.
This is exactly what the traditional Mac OS resource fork is used for in many graphics programs. The large image is stored in the data fork, which means that if I transfer the file to another operating system, it is still usable. In addition to that, there may be images suitable for preview or Finder icons in the resource fork.
Another example of using the resource fork is that plain text editors store my text in the data fork. In addition to that, the resource fork is used to "remember" which part of the text was highlighted when I saved the file and possibly other preferences that I made for how to edit the file.
Can't you just do the old Amiga trick, put tape over the high-density hole and format it to 720K on a PC?
Actually, you don't even need to cover the high-density hole if you're only going to use the disk on the Atari ST. The disk drive doesn't even have a sensor for it. For transferring data to or from a PC, I'd recommend your method. A floppy disk formatted in DOS format on the ST will often not be accepted by a PC.
I wish people would start using the binary prefixes to avoid confusion. I found an old Slashdot aricle about it. An explanation of the binary prefixed can be found here.
However, the more interesting thing is that each of these people has to download a CD worth of information from servers mostly located in the EU. This may well be one of the largest tests of trans-continental bandwidth ever, as I've never heard of 100,000 people trying to download a single game in the space of 3 days or so
That shouldn't be a big problem, as most of the traffic over the trans-Atlantic links usually goes in the other direction. In general users in Europe download a lot more data from the US than vice versa, which means that there should be a lot of unused capacity.:-)
I see a potential problem if superconducting cables are used for power distribution.
The cables need to be extremely cold, or else they loose their superconducting properties. The cooling is achieved through liquid nitrogen or something like that, but in the end the nitrogen has to be cooled by some kind of electrical process.
So -- what happens if there if a huge power failure during a long period (several hours or days)? Will it be possible to restart the power distribution without problems when the power lines are no longer cold enough?
... wouldn't it be fun to ultimately travel from Tierra del Fuego to Johannesburg by train?"
Are there really railroads to make the rest of that trip possible? At least in my world atlas, there are no railroads over the Suez canal, which would be necessary to get from Asia to Africa.
There is a Linux distribution called FlyingLinux.NET used at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden that is claimed to be the first linux distribution oriented to mobility services. I used it last spring on HP OmniBooks with Lucent WaveLAN cards.
Slashdot Mirror
There was an article called On the Responsiveness of DNS-based Network Control presented at the Internet Measurement Conference" last year. It is based on data from the Akamai content distribution network and shows that some DNS servers and even more client applications do not honor DNS TTL information.
What you describe sounds like a paternoster lift.
I'm sorry, but I just can't imagine what a "Microsoft Lager" might be like.
I can't resist to give you this link:
If Beer was like Operating Systems...
Oh, it was that kind of mouse wheel! I thought you meant the one between the two mouse buttons.
MacNN is reporting that Apple just silently released iPhoto 1.1. The download link doesn't seem to work right now, though.
Some other potentially dangerous experiments with CD:s, light bulbs and other objects in microwave owens can be found here. Looks interesting, but I personally wouldn't do that in my own kitchen.
PowerPC stands for "Power Performance Chip".
Since the correct form for 2^20 bytes is "mebibytes", I suggest that the short form should be "mebs".
Btw, MIBs are Management Information Bases.
I found the Web page of project "Cheese" at MIT. They don't seem to be using their own mouse tracking technique yet. The publication that the researchers have produced doesn't provide much more information than the BBC article.
This is slightly off-topic, but there seems to be a few things that have to be clarified.
In the 1950s, Europe upgraded their TV system to color. The new PAL and SECAM color standards weren't compatible with their old 405/441-line black and white standards [ausys.se], leaving consumers with far too many confusing choices.
According to the link you provided (very interesting actually) the 405 and 441 line standards that you are talking about were only used in the UK and France. The reason to discontinue these standards was not the introduction of color. The PAL and SECAM color standards are compatible with the black and white standard introduced in most countries when TV broadcasts started in the 1940s and 50s. Black and white 625 line television sets bought then can still be used.
Color television was introduced in most places in the 1960s. OK, you have probably had both TV and color TV for a longer time in the US, but the price that you've to pay for that is a slightly lower quality picture with fewer lines and a color signal that is not always perfect.
Arguably, European TV never recovered.
I don't know what you mean by that. Most Western European households have at least one television set and there are lots of channels available through cable or satellite receivers.
There is another game based on mobile positioning called BotFighters in action since a couple of months in Sweden. Basically, a player may shoot at another player or attempt to take his/her weapons, but only if they are close enough to eachother.
Anyone with an ordinary mobile phone can play the game, as it uses the positioning information available form the cellular network. Using WAP or text messages may not really be as exciting as having a full-screen PDA in a wireless LAN, though.
Also, the article talks about "Microsoft software" that some Cisco devices where using. What software was that? IIS runs embedded in Cisco stuff now?
I'm afraid that seems to be the case. Just look at this Cisco security advisory:
"The following Cisco products are vulnerable because they run affected versions of Microsoft IIS:
This is exactly what the traditional Mac OS resource fork is used for in many graphics programs. The large image is stored in the data fork, which means that if I transfer the file to another operating system, it is still usable. In addition to that, there may be images suitable for preview or Finder icons in the resource fork.
Another example of using the resource fork is that plain text editors store my text in the data fork. In addition to that, the resource fork is used to "remember" which part of the text was highlighted when I saved the file and possibly other preferences that I made for how to edit the file.
Can't you just do the old Amiga trick, put tape over the high-density hole and format it to 720K on a PC?
Actually, you don't even need to cover the high-density hole if you're only going to use the disk on the Atari ST. The disk drive doesn't even have a sensor for it. For transferring data to or from a PC, I'd recommend your method. A floppy disk formatted in DOS format on the ST will often not be accepted by a PC.
I wish people would start using the binary prefixes to avoid confusion. I found an old Slashdot aricle about it. An explanation of the binary prefixed can be found here.
However, the more interesting thing is that each of these people has to download a CD worth of information from servers mostly located in the EU. This may well be one of the largest tests of trans-continental bandwidth ever, as I've never heard of 100,000 people trying to download a single game in the space of 3 days or so
That shouldn't be a big problem, as most of the traffic over the trans-Atlantic links usually goes in the other direction. In general users in Europe download a lot more data from the US than vice versa, which means that there should be a lot of unused capacity. :-)
I see a potential problem if superconducting cables are used for power distribution.
The cables need to be extremely cold, or else they loose their superconducting properties. The cooling is achieved through liquid nitrogen or something like that, but in the end the nitrogen has to be cooled by some kind of electrical process.
So -- what happens if there if a huge power failure during a long period (several hours or days)? Will it be possible to restart the power distribution without problems when the power lines are no longer cold enough?
There is actually a rumor on Think Secret that Apple is developing rack-mounted servers.
Some information in English can be found at http://www.telemuseum.se/historia/mobtel/mobteleng .html.
Are there really railroads to make the rest of that trip possible? At least in my world atlas, there are no railroads over the Suez canal, which would be necessary to get from Asia to Africa.
There is a Linux distribution called FlyingLinux.NET used at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden that is claimed to be the first linux distribution oriented to mobility services. I used it last spring on HP OmniBooks with Lucent WaveLAN cards.