The 'F' in PIC16F84 stands for 'flash' - i.e., the PIC used here has 2kwords (2048 12-bit blocks) I think of flash, that can be reprogrammed up to 1,000 times.
Anyhow, they're cheap enough chips to get off of digikey, jameco, mouser, etc.
And cheap programmers: Amazon Electronics, http://www.electronics123.com, click on Amazon electronics. No relation to amazon.com.
Even though it covers < 1% of the earth, titanium is considered to be in the top 10 of the earth's most abundant elements. I believe silicon is the most abundant element.
Saw that off a periodic table - that fact was pretty interesting in itself.
I've read a good argument for using Intel for a server. It goes something like:
If you are running a production server, go with an Intel chip. They may be more expensive and lower performing, but Intel is well-known and recognized as a stable solution. Thus, if the Intel chip dies, it'll be treated as a rare occurance. However, if you recommend an AMD solution (against management's wishes), and the AMD solution dies, you're out of a job.
I like AMD. I love their athlons (waiting for a dual SMP system... which would run much better than a dual Intel SMP system). Just that AMD isn't regarded as a "reliable" workhorse that Intel seems to have.
After all, there has to be a reason why Intel can do all these fiascos (FDIV bug, F00F, 1.13GHz Pentium III, i8x0 chipsets, RAMbus) and still charge a premium on their stuff. Especially since Intel's chips tend to be more expensive than their equivalent-performing-or-better AMD counterparts.
Most games don't even take full advantage of AGP 2x! Because video RAM is so cheap nowadays, with 32 meg cards being common, the AGP bus is going to waste most of the time now. There are benchmarks showing very insignifcant gains going from AGP 2x to AGP 4x... and they're talking about AGP 8x now? Big waste of money.
And yes, serial lines *ARE* much more able to made faster than parallel. Parallel links suffer from one problem - the need for every dataline to be locked 'solid' before sending the next logic level. A slight skew in arrival times can corrupt data. The limit is just how powerful your parallel line drivers are to quickly propagate all the lines. (This also explains all the zig-zags you see on motherboards and RAM blocks - they act as delay lines so the signal doesn't arrive too early before the other signals).
While we're on it, note that unless you can prove you're a game developer, the backup of the ROM *MUST BE EXACT*. I.e., you burn a ROM based on the ROM you have. [ROM refers to the actual hardware chip, not a ROM file here]
I don't know if the 'backup' must be done using a native copier, or it can reside on disk temporarily as a side-effect of backing up.
Note that game developers are the only people allowed to have a copy of the ROM in another media format. For the majority of us, it's ROM->ROM only.
You can do that (the stupid and obvious way), or you can be a bit more intelligent and realize if you run a major server, it's far easier to tap into the server's datastream and filter that.
Just have a server connect to a proxy-like program that monitors the server-server comms. It's not hard to do (I've faked my own servers), and the output is easy enough to parse.
The l33t implementation would be to sniff packets to the IRC server, but that'll be problematic due to the sheer amount of traffic.
I'm not sure, but the voltage that falls smack in the middle of the range there is 208V... Which is also a standard voltage for computing devices (there are many UPS' for 208V wiring). I believe this was done to keep current requirements down, but I think the 230 VAC available in a residential district is adequate.
It's a really wide voltage range (probably meant to use 208V if you have it, 230/240 if you don't). Only one problem - most residential power distribution centers/power meters only handle 100A or so, so you have to convince spouse to not cook and do laundry at the same time.
They overclock for the same reason people tweak cars. It's fun, it's enjoyable, and it's something to boast about. It's the geek equivalent of hot-rodding.
When people modify their cars to extract that extra 10hp, same reason people put on huge watercoolers to go that extra 50MHz.
Sure, it's mostly boasting - I mean, some of those high MHz computers don't get great uptimes, others do, etc.
I don't know what we call people who perform 'safe overclocking' - like bringing a Celeron 533A/566 to 800/850MHz (almost always guarenteed), though. Casual tweakers?
to the BC govt. i am in vancouver and perhaps we could even get some other/. readers here to protest this blatant act of hypocrisy. i will take the day off tomorrow. e-mail me if you are in BC and are interested in making some noise on friday, july 14.
Perhaps you didn't read about the fact that most BC politicians do NOT read and/or send email! (I think the article is a Vancouver Sun article titled "noreply@gov.bc.ca") While this came about for another reason (email-aliases to bypass Freedom of Information act), it's important to note that very few politicians actually use email. Even the Premier of BC (Mr. Ujjal Dosanjh) doesn't use email. So phoning might be a better idea.
Oh, go ahead and make noise in Victoria. It's not that we don't have enough at this point in time }}:-) [We could use something to distract us from all the strikes and other general non-business business that goes on around here].
BTW, I was startled by this decision as everyone else is (I live in BC). I don't play FPS (hate 'em, and they're quite boring, but that's another comment), but from what I've seen of SoF (reviews, etc), it does look quite violent. At least it wasn't banned like some other countries have with lesser games... like Mortal Kombat (true!), just 'restricted'. But you'd really thing, with a game selling for $60, that parents wouldn't stop and think about that huge stop label? I'm assuming, of course, that parents do most of the purchasing, and that teens who have jobs and can afford it are mature enough to buy it (at least the overwhelming majority here, it seems).
Internet printing protocol. The ability to print to a printer anywhere from the Internet (more or less).
Nice, yes, but will spammers decide to also start trading around 'Printer Numbers' containing printers open and ready to print? So besides opening that mailbox and dealing with 10 pieces of spam, we also have to deal with a printer that's been spammed. Of course, it would get spammed when we have that all-important report to print out... (hmm. Interesting DoS idea - flood the printer so the company keeps wasting paper/toner/ink/etc and no printouts can ever be made).
I guess we'll need to have the requisite header printouts like on faxes too...
Well, consider the fact that SDRAM, and even DDR SDRAM, is considerably cheaper than RDRAM. Thus, for (nearly) the same performance, you can have a cheaper solution that holds up to the more expensive one. Now which do you choose?
Simple. It keeps all the $cientology nuts busy. Since the only reason it was popular is because the members are forced to watch it, they can't do anything else. BTW, the book is a 'bestseller' at 5 million copies for just the same reason.
If they're wasting their money to see a crap film by a crap author, it means they can't be recruiting. Which, in the end, benefits us all.
Also, use *fresher* paper, that can help. (Yes, there's 'best-before' type quality on printer paper, especially those used for laser printers).
Paper that has been sitting around in the open for several weeks absorbs moisture, which distort its characteristics. This can cause the paper handling mechanism to jam on it a little bit.
Personally, I've seen very abused printers printing perfectly, simply because they print so much, they run through a ream in a day, but no creases, no paper jams (except user-created ones [i.e., opening the printer while a page is still loaded]), etc. Because that ream of paper is in the printer for only one day.
This was actually decided in the 80's. *IF* you are *NOT* a legitimate game developer, you *MAY NOT* dump the ROMs and use the dumped version. The backup clause says you may make *EXACT* copies of computer software, so yes, you may dump the ROM to burn a backup ROM set. But you cannot use the dumped ROM for any purpose otherwise (Unless given permission to do so, of course).
Game developers can use the dumped ROM legally, simply as the "reverse-engineering" way (how did this game accomplish X, Y, and Z?). This dumped ROM for game developers satisfies "intermediate medium" criteria, which is how Bleem! and Virtual Game Station managed to get rulings overturned (of use of the Sony BIOS - the intermediate file analysis of a dump of the BIOS is allowed to write the program).
Which, unfortunately, means all ROM sites are illegal. But, unlike Nintendo (which does not want to license old game ROMs at ALL), at least Sega is attempting to right that wrong by letting people legally use their ROMs.
Reference: http://www.emuhq.com/emufaq/mod2_pt2.htm (the parent to this file is an excellent source of legality information) U.S.C. 17 Section 117 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs)
Well, my IIIx gets on the average 2 months per battery change, and a total ON time (unit in use/displaying something) just shy of 24 hours.
So, a continuous 24 hour battery usage on two AAA batteries, I find that is pretty decent for a device like this.
I don't use the backlight too much because I never needed it that much (great in low-light and outdoors, too).
BTW, one of the reasons why Palm has so many more applications is that there's a free (beer|speech) toolset (the familiar tools - gcc, gdb, and other nice GNU stuff), and a commercial toolset. Support for other OS's helps, too. While gcc requires a not-so-nice hack in the code, it's a cheap way of development.
AFAIK, WInCE requires a Win machine because CE sets up a serial network connection to sync, and to develop requires use of a Visual C++ variant (which costs $$$).
the palm has a crappy OS which crashes pretty often
Well, it's extremely difficult to make an OS stable without the aid of a MMU (the reason databases are protected on the palm is because there's hardware RW protection - databases automatically get marked RO). I've found it to be remarkably stable (depending on the app), but without a MMU, it's hard to determine the extent of the damage (trash the stack, trash the heap) since bad memory addresses (due to bad pointers) are not tracked if they fall within the R/W region.
It *is* possible, I suppose (early Suns used two 68k processors, one of which took over if the other exception'ed out and had to be reset), just complex. I have no idea how uCLinux handles this, though.
Yeah, but IIRC, the PSX2 does *NOT* have a MMU (you don't need one for what it does). The Sega Dreamcast does, because WinCE uses it.
So MMU-less Linux means we're looking at something like uCLinux... (and yes, a MMU really helps in making an OS stable. You can do it without an MMU, but it'll be slow).
Well, there was one bank a while ago that used NT - the "Out of Memory" box (familiar to low-spec NT users who make tiny pagefiles) was showing on the ATM screen... There was another that used 9x, because it's familiar blue screen was showing on another, too.
I had dreams to write a virtual disk driver using mail servers across the world.
Heh. Few months ago, I was thinking the same thing (until I got that 20 gigger that's now full) - to find a way to use all the "free disk space" various websites made available to people (web email, little text boxes used in describing yourself, etc). Only problem would be the redundancy needed to store this information such that one wouldn't use it, as well as encryption.
Well, first of all, it's incredibly tacky to be talking about raising taxes in the midst of a surplus.
I agree, there is no justification for raising the overall tax burden, especially now. But the issue of a net sales tax does not have to be about a tax raise.</I><p>
IANAFC (I am not a financial consultant), but actually, ideally the tax rate would follow the economy - as the economy booms, taxes go up, and the economy falls into recession, taxes go *down*. Traditionally, it's been the other way around (for some backassward reason), but raising money during good times (and saving it away -- a vital necessity for it to work, but try convincing your government of <b>that.<b>) helps pay for the bad times (the economy cannot keep booming endlessly - there will be periods of slow growth/negative growth). <p>
Too bad we can't get government to stop increasing spending during these good times to save away some money for the bad.
I remember the "old" TradeWars [pre 2002] (hell, I probably have a printout of the instructions from it - meticulously ASCII captured with a battery on to keep the pager going }}:-), and printed out on 50-100 sheets of formfed paper).
That was my first BBS experiment - a 2400 bps bbs (! - this was in the 14.4k - 28.8's just barely coming out), from which I moved on. Never quite liked TW - but I probably have an old version of it *somewhere* on my hard drive.
Anyhow, I used to have a favorite door - Planets: TEOS. Never needed to call at 12:01am simply because I didn't have to -- after about 4 months, I was the top-of-the-list kinda person (maxed out all my shields, maxed out cargo, etc), and ended up crushing everyone in the meantime >G<. Great fun until the board crashed (as they always do).
Me? When I moved back to Canada (Van, BC, nonetheless), it took me about 3 years to find an online (internet) site that had BBS' running, but none had them (plus, Terminate has a nasty habit of crashing at the worst moments).
Now, I try to run a 'net BBS - but comport drivers are hellishly expensive (com#<->TCP/IP)...
Here's a java implementation of an enigma machine. I believe it emulates the deficiencies of the machine as well (sometimes a rotor will increment twice in a certain position). Also contains some information about it.
Slashdot Mirror
The 'F' in PIC16F84 stands for 'flash' - i.e., the PIC used here has 2kwords (2048 12-bit blocks) I think of flash, that can be reprogrammed up to 1,000 times.
Anyhow, they're cheap enough chips to get off of digikey, jameco, mouser, etc.
And cheap programmers: Amazon Electronics, http://www.electronics123.com, click on Amazon electronics. No relation to amazon.com.
Even though it covers < 1% of the earth, titanium is considered to be in the top 10 of the earth's most abundant elements. I believe silicon is the most abundant element.
Saw that off a periodic table - that fact was pretty interesting in itself.
I've read a good argument for using Intel for a server. It goes something like:
If you are running a production server, go with an Intel chip. They may be more expensive and lower performing, but Intel is well-known and recognized as a stable solution. Thus, if the Intel chip dies, it'll be treated as a rare occurance. However, if you recommend an AMD solution (against management's wishes), and the AMD solution dies, you're out of a job.
I like AMD. I love their athlons (waiting for a dual SMP system... which would run much better than a dual Intel SMP system). Just that AMD isn't regarded as a "reliable" workhorse that Intel seems to have.
After all, there has to be a reason why Intel can do all these fiascos (FDIV bug, F00F, 1.13GHz Pentium III, i8x0 chipsets, RAMbus) and still charge a premium on their stuff. Especially since Intel's chips tend to be more expensive than their equivalent-performing-or-better AMD counterparts.
True, but remember, DirecPC has this exact same setup too...
.5s) is more important than upstream. Just that 'most' != /. readers >G<.
And some cablemodems required a modem uplink too - they were one way devices. I don't think many providers have it this way anymore...
And for most people, a fast downstream (with huge latency >
Well, you know what?
Most games don't even take full advantage of AGP 2x! Because video RAM is so cheap nowadays, with 32 meg cards being common, the AGP bus is going to waste most of the time now. There are benchmarks showing very insignifcant gains going from AGP 2x to AGP 4x... and they're talking about AGP 8x now? Big waste of money.
And yes, serial lines *ARE* much more able to made faster than parallel. Parallel links suffer from one problem - the need for every dataline to be locked 'solid' before sending the next logic level. A slight skew in arrival times can corrupt data. The limit is just how powerful your parallel line drivers are to quickly propagate all the lines. (This also explains all the zig-zags you see on motherboards and RAM blocks - they act as delay lines so the signal doesn't arrive too early before the other signals).
While we're on it, note that unless you can prove you're a game developer, the backup of the ROM *MUST BE EXACT*. I.e., you burn a ROM based on the ROM you have. [ROM refers to the actual hardware chip, not a ROM file here]
I don't know if the 'backup' must be done using a native copier, or it can reside on disk temporarily as a side-effect of backing up.
Note that game developers are the only people allowed to have a copy of the ROM in another media format. For the majority of us, it's ROM->ROM only.
You can do that (the stupid and obvious way), or you can be a bit more intelligent and realize if you run a major server, it's far easier to tap into the server's datastream and filter that.
Just have a server connect to a proxy-like program that monitors the server-server comms. It's not hard to do (I've faked my own servers), and the output is easy enough to parse.
The l33t implementation would be to sniff packets to the IRC server, but that'll be problematic due to the sheer amount of traffic.
I'm not sure, but the voltage that falls smack in the middle of the range there is 208V... Which is also a standard voltage for computing devices (there are many UPS' for 208V wiring). I believe this was done to keep current requirements down, but I think the 230 VAC available in a residential district is adequate.
It's a really wide voltage range (probably meant to use 208V if you have it, 230/240 if you don't). Only one problem - most residential power distribution centers/power meters only handle 100A or so, so you have to convince spouse to not cook and do laundry at the same time.
Uptime hosed because of dinner and laundry. Hmm.
They overclock for the same reason people tweak cars. It's fun, it's enjoyable, and it's something to boast about. It's the geek equivalent of hot-rodding.
When people modify their cars to extract that extra 10hp, same reason people put on huge watercoolers to go that extra 50MHz.
Sure, it's mostly boasting - I mean, some of those high MHz computers don't get great uptimes, others do, etc.
I don't know what we call people who perform 'safe overclocking' - like bringing a Celeron 533A/566 to 800/850MHz (almost always guarenteed), though. Casual tweakers?
Perhaps you didn't read about the fact that most BC politicians do NOT read and/or send email! (I think the article is a Vancouver Sun article titled "noreply@gov.bc.ca") While this came about for another reason (email-aliases to bypass Freedom of Information act), it's important to note that very few politicians actually use email. Even the Premier of BC (Mr. Ujjal Dosanjh) doesn't use email. So phoning might be a better idea.
Oh, go ahead and make noise in Victoria. It's not that we don't have enough at this point in time }}:-) [We could use something to distract us from all the strikes and other general non-business business that goes on around here].
BTW, I was startled by this decision as everyone else is (I live in BC). I don't play FPS (hate 'em, and they're quite boring, but that's another comment), but from what I've seen of SoF (reviews, etc), it does look quite violent. At least it wasn't banned like some other countries have with lesser games... like Mortal Kombat (true!), just 'restricted'. But you'd really thing, with a game selling for $60, that parents wouldn't stop and think about that huge stop label? I'm assuming, of course, that parents do most of the purchasing, and that teens who have jobs and can afford it are mature enough to buy it (at least the overwhelming majority here, it seems).
Internet printing protocol. The ability to print to a printer anywhere from the Internet (more or less).
Nice, yes, but will spammers decide to also start trading around 'Printer Numbers' containing printers open and ready to print? So besides opening that mailbox and dealing with 10 pieces of spam, we also have to deal with a printer that's been spammed. Of course, it would get spammed when we have that all-important report to print out...
(hmm. Interesting DoS idea - flood the printer so the company keeps wasting paper/toner/ink/etc and no printouts can ever be made).
I guess we'll need to have the requisite header printouts like on faxes too...
Well, consider the fact that SDRAM, and even DDR SDRAM, is considerably cheaper than RDRAM. Thus, for (nearly) the same performance, you can have a cheaper solution that holds up to the more expensive one. Now which do you choose?
Simple. It keeps all the $cientology nuts busy. Since the only reason it was popular is because the members are forced to watch it, they can't do anything else. BTW, the book is a 'bestseller' at 5 million copies for just the same reason.
If they're wasting their money to see a crap film by a crap author, it means they can't be recruiting. Which, in the end, benefits us all.
Also, use *fresher* paper, that can help. (Yes, there's 'best-before' type quality on printer paper, especially those used for laser printers).
Paper that has been sitting around in the open for several weeks absorbs moisture, which distort its characteristics. This can cause the paper handling mechanism to jam on it a little bit.
Personally, I've seen very abused printers printing perfectly, simply because they print so much, they run through a ream in a day, but no creases, no paper jams (except user-created ones [i.e., opening the printer while a page is still loaded]), etc. Because that ream of paper is in the printer for only one day.
This was actually decided in the 80's. *IF* you are *NOT* a legitimate game developer, you *MAY NOT* dump the ROMs and use the dumped version. The backup clause says you may make *EXACT* copies of computer software, so yes, you may dump the ROM to burn a backup ROM set. But you cannot use the dumped ROM for any purpose otherwise (Unless given permission to do so, of course).
Game developers can use the dumped ROM legally, simply as the "reverse-engineering" way (how did this game accomplish X, Y, and Z?). This dumped ROM for game developers satisfies "intermediate medium" criteria, which is how Bleem! and Virtual Game Station managed to get rulings overturned (of use of the Sony BIOS - the intermediate file analysis of a dump of the BIOS is allowed to write the program).
Which, unfortunately, means all ROM sites are illegal. But, unlike Nintendo (which does not want to license old game ROMs at ALL), at least Sega is attempting to right that wrong by letting people legally use their ROMs.
Reference: http://www.emuhq.com/emufaq/mod2_pt2.htm (the parent to this file is an excellent source of legality information)
U.S.C. 17 Section 117 (Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs)
Here's a hard one to get:
.int - I saw it browsing some UN site or other...
Personally, I use joker.com - *cheap* domain registration (12 {EU12} - slightly less than US$12). And no, they DON'T sell any hosting service.
Well, my IIIx gets on the average 2 months per battery change, and a total ON time (unit in use/displaying something) just shy of 24 hours.
So, a continuous 24 hour battery usage on two AAA batteries, I find that is pretty decent for a device like this.
I don't use the backlight too much because I never needed it that much (great in low-light and outdoors, too).
BTW, one of the reasons why Palm has so many more applications is that there's a free (beer|speech) toolset (the familiar tools - gcc, gdb, and other nice GNU stuff), and a commercial toolset. Support for other OS's helps, too. While gcc requires a not-so-nice hack in the code, it's a cheap way of development.
AFAIK, WInCE requires a Win machine because CE sets up a serial network connection to sync, and to develop requires use of a Visual C++ variant (which costs $$$).
the palm has a crappy OS which crashes pretty often
Well, it's extremely difficult to make an OS stable without the aid of a MMU (the reason databases are protected on the palm is because there's hardware RW protection - databases automatically get marked RO). I've found it to be remarkably stable (depending on the app), but without a MMU, it's hard to determine the extent of the damage (trash the stack, trash the heap) since bad memory addresses (due to bad pointers) are not tracked if they fall within the R/W region.
It *is* possible, I suppose (early Suns used two
68k processors, one of which took over if the other exception'ed out and had to be reset), just complex. I have no idea how uCLinux handles this, though.
Yeah, but IIRC, the PSX2 does *NOT* have a MMU (you don't need one for what it does). The Sega Dreamcast does, because WinCE uses it.
So MMU-less Linux means we're looking at something like uCLinux... (and yes, a MMU really helps in making an OS stable. You can do it without an MMU, but it'll be slow).
Well, there was one bank a while ago that used NT - the "Out of Memory" box (familiar to low-spec NT users who make tiny pagefiles) was showing on the ATM screen... There was another that used 9x, because it's familiar blue screen was showing on another, too.
Heh. Few months ago, I was thinking the same thing (until I got that 20 gigger that's now full) - to find a way to use all the "free disk space" various websites made available to people (web email, little text boxes used in describing yourself, etc). Only problem would be the redundancy needed to store this information such that one wouldn't use it, as well as encryption.
I agree, there is no justification for raising the overall tax burden, especially now. But the issue of a net sales tax does not have to be about a tax raise.</I><p>
IANAFC (I am not a financial consultant), but actually, ideally the tax rate would follow the economy - as the economy booms, taxes go up, and the economy falls into recession, taxes go *down*. Traditionally, it's been the other way around (for some backassward reason), but raising money during good times (and saving it away -- a vital necessity for it to work, but try convincing your government of <b>that.<b>) helps pay for the bad times (the economy cannot keep booming endlessly - there will be periods of slow growth/negative growth). <p>
Too bad we can't get government to stop increasing spending during these good times to save away some money for the bad.
I remember the "old" TradeWars [pre 2002] (hell, I probably have a printout of the instructions from it - meticulously ASCII captured with a battery on to keep the pager going }}:-), and printed out on 50-100 sheets of formfed paper).
That was my first BBS experiment - a 2400 bps bbs (! - this was in the 14.4k - 28.8's just barely coming out), from which I moved on. Never quite liked TW - but I probably have an old version of it *somewhere* on my hard drive.
Anyhow, I used to have a favorite door - Planets: TEOS. Never needed to call at 12:01am simply because I didn't have to -- after about 4 months, I was the top-of-the-list kinda person (maxed out all my shields, maxed out cargo, etc), and ended up crushing everyone in the meantime >G<. Great fun until the board crashed (as they always do).
Me? When I moved back to Canada (Van, BC, nonetheless), it took me about 3 years to find an online (internet) site that had BBS' running, but none had them (plus, Terminate has a nasty habit of crashing at the worst moments).
Now, I try to run a 'net BBS - but comport drivers are hellishly expensive (com#<->TCP/IP)...
I don't know about you, but the fact that the CNet story yesterday here had that mentioned wasn't very nice... Oh well.