A compass tells you which direction is magnetic north.
Fixed that for you. Apologies for being pedantic, but this is a huge distinction for some of us.
A compass may point up to 40 degrees away from "true north" in parts of Canada. Although this is an extreme example, ignoring a more common 10 degree declination will place you over 0.17 miles away from your intended target for every mile you travel.
But, since there is also a GPS reciever in the device, surely a localised correction can be made to the magnetic north reading so it displays true north?
I happen to live in a small town, which doesn't have a lot of noise polution. One of my Uncles was a cop, and showed me a Parabolic Mic when I was younger. The thing lets you hear conversations inside a house an entire block away!
I guess if you did see someone pointing one at your house, the solution would be to get a another parabolic dish, aim it back at them, position yourself at the focal point and then SCREAM!!. That should make them take their earphones off in a hurry:-)
* If I buy an original potatoe at a store and I reproduce it and share copies with my friends, why isn't that called theft? Making that initial potatoe available can potentially cost the store thousands in lost potatoe[SIC] sales.
cough cough Monsanto
AFAICS it doesn't just apply to GM plants and patents. If you go to a public plant nursery, you can see otherwise ordinary garden plants with labels effectively forbidding you to take cuttings etc.
I suppose this is fair enough if someone has spent years trying to develop a particular hybrid - they want some rewards for their efforts - but it would be nice to know how long these last (and I don't just mean the plant**:D )
Why? Why should the Australian public fund research that companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Apple, etc can then just take for free and make billions off of?
Conversely why should manufacturers pay money for the invention when they've had to do all the work and taken all the risk refining and setting up mass production.
Apologies if I get some of the details slightly wrong, but in a previous slashdot article discussion, someone pointed out that CSIRO agreed with the WIFI standards committee that the technology could be used for a licensee fee. The manufacturers using the standard must therefore pay for the right to use it.
IIRC something similar happens with manufacturers using the technology in MPEG/DVDs etc.
I think what you are looking for is something called "document management" software.
... where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords?
I agree with the OCR requirement, but if he just needs to search the resulting PDFs, wouldn't DocSearcher do the job for him? I've found it trivial to set up and run and it's certainly helped me keep track of docs etc.
I wonder if anyone in the jury had even the foggiest idea of what the patent was actually about?
That strikes me as a real problem in the US system. How can a jury of average people really understand the intricacies of technology? If it takes a bright person 3 or 4 years to do a degree in the patent's subject area, what chance has the jury got to understand all these things in the time of a court case?
AFAIU, in some other regions these things are at least looked at by a board of people with some "skill in the art". Surely that must be a better way.
Unfortunately the patent they won here was for OFDM. Which was developed in the 1960s. Their patent claims were specifically limited to applications above 10GHz, but somehow or another they managed to prevail in court against manufacturers making devices in the 2-6 Ghz range. It's 100% BS.
I just read the first claim and I'm not sure it's that restrictive. It says:
A wireless LAN comprising:... each said transceiver being operable to transmit and receive data at radio frequencies in excess of 10 GHz,
To me that says it 'can be' be operated in excess of 10GHz not 'it must be', but I guess what it says depends on which patent lawyer you speak too:)
You're kidding right? IF terrorists can learn to fly a jumbo jet, which, mind you, is a very complex beast that requires a lot of training, simulator, and real-world flying time to be able to fly one,
Surely, "the flying" of a modern jet is not the difficult part - it's "the landing".
Wasn't the transputer an example of this architecture? I'm old enough to be able to say "Get off my lawn!" and remember when the transputer came out; it caused quite a stir.
The transputer was a RISC-ish CPU with 4 high speed DMA/serial links allowing it to be easily connected to other Transputers (each with its own local memory) to form a network. As such, it could be used to build a large MIMD system - not a SIMD one.
Transputers (+ the Occam language) supported multi-threaded programming with very fast context switches and, for its time, they also had very good FP performance when compared to the contemporary x86+float coprocessor.
The Apollo computers only had to cope with up to a few thousand kilobits per second of telemetry data and the like. Decoding a high definition YouTube stream means converting a few million bits per second of h.264 video into a 720p30 video stream (which is about 884 million bits per second).
Given that h.264 video is enormously more complicated to decode than telemetry data, and that the volume of it is at least several thousand times greater, I would be outright surprised if web browsing required ONLY 10000 times as much CPU power as the Apollo landers.
But, to be honest, the chipsets are just as likely to come with dedicated video decoding hardware than can handle HD H.264 without breaking a sweat. Take a look at the Atom's Poulsbo chipset for example.
There's something really appalling about spending $1,500 for a round trip cattle car flight with no food that previously cost $200
Sorry gramps, but obviously flying on a modern airliner is going to be a bit more expensive than your pre-WW2 price of piloting a sopwith camel.
That would be tricky because, IIRC, the Sopwith Camel was only produced as a single seater. It was a fighter and extremely manoeuvrable but not very stable. So touchy, in fact, "it" killed 1/3 of the pilots learning to fly it!
I used GOTO once. It was so sweet it can only be a sin.
Sometimes you just have to use a GOTO because C overloads the meaning of "break".
I had a while loop with a conditional break in the middle which was fine until I replaced the if/else construct with a switch which meant I could no longer use the break to escape the containing loop.... sigh.
The OMAP 3430 contains an ARM core as well as a lot of support functions, including hardware support for most video formats, image processing and also, as mentioned, OpenGL. Check out the link for an overview.
Yes the OMAP integrates several units (including the SGX GPU) that would have, a couple of years ago, been in separate packages on the MOBO. Just because they are now integrated onto the die doesn't mean that they are part of the CPU.
LEDs are not traditionally used for illumination not only because of the costs of LEDs, but because of the complex optics required to distribute the light. it's rare to see LEDs used for illumination,
I've started using LEDs as replacements for Halogen GU10 bulbs. The ones I have are a 3W single LED type which I tried as replacements for a few 50W Halogen bulbs. Though reasonable, these aren't nearly as bright as the original bulbs but I have seen some 4W versions advertised and may get those when more of the halogens burn out.
I would think that the issue with light distribution could be addressed to some extent with a small circle of "frosted" glass but I have yet to see any that do this (shrug)
Sorry for yet another "acronym" but if they want to be running an HD media player, my guess it's not so much the SGX technology they want to use, but the vxd
Jeez, could we get a few more acronyms and buzzwords in this summary please?
Sorry for yet another "acronym" but if they want to be running an HD media player, my guess it's not so much the SGX technology they want to use, but the vxd (more info here) unit that is also in the chipset.
That's why you use WoL to boot the system one hour before employees arrive, do a virus scan, check for updates, or other maintenance tasks. 1 hour is generally enough time for updates and virus scan. Employees come into a machine ready to go, you get regular maintenance and everybody's happy.
Sigh. I wish 1 hour was enough for my work PC. Much as I don't like it, I have been leaving mine on overnight as our virus scan (scheduled for the wee hours of the morning) can take several hours to complete... and I'm one of the luckier ones!
Regarding chicken pox, I'll look into it, but I've has the habit of following the local recommendations here (Finland); currently, chicken pox vaccination is not "mandatory".
When I was looking into the chicken pox vaccine for my kids (both of whom have been exposed to chicken pox a few times but somehow managed to avoid catching it), I read that the UK National Health Service's view is that it won't give the vaccine to the public in general. They say exposure to the virus by adults who had it as a child already, then acts as a booster to help prevent shingles (shrug). I guess it means that everyone would need to be vaccinated within a certain time period and then re-done at regular intervals. Of course, it could also be cost related but their argument does make some sense.
Slashdot Mirror
A compass tells you which direction is magnetic north.
Fixed that for you. Apologies for being pedantic, but this is a huge distinction for some of us.
A compass may point up to 40 degrees away from "true north" in parts of Canada. Although this is an extreme example, ignoring a more common 10 degree declination will place you over 0.17 miles away from your intended target for every mile you travel.
But, since there is also a GPS reciever in the device, surely a localised correction can be made to the magnetic north reading so it displays true north?
I remember a day when the composers and songwriters were also the performers.
Must have been a real pain for anyone doing symphonies. >8->
Invalid entry
Syntax error
Test ignore
Null value
And my personal favorite:
rm -rf
Do that and I doubt you'd find yourself in a pleasant retirement home in your old age >:->
That won't help you against one of these.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_microphone
I happen to live in a small town, which doesn't have a lot of noise polution. One of my Uncles was a cop, and showed me a Parabolic Mic when I was younger. The thing lets you hear conversations inside a house an entire block away!
I guess if you did see someone pointing one at your house, the solution would be to get a another parabolic dish, aim it back at them, position yourself at the focal point and then SCREAM!!. That should make them take their earphones off in a hurry :-)
* If I buy an original potatoe at a store and I reproduce it and share copies with my friends, why isn't that called theft? Making that initial potatoe available can potentially cost the store thousands in lost potatoe[SIC] sales.
cough cough Monsanto
AFAICS it doesn't just apply to GM plants and patents. If you go to a public plant nursery, you can see otherwise ordinary garden plants with labels effectively forbidding you to take cuttings etc.
I suppose this is fair enough if someone has spent years trying to develop a particular hybrid - they want some rewards for their efforts - but it would be nice to know how long these last (and I don't just mean the plant** :D )
**Which in my garden could be a matter of days :)
Why? Why should the Australian public fund research that companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Apple, etc can then just take for free and make billions off of?
Conversely why should manufacturers pay money for the invention when they've had to do all the work and taken all the risk refining and setting up mass production.
Apologies if I get some of the details slightly wrong, but in a previous slashdot article discussion, someone pointed out that CSIRO agreed with the WIFI standards committee that the technology could be used for a licensee fee. The manufacturers using the standard must therefore pay for the right to use it.
IIRC something similar happens with manufacturers using the technology in MPEG/DVDs etc.
I think what you are looking for is something called "document management" software.
... where he could archive the PDFs and scanned documents and be able to search by keywords?
I agree with the OCR requirement, but if he just needs to search the resulting PDFs, wouldn't DocSearcher do the job for him? I've found it trivial to set up and run and it's certainly helped me keep track of docs etc.
"jury verdict"
I wonder if anyone in the jury had even the foggiest idea of what the patent was actually about?
That strikes me as a real problem in the US system. How can a jury of average people really understand the intricacies of technology? If it takes a bright person 3 or 4 years to do a degree in the patent's subject area, what chance has the jury got to understand all these things in the time of a court case?
AFAIU, in some other regions these things are at least looked at by a board of people with some "skill in the art". Surely that must be a better way.
Unfortunately the patent they won here was for OFDM. Which was developed in the 1960s. Their patent claims were specifically limited to applications above 10GHz, but somehow or another they managed to prevail in court against manufacturers making devices in the 2-6 Ghz range. It's 100% BS.
I just read the first claim and I'm not sure it's that restrictive.
It says:
A wireless LAN comprising: ...
each said transceiver being operable to transmit and receive data at radio frequencies in excess of 10 GHz,
To me that says it 'can be' be operated in excess of 10GHz not 'it must be', but I guess what it says depends on which patent lawyer you speak too :)
You're kidding right? IF terrorists can learn to fly a jumbo jet, which, mind you, is a very complex beast that requires a lot of training, simulator, and real-world flying time to be able to fly one,
Surely, "the flying" of a modern jet is not the difficult part - it's "the landing".
Wasn't the transputer an example of this architecture? I'm old enough to be able to say "Get off my lawn!" and remember when the transputer came out; it caused quite a stir.
The transputer was a RISC-ish CPU with 4 high speed DMA/serial links allowing it to be easily connected to other Transputers (each with its own local memory) to form a network. As such, it could be used to build a large MIMD system - not a SIMD one.
Transputers (+ the Occam language) supported multi-threaded programming with very fast context switches and, for its time, they also had very good FP performance when compared to the contemporary x86+float coprocessor.
He's overloaded an operator for the car class. That bit of code was omitted for the sake of clarity.
Or, alternatively, to win an "underhanded" coding competition.
The Apollo computers only had to cope with up to a few thousand kilobits per second of telemetry data and the like. Decoding a high definition YouTube stream means converting a few million bits per second of h.264 video into a 720p30 video stream (which is about 884 million bits per second).
Given that h.264 video is enormously more complicated to decode than telemetry data, and that the volume of it is at least several thousand times greater, I would be outright surprised if web browsing required ONLY 10000 times as much CPU power as the Apollo landers.
But, to be honest, the chipsets are just as likely to come with dedicated video decoding hardware than can handle HD H.264 without breaking a sweat. Take a look at the Atom's Poulsbo chipset for example.
Nerd warning....
Sorry gramps, but obviously flying on a modern airliner is going to be a bit more expensive than your pre-WW2 price of piloting a sopwith camel.
That would be tricky because, IIRC, the Sopwith Camel was only produced as a single seater.
It was a fighter and extremely manoeuvrable but not very stable. So touchy, in fact, "it" killed 1/3 of the pilots learning to fly it!
I used GOTO once. It was so sweet it can only be a sin.
Sometimes you just have to use a GOTO because C overloads the meaning of "break".
I had a while loop with a conditional break in the middle which was fine until I replaced the if/else construct with a switch which meant I could no longer use the break to escape the containing loop.... sigh.
The OMAP 3430 contains an ARM core as well as a lot of support functions, including hardware support for most video formats, image processing and also, as mentioned, OpenGL. Check out the link for an overview.
Yes the OMAP integrates several units (including the SGX GPU) that would have, a couple of years ago, been in separate packages on the MOBO. Just because they are now integrated onto the die doesn't mean that they are part of the CPU.
The CPU can support OpenGL ES 2, but the article doesn't mention that at all.
I guess you meant GPU rather than CPU. 8-D
It would certainly put it ahead of the iphone since its GPU only supports OpenGL ES 1.1.
LEDs are not traditionally used for illumination not only because of the costs of LEDs, but because of the complex optics required to distribute the light. it's rare to see LEDs used for illumination,
I've started using LEDs as replacements for Halogen GU10 bulbs. The ones I have are a 3W single LED type which I tried as replacements for a few 50W Halogen bulbs. Though reasonable, these aren't nearly as bright as the original bulbs but I have seen some 4W versions advertised and may get those when more of the halogens burn out.
I would think that the issue with light distribution could be addressed to some extent with a small circle of "frosted" glass but I have yet to see any that do this (shrug)
Sorry for yet another "acronym" but if they want to be running an HD media player, my guess it's not so much the SGX technology they want to use, but the vxd
Really? I thought VxD died with Windows 98.
I guess there are only 26^3 TLAs so the birthday paradox has got to pop up from time to time :-)
Jeez, could we get a few more acronyms and buzzwords in this summary please?
Sorry for yet another "acronym" but if they want to be running an HD media player, my guess it's not so much the SGX technology they want to use, but the vxd (more info here) unit that is also in the chipset.
Oh, it's not like you can't just carry it in after you pull up near the door.
I mean, try to think practically here.
Yes but trying to remember which pocket you put it in is going to be a nightmare!
That's why you use WoL to boot the system one hour before employees arrive, do a virus scan, check for updates, or other maintenance tasks.
1 hour is generally enough time for updates and virus scan. Employees come into a machine ready to go, you get regular maintenance and everybody's happy.
Sigh. I wish 1 hour was enough for my work PC. Much as I don't like it, I have been leaving mine on overnight as our virus scan (scheduled for the wee hours of the morning) can take several hours to complete... and I'm one of the luckier ones!
On reddit, someone posted another neat GA algorithm which evolves a car to match terrain:
http://www.wreck.devisland.net/ga/
Nice. Just we just need to cross that with Fantastic Contraption and we might get some really strange solutions to the puzzles!
Regarding chicken pox, I'll look into it, but I've has the habit of following the local recommendations here (Finland); currently, chicken pox vaccination is not "mandatory".
When I was looking into the chicken pox vaccine for my kids (both of whom have been exposed to chicken pox a few times but somehow managed to avoid catching it), I read that the UK National Health Service's view is that it won't give the vaccine to the public in general. They say exposure to the virus by adults who had it as a child already, then acts as a booster to help prevent shingles (shrug). I guess it means that everyone would need to be vaccinated within a certain time period and then re-done at regular intervals. Of course, it could also be cost related but their argument does make some sense.
I'll give Tolkien credit for creating a great cure for insomnia.
Funny, the first time I got hold of The Hobbit and LOTR, I read them all in a (long) weekend.
FWIW, I think Asimov's Foundation series took me quite a bit longer, but then I read those in about grade 5.