Up here in central Canada, early 2003 showed a nice, gradual uptake in wireless equipment by the business sector, and a few tech-heads putting it in their houses. Now that xmas is over, and stores were selling APs for as little as $15 (cdn) after rebates, I'm seeing almost a 10-fold increase in the number of hotspots compared to June of this year.
I see a couple of trends on the horizon:
1. Just as you can no longer buy a 10mbit hub, because a 10/100 switch costs pennies more to make, soon all home cable/DSL routers will come with 802.11b at the very least. The "premium" models will include g for $5-10 more, to keep some price differentiation happening.
2. Back when it was us geeks and businesses, the WEP/non-WEP ratio seemed to hover around 50-75%, depending on area. Driving around last night, it's below 10%. This could be an indication of new xmas presents that the owner hasn't had time to configure, but really: how many people actually change from the default settings? (On that note, thank you SMC for having a blank default password and an SSID of "SMC":)
Just the changes in the past 12 months have convinced me that 2004 will be the year wireless really takes off everywhere up here, and as long as it's still being shipped unsecured to the consumer, we're soon going to have a LOT more opportunity for this sort of thing.
Off of usenet or another machine on my ISP, less than 30 minutes. Less time, in fact, than most people spent downloading an album during the Napster years. And we all know how unsuccessful that was, because people only want "instant gratification":)
How do you know if the meal will be crap or not? Do you just walk in, eat whatever you feel like, and then pay if you decide you like it? Last I checked, most places don't make free meals for you to "test", unless you're a food critic. The closest I see is free bites of something in the food court, but that's not exactly fine dining...
I think the porn industry could learn from the parent poster:
"Limiting access to a shitty little scratched up disc that only cost the companies $0.05 to make for $17 a pop is rape, plain and simple, especially when you consider there's one good scene in the movie and 60 minutes of wasteful plot. Sell me the 5 minutes that I need for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
Back in the heyday of Napster, most people were on 28.8 modems, some on 56. An album of music encoded to a decent quality is at least 60mb. So what you're saying is, you find it unlikely that someone can get an internet connection at 11x the speed of a dial-up account (700/60).
Oh, you're being pedantic about the word "song"? Fine. I've had 4mbit cable internet access since 1998. Canada rules:)
Precisely the same reasoning used by some several years back, to tell us that mp3s would never go anywhere.
"Computers are just not the best way of listening to music. And while I am sure that there are some people who here who have their computer hooked up to some big stereo or something like that, most dont. Things like music on demand where you can order it and play it whenever you want on your stereo are whats going to happen in the near future."
Instead, people found their own way to do it, and mp3 grew on its own. Only after everyone was doing it did consumer electronics start supporting it. And as for bandwidth? Most people were still on 28.8 modems when mp3 trading took off, so I don't really think waiting an hour or 4 for something is any sort of deterrent to people.
If the movie industry waits for some magic technology to save their ass, they will be in the same boat as RIAA members. Just wait until your Mom & Dad's DVD player supports DivX movies next year.
And this is one of the big issues region encoding was *supposed* to address. If it worked, your relatives could buy DVDs for 1/10th the US price, as the studio still makes a profit at that level. Region encoding would prevent people from importing cheap copies to the US, and everyone's happy. Sort of, anyway.
With the proliferation of region-free and region-changable players, I think we're going to see the end of region encoding. Which is a good thing, for so many other reasons.
Actually, "most" of us need far less than a 1 ghz cpu. Most people I know could get by nicely with a 3-500 mhz celeron, for what they use their computers for. Go even lower if you're willing to tolerate unstable Win9x or a slower Linux (running a modern WM). I bought my 1800+ a year ago, and I still have yet to use half of its power doing anything. It helps that I'm willing to save a bundle of cash and just game on a console, but beyond that, I just don't see the use. If I got into mpeg video encoding, possibly, but other than ripping my own DVDs for fun and profit...
Having said that, these articles are obviously not targetted towards me. They're only really useful to hardcore gamers who want that extra 10-20%. I like them though, because it's nice to have a heads up as to what I'll be using in 2-3 years. It's much like reading articles on the newest Ferrari. Only the 5 richest kings in Europe can afford one, but eventually the tech trickles down to us common folk.
Instead of carrying CDs, you have to carry tons of batteries, since the battery life on all solid-state digital players is terribly short.
I can't speak for solid state, but my hard drive based, internal li-ion batteried Lyra gets 15 hours off a battery charge. 15 hours. That's almost as long as most people are awake during an average day. Listening to music the entire time.
I'd guess that solid state devices use less power than ones with moving parts, so add to the 15 hours. I don't think carrying around batteries is an issue. Oh yeah, and in my case it's not a dozen CDs. More like 1000:)
Well, you've got 2 choices, essentially. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
1. take apart a working PC gamepad (USB/gameport/whatever your software supports), and wire the contacts from the Atari stick directly to the contacts on the gamepad. i.e. when you press up on the stick, the signal will trigger an 'up' on the gamepad, and the game sees it. Advantage: cheap, easy, anyone can do it in a few minutes, full support by all games. Disadvantage: clunky, as you now have a joystick connected to the guts of a gamepad connected to your PC.
2. you can directly interface almost any console joystick to your parallel port, but you need to build a small circuit containing some diodes, etc. You also need a driver to have the game talk nicely with the parallel port. Advantage: if you're clever, you can essentially make a tiny joystick->parallel adapter, and plug in any compatible console joystick at will. Disadvantage: harder to make, and the worst, you need a driver to do this. There used to be a nice driver package for Windows, and a buttload of emulators supported this (also had directX support for PC games), but it's gone missing in the past couple of years.
They're called Supermail boxes. They're pretty handy from a security standpoint, but a real bitch if you live in the praries and have to go get your mail when it's -40 out:)
However, at least in the West, you only see them in newer neighbourhoods (late 80's and newer). So most Canadians still have never used them, and fight against adoption strongly. The "to your door" service is something a lot of people don't want to live without.
I've lived with both off and on, and honestly, when you're waiting for a new credit card to arrive, or something, it's VERY nice to have it locked up until you get it. What did suck though, was at first, the parcel compartments would often have more than one person's mail in them. You and others all got a "B" key, and you were only supposed to take what was yours. I don't know if this was a screw up, or actual policy at the time, but for at least a year back around 1989 I saw several hundred CDs, VHS tapes, and books that I could easily have swiped. I'm pretty sure they can't prove it was me based on "who else had the key", but who knows. Made me less excited about using mail order for a while, though.
1. That's not even the same site. You linked to movie-mistakes.com, but the story points to moviemistakes.com. Your first clue should have been when the images on the page loaded successfully:)
2. If you're stuck at work like me and forced to use IE, you'll be bombarded with some of the most annoying popups I've ever encountered.
Consider yourselves warned.
Re:I think there's a slight typo in the article
on
A.I. Helicopter?
·
· Score: 1
You started with "map bushfires" and all you could come up with was "map ex-girlfriends' activities"?
This would be an absolute nightmare on networks if implemented, but what about adding UDP into the mix? Spoof the source address and use md5 to checksum your packets, relaying encrypted requests back to the server/proxy if any got dropped.
It's probably not foolproof, because I'm way out of my league here, but I've always wondered why no one suggests UDP. Wanna hide the uploaders' IP from the RIAA when they get on your network? I can't think of an easier way, unless they manage to compromise the entire system.
Slashdot Mirror
They're called "recipies" :)
Up here in central Canada, early 2003 showed a nice, gradual uptake in wireless equipment by the business sector, and a few tech-heads putting it in their houses. Now that xmas is over, and stores were selling APs for as little as $15 (cdn) after rebates, I'm seeing almost a 10-fold increase in the number of hotspots compared to June of this year.
:)
I see a couple of trends on the horizon:
1. Just as you can no longer buy a 10mbit hub, because a 10/100 switch costs pennies more to make, soon all home cable/DSL routers will come with 802.11b at the very least. The "premium" models will include g for $5-10 more, to keep some price differentiation happening.
2. Back when it was us geeks and businesses, the WEP/non-WEP ratio seemed to hover around 50-75%, depending on area. Driving around last night, it's below 10%. This could be an indication of new xmas presents that the owner hasn't had time to configure, but really: how many people actually change from the default settings? (On that note, thank you SMC for having a blank default password and an SSID of "SMC"
Just the changes in the past 12 months have convinced me that 2004 will be the year wireless really takes off everywhere up here, and as long as it's still being shipped unsecured to the consumer, we're soon going to have a LOT more opportunity for this sort of thing.
Off of usenet or another machine on my ISP, less than 30 minutes. Less time, in fact, than most people spent downloading an album during the Napster years. And we all know how unsuccessful that was, because people only want "instant gratification" :)
How do you know if the meal will be crap or not? Do you just walk in, eat whatever you feel like, and then pay if you decide you like it? Last I checked, most places don't make free meals for you to "test", unless you're a food critic. The closest I see is free bites of something in the food court, but that's not exactly fine dining...
IMHO, even if you buy from iTunes/etc in one breath and curse the RIAA and the shit it churns out in the next, you're being a hypocrite.
You do know that you can get non-RIAA music off of iTunes, right? And pretty much all P2P networks have indie music? I'm afraid I miss the hypocrasy.
I think the porn industry could learn from the parent poster:
"Limiting access to a shitty little scratched up disc that only cost the companies $0.05 to make for $17 a pop is rape, plain and simple, especially when you consider there's one good scene in the movie and 60 minutes of wasteful plot. Sell me the 5 minutes that I need for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
Back in the heyday of Napster, most people were on 28.8 modems, some on 56. An album of music encoded to a decent quality is at least 60mb. So what you're saying is, you find it unlikely that someone can get an internet connection at 11x the speed of a dial-up account (700/60).
:)
Oh, you're being pedantic about the word "song"? Fine. I've had 4mbit cable internet access since 1998. Canada rules
Precisely the same reasoning used by some several years back, to tell us that mp3s would never go anywhere.
"Computers are just not the best way of listening to music. And while I am sure that there are some people who here who have their computer hooked up to some big stereo or something like that, most dont. Things like music on demand where you can order it and play it whenever you want on your stereo are whats going to happen in the near future."
Instead, people found their own way to do it, and mp3 grew on its own. Only after everyone was doing it did consumer electronics start supporting it. And as for bandwidth? Most people were still on 28.8 modems when mp3 trading took off, so I don't really think waiting an hour or 4 for something is any sort of deterrent to people.
If the movie industry waits for some magic technology to save their ass, they will be in the same boat as RIAA members. Just wait until your Mom & Dad's DVD player supports DivX movies next year.
And this is one of the big issues region encoding was *supposed* to address. If it worked, your relatives could buy DVDs for 1/10th the US price, as the studio still makes a profit at that level. Region encoding would prevent people from importing cheap copies to the US, and everyone's happy. Sort of, anyway.
With the proliferation of region-free and region-changable players, I think we're going to see the end of region encoding. Which is a good thing, for so many other reasons.
Slightly different issue. Well, entirely different.
Come home, plug in mp3 player. Next day, it's charged. Every day, anything I want to listen to is at my fingertips.
As opposed to, come home, try to decide what I want to listen to the next day, load it up, next day, hope I still want to listen to that.
Night and day. Do people even think before they post anymore?
Actually, "most" of us need far less than a 1 ghz cpu. Most people I know could get by nicely with a 3-500 mhz celeron, for what they use their computers for. Go even lower if you're willing to tolerate unstable Win9x or a slower Linux (running a modern WM). I bought my 1800+ a year ago, and I still have yet to use half of its power doing anything. It helps that I'm willing to save a bundle of cash and just game on a console, but beyond that, I just don't see the use. If I got into mpeg video encoding, possibly, but other than ripping my own DVDs for fun and profit...
Having said that, these articles are obviously not targetted towards me. They're only really useful to hardcore gamers who want that extra 10-20%. I like them though, because it's nice to have a heads up as to what I'll be using in 2-3 years. It's much like reading articles on the newest Ferrari. Only the 5 richest kings in Europe can afford one, but eventually the tech trickles down to us common folk.
Instead of carrying CDs, you have to carry tons of batteries, since the battery life on all solid-state digital players is terribly short.
:)
I can't speak for solid state, but my hard drive based, internal li-ion batteried Lyra gets 15 hours off a battery charge. 15 hours. That's almost as long as most people are awake during an average day. Listening to music the entire time.
I'd guess that solid state devices use less power than ones with moving parts, so add to the 15 hours. I don't think carrying around batteries is an issue. Oh yeah, and in my case it's not a dozen CDs. More like 1000
Man, I just realized the ultimate plan:
Design an operating system, and never pay a bar tab again! And people claim Open Source developers don't make anything.
Yeah, because we know there's no way around that [domain] protection.
:)
By the way, anyone know the URL for Yahoo or Amazon?
Well, you've got 2 choices, essentially. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
1. take apart a working PC gamepad (USB/gameport/whatever your software supports), and wire the contacts from the Atari stick directly to the contacts on the gamepad. i.e. when you press up on the stick, the signal will trigger an 'up' on the gamepad, and the game sees it. Advantage: cheap, easy, anyone can do it in a few minutes, full support by all games. Disadvantage: clunky, as you now have a joystick connected to the guts of a gamepad connected to your PC.
2. you can directly interface almost any console joystick to your parallel port, but you need to build a small circuit containing some diodes, etc. You also need a driver to have the game talk nicely with the parallel port. Advantage: if you're clever, you can essentially make a tiny joystick->parallel adapter, and plug in any compatible console joystick at will. Disadvantage: harder to make, and the worst, you need a driver to do this. There used to be a nice driver package for Windows, and a buttload of emulators supported this (also had directX support for PC games), but it's gone missing in the past couple of years.
accounts receivable
accounts payable
accounts incinerable
Personally, I find combining these last 2 helps my financial situation immensely!
They're called Supermail boxes. They're pretty handy from a security standpoint, but a real bitch if you live in the praries and have to go get your mail when it's -40 out :)
However, at least in the West, you only see them in newer neighbourhoods (late 80's and newer). So most Canadians still have never used them, and fight against adoption strongly. The "to your door" service is something a lot of people don't want to live without.
I've lived with both off and on, and honestly, when you're waiting for a new credit card to arrive, or something, it's VERY nice to have it locked up until you get it. What did suck though, was at first, the parcel compartments would often have more than one person's mail in them. You and others all got a "B" key, and you were only supposed to take what was yours. I don't know if this was a screw up, or actual policy at the time, but for at least a year back around 1989 I saw several hundred CDs, VHS tapes, and books that I could easily have swiped. I'm pretty sure they can't prove it was me based on "who else had the key", but who knows. Made me less excited about using mail order for a while, though.
Quick! Maybe we can Slashdot Microsoft!
Disco Stu: "Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continues... AAY!"
nuff said.
Yeah, I'm having a stupid day.
:)
I guess I didn't really think people would link a site that had so many obnoxious browser issues. Mental note: stop reading Slashdot at work
And I was to busy grinning ear to ear to notice any serious bloopers.
I was looking at the wrong sentence; your asking about "props" made me completely ignore Taco's grandstanding.
Wonder if there's a Grammar Nazi Nazi? A meta-Nazi? *shudder*
No really.
:)
I would like TO give a present TO you. (directional)
Sorry, that is TOO much information. (exagerrative)
I hate the RIAA TOO. (in place of also)
(words in brackets I made up 'cause I'm bored
1. That's not even the same site. You linked to movie-mistakes.com, but the story points to moviemistakes.com. Your first clue should have been when the images on the page loaded successfully :)
2. If you're stuck at work like me and forced to use IE, you'll be bombarded with some of the most annoying popups I've ever encountered.
Consider yourselves warned.
You started with "map bushfires" and all you could come up with was "map ex-girlfriends' activities"?
:)
Man, I expected more from Slashdot
This would be an absolute nightmare on networks if implemented, but what about adding UDP into the mix? Spoof the source address and use md5 to checksum your packets, relaying encrypted requests back to the server/proxy if any got dropped.
It's probably not foolproof, because I'm way out of my league here, but I've always wondered why no one suggests UDP. Wanna hide the uploaders' IP from the RIAA when they get on your network? I can't think of an easier way, unless they manage to compromise the entire system.