The data pits are actually inside the CD, a few layers down from the surface. The reason you screw up a cd if you scratch off the label is because the back of label is the silvering the laser reflects off.
If you want cool things to do with a cd, try spraying it with freezer spray (God's gift to service engineers) until it's semi-flexible (I never understood that: heat them, they bend. Freeze them, they bend) and stick it in that other god-sent toy, a microwave.
I can't find anything about it on the web now, but a few years back AOL offered 750 hours free over here in the UK. Even the longest month has only 744 hours, or 745 if the clock goes back, leaving you with 6 totally unusable hours
Also, AOL has never been known as America OnLine here, for the obvious reasons. Bet they had some head-numbing meetings trying to work out whether they should keep AOL as a name outside the US
One of the main reasons that EFNET is unused is because it has no chanserv/nickserv features and is therefore unusable, as it is far too easy to hack around with
Contrast this to DALnet, which has teams of volunteers patrolling it and features allowing reliable and secure operation of room and servers. Just because EFNET was there first doesn't mean it should be revered. DALnet is still very much run by the geeks (hence dal.net not dalnet.com, iyswim.
Like it or not, the web is a much bigger place than it used to be. This kind of harking back to "the good old days" won't help preserve the distributed, open and hackable (in the good sense) nature of this beast we created. If a service, site or protocol is unreliable and not very viable for its intended purpose, it will die, nostalgia or not. We can only hope this is totally true and MS doesn't prove the exception with SQL et al.
Macrovision works (IIRC) by sending a signal saying that the video level is higher than it is no matter what it's plugged into. If the signal goes to a TV (or through a video for that matter), then there is no loss. But if you try and lay the video signal down on to tape the Signal Processor in the VCR determines that the incoming video signal is at a higher strength than it really is and lays down a very weak picture on the tape.
Macrovision can be eliminated by using a Sync Pulse Generator (or Time Base corrector, can't recall which) but as these are components of a professional video suite they aren't cheap. You can buy boxes that purport to get rid of macrovision, but I have never seen one working.
It may be the case that new VCRs have some sort of chip in, but the old ones won't work either.
If NSA et al have all these super-duper computers at Fort Meade, Digby etc., and all the people (well OK, at least a shitload of them) are CS and maths people, you'd have thought one of them would have come across this (hell, I bet some of them read/.) and run it through a few spare cycles on their Thinking Machine / Quantum Computers?
Mind you, I'm betting that posting the answer would have got them fired. But anyway, my point is I bet this was solved years ago, just outside the public domain.
Unless of course Osama Bin Laden's chinese satellite encryption and Saddam's russian one-time cipher pads are nothing next to EAPoe's whimsy.
Hey, what's an Intel launch without a recall or two?
"Excessive heat and lack of performance"? I bet they just bought a load of old cyrices from the govt. and welded them together. Man, nothing would heat a poor student up better than a nice cyrix
Ben^3, founder of the "give intel a chance" charity. (1990-1998)
Nintendo asked Sony to develop the playstation, as an add-on for the SNES. But, when Sony turned up at a games expo, they found Nintendo in bed with Philips for the same project, and got the huff. Thus, Nintendo created their own arch-nemesis, which amuses me quite a lot. Like GM saying to Firestone "we were gonna buy your tyres, but screw you", and Firestone turning around and decimating GM's market share.
As for PSX, it was never a Sony development name. It was invented by scummy people everywhere who have to have a TLA (ok, maybe just an A) for everything, and X is kinda like "tion". Honest.
This guy Saram was in The Times (the proper one, in London) on Sunday as a bankrupt man who had fled the country. from his own Rhodium website:
He decided to restructure Rhodium in September 2000 after discovery of evidence implicating the British Government in a conspiracy to destroy Rhodium and his character because his encryption technology and commercial operations were 'not in the economic well-being' of the United Kingdom.
Does this sound like a respectsable business, with pre-orders of a quarter of a million units for an unfinalised, unspecced "AI" machine? Yeah right.
I find it ironic that he made the sunday time's "Young Rich List" one week and just seven days later he's decamped to Sri Lanka (home of Arthur C Clarke, bizarrely) saying that MI5 wants his business destroyed for making an unbreakable encryption?
So, to sum up this guys life, he's put NSA, MI5/6, Echelon and CIA out of business, invented a "near-AI" desktop, touchscreen PC with ACClarke's backing, made millions off his own intiative and been declared PNG by the UK? *cough* yeah right.
Er... Given that an old betacam camera was anything up to 60,000GBP including a broadcast lens, and the current DigiBetaCam ones can cost up to half that, I'd say that the current range of Sony DV Camcorders (like the 300DSR(?)) offers excellent value for indie film makers, at about 10-15,000GBP and with better quality.
The real issue here is that film just doesn't look like video, which is what this is at the end of the day. Film has a whole range of characterisitcs that modern CCD cameras just can't reproduce, whatever the storage media (analogue or digital, the front end's the same)
I for one will be very interested to see the (necessary) projection reels that they transcribe this film to, as surely they won't only show it in digital theatres.
I know it's a bit anal, but can you please get rid of that URL in your sig?
I take it you're a yankee. so why you feel you can link to a poorly-written, badly researched hysterical page about crime here in the UK is beyond me. Personally, I don't see how someone breaking into my house over here armed with, at worst, a screwdriver compares in any way to any guy off the street walking into your house in the US armed with a legally bought and carried handgun.
Link to the gun "control" site parent by all means, but don't use information of this poor quality to try and strengthen your case. If you are British, and this is some kind of subtle joke, well you're too subtle for me.
Ben^3 (ferociously patriotic, and a hater of non-referenced CRAP data)
Although this may be the first film to be shot using digital cameras (and I'm sure it isn't, just the biggest yet) it is by no means the first film to be distributed digitally.
I watched Toy Story 2 in a digital cinema at the Trafford Centre near Manchester, UK, over a year ago. I'm reasonably sure that Toy Story never existed in a "real" state, making it the first all-digital film since Tron (joke).
And if, you look at the old PS as an example (and I can't see why this should be different) the PSU is hosted on a seperate (quite cheaply made) board, so the main part of the procssing and stuff is interchangeable. Also, my "NTSC" DC seems to have no problem outputting PAL with a few changes of boot mode *cough*
Ground is a reference point, and this is what makes a positive ground quite easy to understand. In car electronics, for example, you use a negative ground. Everything is measured relative to the ground (electrical earth, as it were), and pins are shorted to ground in processors.
All a positive ground means is that relative to the Solar Panels, the body of the space station is at zero potential. Imagine hooking up your positive battery terminal in your car to the car body. Now, when you touch any "live" wire in the car to the body, nothing happens. No spark, no current flow. If the battery is the other way round, current flows.
Basically, all this means is that the Xenonauts (does that work?) can't get a shock by grounding the solar panels to the station body.
Wow... I have had a serious Nokia fetish since my first phone (3110, three years ago). Since then I've had the 6110 (as it was small) and currently the 7110 (as it has WAP). I've tried other phones, notably the startac, and the software just isn't as good, as intuitive.
This EPOC OS is the first fruit of the Symbian Relationship, stewarded by Nokia and Psion as an alternative "Consumer Electronics" (I know, it doesn't stand for that) platform for those in the world who don't kowtow to M$ dominance. And good luck to them.
As this phone has "Third party software development capability" and supports "pure" W3 html and java, I guess we should all get excited by it. It is pretty/.able.
Anyway, I'm off to see what they cost over here (less than a PS2, I'll bet) and I'll leave all you nice colonials with your chunky, insecure analogue models. Sometimes we do come first!
This must be about the fifth year ina row I've heard great things about buckyballs, and Carbon 60. But where is it going? I mean, after all this time and we still don't have a decent end product.
I appreciate that development takes time, but when can we, the general public, expect nanotubular bike tyres or Lego blocks {grin}?
And what exactly does this new technology offer us? Maybe I'm being paranoid, but if this tech had many serious uses it would've been classified up the wazoo by now. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Before everyone gets on their high horse (oops... too late), is this really a sound business move? It took them long enough tom overcome all the shoddy off-brand products that came with their name on in the first place, and now they want to start over again?
Maybe I'm missing the point, but although they seem to be producing a load of crap recently, at least it was crap with 3DFX!!! written across it. Oh well, wait and see I s'pose. But, it seems to be pretty unprecedented.
It's always the same with Branson propaganda... "He's such a nice guy", "Did you hear about the time he...". I was at a restaraunt launch once where he had part ownership, and if you were to meet him in person, or read some of the unauthorised bios out there you'd have a different opinion of him. At the restaraunt, he arrived with what can only be described as a posse of friends, yes-men and assorted beauties. They sat down, and ate. Half way through the meal, literally, he stood up and announced to the entire restaraunt (like we cared) that he was leaving. He wasn't the main guest or anything. All of his friends also stood up, many of them halfway through their main courses, and left with him en masse. It was spooky.
More recntly, with the lottery application, he was caught telling a whole lot of porkies to the press, the lottery commission, etc. Don't believe the hype. This man is a phenomenon, but he has more half-truths and propaganda written about him than anyone else in the country.
I need something explained here:
NTSC is a crappy standard, compared to our old PAL system (less resolution, etc).
We (in the UK) are pretty much all digital TV now. I have a box (which was free from the broadcaster OnDigital, and outputs high resolution TV. When you talk about HDTV, is digital TV what you mean? This UK Digital system still outputs to a 625line res, whether you use an integrated box or a Set-top.
We have a thing called a tivo which is basically a big HDD that records TV, allows you to pause live TV etc.. This sounds a lot like the capabilities of the card mentioned. As for copyright issues, our boxes have MacroVision copy protection built in, due to the quality of the films being broadcast (especially on payperview). Granted, MacroVision isn't the most secure encryption ever, but I think you'll finf this card has a similar system.
Ben^3
And obviously they aren't just defining the box to be whatever suits their aims. Worried about people exporting and reselling PS2s ahead of other-territory launches? Get the MITI to designate it an offence to export more than two. Want to raise the (already ludicrous) profit margin in the UK? get 2.2% of the raw cost knocked off. It's just typical Japanese business policy. As Michael Crichton put it, "All's fair in love and war. And to the Japanese, business is war"
Finally!
I spent hours trying to explain to all and sundry that I dropped out of CS because it's more of an art than a science. Unless you have experience of it (and experience of swearing at it, and seeing people less intelligent than yourself excelling in it), you'll never see it that way.
BTW, I'm now on a management degree. Which I guess makes me the enemy.
Ben^3
Slashdot Mirror
The data pits are actually inside the CD, a few layers down from the surface. The reason you screw up a cd if you scratch off the label is because the back of label is the silvering the laser reflects off.
If you want cool things to do with a cd, try spraying it with freezer spray (God's gift to service engineers) until it's semi-flexible (I never understood that: heat them, they bend. Freeze them, they bend) and stick it in that other god-sent toy, a microwave.
Ben^3I can't find anything about it on the web now, but a few years back AOL offered 750 hours free over here in the UK. Even the longest month has only 744 hours, or 745 if the clock goes back, leaving you with 6 totally unusable hours
Also, AOL has never been known as America OnLine here, for the obvious reasons. Bet they had some head-numbing meetings trying to work out whether they should keep AOL as a name outside the US
Ben^3Here I go with a bit of karma-whoring (joke)
Go here to read about a loose coalition of london people trying to set up a similar scheme.
And go here to read all the comments from when this subject was last posted on /. just over a week ago.
Ben^3 (wondering whether CmdrTaco et al have goldfish DNA)One of the main reasons that EFNET is unused is because it has no chanserv/nickserv features and is therefore unusable, as it is far too easy to hack around with
Contrast this to DALnet, which has teams of volunteers patrolling it and features allowing reliable and secure operation of room and servers. Just because EFNET was there first doesn't mean it should be revered. DALnet is still very much run by the geeks (hence dal.net not dalnet.com, iyswim.
Like it or not, the web is a much bigger place than it used to be. This kind of harking back to "the good old days" won't help preserve the distributed, open and hackable (in the good sense) nature of this beast we created. If a service, site or protocol is unreliable and not very viable for its intended purpose, it will die, nostalgia or not. We can only hope this is totally true and MS doesn't prove the exception with SQL et al.
Ben^3What a load of BS
Macrovision works (IIRC) by sending a signal saying that the video level is higher than it is no matter what it's plugged into. If the signal goes to a TV (or through a video for that matter), then there is no loss. But if you try and lay the video signal down on to tape the Signal Processor in the VCR determines that the incoming video signal is at a higher strength than it really is and lays down a very weak picture on the tape.
Macrovision can be eliminated by using a Sync Pulse Generator (or Time Base corrector, can't recall which) but as these are components of a professional video suite they aren't cheap. You can buy boxes that purport to get rid of macrovision, but I have never seen one working.
It may be the case that new VCRs have some sort of chip in, but the old ones won't work either.
Ben^3If NSA et al have all these super-duper computers at Fort Meade, Digby etc., and all the people (well OK, at least a shitload of them) are CS and maths people, you'd have thought one of them would have come across this (hell, I bet some of them read /.) and run it through a few spare cycles on their Thinking Machine / Quantum Computers?
Mind you, I'm betting that posting the answer would have got them fired. But anyway, my point is I bet this was solved years ago, just outside the public domain.
Unless of course Osama Bin Laden's chinese satellite encryption and Saddam's russian one-time cipher pads are nothing next to EAPoe's whimsy.
Ben^3 (popping up on echelon as we speak)Hey, what's an Intel launch without a recall or two?
"Excessive heat and lack of performance"? I bet they just bought a load of old cyrices from the govt. and welded them together. Man, nothing would heat a poor student up better than a nice cyrix
Ben^3, founder of the "give intel a chance" charity. (1990-1998)Dammit, it's only been up a few minutes
What am I supposed to do at 3am, wired on Red Bull if I can't read the techy stats for the PS2?
Don't taunt me, Taco
Ben^3 (4 cans down, 3 to go)Nintendo asked Sony to develop the playstation, as an add-on for the SNES. But, when Sony turned up at a games expo, they found Nintendo in bed with Philips for the same project, and got the huff. Thus, Nintendo created their own arch-nemesis, which amuses me quite a lot. Like GM saying to Firestone "we were gonna buy your tyres, but screw you", and Firestone turning around and decimating GM's market share.
As for PSX, it was never a Sony development name. It was invented by scummy people everywhere who have to have a TLA (ok, maybe just an A) for everything, and X is kinda like "tion". Honest.
Ben^3Vapourware, bullshit and posturing.
This guy Saram was in The Times (the proper one, in London) on Sunday as a bankrupt man who had fled the country. from his own Rhodium website:
Does this sound like a respectsable business, with pre-orders of a quarter of a million units for an unfinalised, unspecced "AI" machine? Yeah right.
I find it ironic that he made the sunday time's "Young Rich List" one week and just seven days later he's decamped to Sri Lanka (home of Arthur C Clarke, bizarrely) saying that MI5 wants his business destroyed for making an unbreakable encryption?
So, to sum up this guys life, he's put NSA, MI5/6, Echelon and CIA out of business, invented a "near-AI" desktop, touchscreen PC with ACClarke's backing, made millions off his own intiative and been declared PNG by the UK? *cough* yeah right.
Ben^3 (jealous/intrigued>Er... Given that an old betacam camera was anything up to 60,000GBP including a broadcast lens, and the current DigiBetaCam ones can cost up to half that, I'd say that the current range of Sony DV Camcorders (like the 300DSR(?)) offers excellent value for indie film makers, at about 10-15,000GBP and with better quality.
The real issue here is that film just doesn't look like video, which is what this is at the end of the day. Film has a whole range of characterisitcs that modern CCD cameras just can't reproduce, whatever the storage media (analogue or digital, the front end's the same)
I for one will be very interested to see the (necessary) projection reels that they transcribe this film to, as surely they won't only show it in digital theatres.
Ben^3I know it's a bit anal, but can you please get rid of that URL in your sig?
I take it you're a yankee. so why you feel you can link to a poorly-written, badly researched hysterical page about crime here in the UK is beyond me. Personally, I don't see how someone breaking into my house over here armed with, at worst, a screwdriver compares in any way to any guy off the street walking into your house in the US armed with a legally bought and carried handgun.
Link to the gun "control" site parent by all means, but don't use information of this poor quality to try and strengthen your case. If you are British, and this is some kind of subtle joke, well you're too subtle for me.
Ben^3 (ferociously patriotic, and a hater of non-referenced CRAP data)
Although this may be the first film to be shot using digital cameras (and I'm sure it isn't, just the biggest yet) it is by no means the first film to be distributed digitally.
I watched Toy Story 2 in a digital cinema at the Trafford Centre near Manchester, UK, over a year ago. I'm reasonably sure that Toy Story never existed in a "real" state, making it the first all-digital film since Tron (joke).
Ben^3The UK is 230V 50Hz
And if, you look at the old PS as an example (and I can't see why this should be different) the PSU is hosted on a seperate (quite cheaply made) board, so the main part of the procssing and stuff is interchangeable. Also, my "NTSC" DC seems to have no problem outputting PAL with a few changes of boot mode *cough*
Ben^3 (waiting until it's £150)And these screenshots are over two months old. As is the release date, which by now is very likely March.
Ben^3Ground is a reference point, and this is what makes a positive ground quite easy to understand. In car electronics, for example, you use a negative ground. Everything is measured relative to the ground (electrical earth, as it were), and pins are shorted to ground in processors.
All a positive ground means is that relative to the Solar Panels, the body of the space station is at zero potential. Imagine hooking up your positive battery terminal in your car to the car body. Now, when you touch any "live" wire in the car to the body, nothing happens. No spark, no current flow. If the battery is the other way round, current flows.
Basically, all this means is that the Xenonauts (does that work?) can't get a shock by grounding the solar panels to the station body.
Ben^3. former Blaupunkt engineer.Wow... I have had a serious Nokia fetish since my first phone (3110, three years ago). Since then I've had the 6110 (as it was small) and currently the 7110 (as it has WAP). I've tried other phones, notably the startac, and the software just isn't as good, as intuitive.
This EPOC OS is the first fruit of the Symbian Relationship, stewarded by Nokia and Psion as an alternative "Consumer Electronics" (I know, it doesn't stand for that) platform for those in the world who don't kowtow to M$ dominance. And good luck to them.
As this phone has "Third party software development capability" and supports "pure" W3 html and java, I guess we should all get excited by it. It is pretty /.able.
Anyway, I'm off to see what they cost over here (less than a PS2, I'll bet) and I'll leave all you nice colonials with your chunky, insecure analogue models. Sometimes we do come first!
Ben^3, confirmed Nokia fetishestThis must be about the fifth year ina row I've heard great things about buckyballs, and Carbon 60. But where is it going? I mean, after all this time and we still don't have a decent end product.
I appreciate that development takes time, but when can we, the general public, expect nanotubular bike tyres or Lego blocks {grin}?
And what exactly does this new technology offer us? Maybe I'm being paranoid, but if this tech had many serious uses it would've been classified up the wazoo by now. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Ben^3Before everyone gets on their high horse (oops... too late), is this really a sound business move? It took them long enough tom overcome all the shoddy off-brand products that came with their name on in the first place, and now they want to start over again?
Maybe I'm missing the point, but although they seem to be producing a load of crap recently, at least it was crap with 3DFX!!! written across it. Oh well, wait and see I s'pose. But, it seems to be pretty unprecedented.
Ben^3 Proud owner of a V3500Perhaps you meant
"Ad Astra per ardua"which means "through perseverence, to the stars" and is the motto of the Royal Air Force.
Ben^3
Excellent mis-use of the english language there. And so apt. Oh, how I chortled. Can you get anti-climatic control for your car?
Ben^3
It's always the same with Branson propaganda... "He's such a nice guy", "Did you hear about the time he...". I was at a restaraunt launch once where he had part ownership, and if you were to meet him in person, or read some of the unauthorised bios out there you'd have a different opinion of him. At the restaraunt, he arrived with what can only be described as a posse of friends, yes-men and assorted beauties. They sat down, and ate. Half way through the meal, literally, he stood up and announced to the entire restaraunt (like we cared) that he was leaving. He wasn't the main guest or anything. All of his friends also stood up, many of them halfway through their main courses, and left with him en masse. It was spooky.
More recntly, with the lottery application, he was caught telling a whole lot of porkies to the press, the lottery commission, etc. Don't believe the hype. This man is a phenomenon, but he has more half-truths and propaganda written about him than anyone else in the country.
Ben^3 (aka an unhappy Virgin Trains commuter)I need something explained here: NTSC is a crappy standard, compared to our old PAL system (less resolution, etc). We (in the UK) are pretty much all digital TV now. I have a box (which was free from the broadcaster OnDigital, and outputs high resolution TV. When you talk about HDTV, is digital TV what you mean? This UK Digital system still outputs to a 625line res, whether you use an integrated box or a Set-top. We have a thing called a tivo which is basically a big HDD that records TV, allows you to pause live TV etc.. This sounds a lot like the capabilities of the card mentioned. As for copyright issues, our boxes have MacroVision copy protection built in, due to the quality of the films being broadcast (especially on payperview). Granted, MacroVision isn't the most secure encryption ever, but I think you'll finf this card has a similar system. Ben^3
And obviously they aren't just defining the box to be whatever suits their aims. Worried about people exporting and reselling PS2s ahead of other-territory launches? Get the MITI to designate it an offence to export more than two. Want to raise the (already ludicrous) profit margin in the UK? get 2.2% of the raw cost knocked off. It's just typical Japanese business policy. As Michael Crichton put it, "All's fair in love and war. And to the Japanese, business is war"
Finally!
I spent hours trying to explain to all and sundry that I dropped out of CS because it's more of an art than a science. Unless you have experience of it (and experience of swearing at it, and seeing people less intelligent than yourself excelling in it), you'll never see it that way.
BTW, I'm now on a management degree. Which I guess makes me the enemy.
Ben^3