Sounds like a $40 Linksys box would'a been a fine fix and wouldn't have had to quit the job. A cheep hardware cable router/firewall saves a lot of headaches and is money ahead in many cases!
What is new about this is his effort. He maximized his design for over two years to get the maximum affect (prolonging the life of produce) for the least cost. Then he built two factories to produce them and distributed them to rural villagers for free (using his own money). Imagine the changes it made on a culture where food grown would only last 1-2 days once picked if it could now last a month or more!
The real "invention" here is his efforts toward making a positive change in the villager's lifestyle. Obviously if someone is awarding $100,000 dollars there is more to it. You folks should do some more research before you nock it!! He plans to use the $100,000 to distibute the pots more widely and to increase his education efforts!
Learn before you look like a fool: http://www.varaprasad.htmlplanet.com/custom 3.html
It should be trivial to use existing Text-To-Speech API's to make an open source reader/player for these.
From their site:
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.
A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The blind/dyslexic community has for years been working on an open standard for e-texts. Why not use it? There are many readers available to read these texts and it would be nearly trivial to use the Text-to-speech (TTS) features of Mac OS X and Windows to do this (I don't know the TTS features avail to Linux (sorry)).
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.
A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.
Why not use the Daisy format? The community providing books for the media challenged have worked hard for years to provide an open standard. From their Web site: http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.
A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.
If someone like IBM has licensed access SCO's code, couldn't they do a comparison against various Linux versions and check for the duped code? Then we could simply get to work at replacing it...
If no one has licensed access to SCO's code, then could that mean that someone at SCO (or an earlier holder) gave out the code and is the real violator?
Ever read Hardcore Visual Basic programming? Using the API to enumerate other windows and send signals to them is what it is all about. I've often used Visual Basic to automate other programs by detecting windows, dialog boxes, etc. and sending key strokes to them. This is basically how all those really cool screen readers for the blind used to work before MS opened up and API for them.
Windows isn't really a multi-user system anyway (at least not simultaneously). If you are running multiple programs at the same time and they have access to the windows API, COM, OLE, etc. then you just have to assume that they can control each other...
At my parent's house, where my parents and grandmother live, even my grandmother can lower the screen resolution in Windows using only 5 or so mouse clicks.
Plus, I often go to a library to get high speed computer access in a public lab they have setup. The first thing I do is set the screen res higher... if they were using Linux their IT guy would probably have a fit if I were going into the O/S and reconfig'n it!
The first O/S bug I found was in the TS1000. Remember that thing? It was a Timex version of the Sinclair ZX80. Would you even call it an O/S? The only thing the TS1000 had over the ZX80 was you didn't have to solder it together and it's 1KB of static RAM was twice that of the ZX80 so at least you could fill the whole screen with characters with out running out of memory...
The bug it had caused me to get a "B" on a computer assignment in my Senior year science class because the square root function would return incorrect results some where around 2.5 or so. Even though I could prove to my teacher the computer was making a mistake by simply doing something like:
10 PRINT SQR(2.5) he insisted that computers never make mistakes and that I must have been doing something wrong. I later read where I could call some number in England and they would send a new ROM chip to fix that and other errors...
(And, yea, I remember being irked bad when a friend got one of these a couple month later and it came with 2K of RAM! Wow 2048 Bytes... Damn.)
The funny thing is I remember people actually sold chess programs that ran on these things.)
So does this mean that if I get 10 of my friends and they each get 10 of their friends, etc... to visit Microslop sites and vote them down that we can help save kids from bad software?
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a $40 Linksys box would'a been a fine fix and wouldn't have had to quit the job. A cheep hardware cable router/firewall saves a lot of headaches and is money ahead in many cases!
What is new about this is his effort. He maximized his design for over two years to get the maximum affect (prolonging the life of produce) for the least cost. Then he built two factories to produce them and distributed them to rural villagers for free (using his own money). Imagine the changes it made on a culture where food grown would only last 1-2 days once picked if it could now last a month or more!
m 3.html
The real "invention" here is his efforts toward making a positive change in the villager's lifestyle. Obviously if someone is awarding $100,000 dollars there is more to it. You folks should do some more research before you nock it!! He plans to use the $100,000 to distibute the pots more widely and to increase his education efforts!
Learn before you look like a fool:
http://www.varaprasad.htmlplanet.com/custo
You can check it out at their Web site:
http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp
It should be trivial to use existing Text-To-Speech API's to make an open source reader/player for these.
From their site:
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard. A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
The blind/dyslexic community has for years been working on an open standard for e-texts. Why not use it? There are many readers available to read these texts and it would be nearly trivial to use the Text-to-speech (TTS) features of Mac OS X and Windows to do this (I don't know the TTS features avail to Linux (sorry)).
From the DAISY Consortium's Web site:
http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.
A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.
Why not use the Daisy format? The community providing books for the media challenged have worked hard for years to provide an open standard. From their Web site:
http://www.daisy.org/about_us/default.asp
In 1997, the DAISY Consortium decided to adopt open standards based on file formats being developed for the Internet. The DAISY 2.0 specification was released in 1998, and the 2.02 recommendation was approved in February 2001. Release of DAISY 3, the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 2002 standard was official in March 2002. This standard was jointly developed by the DAISY Consortium, The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (part of the Library of Congress), and a variety of other organizations in North America. Plans are underway for the development of the supporting materials necessary to promote the standard.
A DAISY book can be explained as a set of digital files that includes:
One or more digital audio files containing a human narration of part or all of the source text;
A marked-up file containing some or all of the text (strictly speaking, this marked-up text file is optional);
A synchronization file to relate markings in the text file with time points in the audio file; and
A navigation control file which enables the user to move smoothly between files while synchronization between text and audio is maintained.
The DAISY standard allows the producing agency full flexibility regarding the mix of text and audio ranging from audio-only, to full text and audio, to text-only.
In Mac OS X, it is extremely trivial to have text read back to you. Almost all native apps have a text->speech option available on the menu bar.
Doing a pop-under is no less obvious than say using Javascript to verify form entries. Hmmm... Maybe I can patent that and make some real big $$$$.
If someone like IBM has licensed access SCO's code, couldn't they do a comparison against various Linux versions and check for the duped code? Then we could simply get to work at replacing it...
If no one has licensed access to SCO's code, then could that mean that someone at SCO (or an earlier holder) gave out the code and is the real violator?
Ever read Hardcore Visual Basic programming? Using the API to enumerate other windows and send signals to them is what it is all about. I've often used Visual Basic to automate other programs by detecting windows, dialog boxes, etc. and sending key strokes to them. This is basically how all those really cool screen readers for the blind used to work before MS opened up and API for them.
Windows isn't really a multi-user system anyway (at least not simultaneously). If you are running multiple programs at the same time and they have access to the windows API, COM, OLE, etc. then you just have to assume that they can control each other...
At my parent's house, where my parents and grandmother live, even my grandmother can lower the screen resolution in Windows using only 5 or so mouse clicks.
Plus, I often go to a library to get high speed computer access in a public lab they have setup. The first thing I do is set the screen res higher... if they were using Linux their IT guy would probably have a fit if I were going into the O/S and reconfig'n it!
The first O/S bug I found was in the TS1000. Remember that thing? It was a Timex version of the Sinclair ZX80. Would you even call it an O/S? The only thing the TS1000 had over the ZX80 was you didn't have to solder it together and it's 1KB of static RAM was twice that of the ZX80 so at least you could fill the whole screen with characters with out running out of memory...
The bug it had caused me to get a "B" on a computer assignment in my Senior year science class because the square root function would return incorrect results some where around 2.5 or so. Even though I could prove to my teacher the computer was making a mistake by simply doing something like:
10 PRINT SQR(2.5)
he insisted that computers never make mistakes and that I must have been doing something wrong. I later read where I could call some number in England and they would send a new ROM chip to fix that and other errors...
(And, yea, I remember being irked bad when a friend got one of these a couple month later and it came with 2K of RAM! Wow 2048 Bytes... Damn.)
The funny thing is I remember people actually sold chess programs that ran on these things.)
So does this mean that if I get 10 of my friends and they each get 10 of their friends, etc... to visit Microslop sites and vote them down that we can help save kids from bad software?