Also, you didn't mention this, but it's pretty dodgy:
You may permit a
maximum of five (5) ("Connection Maximum") computers
or other electronic devices (each a "Device") to connect
to the COMPUTER to utilize the services of the SOFTWARE
solely for File and Print services, Internet Information
services, and remote access (including connection sharing
and telephony services). The five (5) Connection Maximum
includes any indirect connections made through
"multiplexing" or other software or hardware which pools
or aggregates connections. Except as otherwise permitted
below, you may not use the Device to use, access, display
or run the SOFTWARE, the SOFTWARE's
User Interface or other executable software residing
on the COMPUTER.
Translation: you can't run any sort of service not listed (including hosting games, IRC servers, Gnutella/Kazaa servers or the like), you can't have more than five computers using serivces on your computer at once (could easily be exceeded e.g. in a college situation, if your web site gets slashdotted, or when you provide multiple services), and you can't run remote administration software to use the computer remotely. This clause prohibits a lot of useful functionality in Windows.
There's nothing wrong with the interactive line number thing, that's what BASIC was before about 1985. It's a pain to write long programs like that, but I'm sure they can get the idea. It's what I started on (good ol' GWBASIC, BASICA and ROM BASIC).
Introducing people to an IDE before they really want/need it may not be as helpful.
I'm suprised noone has commented on NVidia's change to flip-chip technology yet. It's the first time that I've seen it used in consumer computer technology. Instead of having small legs like surface mount chips, the chip has blobs of solder underneath it, and the solder bonds to the PCB when the chip is pressed against the board during manufacturing. It's important because it lowers the capacitance of the external pins, which means that the chip can interface to the outside world at higher clock rates. It's an important shift in packaging technology.
One of the first things that you learn from reading "top" displays and the like is that the figure for X includes the video card's memory (which is often mapped into multiple places in X's address space, so it counts multiple times). Also, X uses some of its address space as shared memory for communicating with it's child processes. And shared libraries count against each program that uses them, even though the code is shared between them.
Getting an estimate of how much memory is free on operating systems like Linux can be difficult at times. IIRC, up until 2.5.something, Linux didn't know for sure exactly how much RAM it had remaining. So actually working out how much RAM Linux was "idling" at is a bit tough, unless you know a lot about the shared libraries that your apps are using and the way that your X display driver works.
I should explain that I had a 2 year term of leukemia caused by cellphone radiation, fortunately it has cleared up over this year.
Wow, that's really interesting. I've never heard of a confirmed case. Do you know for sure that it was the main cause, or were there other factors that might have contributed? Did you use a cellphone a lot before that? Do you know if you're genetically susceptible to leukemia?
LaTeX's TOC uses the sections/subsections that you divide up your document into. You get a heading (and section number if you like) at the beginning of a section, and if you put in a table of contents, it displays page numbers for the section (and subsections etc. if you like).
It has ways of numbering equations, figures and tables. There are also generic numbering systems that you can use for theorems/laws/whatever. There is a generic "label" and "ref" pair of commands which allow you to refer to a section number, equation number, figure number, list item number... whatever. There's also commands for automatically inserting a List of Figures, List of Tables, Bibliographies, etc.
LaTeX's inserted figures are always EPS figures. It doesn't actually do much in that regard except work out how big the figure should be. There are ways of getting raster formats like TIFF and JPG into EPS using graphics conversion tools (EPS files can have embedded raster images in them), and you can print to a file in Windows and Unix (in Windows, it has to be a postscript printer with an EPS option set). In general, LaTeX doesn't process the EPS file, it just works out how big it is and allocates space on the page for it. When you view the output, or create a PS or PDF file, the EPS gets included. It can be as easy as telling it where the EPS file is, but sometimes GhostScript (the PS viewer that I use) gets confused with certain EPS files, large ones in particular. Also, some apps produce EPS files that work well, some don't. In my experience, Matlab works well, things that come out of a "print to EPS" printer driver are ok, the GIMP produces good EPS files (although sometimes rather large), and other stuff is dodgy. There are also apps that do automated conversion from various types of graphics files to EPS files, but I haven't really tried them. Once you find something that reliably produces EPS files though, you're set. If you've got a good vector graphics program, then it'll almost certainly convert any vector or bitmap format to EPS for you nicely.
There are packages that let you use drawing commands directly in LaTeX, but I wouldn't recommend doing that... you can't see how your picture looks until you're finished:(. Also, LaTeX's normal figure tools don't give you a real lot of freedom in figure placement---it's not desktop publishing software. In general, text doesn't flow around figures, and you can't put two figures on the same horizontal level without getting extra packages... But I find that I don't need to have a real lot of control over images. It's figure placement is pretty intelligent, even though it's a bit inflexible at times.
That said, the main strength of LaTeX is its equation support IMHO. The cross reference stuff is pretty nice too, but if you use styles for headings in Word, you can get a lot of those benefits like easy TOC generation. LaTeX also has nicer page layout algorithms than Word, the end result is better typographically, and there are less problems with figures moving around and making the text look awful. You do get a more professional-looking end result with LaTeX, but at the cost of some flexibility.
Re CAD, schematic capture, autorouting PC boards: have a look at Mentor Graphics' web site (http://www.mentor.com/). Anything in the EDA area is covered, including PCB design, Verilog/VHDL synthesis, simulation, FPGA programming and IC layout. Large amounts of their software supports Linux, or is very close to supporting it. Most of their software was on big-iron Unix before it was on Windows.
Protel doesn't support Linux, but a few people have claimed to get it running under WINE.
You may have bad memories of Pascal, but VB has far more language inconsistencies and annoyances for me than Pascal does.
Pascal has some problems, e.g. typecasting can be a pain at times, but Pascal in Kylix doesn't look at all like the old-school Pascal that had trouble doing console I/O. In Kylix, you never have to touch Reset or Readln if you don't want to, but you do need to be familiar with object-orientated programming concepts.
You can try Kylix for free from Borland's web site (download "Kylix open"). You'll probably find that VB's components have a poor API, and the language is a bad joke in comparison to Kylix. VB is suitable for quick and dirty GUIs, but I find I always end up fighting it if I'm doing anything substantial.
Microwave radiation is very different from nuclear radiation (alpha or beta particles, or gamma rays). Microwave radiation carries less energy than visible light, or infrared, and nowhere near the amount of energy of gamma rays. The only reason that microwave ovens cook food is because they use very powerful microwaves (over 1000x more powerful) than your phone, and they are at the resonant frequency of O-H bonds in water molecules (2.45 GHz). They don't make your food radioactive or anything. The frequency of a phone's transmissions is quite a bit less than the frequency of microwaves, so it doesn't resonate with the O-H bonds in water, and doesn't heat stuff up. You're probably more likely to get skin cancer from the fluorescent lights in your office than getting cancer from a mobile phone. And computers emit even less radiation, although it will increase as CPU and motherboard speeds increase. Not only that, but there's often metal parts shielding you from the CPU.
It's possible that having a small nuclear source like this may have radiation shielding problems. But sailors can live for quite a long time on nuclear-powered submarines without any ill effects that I'm aware of, so it may be possible.
Certainly, even a huge reduction in processor power usage probably won't do anywhere near that much for overall power usage. However, they're anticipating a massive blowout in power usage by the phone's microprocessor in the next few years. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a move towards adding all sorts of significant enhancements: video conferencing, larger colour screens, interactive content, etc. They think that this could increase processor power usage by up to 10 times without some sophisticated power management. I don't know accurate this is, but since this stuff is probably aimed at ARM's customers, i.e. mobile phone designers, I'd guess that they'd better provide some significant saving in overall power usage before anyone would use it.
I'm not sure on what the transmitter's power requirements are like with 3G phones, or (hypothetically) ultra wideband phones... Does anyone know how they compare to GSM phones? I know that the max allowed transmitter power of a GSM phone varies a lot between countries.
They're basically targetting mobile phones and similar embedded systems like PDAs, because this is where ARM's main market share is at the moment. They say that they're looking at a more system-wide approach than is currently used, and they want to standardize the embedded software/hardware interface as part of this.
Also, note that "samples available Q2 2003" doesn't necessarily mean actual silicon. ARM doesn't make chips, they license their designs out to other companies which use them as a basis for an actual chip, so a "sample" quite likely means a software simulation. Actual devices which use this technology probably won't be around until 2004 at least.
Something that could be really popular in certain markets is to control the voice volume for Karaoke purposes...
Anyway, you're 100% spot on. I think many people buy into new formats because of features like that, even if they'd never use them. <<Insert ficticious anecdote here>>
But your computer makes a local copy of the agreement so that you can read it. Making that copy may not be legal unless you're licensed to do it, i.e. you've agreed;). (This is more or less the justification that software companies use for putting EULAs on their software. You're not allowed to run the software unless you accept the EULA because your computer makes a copy to put in RAM.)
What you've said about companies being accountable to their shareholders and the public in general is very true for publically traded companies, but most smaller companies (and some larger ones too) are privately owned. In other words, there's no need to publically disclose any information about their financial situation, as there's no way that Joe Random Citizen could buy shares if he wanted to. The company doesn't necessarily have a right to privacy, but they are not obliged to disclose information in the same way as publically traded companies.
Of course, if the accused isn't even told exactly what they're accused of, then that's reason enough to reject the idea.
And guess what? Saddam simply has to let weapon inspectors into Iraq and prove that he has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, and it all stops! Now, if you were a leader of a country such as Iraq and you genuinely wanted the best for your citizens, which would you prefer? Letting in some weapons inspectors and following UN guidelines or seeing thousands of your citizens die?
Not only that, but sanctions against Iraq do not stop food and medical supplies. If people in Iraq aren't getting adequete food, then that is the fault of the Iraqi government, not of the US and the UN. In fact, there are UN programs in place deliberately aimed at getting food into the country (e.g. the oil for food program). The US and the UN are attempting to punish the Iraqi government without harming it's civilians. What alternative do you suggest? That everyone capitulates to mighty Saddam's will and apologizes immediately? Maybe you should stop trying to put blame on the US for something which is clearly Saddam's fault.
But they don't place any limit on how many pieces must be placed to optimally satisfy their criteria --- there may be an arbitrarily large number of pieces that must be places. So the problem is unbounded: the number of pieces given to you is unbounded. Further, they say that even if you know all the pieces that you'll get, you still can't solve the problem in less than polynomial time (with respect to the number of pieces). They also show that their proof holds even when the gameboard is extended to be arbitrarily tall, so the player can never "lose". So, yes, the problem that they propose is unbounded.
However, note that they propose a specific board from which they want to optimize the placement of pieces in the "best" way (they look at 4 different ways of defining "best"). They don't start from an empty game board.
Most people on slashdot aren't average Windows/Linux users. I would guess that most have installed an OS before. Most use their computers to automate their everyday tasks much more than the average user, but for a lot of people, including myself, this doesn't mean comprimising ease of use.
It's good to be able to edit a config file, but there's no real reason why software should force you to -- it's just that people writing the software often don't want to write an easy to use and powerful config editor as well. It's also good to be able to specify installation options in gruesome detail if you need to, but there's no reason not to have sane defaults, or suggestions that will work for most users.
Similarly, it's not necessary to have a nice graphical installer, but having an installer that requires the user to type in non-intuitive commands to get pretty standard hardware working (e.g. 2.4 kernel for decent USB support) is not necessary either. Getting things to install from floppies is also not really necessary --- most users can get a CD burnt these days.
As you say, once it's done it's done, but if a user can't get a system with all their hardware working without a lot of hassle, then they'll give up on it outright and use another distro or OS. There's no need for Debian to lose users and potential contributors over something like an installer when the rest of the system works well.
Int 33h is the DOS mouse driver interface. BIOS interrupts are int numbers < 20h. The standard PC BIOS doesn't have a mouse driver interface to my knowledge.
OK, so instead of a hashkey, you use a public/private key signing algorithm, with the private key held secret by the middleman. The code must be hashed, and then both the code and hash signed by the private key before the hardware will accept the code as trusted. Also, the hardware would prevent any unauthorized program from snooping the memory/video output/audio output of an authorized program, so actually getting to the data in an unencrypted form is hard. The software and hardware would also authenticate to each other using public key crypto, like with SSL.
Unless you plan on finding a weakness RSA or whatever, or finding a weakness somewhere in the implementation of the chain of trust, there's no practical way around this sort of thing if it's implemented very well. Of course, this is unlikely (see X-Box).
It probably would pose quite a challenge to a hacker, but there are lots of weak spots. However, for anyone to work out a software hack, they probably would have to hack their own hardware as well because otherwise the hardware wouldn't let them look at the software when it's running... Anyway, maybe we should all stock up on CROs, logic analyzers, FIB editing machines and FPGAs;).
Thank you for stating that point so succinctly. That's exactly what I think about technology and DRM. There's so much that you can do with technology, and there is so much that we could do with technology, and IMHO technology is there to enable people to do more. It's really a shame that some people want technology to be able to do less. I suppose this is kind of depends on your point of view: if you're Hillary Rosen, then restricting people's copying of songs increases the RIAA's control, and hence increases what technology can do from the RIAA perspective. But for the majority of people, it reduces what they can do with a computer that they own.
Usually the group velocity is the speed of information transfer, but it's possible for it to be different, as it is in this case. Here, the phase velocity would be less than c (the propagation is in coax cables), the group velocity is greater than c, and the information transfer is <= c. (I don't know whether the information transfer is faster than the phase velocity or not, but I think it is. The article's a bit light on technical details.)
I think you might mean pHotons in a few places, not pRotons;). Also, I think you can "own" part of the RF spectrum, or at least be licensed to use it. Try transmitting at 1800 MHz at a fairly high power and see how long it takes before someone comes knocking at your door...
However, you don't need to be licensed to transmit around the 2.4 GHz band at low-ish power levels, which is what 802.11b uses. So there's nothing illegal about it for either party, except that as a provider, you might be violating the terms of service of your ISP contract.
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You may permit a maximum of five (5) ("Connection Maximum") computers or other electronic devices (each a "Device") to connect to the COMPUTER to utilize the services of the SOFTWARE solely for File and Print services, Internet Information services, and remote access (including connection sharing and telephony services). The five (5) Connection Maximum includes any indirect connections made through "multiplexing" or other software or hardware which pools or aggregates connections. Except as otherwise permitted below, you may not use the Device to use, access, display or run the SOFTWARE, the SOFTWARE's User Interface or other executable software residing on the COMPUTER.
Translation: you can't run any sort of service not listed (including hosting games, IRC servers, Gnutella/Kazaa servers or the like), you can't have more than five computers using serivces on your computer at once (could easily be exceeded e.g. in a college situation, if your web site gets slashdotted, or when you provide multiple services), and you can't run remote administration software to use the computer remotely. This clause prohibits a lot of useful functionality in Windows.
There's nothing wrong with the interactive line number thing, that's what BASIC was before about 1985. It's a pain to write long programs like that, but I'm sure they can get the idea. It's what I started on (good ol' GWBASIC, BASICA and ROM BASIC). Introducing people to an IDE before they really want/need it may not be as helpful.
I'm suprised noone has commented on NVidia's change to flip-chip technology yet. It's the first time that I've seen it used in consumer computer technology. Instead of having small legs like surface mount chips, the chip has blobs of solder underneath it, and the solder bonds to the PCB when the chip is pressed against the board during manufacturing. It's important because it lowers the capacitance of the external pins, which means that the chip can interface to the outside world at higher clock rates. It's an important shift in packaging technology.
Getting an estimate of how much memory is free on operating systems like Linux can be difficult at times. IIRC, up until 2.5.something, Linux didn't know for sure exactly how much RAM it had remaining. So actually working out how much RAM Linux was "idling" at is a bit tough, unless you know a lot about the shared libraries that your apps are using and the way that your X display driver works.
Wow, that's really interesting. I've never heard of a confirmed case. Do you know for sure that it was the main cause, or were there other factors that might have contributed? Did you use a cellphone a lot before that? Do you know if you're genetically susceptible to leukemia?
It has ways of numbering equations, figures and tables. There are also generic numbering systems that you can use for theorems/laws/whatever. There is a generic "label" and "ref" pair of commands which allow you to refer to a section number, equation number, figure number, list item number... whatever. There's also commands for automatically inserting a List of Figures, List of Tables, Bibliographies, etc.
LaTeX's inserted figures are always EPS figures. It doesn't actually do much in that regard except work out how big the figure should be. There are ways of getting raster formats like TIFF and JPG into EPS using graphics conversion tools (EPS files can have embedded raster images in them), and you can print to a file in Windows and Unix (in Windows, it has to be a postscript printer with an EPS option set). In general, LaTeX doesn't process the EPS file, it just works out how big it is and allocates space on the page for it. When you view the output, or create a PS or PDF file, the EPS gets included. It can be as easy as telling it where the EPS file is, but sometimes GhostScript (the PS viewer that I use) gets confused with certain EPS files, large ones in particular. Also, some apps produce EPS files that work well, some don't. In my experience, Matlab works well, things that come out of a "print to EPS" printer driver are ok, the GIMP produces good EPS files (although sometimes rather large), and other stuff is dodgy. There are also apps that do automated conversion from various types of graphics files to EPS files, but I haven't really tried them. Once you find something that reliably produces EPS files though, you're set. If you've got a good vector graphics program, then it'll almost certainly convert any vector or bitmap format to EPS for you nicely.
There are packages that let you use drawing commands directly in LaTeX, but I wouldn't recommend doing that... you can't see how your picture looks until you're finished :(. Also, LaTeX's normal figure tools don't give you a real lot of freedom in figure placement---it's not desktop publishing software. In general, text doesn't flow around figures, and you can't put two figures on the same horizontal level without getting extra packages... But I find that I don't need to have a real lot of control over images. It's figure placement is pretty intelligent, even though it's a bit inflexible at times.
That said, the main strength of LaTeX is its equation support IMHO. The cross reference stuff is pretty nice too, but if you use styles for headings in Word, you can get a lot of those benefits like easy TOC generation. LaTeX also has nicer page layout algorithms than Word, the end result is better typographically, and there are less problems with figures moving around and making the text look awful. You do get a more professional-looking end result with LaTeX, but at the cost of some flexibility.
Protel doesn't support Linux, but a few people have claimed to get it running under WINE.
Pascal has some problems, e.g. typecasting can be a pain at times, but Pascal in Kylix doesn't look at all like the old-school Pascal that had trouble doing console I/O. In Kylix, you never have to touch Reset or Readln if you don't want to, but you do need to be familiar with object-orientated programming concepts.
You can try Kylix for free from Borland's web site (download "Kylix open"). You'll probably find that VB's components have a poor API, and the language is a bad joke in comparison to Kylix. VB is suitable for quick and dirty GUIs, but I find I always end up fighting it if I'm doing anything substantial.
It's possible that having a small nuclear source like this may have radiation shielding problems. But sailors can live for quite a long time on nuclear-powered submarines without any ill effects that I'm aware of, so it may be possible.
I'm not sure on what the transmitter's power requirements are like with 3G phones, or (hypothetically) ultra wideband phones... Does anyone know how they compare to GSM phones? I know that the max allowed transmitter power of a GSM phone varies a lot between countries.
http://www.arm.com/news/powerwise1111
They're basically targetting mobile phones and similar embedded systems like PDAs, because this is where ARM's main market share is at the moment. They say that they're looking at a more system-wide approach than is currently used, and they want to standardize the embedded software/hardware interface as part of this.
Also, note that "samples available Q2 2003" doesn't necessarily mean actual silicon. ARM doesn't make chips, they license their designs out to other companies which use them as a basis for an actual chip, so a "sample" quite likely means a software simulation. Actual devices which use this technology probably won't be around until 2004 at least.
Anyway, you're 100% spot on. I think many people buy into new formats because of features like that, even if they'd never use them. <<Insert ficticious anecdote here>>
But your computer makes a local copy of the agreement so that you can read it. Making that copy may not be legal unless you're licensed to do it, i.e. you've agreed ;). (This is more or less the justification that software companies use for putting EULAs on their software. You're not allowed to run the software unless you accept the EULA because your computer makes a copy to put in RAM.)
Of course, if the accused isn't even told exactly what they're accused of, then that's reason enough to reject the idea.
Not only that, but sanctions against Iraq do not stop food and medical supplies. If people in Iraq aren't getting adequete food, then that is the fault of the Iraqi government, not of the US and the UN. In fact, there are UN programs in place deliberately aimed at getting food into the country (e.g. the oil for food program). The US and the UN are attempting to punish the Iraqi government without harming it's civilians. What alternative do you suggest? That everyone capitulates to mighty Saddam's will and apologizes immediately? Maybe you should stop trying to put blame on the US for something which is clearly Saddam's fault.
However, note that they propose a specific board from which they want to optimize the placement of pieces in the "best" way (they look at 4 different ways of defining "best"). They don't start from an empty game board.
But you can always type "ipconfig /flushdns" at a command prompt (under 2K or XP at least) to flush the cache.
It's good to be able to edit a config file, but there's no real reason why software should force you to -- it's just that people writing the software often don't want to write an easy to use and powerful config editor as well. It's also good to be able to specify installation options in gruesome detail if you need to, but there's no reason not to have sane defaults, or suggestions that will work for most users.
Similarly, it's not necessary to have a nice graphical installer, but having an installer that requires the user to type in non-intuitive commands to get pretty standard hardware working (e.g. 2.4 kernel for decent USB support) is not necessary either. Getting things to install from floppies is also not really necessary --- most users can get a CD burnt these days.
As you say, once it's done it's done, but if a user can't get a system with all their hardware working without a lot of hassle, then they'll give up on it outright and use another distro or OS. There's no need for Debian to lose users and potential contributors over something like an installer when the rest of the system works well.
Int 33h is the DOS mouse driver interface. BIOS interrupts are int numbers < 20h. The standard PC BIOS doesn't have a mouse driver interface to my knowledge.
Unless you plan on finding a weakness RSA or whatever, or finding a weakness somewhere in the implementation of the chain of trust, there's no practical way around this sort of thing if it's implemented very well. Of course, this is unlikely (see X-Box).
It probably would pose quite a challenge to a hacker, but there are lots of weak spots. However, for anyone to work out a software hack, they probably would have to hack their own hardware as well because otherwise the hardware wouldn't let them look at the software when it's running... Anyway, maybe we should all stock up on CROs, logic analyzers, FIB editing machines and FPGAs ;).
The virus file is compressed, so you need to decompress it before "strings" will show you much.
Of course, the best way to handle it would be to have a key combination for rename... F2 is rename.
Thank you for stating that point so succinctly. That's exactly what I think about technology and DRM. There's so much that you can do with technology, and there is so much that we could do with technology, and IMHO technology is there to enable people to do more. It's really a shame that some people want technology to be able to do less. I suppose this is kind of depends on your point of view: if you're Hillary Rosen, then restricting people's copying of songs increases the RIAA's control, and hence increases what technology can do from the RIAA perspective. But for the majority of people, it reduces what they can do with a computer that they own.
Usually the group velocity is the speed of information transfer, but it's possible for it to be different, as it is in this case. Here, the phase velocity would be less than c (the propagation is in coax cables), the group velocity is greater than c, and the information transfer is <= c. (I don't know whether the information transfer is faster than the phase velocity or not, but I think it is. The article's a bit light on technical details.)
However, you don't need to be licensed to transmit around the 2.4 GHz band at low-ish power levels, which is what 802.11b uses. So there's nothing illegal about it for either party, except that as a provider, you might be violating the terms of service of your ISP contract.